Richtofen's Miracle

As the Holy Roman Empire buckles and struggles under the immense weight of the seemingly endless French advance, Imperial High Command seems content to simply flee from fortress to fortress in hopes of simply exhausting the French. But there are other, more forward thinking strategists who still press for a counterattack, a chance to demonstrate that Imperial martial prowess is more than simply hiding in concrete castles. Their opportunity arises from one that is both expected and unexpected - the ostracized Marshall of the Air, eager to prove himself more than an eccentric liability, concocts a scheme that will not only turn Imperial fortunes, but perhaps revolutionize the Great War to come…

While the intricate protocols and traditions of the Imperial Courts and the outbreak of the Great War kept Air Marshall Manfred von Richtofen safe from serious repercussions as the result of his botched rescue attempt in Paris, it was hardly a secret that many held him to blame not only for the war itself but for the loss of the Archduke that heralded its outbreak. Effectively exiled to the command of the neglected zeppelin fleets, used only in defensive maneuvers and to bolster static garrisons, Richtofen found himself frustrated by the outcome of the first months of the war. While far from the only one to have criticisms of the Imperial defensive strategy, as a staunch proponent of the capabilities of the zeppelin fleets it was agony to watch report after report of slogging sieges, cities and armies being cut off and surrounded by rapid French advances, and an Imperial adherence to old-fashioned fortification warfare leaving them with no gains, only losses in the effort to maintain status quo. Eager for not only a chance to redeem his reputation, but a chance to prove that the Empire should be feared as more than a “snapping turtle in Old Europe”, Richtofen began to seek out new allies in the lower ranks; new blood that would be willing to overlook his failures in hopes of improving their own positions.

The target of his planned strike was an easy one for him to settle upon. Merely 40 kilometers from the constantly besieged city of Frankfurt was the occupied city of Mannheim. A major production center for airships, not only was the city vital to Richtofen’s own agendas for the war effort, but its abundant facilities for the support of zeppelins made it an opportune place to strike from the air. The French, he had reasoned, had little reason to suspect an attack of the nature he had planned, and the resources he desired for the operation were meager enough that he could easily pass the requisitions through the necessary bureaucracies with little fanfare. Just a handful of petty nobles with Knecht battlesuits and cooperation from the Sturmpioniers reserved in Hungary, and of course a handful of zeppelins.

The difficult part of his plan hinged on who he could find to carry out the attack he needed to capitalize on his ingenious scheme of infiltration. Not only was an opportune position needed, but the right mind to understand the crux of his planned attack.

Richtofen’s ideal ally was found in the Imperial 5th Army Group, stationed in Stuttgart some 80km from Mannheim and, like most of the army groups of the Empire, given little in the way of productive orders other than to hold position against any oncoming French attacks. Ideally positioned for his needs, Richtofen found a rare kindred spirit in the form of their commander, Oleksander Hrekov.

An outsider to the court life of the Holy Roman Empire, Oleksander Hrekov was a Ukrainian-born Russian, a military academic who had volunteered his services to the Imperial Army out of a desire to put his knowledge to best use. The Russian’s prospects in the courts were limited, both by his foreign blood and his own indifference to the politics of the nobility, his true passion lying with military strategies. Having gained his experience in various small border skirmishes with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth some decades ago, Hrekov was familiar with the rapid mobility tactics the French had utilized, and had spent much of his career developing his own strategies to counteract such enemies in a decisive fashion.

Frustrated with the defensive doctrine of high command, Hrekov was immediately warm to Richtofen’s suggestion of an unauthorized secret mission, one that would allow him to put his theories to the test and perhaps aid in convincing his superiors of the need for decisive offensives. Like most of the Imperial commanders, Hrekov had some skepticism of Richtofen after the disaster in Paris, but his desire for an attack outweighed any other scruples he may have had about the controversial Marshall of the Air. Accepting Richtofen’s offer, Hrekov immediately began to mobilize mechanized and armored battalions, arraying them to the north of Stuttgart in preparation for an advance.

