IceBreakChron VII: COUNTDOWNS

Started by JasonPratt, April 21, 2020, 12:46:28 PM

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JasonPratt

A short entry today to balance out the longer one yesterday.

Summer 1941: Zhukov completes recovering and activating the former Polish naval base near the city of Pinsk -- more than 300 miles from any ocean, in the forested swamps of the Pripyat River (a tributary of the Dnepr). Stalin had demanded the base be ready by May 1941, and Zhukov got it done, though up until June 22nd the base will still be gearing up to full activation (at which time the base will have other concerns all of a sudden. ;) )

Zhukov with understandable pride (and motivations, in context!) will mark it in his "Memoirs and Reflections" (p.225) along with all other Soviet Naval bases in the first half of 1941.

The Pinsk flotila includes four 263-ton Zhelezniakov class armored boats, plus five other 'monitors' captured from Poland ranging from 130 to 150 tons. Altogether the Pinsk flotilla has 66 river warships and cutters, a squadron of airplanes, a company of the newly formed Soviet Marines, and other units (per Shirokorad's "Ships and Cutters of the USSR Navy 1939-1945", pp.741-56.)

As for why Stalin wanted a naval base more than 300 miles from any ocean... well if the hints given from back in its initial report entry didn't explain it, don't worry, that'll become clear eventually. This will eventually be perhaps the most famous Soviet naval base in the mid-20th century! -- just as Stalin and Zhukov had planned, more or less!

(Though not for defending the Soviet Union.)
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
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JasonPratt

Bit of a grab-bag today; a longer entry coming tomorrow...

Welcome to June, 1941! Just in case you were wondering, and for the very last time: Soviet fighter and bomber airfleet training manuals continue to focus teaching one massive ground strike instead of dogfighting. This will be painfully relevant twenty-two days from now... :hide:


June 1941: say, how's the Palace of the Soviets coming along? Haven't thought about that for a while. The steel frame for its lower levels has been erected. Construction has been unavoidably delayed by the monstrous production levels of war material, of course; but should start up again more briskly, soon! (This is as far as it will ever get in construction.)


June 1941: this month Nazi U-boats will sink sixty-one British merchant ships, totaling 431,000 tons (per Churchill's semi-autobiographical "The Second World War", Moscow edition 1998, vol.3, p.80). One imperial ton equals 1.016 metric tons. This year has been very bad for British shipping: January, 320,000 tons; February, 402,000; March, 537,000; April, 654,000 (!!); May, 500,000. Well, that's kind of an improvement last month, right? Not entirely -- the numbers are decreasing partly because the United Kingdom is running out of merchants!

You can thank Soviet rare earth elements sold to Hitler by Stalin (as well as Soviet oil) for contributing to this stunning naval victory in the Battle of the Atlantic over the dominant naval super-power of all world history up until now. Without chromium and vanadium, to give only two examples, you not only don't get fancy marine-grade screwdrivers; you also don't get marine-grade engines capable of withstanding the temperatures and pressures needed to run your subs (and other boats and ships) on oil instead of boiled water.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
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JasonPratt

Early June 1941: in "My Mission in Life: Memoirs of an Aircraft Designer" (p.252), Stalin's personal aide Yakovlev, eventually an Air Force Colonel-General, attests that "at the end of May or the beginning of June" a meeting was convened at the Kremlin to deal with concealment and deception.

What kind of deceptions? Troops would be told they were going on maneuvers; the generals would know better, but only the highest ranking generals and marshals (or some of them) would be given accurate deployment locations and schedules. Actively misleading your own troops is much more important to offensive than defensive operations: secrecy in defense can amount to being told no more than "defend this line" or this town or fort or road or forest or whatever. You might hide the mission from them until the point of departure, but Soviet leaders are hiding this mission not only after the point of departure, but after the forces arrive in their deployment area! (Nazi High Command at this time is doing exactly the same, involving "Sea Lion".)

