0900 21 April
Not much going on. There aren't currently any counterattacks worth making.
1000 21 April
How quickly things change. Bielsk in Poland and Beltsy in Romania come under attack, both facing 2-1 odds. Troops fall back from Bielsk, having been redeployed too recently to put up any serious resistance, and burn the province to the ground. Zhukov is redeploying. He'll be until the middle of June.
1800 21 April
German aviation tests the mighty VVS for the first time.
0000 22 April
The mighty VVS has once again proven its worth, shooting down just under four hundred German bombers for only 150 losses. A group of modern fighters, redeployed from the Far East, is reorganizing at the airbase in Mogilev, and will be fully ready for action in about a month.
1200 22 April
Germans attack Siauliau, just south of Jelgava. I suspect the Germans will be making a strong push in the north.
0900 23 April
Twelve air groups of Soviet fighters, mixed LaGG-3s and Yak-7s, catch four groups of FW-190As, winning a decisive victory: some 150 German losses to our 75.
Berzarin's defense of Beltsy has already lasted two days at this point, and is still doing alright. With enough bomber support, we may be able to turn this into a win.
0000 24 April
Kowel in Poland is under attack.
0000 25 April
Outlasting even my grandest expectations, Berzarin is forced to fall back from Beltsy. It probably should still go in the books as a win.
![](http://jayslater.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/beltsy-fallback.png)
0700 25 April
Turkey update! The Italian landings on the mainland have been forced back to once province, and they're about to lose three divisions in that pocket. We have a mechanized force of seven divisions here, which ought to be enough to hold against landings. More troubling is the force the Italians are building up in the Dodecanese, which (at the end of this update on 7 May) totals 16 divisions. Granted, to attack they have to attack mountains across a channel, so I'm not too concerned.
We begin to fall back out of Kowel, losing 5000 troops to the 4000 German losses. A bunch of Italian bombers are shot down, however.
Turkey:
![](http://jayslater.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/turkey-situation.png)
1700 25 April
Italians pushed out of Turkey.
0900 26 April
Kowel and Siauliau are abandoned, and the German forces move in quickly enough to stop us from totally destroying the provinces. They're mostly gone, though.
0000 27 April
A welcome moment of quiet...
2000 27 April
...destined not to last. Tarnopol, at the south end of the front, is under attack. This is one that would be great to win, both for my morale and to prevent this force of German armor from opening an avenue for exploitation.
0100 29 April
Tarnopol is looking good. Lvov (which I neglected to mention earlier) is holding, but not likely to win.
0600 30 April
The north is in danger of a collapse. Jekapilis and Pinsk come under attack. The former is lightly-defended and, in my current arrangement of troops, a gateway to the north. I don't have the troops to hunt down penetrating units and still hold the line. If we lose the latter, some thirty divisions (ETA 7 May through 13 May) are in danger of encirclement and defeat. This is absolutely unacceptable, and would probably end up spelling defeat.
Jekapilis and Pinsk are both currently defended by token forces of four divisions each. I've set Victory or Valhalla (hold at all costs) on both of them until reinforcements arrive.
(Note: this is where my notes get sparse. It got very tense.)
30 April - 7 May
Jekapilis is reinforced by units from nearby provinces, and from units redeployed from Persia, which are beginning to arrive.
The original defenders of Jekapilis hold out for a full week against 3-1 odds, but take terrible losses. A corps of four divisions was reduced to a strength of just over two before reinforcements finally arrived to relieve them.
Battles in Pinsk are ongoing. The leading edge of the units from the Brest-Litovsk salient are arriving, allowing me to rotate the defenders that took the worst of the fighting out. I'll keep doing this until our thirty divisions are safe (and hopefully redistributed somewhere they can be useful).
At some point in all this, we won another decisive victory against the Americans in Khabarovsk, which means I can probably afford to pull a few more units off that front to deal with the Germans. On the other hand, the Americans are reinforcing.
![](http://jayslater.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/khabarovsk-victory.png)
Below: Victory in Jekapilis, with some potential consequences marked up in blue and my current relevant move orders marked up in red. Bear in mind that most of the casualties we sustained were suffered by four divisions.
![](http://jayslater.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/jekapilis-marked-up.png)
That's where we stand.