Their Finest Hour Diary: Start of World War II

The temptation for everyone playing the Hearts of Iron III is to re-write World War II history and that means playing either the United States, in order to quickly bring democracy to Germany and Europe and then tackle the Russian Communists, or Germany, in order to see whether the country had any chance of winning the war in the USSR.

I have played this series since the first installment of the second game in the franchise and almost since then, I also mostly devoted my attention to these two countries, with some occasional detours into playing Romania.

With the launch of Their Finest Hour, the third expansion for Hearts of Iron III, I plan to do something different and play a game as the United Kingdom for the first time in, I believe, four years, in order to see how the island nation can cope with the initial Germany attack on Western Europe and whether it can then strike back without waiting for backing from the United States and their industrial might.

The United Kingdom is not in great shape at the start of the game: it’s industrial base is not ready for the coming war, its troops are scattered and the fleet structure is a mess and, finally, the structure of the land forces is tangled, with too many leaders and too few troops.

I plan to launch a program of industrial expansion as soon as possible, backed by some solid research into efficiency and production, while also creating a streamlined army and navy before war breaks out.

I might also think about attacking the Germans before 1939 and stop their development, as long as it is possible and does not cost me too much in dissent and internal issues.

My initial plan is also to scrap all ships that are at level I, despite the upgrade opportunities that Their Finest Hour offers.