Eventual Marshal of the Soviet Union Zakharov gives an example of the thickness of this veil of secrecy (in "Historical Issues", 1970, #5, p.42, possibly meaning "JMH"). "In early June, Colonel Rumyantsev, in charge of military liaison with railway lines serving Odessa Military District, stopped by my office -- I was then District Chief of Staff -- secretly to inform me that Znamyenka Station had in recent days seen 'annushkas' passing through, coming from the Rostov area and bound for offloading in the Cherkassy sector. 'Annushka' had become the military liaison people's moniker for 'division'."

The point is that Rumyantsev is confused about the pass-through of these divisions, and is secretly asking for clarification from Zakharov, who can't help because he doesn't know anything about it either, despite being Chief of Staff for the Odessa Military District: an absolutely crucial lynchpin in Soviet border operations!

"Two days later, I received from Cherkassy [sector] an encrypted message asking for permission to take over a few of our district's depots for storing the belongings of troops coming into the area from the Northern Caucasus. Since our District HQ had not been advised any troops were to be massed here, I used a secure line to call the Ops Section at General Staff."

Now the Chief of Staff for an entire Military District is calling secretly up the chain of command in confusion, about divisions massing in his area that he himself has never been told about.

"Ops Duty Chief Anfisov came to the phone. I told him about the encoded message I had gotten and asked for clarification. Anfisov answered that the cable was to be shredded forthwith, that Cherkhassy [sector] would receive necessary instructions from General Staff, and that [Military] District Headquarters was not to get involved."

General Staff has told the Odessa MD Chief of Staff that the sector has blundered in asking an otherwise perfectly reasonable request up the normal chain of command, and that the HQ of the Odessa Military District should forget and ignore the divisions massing here.

Why did the Odessa MD Chief of Staff call up to Moscow rather than asking his own troop commander about it? Zakharov explains: Lieutenant-General Cherevichenko, the Odessa Military District commander, and his immediate superior in the chain of command, also knows nothing of divisions passing through and deploying at the border sector of his MD!

Soviet MD commanders and their Chiefs of Staff are people invested with enormous authority and power: for all practical purposes, the are the military governors for hundreds of thousands or even millions of square miles, and over millions of people, or even tens of millions, civilian as well as military. They are held responsible for absolutely everything happening within their District, and not only involving military operations! As MD commander, a general must during wartime also pool resources for the war: population, industry, transportation, communications networks, agriculture, natural resources both for food and production.

Yet even inside his safe, a cable meant for the eyes of the District Chief of Staff alone, poses some kind of threat, and must be immediately destroyed! -- and the MD commander himself is kept in the dark, told not to pay attention.

Don't worry, though! Soon enough, Zakharov will be the one deploying in secret through his Military District, while folks back at MD headquarters are told not to talk about multiple military commands in the same district...
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
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JasonPratt

Thirty-one days out from the anniversary of Barbarossa in current history!  :coolsmiley: (Or is it thirty-two? -- too lazy to check my math for sure.)

June 2, 1941, twenty days before Operation Barbarossa: the Nazi SS start forcibly deporting civilians living on the eastern border.

They are not being deported to protect them from a Soviet invasion, but because Hitler plans to invade Russia in two or (eventually) three weeks and is about to move his forces even closer to the border than they already are. As the first example of this push-up, once the SS troops have finished the deportation, they themselves stay put, getting ready for death squad actions in Russia.


Early June 1941: eventual Soviet Marshal Moskalenko, commander at this time of the First Artillery Anti-Tank Brigade, learns that Nazi troops are starting to take down barbed wire on their side of the borders with Soviet territory. He regards this as irrefutable proof that they are about to invade. (From "On the Southwestern Front" p.24.)

Guderian arrived in the area back in spring, and has been directing the quick construction and placements of light "assault fortifications", of the sort he threw up in about a week, before he invaded Poland -- although since May this has been mostly busy-work for show to the Soviets.

The Nazis have, of course, been watching the Soviets setting up similar light fortifications off to the side of main axes of advance, for almost a year.

