Trash , considering this is about the struggle of the only truly independent and sovereign nation of Africa in an Alternate History scenario against all odds, and an AAR that will feature a desperate struggle for victory, I think you'll enjoy it, and this update in particular. I'm not sure what I can compare this with. Maybe Vietnam, considering the asymmetric situation and how they are the ones taking far heavier losses and still resisting bravely.
Africa's Finest Hour
The Siege of Madrigal Algiers
Imperialistic cowards! Our fleet had no chance... they fought bravely, but they had no chance. Our navy can make no difference in this war, there is no other option than to disband what is left, and prepare for the coming onslaught. One day, one day, all the sailors butchered in such a dishonorable attack shall be avenged!
My precious Congo is practically free! All the Enrichers must stand and fight for North Africa now! If we lost the fight with Britain, this achievement over Congo will be in vain. To victory!
The white devils arrogantly think our Mother Africa is doomed because they assume the strategic deployment of the majority of the African army is over and that it will starve without supplies now. How wrong they are! As the Lord of all Beasts of Earth, Air and Sea, I have a plan that will give Africa a chance no matter how bleak the situation currently is!
For Mother Africa comrades, do not turn your back on her! Victory or Death!
The North African front is collapsing! Whatever your plan is, Amin, we need it now or soon we will be fighting a last stand!
This cannot end like this! After all the struggle, after all the toil and blood, this cannot! All attempts to cut off the spread out British forces have failed, I fear the British invasion force already outnumbers the entire African Army and even worse: an entire infantry division and one of our machete knights divisions are completely surrounded and without supplies! There is little to do if the armies that were being redeployed from Congo end without supplies, because if that happens, it shall be the end for all of us!
Not with bombs, not with arms, not even with a thousand years of oppression, will the African spirit be broken. We will fight to the last man, including those the arrogant Anglo-Saxon imperialists, invaders of Britannia as much as of our homeland, for Britannia belongs to the Celts, which I am well aware of, being the Last King of Scotland, assume to be doomed, for in Algeria, most of our forces will soon make their valiant stand!
But how if Algeria is completely surrounded by British forces and their navy rule undisputedly over the Mediterranean and Atlantic?
God has given me the intuition to find a wondrous relic from the times the mythical continents of Atlantis, Lemuria and Mu existed! A gate through space that can connect two distant locations and allow instant travel between them! But I know only one of the codes of its lost language: the one to set it to transport our armies in the Sahara to another of those gates buried near Algiers, which was already unearthed for this.
Tears of the Sun OST: Variations of a Theme
Excerpts from Undisclosed 20th Century History of Africa, published in 2515
"And thus, leaving the intelligence of the British Empire dumbfounded, the reports from scouts on how suddenly an entire army appeared near Algiers were but a glimpse of the unbelievable discovery of an ancient mass teleporter buried in the Sahara, that gave to Africa a slim chance of victory by allowing the majority of their supply-starved forces to regroup at Algiers through teleportation, bypassing the enemy linesÂą. However, such was still a slim chance for them, for even with most of their forces safe from being without supplies and encircled, they were still facing a vastly superior army in numbers, operational training and equipment. The events that follow are known as the Siege of Algiers."
ÂąThere is no consensus among Historians about how exactly the Africans of 1942 succeeded at operating such a device far beyond the scientific expertise of even the most advanced nations of the Earth in that year, let alone Africa. Blind luck is the most accepted theory, but only by about 30% of those who specialized in WW2 studies, second to telepathic instructions by an Extraterrestrial Sentient Entity(ESE) , a theory particularly popularized by the African History Channel.
(Note: Because there isn't a cooler explanation for this than
Gayniggers from Outer Space Helping their bros in Earth portals
)
"Poorly equipped but with unbreakable morale, the African soldiers resisted fiercely, guided by effective tactical and strategic leadership, and refused to fold even when defeat was, for the eyes of many foreign specialists, a complete certainty to the point the British were already preparing the celebrations by the beginning of August..."
"In most of the battles fought in this bleak time for the African nation, the casualties rarely were higher on the British side..."
"The battle of Tlemcen was a desperate attempt of the African Union to relieve their two encircled infantry and cavalry divisions..."
"...hampered by poor weather, organization and the terrible overload of the extremely limited logistical capabilities of the African Union army to transport supplies to the front..."
