Calinthian People's Army

The Calinthian People's Army (KVA) was the military of the People's Republic of Calinthia. Gothic: "Volksrepublik Kalinthische"

History
The history of the Calinthian People's Army dates back to the creation of the People's Republic of Calinthia (PRC) in 1942. The Calinthian People's Army was raised to defend the goals of the Calinthian Communist Party in establishing a Soviet State during the Calinthian Civil War. The Calinthian Civil War would rage for six years and would see the KVA fight against Republican Guard Forces and Loyalist Forces.

The Communist uprisings on the Western territories of Calinthia by mainly Gothic Calinthians resulted in Republican Guard Forces being stretched thin. At first the Communist Calinthians and Loyalist Calinthians would openly fight one another in many minor skirmishes in the North. However, by late 1937 the Communist Calinthians under General Secretary of the Communist Party Siegmund Goering (1901 - 1991) would ally themselves with the Loyalists against the Republican Guard Forces. With Communist forces in the West and Loyalists in the East, the Republican Guard quickly found themselves on the back-foot. By early 1940, Republican Guard Forces prepared a hastily built defense around Aurelia and struggled to maintain their supply lines from the port of Napolis. Constant air attacks by the superior Loyalist air force rendered many of the railroads inoperable. In addition, the mechanized Communist assaults using a tactic called "Schwerpunkt" penetrated deep into Republican Guard lines, cutting supply lines. The tactic was an adaptation of the Urcean "lightning war" tactic developed by Benno de Caryale. It was adapted and implemented by the Calinthian People's Army under the command of General Friedrich von Guder (1910 - 1994) a graduate of the Urcean Imperial War College and student of de Caryale's tactics. The Calinthian Civil War resulted in the dissolution of the Republic of Calinthia and it's military in 1942. Following the collapse of the Republic of Calinthia, Gothic Calinthians formalized their new state through the creation of the Communist State of Calinthia. In 1944, the Calinthian People's Army would undergo reformations to strengthen the military might of the PRC. These reformations were the Military Besserung of 1944.

Tactics & Strategy
Since the Military Besserung of 1944, Calinthian ground tactics consisted of large mechanized and armored assaults. This tactic is also known as "Schwerpunkt" and was adapted by Friedrich von Guder. It relies on overwhelming armored force concentrated on as small of a section of the battlefield as possible. The KVA used the tactics to great effect both in the Calinthian Civil War against the Republican Guard and in the War of Hearts against the Loyalist forces. The main implementations of the reformations of 1944 was complete reliance on mechanized and armored warfare doctrines with supporting combined arms such as air or artillery formations in support. KVA general Hannelore von Klaive was the first to formalize the concept of Blitz und Schrecken, literally "Lightning and Terror". This tactic relied on overwhelming first strike capability to completely render the opponents military and civilian infrastructure destroyed or at the very least temporarily suppressed. This is then followed by a mechanized and armored ground attack using the concepts of Schwerpunkt. Through these methods, von Klaive theorized that the enemy would have limited time if any to react to an attack. She further theorized that not only would the destruction of military infrastructure compromise the reactivity of the enemy military, but the complete destruction of civilian infrastructure on a massive scale would cause panic among the civilian populace. This would create riots, distrust of the local government, and would heavily reduce the amount of Calinthian fighting force needed to fight the enemy.

Equipment
All numbers are approximate and as per the Calinthian People's Army own statistics at the time of the collapse of the People's Republic of Calinthia in 1989.