AGGRESSOR!

The great thing about twitter is that sometimes a post appears that sends you of down some ridiculous rabbit hole all about some obscure fact you knew nothing about. You get all excited and plans and formulations spring into your mind and before you know it, your inches away from attempting to buy into another obscure period to add to the pile of shame.

This is what happened to me last week. I think i'm over it now but let me explain.

Post WW2, the US army put together a briefing document in order to rationalise live training exercises for the army. Essentially they were looking to write a believable background to a series of wargames on US soil, where some troops would be the enemy and some would be the traditional US forces.

The document went into huge amounts of detail about the history and background of the enemy state, dubbed 'AGGRESSOR' by the writers, and it is a great read!

Essentially the idea is that post war, a new ideology swept through neutral Spain, Southern France, Northern Italy and Southern Germany that filled the Power Vacuum left by the rapid withdrawal of Allied Forces.

                    

The movement had a political party called the Circle Trigon party and united the disparate parts of nations into a coherent whole by focussing on rebuilding and improving their industrial base. They encouraged the use of Esperanto as a unifying language and built up it's armed forces.

Looking to secure it's future the Aggressor state decided that the only way it could hope to dominate the rest of the world would be to attack it's largest competitor, the USA. 

What followed was a detailed history of various land campaigns by the Aggressor state, both on mainland USA and around the world. As the Document was updated several times in the 60's the history becomes even deeper with the Trio at the top of the Circle Trigon party being replaced and threat assessments being delivered. The military campaigns (with casual use of tactical nuclear weapons!) is discussed in great depth. There is even documents covering what personal paperwork an Aggressor soldier should be carrying and details of uniforms and rank systems.

All this gives you an idea of how the US army saw it's role in the post world war 2 world, taking on a Military that was at least at peer level and as the document were re-written it becomes obvious that Aggressor is looking a little more......communist as the years go by.

But as an alternative future, it's actually pretty entertaining. What dragged me in was the desire to find a reason to play not-ww2 games with a friend of mine who is squeamish about playing 20th century games, as it's to close to the mark. An alternative reality post ww2 that wasn't full of walking tanks and werewolves seemed ideal.

 

What was even more intriguing was the idea that I could easily use some of the current range of plastics to represent the circle trigon forces. The Aggressor state troops were dressed in uniforms that were very similar to standard US army issue (for obvious reasons). Apart from colour differences and a natty helmet ridge, they were exactly the same as US troops.

This was my first point of indecision. I didn't just want to have two forces of US troops as that would feel like I was playing a game of the real life wargame. What I wanted was a force to take on the Aggressor troops that was different enough to be interesting to model. And I didn't want to do the Soviets as it's just a standard cold war tussle if I do that. If you look at the maps, you'll notice that there are two different maps of europe that show that extent of the Aggressor state, one is confined to the South of Europe the other covers the whole of Western Europe apart from the UK. I liked the idea that, at least initially, Aggressor would have to try and take the rest of Europe from the occupying forces. These would be the UK (and what's left of it's Empire troops) Nothern France, Western Germany, teh Benelux countries and the Scandinavian countries. These would be formed into some kind of treaty such as NATO had formed in real life. It would be this grouping that form the main opponent of AGGRESSOR. The North European Treaty Organisation. NETO.

So that's what has been bouncing around in my head. I've been haunted by plans for the NETO uniform, based around the British airborne plastics with MkIII British Helmets and the idea of getting centurion tanks onto the streets of Northern Europe fighting it out with Aggressor armoured units made up of Late war Shermans manufactured in Northern Italy. 

Below is a link to the 1950 US Army Handbook, try not to get too carried away!

FM 30-102 Handbook on Aggressor Military Forces 1950 (wikimedia.org)