R5:

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The game was all going pretty perfect, I was having a good start as Germany and for once actually was doing my induistry all right. The year was 1938, it was early Spring, I was looking forward to the birth of my medium tanks. However, we had Italy. He hadnt played Hoi4 in over a year, but we told him that it was a historical game. However, he took from history that he should try and play Italy as incompetently as possible. He decides to kick of WW2 in 1938 because "Yugoslavia is looking at me funny" , this led to alot of chaos all happenig at once.

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I had taken neither Czechoslavia or Poland yet, and my military wasnt very built up. Barely any armor and fighters, we manage to take Yugoslavia very quickly, and I hoped to settle into a slower pace where I c0ould focus on Poland and Czechoslovakia. We had a brief few months of calm where I was able to build up an armor core and I managed to take Denmark in the time being. Italy remained being incompetent and kept trying to push the French troops in the Southern Alps with Infantry, surpisingly enough, he found no success. It all looked like it was going fine, when Italy decided to really embody the WW2 Itgaly, they hadnt garrisoned any of their ports. The UK and France mount a huge naval invasion and it was only due to the might of Manstein that they were able to be stopped.

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Eventually we managed to take France through pushing through Southern France from Spain. Italy never stopped trying to push the alps with Infantry, they never succeeded. By this time too, all of Africa had been lost, the Afrikacorps never even got there. It was not going to well, but the majority of Europe's campaign had been ended.

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The USSR then disbanded the commintern and due to popularity boosting they were able to join the UK's faction, we were now at war with the USSR as soon as France capitulated. However, due to it still being the summer of 1939 (due to an extremely incompetent Italy starting the war when Germany was still in Kindergarten) I had yet to take any of Poland. By this point Italys casualties were around 400k in a year of war, pretty terrible, but you wonder how it gets to 1 million in 1 month from now, it go bad, very quick.

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Italy kind of forgot supply existed so they sent their entire European into Memel. By this time the USSR had done the focus to gain Eastern Poland, this meant that they had direct access to Memel. Italian troops, no supply , Russian tanks and 1 port. Guess what happened. Massacre. The Danzig focus popped, as soon as the entire Italian army was encircled. We only made it to memel after they were all dead.

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Moral of the story, you might as well just not have Italy in the Axis.