"...Operation Market Desert failed, dooming the 40,000 soldiers of the 3rd Machete Knights and 3rd Regular to annihilation or capture, while technically all but Algiers was lost territory as Algiers was the last region of the African Union with real defenses other than the delay the terrible African road infrastructure, or lack thereof provided, a delay that became a decisive factor to give the African Union a fighting chance..."
"...the almost complete indifference of the socialist allies of the African Union to their growingly hopeless fight, other than for a few Russian interdiction operations before the siege of Algiers, which were quickly abandoned when the Union needed them mostly, would later be known in Africa as the Eastern Betrayal, and even after the European Front of the Second War began to shift in favor of the Internationale, no significant support ever came while Africa stood on the brink of defeat, in land, sea and air, with the latter being particularly devastating because Britain achieved absolute air supremacy over Africa, as they had no air force or anti-air equipment of any kind. Such abandonment was completely intentional, for Rome intended to partition Africa with Russia after "liberating" it, rather than helping a sovereign Africa to survive."
"If there was one element the African army of 1942 had in their favor, it was their advanced and extremely complex set of tactical doctrines centered on their greatest strength of numbers and infantry and focused on the daunting task of launching effective nightly hit-and-run attacks against enemy forces, where select units were sent even behind enemy lines to disrupt their formations, many years before the first night vision goggles were invented. Despite their technological superiority, the efficiency of the British army in night offensives ended significantly inferior..."
"Africa faced a great strategic dilemma: by advancing, they would be risking all they have left, but by operating defensively, they would be risking inevitable defeat and reliance over allies long proved to be unreliable. A daring move was launched to both rescue the 3rd Regular, or what is left of it, which somehow, by Septermber 16th, still survived and evaded capture, and to encircle and rout part of the British forces in Africa. Only a single infantry division would be left at Algiers, with the defying task of holding the city at all costs..."
"All the British territorial advances that happened even in late October continued both sluggish and of little strategic impact against the African ability to slowly but surely expand their army, giving them little better, even if still small chances of victory, but the British still had reinforcements available to strengthen their front, while Africa, despite having no shortage of men ready to enlist, which ensued any victory was a victory no matter how disproportionate the casualties, had a crippling shortage of industrialization to field and supply a modern army..."
"...alleged to have driven Mathilda tanks into retreat without any access to modern anti-tank weapons, the 2nd and last surviving division of Machete Knights, which turned into a general symbol of African resistance against Imperialism as much as the Ethiopian victories that granted their continued independence during the 19th century and the Zulu's hopeless struggle against the Iberian colonization of South Africa, were given the decisive role of breaking out the 3rd Regular and encircling the British forces near Oran and Orleansville, which if successful would be a significant strategic victory for Africa, but still possibly insufficient to turn the tides of the war..."
"In an attempt to prevent the encirclement of their own forces, the British, exploiting the ever-thinner defenses of the African Union, launched an attack against Djelfa that if successful could lead to the complete encirclement of almost half of the African army..."
"Swag swag swag for sho welelele!" - 3rd Regulars', informally known as the Izikhotanes, last battle cry before they launched a doomed charge against the British forces surrounding them at Oujda, armed with only machetes as they have long ran out of ammunition in 29th of November at 13:00 hours. They confirmedly fought to the last men, backed by the complete lack of registers on any members of the 3rd Regulars surrendering in both British and African archives.
Canadian Edition Trivia: Among the 3rd Regulars were 100 Canadians who joined the African International Brigades. The black Africans believed the non-Arab Caucasians fighting on their side were their "spirit brothers", literally black African spirits reincarnated or born as white men.
"December 5th, 1942. The African soldiers defending Djelfa, upon whom the entire survival of Africa as a sovereign nation may have depended at this point, seemingly were on the verge of defeat, not because they had no chance at holding Djelfa against the British forces attacking, but because of the complete air supremacy of Britain over the African skies, and all requests Africa sent to their allies for expeditionary air forces to help them resist were answered with the indifference of silence and vague promises. Not even the greatest elan could turn the tide of the battle with devastating dive bombings and roaring sirens of the bombers, which the African soldiers cowered from impotently, as they had no means of fighting back against the RAF. Many believed the Union had literally no chance at all when the British began to deploy a significant portion of their air force over Africa, using runways from captured territories."
"By the dawn of December 6th, despite being constantly bombarded, the Regulars defending Djelfa resisted heroically and long enough against the British offensive to finally allow the encirclement of over thirty thousand British soldiers. Immediately, the African forces not engaged at defending their territory launched a massive assault against Orleansville, with the difficult but possible objective of finishing off those forces to avenge the three African divisions that met a similar fate and give them better odds..."