The Nazi high command knows exactly what their own efforts really mean; they must know what the very similar Soviet efforts also mean, although the Nazis do not yet know how extensively the Soviets have been preparing in their backfield. (The arrival of the Second Strategic Echelon will take the Nazis totally by surprise, for example, as well as uncovering the extensive Soviet tank factories created near the front line.)
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
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RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

June 3, 1941, from today's Directive of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army: "Leninism dictates that a socialist country, using the favorable world situation, must take on the initiative of making military advances against the capitalist surroundings with the purpose of widening the socialist front... Leninism's motto, 'defend your land on foreign soil', can at any moment turn into practical action."

Nineteen days before Barbarossa, the chief political leaders of the Red Army are emphasizing (again) that the troops should be ready to make military advances into foreign soil, at any moment, in order to widen the spread of international socialism. The "favorable world situation" "dictated" by Leninism refers to opposing nations being weakened by the Second Imperialist War, and/or mass uprisings of workers across the world against property owners (which is the classical Marxian way for the final revolutionary world war to start.)
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
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RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

June 6, 1941: sixteen days before Barbarossa, Hitler and his innermost circle receive word that the Soviet government is intending to move out to Sverdlovsk, significantly east of Moscow.

Göbbels writes some very unflattering things in his diary about this plan.

This, however, is counter-intelligence: Sverdlovsk is a bogus command post. When things do turn really critical, Stalin will transfer many Soviet government agencies and foreign embassies to Kuibyshev, not to Sverdlovsk -- and then only the agencies deemed expendable enough that the Soviet high command doesn't need them!

The actual defensive crisis redoubt is a massive set of underground tunnels driven into the Zhiguli range; a construction masked by the Kuibyshev hydro-electric power station, which will not be built here but at another site upstream because this area is unfit for a power station! But it's great for a bedrock-burrow command post, in a final defensive regroup. Suvorov finds no indication that the Nazis ever knew about the Zhiguli bedrock-bunkers, or even the surface-level Kuibyshev defensive capital.

However, the Soviet leadership isn't planning to move there yet.

(Suvorov claims that after graduating with honors from the Frunze High Command Army School in Kiev, with honors, in only three years rather than the normal four, he was assigned his second duty, after a stint in the Carpathian Military District, to the Volga Military District headquarters in Kuibyshev -- still the unofficial capital of the Soviet Union even in peacetime! All the political, economic, and military data processed about other nations in Moscow, was analyzed simultaneously and independently, so that rationales and conclusions by each set of teams could be compared to each other. Suvorov served on such teams, before being sent to a top-secret Soviet Army Academy; graduating from an accelerated course in three years; and then being sent as attachê to the USSR Permanent Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, where he spent four years processing military intelligence information.)
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
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RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

#51
Memorial Day today in current history, May 25, 2020!

As you can see below, we're starting to get up to June 13th, 1941; so the end of this thread approaches! -- but we have a few more things to check on before June 13th arrives.


June 9-12, 1941: the 9th Special Rifle Corps, commanded by Lieutenant-General Batov, is secretly redeployed from the Trans-Caucasus to the Crimea.

We've heard a little about them before, so now it's time to reveal why they are "special": because they are the first Soviet rifle corps to be configured, armed, and trained, for amphibious assault. (Note that they are not the Soviet Marines, who are part of the Navy as would be expected.)

The Odessa Military District Troop Commander Lieutenant-General Cherevitchenko (later Colonel-General), receives them and orders their deployment during these days (having embarked weeks earlier of course.) We only know this from Zakharov (in "Historical Issues", 1970, Vol.5, p.44). Cherevitchenko never says one word about it in his own memoirs or articles, despite this Rifle Corps being an amazing achievement of Soviet training!

At least Zakharov knows about this Corps arriving in his Military District; despite commanding his MD, he has no idea (yet) that a whole 19th Army under Lieutenant-General Konyev (later a Marshal of the Soviet Union) and his deputy Lieutenant-General Reiter (a graduate of the German Red Army training academies!), is being secretly assembled in the Odessa MD.

