Chronicles of Toria: Setting the Stage (Vol. 0)

(Act 1) Chapter 3 - The Beginning of the End

1942

The year 1942 would be marked by the second turning point of the war, as Italy had finally made its move and joined the war, on the side of the Trident Alliance. Just like in World War 1, the Italians weighed their options and decided that siding with Germany would only result in their defeat.

But that was only one of the reasons for the Italian betrayal; the other was the increasing rift between Mussolini and Hitler, with the former having growing worries about the possibility of the Germans attempting to remove Il Duce from power and replace him with a German lapdog, causing the nation to be occupied by the Germans. It would be for those reasons, among many others, that would lead Mussolini to throw himself and Italy into the arms of the Alliance.

And so, beginning close to the end of 1941 and the start of 1942, the leaders of the allied nations and Italy conducted a series of secret meetings, which resulted in the recognition of the Italian annexation of Albania, their conquest of Ethiopia, the halt of support for the Ethiopian forces still fighting a guerrilla war against the Italians and the eventual transfer of French Tunisia to Italian control. All of which led to the Italian invasion of the Austrian Alps in May.

Although the Italian betrayal had come as a surprise to the Germans, they were still able to react and blunt the Italian offensive dead in its tracks. The mountainous terrain proved to be the biggest obstacle for both sides, but especially for the Italians, as time after time, they kept trying to break through the German lines and failing every time. The situation only worsened when a successful German counterattack threw the Italians into a frenzied panic.

What was supposed to be a small counterattack became a complete rout of the Italian forces in the region of Venezia. Miscommunication, loss of order, desperation, and hasty decisions by the Italian Army led to their eventual chaotic retreat from the Austrian Alps and then from Venezia, as the remaining panzer forces of the Germans gave chase to the Italians. Just like in World War 1, the Italian army was shown to be led by donkeys, and a worse disaster was only stopped by the last-minute arrival of British and Japanese Expeditionary forces alongside ANZAC units, which managed to stop the Germans at the Adige River.

Although the Italian offensive was a fiasco, their entrance into the war caused the Germans to redeploy many of their forces to the south to prevent a possible Allied breakthrough from the Austrian Alps. With the redeployment of German forces away from France, the Trident Alliance would finally achieve total air superiority over France, something they would use to great effect in their next operation. However, that was still some time away as the Alliance was in the final stages of their preparations for their grand offensive, and changes were still happening around the world, some bigger or smaller.

In Eastern Europe and the Balkans, the situation remained tense but silent. In Greece, the civil war between Royalist and Communist forces still raged on, but the tide was slowly turning in favor of the Royalist forces as they received support from their neighbors. Meanwhile, in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, the leaders of those two nations also began to hold secret meetings with the Allied nations, as it became more evident that Germany was starting to fall, especially after the Italian betrayal. However, the intervention from both nations would only come a year later.

For Hungary and Romania, the situation was much worse. Cut off from most international trade by the Allied blockade of sea and land lanes, the lack of success on the Western front, and the treatment of Hungarians and Romanians as nothing more than cannon fodder by the Germans were slowly causing the populations and even governments of those nations to turn against what little sympathy remained for the Axis. But Germany wouldn't accept another betrayal so easily.

In Hungary, after fears of their leader attempting to sign a separate peace with the Alliance, Hitler ordered his forces to launch Operation Margarethe, which essentially led to the German Occupation of Hungary and the installation of an avid Nazi supporter as the leader of Hungary. This coup effectively ensured Hungary's loyalty towards Germany for the remainder of the war, but it also did nothing to change the current progress of the conflict, aside from diverting even more forces away from France.

In Romania, the Nazi coup in Hungary became the catalyst for growing unrest within the government, as King Michael I began preparations for what would later become known as the 1943 Romanian Coup d'État, or more simply known as The Royal Coup.

As for the Soviet Union, it continued to maintain its neutrality during the conflict, but Western spies inside the Union sent concerning reports of the ever-increasing Red Army and its modernization. Yet, at the same time, there were no signs that the USSR would make its move just yet, almost as if Stalin was waiting for both capitalists and fascists to kill each other so that he could sweep up the broken pieces of all participants.

On the other hand, across the Atlantic, the United States also continued to maintain its neutrality, but only through the whims of the still primarily anti-war Congress. It was a significant thorn for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who wanted to bring the USA back into the world stage as a major power, and for that, he needed the nation to join the ongoing war in Europe.

However, with Germany now being slowly encroached upon from all sides, and the Trident Alliance having total naval superiority in the Atlantic, the hopes for Congress voting for an American intervention in Europe appeared slimmer and slimmer by the day. To change that, FDR would need to burn through much of his political capital to garner enough support from Congress.

In the Far East, the Empire of Japan continued to covertly spread its influence in Southeast Asia, especially in the Dutch East Indies. Due to their situation as a government-in-exile, the Dutch necessitated Japanese support to arm and supply them, forcing the Dutch to make more concessions to the Japanese in exchange.

Meanwhile, in China, the civil war still continued, but it was ever closer to ending as the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek, after having destroyed the last remnants of the PRC, began focusing their attention west and slowly defeating the last remaining independent Chinese warlords.

June 1942

The first day of summer in 1942 would be greeted with an intense bombardment of the German lines by Allied artillery pieces and bombers. That marked the start of the grand Allied offensive, as French, British, Japanese, Commonwealth, and various Free Forces troops began crossing the Marne and Seine rivers and advancing into the German lines.

The offensive had the arduous task of pushing the Germans out of France, but it was greeted with resounding success at the start. Allied forces would make multiple breakthroughs across the entire front, especially on the coast of Normandy, where Allied ships provided shore bombardment alongside close air support from various air forces to aid the advancing troops.

The German forces put up staunch resistance to the offensive, but they were continuously pushed back, as British and Japanese forces equipped with new tanks forced breakthroughs after breakthroughs on their lines. While a reformed and increasingly more mobile French army, equipped with heavy tanks capable of outperforming the German Tigers, followed right behind to hold the new lines. In many ways, the Allied forces were copying the Germans with a rapid offensive to encircle and destroy the German army in the region, but with the necessary precautions to prevent a premature end to the offensive.

Still, the Germans conducted a series of fighting retreats and manage to avoid many of their units from being encircled, albeit with heavy losses in manpower and material. By the 3rd of July, the Allies would successfully push the Germans all the way back to the right bank of the Somme River and back into Belgium and Luxembourg. Although the offensive had failed to ultimately push the Germans out of France, it was still a resounding success.

This offensive overshadowed the smaller but notable Venezia offensive, where Italians, alongside the allied ANZAC, BEF, and JEF units, pushed the Germans back out of Italy. This offensive was much slower and more methodical than the French one, and it only ended after the German forces successfully withdrew most of their forces back into the impregnable Alps of Austria.

As the offensives came to an end, the precarious situation of Germany was only exacerbated. The alliance showed that they could force the Germans to retreat, and Germany was now clearly on its way to defeat. As the alliance forces recovered from their offensive, plans for the next and much more ambitious offensive were already being drafted. Across the rest of Europe, armies were starting to mobilize for war.