"Despite constantly attacked by British tactical and dive bombers, the defenders of Djelfa resisted for weeks, but in the end, they lost the battle, paying a high price in blood to hold their ground with the sacrifice of over six thousand African soldiers, among whom were three hundred Africans that refused to retreat and made a last stand in Djelfa, for the encirclement was breaking apart and there was a fear that with the loss of Djelfa, every struggle so far would have been in vain. Those three hundred Africans, like the Machete knights and the final charge of the 3rd Regulars, became symbols for the struggle of the African peoples against foreign imperialism."
"...the enemy forces were driven out of Orleansville, but the encirclement failed, and the situation remained as desperate as before for the Union...."
"In 6th of January of 1943, Africa lied on the eve of total defeat. Against all odds, they drove back the enemy forces at Djelfa and advanced quickly to prevent the annihilation of the four divisions encircled at Tlemcen by a coordinated British offensive. Britain was almost celebrating prematurely a total victory against the African Union they believed to be certain..."
"...they failed to break the spirit of the Africans and their will to fight no matter how hopeless, no matter how many of them would have to sacrifice their lives to ensure their sovereignty. Even if the African Union of 1942 was authoritarian, it had superior living standards to the parts of Africa subjugated by foreign conquerors or under monarchical rule, because it's very unlikely an unpopular and ineffective dictatorship, under which the inhabitants were worse off than were them in autonomous colonies, would have managed to drive so many ethnic groups to fight in a coordinated way and with such elan after so many setbacks..."
"...had they not managed to relieve the four divisions trapped at Tlemcen, total defeat would have been almost 100% likely..."
"...but if they were to lose their spread out strategic assets to field ammunition and supplies, slowly expand their military forces despite having countless miles of their country under occupation, and covertly deploy them, no elan and will to fight could save Africa from defeat... the fact their industrial infrastructure was so thinly spread out amidst terrible infrastructure was the only reason that, unlike highly industrialized States, were them in a similar situation, they didn't surrender or lost their capability of continuing to put up a fight after all of this..."
"While their first encirclement attempt with real chances of success during late 1942 failed, in March of 1943 the African forces flanked British forces at Tlemcen, which was recently lost..."
"The successful defense of Orleansville was essential to the plan of encircling the British forces at Oran. Where other armies would have retreated, the Africans continued resisting valiantly and fiercely even after they lost over four thousand men, long enough for reinforcements to arrive and secure it, and this successful defense was bringing the encirclement close to success this time..."
"The encirclement of Oran was far from a decisive feat for the Union in their fight against the British, but it represented the first time since the mass invasion of Africa that the Africans successfully surrounded and routed an entire British division, and as they persisted in crushing the vastly outnumbered British division in Oran, their spirits were lightened up by the confidence brought by this feat that, even as British bombers slaughtered entire platoons of African soldiers attacking Oran in a desperate attempt to relieve the surrounded British soldiers, confirmed they had a chance yet to win this war, even if small, even if most of them would not live to see victory..."
"Deprived of supplies and almost completely broken, the 1st Machete Knights were ordered to disband, for there was no viable way to rescue them soon enough to prevent their total demise. All of Africa but a small region around Algiers is practically in British hands, with time being the only barrier to their full occupation...."
"...suffering almost twice more casualties than their attackers, the last division of Machete Knights held Tlemcen long enough to allow the other African soldiers to force the British soldiers pocketed in Oran to choose between surrender or annihilation, and for the first time since the start of this great invasion, Africa achieved a real strategic victory, no matter how minor to the greater picture it could be isolatedly..."
"...while not a turning point militarily, it was deemed a turning point in public opinion, for the increasingly costly conquest of Africa, in spite of the massive superiority of the British army, navy and air force, was starting to cause civil protests in a degree no longer too small to be ignored. Likewise, the once almost completely hopeless African populace grew far more loyal to the Union with the news of this victory of small strategic importance, still insufficient to eliminate the odds of Africa losing the war, but of unmeasurable symbollic importance..."
"...a bold plan to create a pocket all over Morocco..."
"...left with only one division and supported only by flanking attacks and only when those were possible, the city of Algiers would become a symbol of resilience..."
"...recent victories of the African Union after being at the eve of defeat did nothing to halt the British advance through North Africa. Dakar was one of the regions with a modicum of industrialization the country relied upon, and although its loss was not crippling, every bit of industrial capacity made a difference for a barely industrialized country like Africa..."
