188 - Patton Has a Plan, and it's Bad - WW2 - April 2, 1943

by Panzer
Wait, wait wait, wait, so what did Herman say?
Everybody got to work, and we are not talking about slave labour, no, Germans, all of them
have... all the men and all the women, they all have to do the same.
What about their other jobs?
Doesn't matter.
Herman says they all have to work.
Okay, yeah, well, times change, all right, see you.
April 2, 1943.
There are many ways to try to find out your enemy’s plans for the war, and this week
the British learn about a German plan for the future from simple eavesdropping.
And what do they learn?
This week they learn about rockets.
I’m Indy Neidell; this is World War Two.
Last week for the second week in a row, there was a failed attempt on Adolf Hitler’s life.
The Americans and British were hitting the Axis forces in Tunisia from two sides, though
not conclusively.
The Chindits were retreating from Burma, the Japanese navy from the North Pacific, the
Germans from near Smolensk, and there was a whole lot of mud everywhere.
Albert Speer has given Hitler the plans for an enormous missile silo, made of reinforced
concrete, to be located on the Channel coast, and from where London can be easily bombarded.
Hitler approves the plans March 29th.
The secret German rocket program is progressing, albeit slowly.
But there’s also this: last week on the 23rd, Axis Generals Cruewell and von Thoma,
both captured in North Africa and currently ‘guests’ of the Allies in a prison near
London, had a conversation.
British intelligence is listening to their conversations.
Von Thoma told Cruewell that since they’re near London, and since he doesn’t hear huge
explosions, there must be a delay of some sort in the rocket program- “No progress
whatsoever can have been made in this rocket business”, and then he described a trip
he’d made to an experimental rocket base, and went on, Thoma also says that there’s
no limit to the rockets’ range.
So, what I’m saying now, is that the secret German rocket program is progressing, only
it’s no longer a secret.
As for the Allied bombing of Germany, by April 2nd the daily and nightly Allied bombing runs
have reached the point where Luftwaffe Chief Hermann Göring issues a decree that makes
air raid patrol duty mandatory for all able bodied men and women.
That’s in the European skies, how about at sea?
For the month of March, the Allies lose 120 ships for 693,400 tons.
U-Boats sink 627,000 of that and of 108 ships falling to U-Boats, 72 are from North Atlantic