Visitors from Terra: Iron and Blood

Prelude to Twilight (II)

The first months of the war saw the fall of the Baltic countries to the advancing Russian forces and the capture of the strategically important island of Gotland. Although the European nations, in paper, had a combined army powerful enough to match their enemy's strength, the sad reality was that, with the diversion of significant amount of US troops to the Asia-Pacific front and the severe shortages of both weapons and manpower, they did not have the capabilities to face the Russians of the battlefield. This colossal issue was exposed when the Polish 10th and 12th Mechanized Divisions and German 3rd Panzer Division tried to launch a counterattack in the region of present-day Elbing. The combined allied army failed to achieve a significant breakthrough, and it only led to the Russian armor to strike from the right flank and force them to retreat. Shortly after this failure, Russia launched Operation Suvorov, its first major offensive into European soil.

From the 2nd to 14th of August, several Russian armored spearheads broke NATO defenses in several points across the northern and southern sectors of the front. According to ancient military dossiers found at the ruins of Smolensk, General Lyudmevich's 2nd, 8th and 14th Armored Divisions made a lightning attack into the plains of Poland, occupying the cities of Gdansk, Bydgoszcz and Koszalin in the process. Meanwhile, in the south, Russian marines managed to capture several bridges over the Prut river and allowed for the 6th Army to push into Romania, leading to the capture of Constanza, Ploistei, and most important of all, Bucharest. NATO forces were experiencing defeat after defeat, and despite the arrival of fresh troops from America, morale was at an all-time low. The Asian front was not in a better shape. Back in July, China had landed a significant force on the Philippine island of Luzon, and although the US Army had managed to halt their advance at the outskirts of Manila, the situation at the archipelago was very precarious. It is mentioned in the memoirs of William Kassel, Secretary of the Treasury under DiAngelo and later on founder of the post-Great Disaster state of Arkham City, that there had been very intense diplomatic negotiations between the American president and the Indian Prime Minister, Jagpeed Mori, to convince him to join the war against the People's Republic of China, but due to differing geopolitical interests these ended in a dead end.

Regardless of the diplomatic talks that were taking place in the embassies' halls, it was clear to NATO commanders that, if they did not do something soon, then the European front would be at risk of collapse. As such, American general Lerroux devised a massive counterattack which would involve nearly a quarter of all available US forces in the area. Russia's August offensive had seen large swaps of Northern Poland fall to the enemy, but thanks to the staunch resistance put up by the Polish troops, the provinces of Warsaw and Lodz had managed to remain in allied hands, creating a salient in the Russian lines. Lerroux's battleplan, codenamed Operation Winter Storm, wanted to take advantage of the Russian overextension by launching an attack spearheaded by the 3rd and 6th Armored Divisions against the flank and take the key port city of Kaliningrad (present-day Königsberg), resulting in the complete annihilation of General Lyudmevich's army group. With this goal in mind, the US Army and Air Force began a significant buildup of forces in the Warsaw sector over the course of the next several months, culminating the process by late February. The 65.000 strong NATO army was ready to strike, and soon enough, the time came...