Land Cruisers:
The Lithuanian Campaign
Scenario Preview, Part Two
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
January 2023

I have a doctorate in history; I bled and sweated for it so I list it right up there in the byline, because I can. I’ve dug around in archives and pieced together stories from primary documents many times; it takes an obsessive personality because you spend an awful lot of time staring at the handwriting of some clerk who’s been dead for a century or more trying to decide if this is a march order for Ringelsheim’s Brigade or a takeout order for Café Demel.

Sometimes, though, I get this urge to just make stuff up. And so I do; we have a whole line of alternative-history books and games that take history as a launching point and veer off into the might-have-been. And then we have our Golden Library of downloads just for our Gold Club.

Land Cruisers: The Lithuanian Campaign is one of the latter. It’s an expansion for our alternative-history Land Cruisers book, letting the Land Cruisers fight the Russians (the Imperial Russians) who have invaded their neighbors in a war of conquest. (I wrote the Second Great War background years before Vlad Putin decided that international law and human decency just weren’t for him.).

Let’s have a look at the second and final chapter.

Chapter Two
Enter the Land Cruisers
The Imperial German Army had good success on the Western Front with the giant fighting machines known as Land Cruisers. But after weeks of combat, their surprise value had faded and the French had learned to stop them through massive application of air power, artillery, tank attacks and close-quarters infantry assaults. The General Staff had withdrawn the 1st Special Mechanized Brigade and its gigantic fighting machines from Prinz Franz’s Bavarian Army Group for repair and refitting. All of the Land Cruisers had taken at least some damage, and three of them had been essentially destroyed.

All eight would be brought back into service, this time on the Eastern Front. The Russians had driven into German territory in East Prussia, and must not be allowed to make further progress. Moving by night, the huge special rail carriers brought the Land Cruisers to the big arsenal at Königsberg, where workers re-assembled the machines for action.

Field Marshal Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, chief of the general staff, authorized piecemeal deployment of the Land Cruisers. This would dilute their effect, but the Russians had to be stopped.

Scenario Six
Defensive Bulwark
October 1940
Emergency measures had slowed the Russian advance, with the light artillery batteries moved into the front lines to give additional anti-tank capability to the German and Lithuanian infantry. When the first Land Cruiser trundled to the front, Herbert Frahm, the commander of 1st Infantry Division, decided to use it to stiffen the shaky Lithuanian militia on his unit’s flank.

Conclusion
The Russians had heard rumors of the Land Cruisers, but their high command had given little thought to the possibility of their deployment in the East. While local commanders insisted that the fortress had moved, their superiors in their offices insisted that they had been repelled by a standard fortification. The attack must be repeated.

Notes
This time, the Lithuanian defense has a Land Cruiser. Its placement is going to be crucial, because it’s not exactly going to form a mobile reserve. The defenders are a mixture of Lithuanian regulars and militia, facing that deadly tandem of Russian rocket-firing infantry and slow but steady breakthrough tanks.

Scenario Seven
A Mighty Fortress
October 1940
With two more of the huge machines available, Frahm assigned them to the defenses manned by his own division. The German infantry had been battered by the Russians, but now that they defended German soil – the same lines around Gumbinnen held by their fathers in 1914 – their generals hoped that resistance would stiffen. Perhaps the gigantic Land Cruisers would give them a rallying point.

Conclusion
The Russians pressed their attack, only to be repelled by a counter-attack led by German tanks. The Russian high command had placed the main weight of its attack in central and southern Poland and Austrian Ukraine, and would not re-assign the tank corps spearheading those offensives to East Prussia. The Russian Baltic Front would have to make do with what it already had.

Notes
The Germans are defending, and they’ve got a pair of Land Cruisers to help them fend off the waves of T35 land battleships. And then they get some tanks of their own to fight back. There’s lots of heavy metal moving about.

Scenario Eight
Iron Wolves, Steel Fortress
October 1940
With most of Lithuania now under Russian occupation, the small country’s generals pressed their German counterparts to use their mighty new machines to expel the invaders. That was probably well beyond their capability, but a spoiling attack could be arranged. The Iron Wolves eagerly prepared for their new mission.

Conclusion
The presence of a huge Land Cruiser trundling alongside them heartened the Lithuanians, but its painfully slow movement gave the defenders’ artillery plenty of time to zero in on the massive machine. Even so the Land Cruiser shrugged off multiple hits and inflicted heavy casualties on the Russian lines, but the Russians managed to pull back successfully and re-organize.

Notes
This time, we get a Land Cruiser on the attack, alongside the Lithuanians, which means that the Land Cruiser has to carry the burden. That’s a tough order, with those nasty Russian rockets and anti-tank guns awaiting them.

Scenario Nine
Land Cruiser Attack
October 1940
The failure of the first Land Cruiser attack to gain much ground showed the need to attach mobile reserves that could exploit any breakthrough, and provide plenty of infantry to keep the rocket-firing Russians at bay. Frahm, offered a full battalion of the big machines, added a regiment from 1st Cavalry Division to his next attack.

Conclusion
This time the Land Cruisers made significant gains, only to be stymied by a tank-led Russian counter-attack. The Russian tanks, only modestly faster than the Land Cruisers, suffered significant losses of their own and could not maintain this sort of trade for long.

Notes
More Land Cruisers attack, with supporting infantry plus horsed cavalry because it’s in the set so we’re going to use it.

Scenario Ten
Mass Attack
November 1940
The full 1st Mechanized Support Brigade would now spearhead a German counter-offensive aimed at freeing East Prussia from Russian occupation. The older-model Land Cruisers were vulnerable to Russian anti-tank guns and rockets, but Field Marshal Lettow insisted that they be used as well to add weight to the attack.

Conclusion
Urgent requests for information from the French had finally borne fruit, but by this time the Russians had enough experience of their own in battling the gigantic machines. They had enormous firepower and could shred attacking tanks, but were vulnerable themselves, especially the smaller numbers. They just had to be attacked with enough tanks to overcome the inevitable losses. The Germans made their advance, but the Russians destroyed half of their Land Cruisers. The day of giant fighting machines appeared to be in its twilight.

Notes
We have to end with a mass scenario, and so we do. All of the Land Cruisers, plus lots of tanks roaming around and shooting at each other. Team play might help, or you can push them all yourself while making explosion sounds. Don’t forget to make explosion sounds.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children, and new puppy. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.

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