"In late May of 1943, contrasting with the growing Russian success against the Austrian Empire, Italy was in an even more desperate situation than Africa, with the Iberian Islamic Republic on the verge of completely subjugating the peninsula, to the point Rome assumed direct control over what is left of it...."
"...as another great advantage of the enemy in attacking Algiers, the infamous Junkers Ju87 Stuka of the Austrian Air Force were harassing the defenders of Algiers day and night, terrorizing them with their signature sirens, and against which, like with all aircrafts, they had no way of fighting back..."
"... the development of the night infiltration doctrine is believed to have been a decisive boost to the chances of victory during the Siege of Algiers, for the British had no tactical provisions to fight effectively at night, and during the night, the African forces were less vulnerable to precise air attacks. Nevertheless, the constrastingly advanced tactics of the Africans to their obsolete gear was being continually enhanced, and given a much higher priority than the update of their weapons and equipment from 1918 to 1943 standards...."
"...again fighting a two-front war, but over a much smaller geographical area..."
"...another potentially successful encirclement, but still far from devoid of risks, with the African High Command practically juggling their limited forces in their near impossible but necessary goal of driving back the British Empire..."
"...seemed a little better for Africa, while Italy was practically lost..."
"...a French Algerian pianist composed a song in homage to the men who gave their lives for Africa, a song of both sorrow and hope amidst apparently none..."
"...never before hope was needed than when the bleak realization of how even the irregulars of the British Army were better equipped than African regulars came in, for, combined with air support, a single British Militia division was slowly but surely gaining ground as the longest and most difficult battle ever fought for Algiers began..."
"The British had almost everything in their favor to win the battle, even with numerical parity of ground forces, thanks to total air supremacy over Africa, through which their Blenheims and other bombers slaughtered countless Africans in Algiers. Yet, the little ground the enemy gained during day with air support was almost completely retaken through the courageous and effective infiltration counter-attackers of the African defender by night, and thus, the battle persisted for many days in spite of the immense force multiplier of air support in favor of Britain..."
"Against all odds, despite hundreds being slaughtered by nonstop close air support and aerial interdiction, the defenders of Algiers still stood tall after countless days of a battle that appeared to be on the verge of defeat for Africa, fighting with unremitting courage and elan to retake by night every inch of ground they lost by day, until the offensive stopped, but possibly only for a while..."
"...the defenders mistaken assumption the siege ended was soon corrected at 27th of July, and more than one week of brutal fighting later, at 5th of August, the longest continuous battle for Algiers was still raging. Both exhausted and constantly bombarded, they resisted even in face of what appeared to be an almost certain defeat at this point, even after more than two thousand of their fellow soldiers having already fallen..."
"It was in August 8th that, against all odds, Algiers has not fallen and the enemy offensive, despite complete air supremacy, failed. This victory was more than another victory is this war, a victory of men who used late Great War equipment against militias with submachineguns and bombers after 13 days of battle, from a siege lasting months that was considered individually the finest hour of the African Army within the finest hour of Africa..."
"...the encirclement was becoming even more risky..."
"...unbelievably making through machineguns, rifles and submachineguns, the 2nd Machete Knights charged under heavy artillery bombardment until they got closer than the minimum range of the British artillery, chopped artillerymen with machetes into pieces, fired some of them against their owners and sabotaged their guns, spreading terror behind enemy lines..."
"The encirclement failed, but the whole struggle continued victorious by pushing back the enemy front, even if minor and still insufficient to turn the tide of this war..."
"Bougie was chosen as the limit of the front expansion eastward until the British forces in West Africa could be defeated, for all of North Africa east of Algeria, thanks to an Egypt that saw in neutrality its best bet, was completely isolated to the rest of Africa by land, for the deserts were too hostile for an army to cross through southwards from Libya..."
"... September of 1943 was considered a turning point in the Second World War. Austria was starting to clearly lose, as while the mighty Russian Army not only was advancing and crushing the Austrians, but also held the British forces in Manchuria, while an African Union once on the verge of total defeat now had a more plausible chance of making it through."
08/08 NEVAR FORGET
Not with machineguns, not with bombs, not with thousands of Stukas and Shells in the Night, will the spirit of Africa be broken. Never forget our heroes who defended Algiers and all surrounding regions against all odds. Let them serve as an example. We will fight to the last man, and as those heroes have proven, we shall yet win! TO VICTORY!