Richtofen’s plan was a simple one, relying on the thing he had learned to value above all else: speed. His special force of Knecht-suited petty nobles and platoons of hardy Sturmpioneers would infiltrate Mannheim by way of the air - using simple civilian craft whose comings and goings in Mannheim had never been halted by the city’s French occupiers, reliant on the supplies and trade they brought to the city, and more concerned with Frankfurt than anything over their heads. The soldiers would be hidden amongst the cargo, easily concealed from the indifferent eyes of the Republican Guard on duty. Once landed, this task force would quickly and decisively secure the vital airship production facilities and neutralize the city’s shield defenses.

While Richtofen’s task force carried out their mission, the vital distraction would come in the form of heavy armor and artillery elements of Hrekov’s 5th Army Group. While not willing to abandon Stuttgart entirely, these battalions critically were comprised of high-powered and flashy tools in the Imperial arsenal - Barbarossa tanks, Morser artillery pieces, Arpad guns, and supporting regiments of battle-hardened Landwehr all would descend upon Mannheim in force, battering the shields and drawing the full attention of the French 2nd Army Group occupying the city. By the time the French realized that the city was infiltrated, they would be pinned between heavily armored fronts and the waters of the Rhine with the shield generators disabled. Regardless of how hard they fought or tried to escape the encirclement, it would be too late for them to sabotage the airship facilities or any other infrastructure in the city. The French would be crushed from the sky against the armored might of the 5th Army Group, and Mannheim would be liberated in a stroke of Richtofen’s trademarked aerial brilliance.

If, of course, everything went to Richtofen’s planning.

The infiltration commenced right as scheduled, as four commercial zeppelins (Russian corporate freight payrolled by Hrekov’s family connections) each unloaded their cargo in the ports under the eyes of disinterested Frenchmen. The French 2nd Army Group was still battered and weary from the Siege of Frankfurt, and their efforts were focused on recuperation rather than sentry. Those men stationed on watch at Mannheim’s ports soon would not have recovery at the forefront of their minds, as their heads were now occupied with the powered maces of the Knechts who emerged fully armed from the shipping crates around them. Richtofen’s task force immediately set to work, the Sturmpioneers carrying out their orders with deadly efficiency, neutralizing guards and taking positions in preparation for the incoming attack from Stuttgart.

Richtofen had unfortunately forgotten that the rest of the Imperial Army was not nearly as fast as he would like. The incoming forces, unknown to the task force themselves, were still hours away, the ponderous war machines of the 5th making their way through the ruined roads and forests north of Stuttgart to commence their scheduled offensive. Richtofen had also overestimated the cooperation of the assets he had chosen. Having laid in wait for an hour, the nobles grew impatient, and disregarding the Sturmpioneers (whom many of the nobles already resented having to collaborate with) a small band of the Knechts separated from their positions to seek out the enemy and wreak vengeance for the dead of Frankfurt. The Sturmpioneers, majority being commoners whose word went unheeded by the battlesuit-clad nobility, were forced to improvise. Some squads elected to hold their positions and secure the airship facilities, aided by the few Knechts who stuck to the plan, and others felt it necessary to extend their positions outward into the neighboring streets and warehouses. While their initial arrival had been masked by the noise of the docks and the avoidance of gunfire, the huge battlesuits and heavily armored pioneers were no paragons of stealth, being almost immediately spotted as they disjointedly fanned out into the city.

Chaos quickly broke out in the streets of Mannheim as the French sentries sounded the alarm. Caught unawares by this sudden attack, and unable to determine the number or nature of the attackers, the French response was equally disjointed, with Knechts and Sturmpioneers being stranded in the streets fighting off French patrols and light armor as they blindly blundered into one another’s paths, neither able to organize their approaches meaningfully as they clashed in the streets, weaving in and out of alleys and storefronts, appearing and disappearing in the urban maze. The Imperials, overextended and outnumbered, found themselves acting out an eerie repeat of the botched operation in Paris, and as one by one Knechts and Pioneers fell to sheer overwhelming fire, the task force wondered if they too were about to be remembered in infamy.

