Re: Blood and Iron

The sky over Okinawa was choked with the acrid scent of cordite and ash. Shells pounded the earth with a thunder that felt biblical, even to veterans of this long war.

For three days prior, the Luftwaffe had softened coastal defenses with precise strikes; fuel depots, bunkers, radar stations, and artillery emplacements reduced to smoldering ruin.

The assault began at dawn.

Amphibious assault craft, engineered from the modular hulls of the German armored doctrine, surged forward with blunt purpose.

Each one carried not only infantry but entire squads of mechanized armor: amphibious IFVs with mounted 30mm auto cannons, smoke dispensers, and slat armor.

Among the first to make landfall were the 3rd Kaisermarine Infantry Division and the elite 7th Fallschirmjäger Regiment.

Whose paratroopers had dropped out of planes over the contested island. They moved in tandem, seizing beachheads and fortifications further inland with terrifying efficiency.

Resistance was brutal but desperate. Japanese defenders, dug into a honeycomb of tunnels and fortified bunkers, emerged with suicidal tenacity.

Grenade belts, satchel charges, and desperate bayonet charges followed the path of falling artillery like vultures trailing a wildfire.

A German Captain leading the 3rd Division’s forward armored spear, recorded in his field notes:

“They came from the earth like ghosts. But not even ghosts can stand against steel and fire. They died for a home already lost.”

By nightfall, half the island’s southern coast was in German hands.

With aerial reconnaissance feeding information live via radio broadcasts to frontline commanders, the German doctrine of “high-speed envelopment” was in full force.

Platoons maneuvered not by map, but by minute-to-minute radio communication.

Still, casualties were not light. Dozens of IFVs burned in the surf. The bodies of young marines lay scattered where shellfire had caught them in the open.

But war was never bloodless, and the advance continued without relent. The battle would not be quick. But it would be decisive.

—

At the same time, the Russian campaign for Busan was not as elegant. It was a hammer strike; brutal, efficient, and soaked in blood.

Major General Zhukov, acting commander of the Far Eastern Front, directed the assault from a forward command post embedded in the hills northwest of the city.

Unlike the Germans, who had spent years refining the modular fusion of armor and air, the Russians were still learning by doing; and bleeding in the process.

Joint military exercises, and the exchange of cadets, could only do so much to prepare Russian strategic thinkers for the new era of warfare.

They had the tools and the resources, but not the foresight to truly understand how to win a war without bleeding for it first.

As a result, the 5th White Army spearheaded the advance in support from domestically produced Panzer II medium tanks and German-licensed self propelled artillery based on the same chassis.

The attack was preceded by a twelve-hour artillery barrage that leveled entire sectors of the outer city. The Russians surged in with flamethrowers, mechanized infantry, and overwhelming numbers.

Busan was defended by a veteran Japanese garrison determined to fight to the last man. Sniper nests, scorched trenches, and hidden IEDs littered every street.

A Russian Colonel leading a battalion of Siberian infantry through the industrial district described the carnage:

“The city screamed. Not in voices, but in the metal that bent and burned. We buried brothers in the ash between steel beams and broken glass.”

Unlike Okinawa, there was no clean thrust; no surgical strikes. It was a house-to-house purge. Civilians who had not fled were caught in the inferno.

But the Russians were relentless. After five days of nonstop combat, Busan fell. The last remnants of the Japanese forces detonated their supply depot in a final blaze of defiance, killing hundreds.

The flames smoldered for hours. Even the Russians, hardened by winter campaigns and purges, fell silent as the smoke rose into the morning.

Among the ruins, a mother clutched the charred remains of her child, screaming not in Japanese; but in perfect Russian. She had once been married to a Russian merchant, long before the war.

Now, none could tell which side she belonged to. War had erased the difference.

Only silence remained in the wake of her grief.

—

Tokyo.

The Imperial War Cabinet sat in a fortified basement beneath the Kantei. Maps adorned every wall, but they were no longer battle plans; they were obituaries.

The Korean Peninsula was gone. The southern archipelago lost. Okinawa, once the last bastion, was now a staging ground for German bombers.

Admiral Yamamuro stared at the map and said what none dared admit aloud:

“We are surrounded.”

The room was quiet save for the rustling of reports. Civilian morale was crumbling. Supply lines were strangled by submarine warfare. There were whispers of famine in the rural prefectures.

But surrender?

“If we surrender now,” said General Kuroda, voice low and venomous, “then all those who died before, at Kyoto, Seoul, Osaka, even Hiroshima, they died for nothing. Emperor Taisho will be remembered by the people as a man that started a war which broke the Empire! This cannot be!”

“If we do not surrender,” replied a soft, but thunderous voice through his envoy, “then everyone still alive dies next.”

It was the voice of the new emperor.

He did not speak often, and when he did, it was never with theatrics. But in that moment, there was something in his words that cut deeper than any sword the samurai had ever carried.

The officers around the table lowered their heads; not out of obedience, but recognition. The age of glory had passed. What lay ahead was only survival.

Hirohito did not wear the crown. In this life, he had died shortly after his father’s death in the struggle that came from various factions within the imperial palace. Rather, his brother, Yasuhito, now reigned as the Emperor of Japan.

His words were deafening, and the room remained silent for some time. But ultimately this did not persist long as there was talk of a last stand.

Of flooding Tokyo’s tunnels with the Imperial Guard. Of training women and children with sharpened bamboo spears. A scorched-earth defense of the homeland.

But for the first time, even the most zealous saw the flicker of inevitability.

The Reich and the Tsardom had won the skies. And they had seized the waves.

And beneath those skies, and among those waves, Japan truly stood alone.

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