Does General Konyev speak of the assembling of this secret army? Nope, he starts his memoirs in 1945. What about Batov, commander of the special amphibious assault corps? We learn in his book that he was the deputy commander of the Trans-caucasus Military District -- so why was he deployed to the Odessa MD in charge of a "special" corps? Why were corps units and formations being drilled in quickly loading into and assaulting from Black Sea Fleet combat vessels onto foreign shores? Why do they specialize in seizing and destroying oil wells and derricks once on land? Why does this Corps get special indoctrination from top-level representatives of the Chief Directorate of Political Propaganda about waging "liberation war on aggressor territory"? Why, on June 13, 1941, will every member of 9th Special Corps get a Russian-Romanian pocket phrase-book?

Suvorov can find these details (though not their explanations) about Batov's Corps as side-notes and asides in other accounts; not in Batov's. But this is typical: high-level commanders tend to be chatty later about secret details of other formations, not about their own.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
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JasonPratt

Early June 1941: Lieutenant-General Professor Karbyshev, of the Corps of Engineers -- the man who designed and oversaw creation of the Stalin Line in the 1930s, and who has overseen creation of the weirdly oriented Molotov Line since late June 1940 -- deploys personally to the western border with the nation's most elite combat engineers.

Arriving at the beginning of June, he writes back to his friends in Moscow that the war has already begun (Germany won't invade until June 29th, when Stalin will be taken by surprise).

He isn't writing back to complain that war has already begun, or to warn them about it, but to arrange a victory party with them!

This party won't be back at Moscow: he plans for them to come forward to where he will be, "on the scene of victory".

Meanwhile, he is attending and evaluating exercises for teaching Soviet troops how to fight across wet gaps and for teaching the most recent generation of T-34 tanks how to overcome anti-tank barriers. These are purely offensive maneuvers against enemy defenses.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

Early June 1941: Colonel Professor Illya Starinov of Military Intelligence, and NKVD Colonel Vauphsassov, had both been involved in creating and leading the partisan brigades for the security corridors, and (for Starinov) the epic Fortified Sector defenses behind the security corridors; and both colonels had also been surprised at the orders from Stalin to deactivate the partisans and the garrisons and uproot or bury the defensive structure of the Sectors and corridors. What have they and the Soviet partisans been doing since autumn 1939?

The former defensive partisans have been reassigned to paratrooper assault units (in an airmobile arm already over a million strong back in autumn 1939, nearly 40 thousand in parachute assault, now bolstered with new regiments and stand-alone battalions to be assigned to normal divisions); to NKVD SpecOps penal units; or to special infiltration units on the western borders. The chronicle of the "Order of Lenin Moscow Military District", p.177, records (per Suvorov) three regiments of three battalions each of parachute assault troops formed from disbanded defensive partisans, each battalion numbering from 500-700 paratroops.

Starinov (author of "Mines Awaiting Their Moment", frequently cited by Suvorov) is sent to the western border with written orders in his pocket from People's Commissar for Defense Marshal Timoshenko, and subordinate to him alone. After the German invasion starts, Starinov will be assigned as deputy to the Partisan Movement Supreme Commander for Strategic Disruptive Operations ("thus becoming the Red Army's Commando #1", as Suvorov puts it). Starinov will later plan, lead, and carry out "Operation Concert" and "Operation Rail War", in 1943, each operation having the simultaneous participation of over one hundred thousand partisans and commandos. Starinov is no mere party apparatchik! He will be on the border literally on the evening of Barbarossa.


June 1941: according to the JMH, 1983, #9, p. 31, nine separate NKVD blocking regiments, plus a reserve blocking battalion and blocking squad, are assigned behind the Southern Front line.


Early June 1941: Colonel Rodimtsev, commander of the 5th Airborne Brigade, 3rd Airborne Corps, along with his men, start learning German -- first and foremost, among other languages. He and his men are far from the only troops cramming German lessons in early 1941, however.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

June 12, 1941, ten days before the Nazi invasion: Stalin creates Airborne Forces Command. This (wartime!) organization directly commands the second new five airborne corps, being assembled on Stalin's order since May, effectively grouped now into the world's first airborne army organization.

It should be noted that while the order to create the Army HQ came on this date, the corps themselves will not be finished filling out until well after the Nazis have invaded. But the paratroops, parachutes, and fighting material already exist; so despite being invaded by a blitzkrieg against which airborne assault is essentially useless, the whole second set of five corps will still gear up for airmobile operations in August, as Stalin previously decreed!