As the French managed to begin organizing their efforts and encircling the fortified remainders of the task force at the airship facilities, their triumph was shattered by the sound of guns. Hrekov’s offensive had arrived, catching the French for the second time flat on their feet with a devastating salvo of artillery fire that almost instantly leveled the outer defenses of Mannheim. Hrekov was determined not to merely be a footnote or a pawn in Richtofen’s courtly schemes, and had committed his battalions to the offensive with a terrifying fervor. Lines of tanks rolled upon the city, as artillery pounded every building and street. Landwehr marched shoulder to shoulder, hurling grenades into every storefront and cellar door to flush out the suspected French defenders. The sieging force was a small fraction of the 5th Army Group, as Hrekov had no intention of leaving his flank exposed to French attack. He had fully committed to the distraction, and as far as the Frenchmen guarding the city were concerned, the whole of the Imperial Army was descending on them in a thunderous fury.

Hrekov and Richtofen, in their eagerness to execute the Liberation of Mannheim, had vastly overestimated the 2nd Army Group. This was not, as they had assumed, a full strength army of hardened French veterans bolstering for an attack on Frankfurt, but a battered garrison of wounded and tired men, barely recovering from the first great siege. The French had been unable to even operate the Imperial shield generators, lacking the necessary specialists to decipher the devices, and the first salvos of Hrekov’s artillery had struck the city completely unhindered. Realizing that the Imperials were coming in force, and already scattered by the initial attack, panic quickly set into the French ranks at the sight of sheer and sudden destruction that surrounded them; the Imperials were seemingly so hell-bent on vengeance that they would destroy their own city to bury them in its ashes.

The French retreat was, as the rest of Mannheim’s liberation, complete and total chaos. Some bravely held on to the last man, hurling Feu de Lis into the cupolas of Barbarossa tanks one-armed as they succumbed to the terrible onslaught of the 5th Army Group. Others trampled their own comrades underfoot in a desperate bid for escape across the few bridges over the Rhine. The chaos did not leave the remaining civilian populace of Mannheim untouched either, many being cut down in the streets or in their homes by the artillery, grenades, errant tanks, and rage-blind bullets of both armies embroiled in a chaotic slurry of desperation and vengeance. The stones of the streets were churned by the treads of tanks, the windows shattered to sand by a torrential downpouring of explosives, and the waters of the Rhine were thickened in blood - French and Imperial alike.

As the dust settled and order was restored to the Imperial ranks, they found that despite the utter chaos, the mistimed strikes, the false assumptions of their foe’s disposition, and the devastation that hit the outer reaches of the city, they had achieved a rare victory. Imperial losses had been at a minimum, only the zeppelin task force having taken heavy casualties. The core objective of the mission, the airship facilities, remained completely pristine, ready for almost immediate reuse by the Imperial Army. Indeed, the heaviest toll paid by the Empire in the Liberation of Mannheim was paid by Mannheim itself. The city was in shambles, the people scarred by their own soldiers’ grenades, and while the airship facilities were intact there was little else that would be coming from Mannheim in the ensuing months but refugees and bad news.

Despite this heavy price the city paid for its freedom, the newspapers quickly, and perhaps insultingly, declared this sudden and decisive attack the “Miracle of Mannheim”, lavishly praising the brilliant planning of Richtofen and the bravery of Hrekov and the 5th Army Group in giving the Empire what it desperately needed - a decisive offensive victory. Indeed, not only had Richtofen proved that the Empire was no snapping turtle, but that it could and would strike at the French from every angle - and could match them for speed as well, if they so desired.

In the Imperial Courts however, the Army command was not nearly so impressed. Already skeptical of Richtofen’s unorthodox tactics, they reasoned that he had simply gotten lucky, and nothing more. While they agreed that more decisive counter-offensives would be needed, Richtofen’s little stunt, pulled without their knowing, would only cause them more trouble than needed, and strain the valuable resources needed for their stalwart defense of the Empire.