“You said that you could defeat them,” the Fuhrer snapped, swinging round to confront Goring. The Iron Fatty shivered; Himmler allowed himself a cold smile. The battles over England had raged backwards and forwards, neither side emerging a clear winner. Losses were heavy – they knew for a fact that they were worse for the Reich than their opponents – but they had thousands to spend.
Goring coughed nervously, sweating in his proud uniform. “Mein Fuhrer, we are winning,” he said. “Our tactics are improving” – he neglected to mention that the future British were also improving – “and they were deploying less aircraft against us. They have also stopped targeting our radar installations; we have nearly a complete radar net tracking aircraft over Britain. We are starting to build up a comprehensive picture of how they operative….”
Himmler allowed the fat oaf to babble on. Who would have thought that the co-pilot of a degenerate passenger aircraft would have known so much about the RAF’s defences and bases? Did the future British have any concept of security? They had even included a chart of civilian airports in the captured aircraft!
“Now the new weapons have begun mass production, we can degrade and diminish their capability still further,” Goring continued. “The remotely-piloted aircraft will destroy their bases and save the lives of my pilots and we will…”
Hitler cut him off, rounding on Kesselring. “And the Mediterranean?”
“The damage to Italian and French possessions is quite great,” Kesselring said calmly. Himmler knew that he was understating the case. “The Italians are now having the dead weight of their foolish economy removed from their necks; production has already increased. However, we must act on the assumption that North Africa will be lost; the damage to the Italian Navy makes that quite clear.”
Hitler had never been comfortable with naval warfare. He’d still raged with news of the destruction of the Italian fleet had arrived, even with the single piece of really good news.
“Despite sending Admiral Darlan as a Special Representative to North Africa, the British have continued their advance,” Kesselring said. He scowled; the British made the concept that would later be called Blitzkrieg seem meek and mild. “They are apparently bent on taking over the French possessions. Petain has requested permission to send more troops to North Africa, but at the speed of the British advance, they will have swept to Morocco by the time they can arrive.”
He smiled. “On the other hand, we have one important new datum,” Kesselring said. “One of the future craft was sunk when a brave Luffwaffe pilot crashed his plane into the ship, punching through its armour. They don’t have the armour needed to survive in modern war; our war.”
“My pilots will bear any burden,” Goring proclaimed loudly. “If swarming their defences is required, we can do it, and if any of them should be asked to give his life for the Reich, they will do it.”
“I was thinking more of using Italian pilots,” Kesselring said smoothly. “Perhaps if we were to…”
Hitler rapped the table and they both fell silent. “Has there been any response to our diplomacy?”
“The Greeks have refused to allow us to use their territory as a staging post,” Ribbentrop said. Himmler scowled; the jumped-up champagne salesman was anything, but efficient. “The Turks have expressed cautious interest in joining us, but only at a serious price. The Spanish have been reluctant, but might be persuaded should the British move into Morocco as well.”
“Inform them that they will be invaded if they refuse to cooperate,” Hitler snapped. “Speer?”
Himmler nodded in approval. Speer’s new appointment as Director of War Production had annoyed Goring; it had been worthwhile pushing for it on that ground alone. Todt’s death in a British missile strike had cleared the path for the man whom Horton had identified as the only man with the genius to streamline production of German weapons. Hitler had given him total authority; he’d already worked miracles.
“Production has reached 300% of production before the… ah, arrival of the future Britain,” Speer said. “For this month, we will have produced nearly three thousand warplanes of all types, while finalising the designs for future variants. In addition, we have constructed nearly nine hundred of the new-old V1, from plans in the laptops. They have been extremely helpful; we have jumped generations ahead of where we were.
“On the waves, the newest model of u-boat is about to enter production,” he said. “We have copied an American business model that was apparently invented by myself, three years in the future.” Hitler laughed; the others took it as their cue to join in. Himmler, who knew perfectly well that it had been invented by a clever Jew, didn’t. “We have finalised the design and broken it down into dozens of components, all of which can be built by… labourers, and put together at the final destination. The Elektroboote requires far less fuel than any other design, and it’s a great deal quieter.
Himmler tuned him out as he went on to speak about tank production and Panzerfaust rockets. He was due to meet with Roth in half an hour and he hoped that he would not be delayed. Roth had received information from the future Britain and he’d promised Himmler a report.
Roth stared down at the treacherous CD-ROM, lying on the desk. It had been addressed to him personally, and he’d read it at once. The other CDs, gigabytes – a term he’d had to ask one of the prisoners to explain – of data, waited for his team to begin exploring, cataloguing and distributing it across the Reich.
Hot tears stung his eyes. The July Bomb Plot – and others like it – had failed. The names, however, had been recorded for posterity; the thousands who would betray the Fuhrer. Name after name sprang up on the screen, but only one of them held his attention. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel; the Fuhrer’s personal favourite. Others scrolled by – Oster, Canaris – all of whom held high positions within the Reich. The evidence of history was damning; Oster had apparently betrayed the Reich once already, but – irony of ironies – he hadn’t been believed by the enemies of the Reich.
He shuddered. Whole nests of Russian spies, Frenchmen who would resist the Reich, German communists, all of them existed. The Gestapo hadn’t even scratched the surface, he realised; how could they have?
History scrolled on past his eyes. The Germans had never invaded England; they’d never succeeded in the African desert. They’d moved into Russia and lost whole armies in the snow; entire gigabytes of data studied German mistakes and errors, from declaring war on the United States to refusing to withdraw from Stalingrad. Oliver had attached a whole series of analysis documents of the war; Horton hadn’t been able – or willing – to give them such detail.
Carefully, he set the printer to begin printing the names of those who would have to be… purged, and started to read through the technical abstracts. Oliver had done a good job, he realised; the plans for heavy 1945-era tanks, if not later tanks, could be placed into production very quickly. Rockets – the V2 and upwards – could also be designed and constructed, and then used to burn godless socialism off the face of the Earth. There was no information on nuclear weapons – he’d scanned for that when he realised how much was needed – but with the information he did provide, it was possible to read between the lines.