6th Air Assault Corps will be commanded by Major-General A.I. Pastrevich, housing 11th, 12th, and 13th Airborne Assault Brigades in the Moscow Military District.

7th AAC, Major-General I.I. Gubarevich, housing 14th, 15th, and 16th AABs, in Povolzhie.

8th AAC, Major-General V.A. Glazkov, housing AABs 17, 18, and 19, also in the Moscow MD.

9th AAC, Major-General M.I. Denissenko, housing AABs 20, 21, and 22, in the Ivanov Military District.

10th AAC, Colonel (not a General) N.P. Ivanov, AABs 23, 24, 25, also in Povolzhie, specifically the Gorokhovets camps.

Notice also that while these corps have been assigned into the equivalent of an Army HQ container, they're still essentially three-brig divisions plus support, just like the prior five. Also worth noting is that the new triple-brigs aren't being assigned to divisions to be added to the current corps with the original triple-brigs being assigned to their own proper divisions. Is that because they're running out of qualified commanders? -- maybe: there's a colonel in charge of one of these "corps" currently! But container organizations typically show an intention to fill out the remainder later, and much of an AAC's striking power wouldn't be in parachute assault troops and glider assaults, but in normal forces being brought in later by normal air transports, or even rolling up on the ground afterward.

Having these forming up in the backfield, compared to the far-forward deployment of the first five Airborne Assault Corps, makes a difference in why they don't have corps-level commanders yet, but it also begs the question of why the first five AACs are deployed so far forward to begin with! The overall implication is that Stalin expects the first group of AACs to be in action long before August, so that restructuring them now into the new Airborne Forces Command would greatly hamper their operations.

Aside from the thirty airborne assault brigades of the ten airborne assault corps, another six detached airborne assault brigades and several separate airborne assault regiments either already exist or will by August.

Aside from those, a significant number of parachutist landing battalions have been created as units attached to regular Soviet infantry. The 55th Rifle Corps has been cycling these battalions through training, along with some other corps, per (eventual) Marshal Ivan Bagramian, since the start of the year.

None of these ten airborne corps (the first or second group) is (apparently) the set of airborne corps which will be air-lifted later during an offensive in 1943 -- that will be a third whole other set of airborne corps, first commissioned and then filled out at the very depth of the German invasion!

Of the first group of five corps, only one will ever fight as an airborne corps, during a counter-offensive near Moscow. But not one of the five new Airborne Forces Command corps will ever fight as an airborne corps. The many divisions-worth of troops of these ten corps will get used eventually, however: in an epic fashion to be narrated later!
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

#55
June 12, 1941, ten days before Barbarossa: the Kiev Special Military District receives a "top secret, special importance" directive from Zhukov and Timoshenko (found in the Central Archive of the Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation, Fund 16, Index 2951, Case 261, Sheets 20-21), stating, "During the time period June 15 to July 10, 1941, the 16th Army with the following components will arrive on the territory of the Kiev Special Military District: the command of the army with service personnel; 5th Mechanized Corps (of 13th and 17th Tank, and 109th Motorized Divisions); 57th Tank Division; 32nd Rifle Corps (of 46th and 152nd Rifle Divisions, and 126th Corps Artillery Regiment)... I forbid all open telephone and telegraph communication with the arrival, unloading, and placement of the new troops. Nobody except you, members of the [Kiev MD] Military Council, and the chief of staff in the district, can know about this... All units arriving to the territory of the district have been issued false names, listed below. The false name is to be used in all correspondence, including on envelopes of top secret documents."

Four armies and nine separate corps make up the Kiev MD already! -- and troops have been arriving in mass since the second half of May! Now the super-strong 16th Army, currently being shipped from beyond western Russia, will be arriving in equally super-secret fashion: so secret that they're traveling under false names, which must be used in all official correspondence, even within the limited high-command of the MD who are allowed to know about their arrival and deployment.

But the Kiev MD is about to get even busier than this, earlier than this, starting tomorrow...


Next up: THE GREATEST IN ALL HISTORY
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!