The Goddess Of Fortune

by Andrew Blencowe

  Jodl disclosed,

  “And Turkey is close to entering on our side. Of course, with forward aerodromes in Turkey, we will be able to go south to what is now called Iran, as well as to the Suez Canal. Our strategy is to strengthen the southern flanks of Bulgaria and Romania to fight the British on our terms on our ground, not in Egypt and Libya where we have to depend on the Wops to ferry fuel across the Mediterranean where the British Royal Navy is still strong and still dangerous. And we can always depend on the Wops to be undependable, so we need consider the Italians as our adversities. I have assigned a tank commander to Bulgaria who did well last summer in France when he forced the crossing of the Meuse with his 7th Panzer—the Gespensterdivision, as it is called. He’s a bit of a showman, but there is nothing wrong with that. And I think this man—Rommel—will provide useful support for Paulus’s right flank. This will be even more the case when Turkey joins us. Also, the Romanians are morally weak, like the Italians—I’ve seen reports of some Romanian army staff officers wearing rouge and propositioning young boys on the streets of Bucharest; they make the French look pious and devout.”

  Jodl shared with all the other officers an abhorrence of this depravity—how the late, unlamented Chancellor could stomach the likes of Röhm was beyond his understanding.

  As a young officer, Jodl was told of the horrors of one evening in ‘01 when the Kaiser was entertaining Fritz Krupp. The centerpiece of the entertainment for that night was the brilliant and scintillating performance by a ballet dancer in a glorious pink tutu that was finished with the most magnificent mock sapphires. Around and around in the center of the huge parquet wooden dance floor the dancer twirled. Up and down the room, teasingly towards the two men who sat together on a small elevated stage. Fritz whispered to the Kaiser the joys of such a performance. God was in his heaven and the two men were so very happy.

  Then, as if the devil was watching and had decided to destroy this simple human joy, the dancer—now in the middle of the room—stopped twirling, looked first at Fritz for a brief instance, and then at the Kaiser and then let out a terrible, muffled moan. Grabbing his chest the dancer dropped to the floor. Dead. The ten men in the room made no sound. Then the Kaiser commanded them to get the Field Marshal out of this tutu and back into his uniform. There was a horrible delay of twenty minutes until the dead Field Marshal’s uniform was eventually located (he had secreted it in the back of a locker in the Ladies Gowning Room). Then, the real disaster started—rigor mortis had already set in and so it was impossible to dress the Field Marshal who was massively corpulent and whose uniform had to be specially made in Berlin at a tailor who specialized in the extremely obese. For reasons of decency, Fritz Krupp and the Kaiser had left while the other eight men tried—and failed—to dress the dead Field Marshal. Remembering that terrible evening, Jodl understood why the British at the time called these perversions the “German Disease.”

  “Of course, I am getting daily telegrams from the Duce, who is alternating between threatening and begging, but we can safely discount him. I think it might be worth doing a small Italian Anschluss when the time is ripe—I know from our agents that the Vatican would welcome that, especially if we bribe the Pope with significant power in a new Italian puppet government, thus returning the Italians to their natural order—a cabal of back-stabbing city-states so clearly described in The Prince. I will now let Milch tell you of his excellent progress.”

  Milch had spent too long associated with the politicians to remain completely untainted. Like his late boss, Milch liked the good life, but at a human level, not the caricature that was the dead Reichsmarschall. Milch provided a sea change—he was competent, modest, a good listener, and above all, worked well with the Wehrmacht.

  “Just as Jodl has done with the Bolsheviks, so we started our little circus by asking one question: In today’s modern, scientific war what are the enemy’s greatest weaknesses: civilian morale, lack of soldiers, our U-boats, lack of planes, what? My Luftwaffe research department boffins have come up with a three very interesting—and I think quite surprising—answers.”

  He paused to ensure he had everyone’s attention.

  “The boffins say: ‘RDF, airfields and 100-octane fuel.’ ”

  “The British have invented an apparatus called ‘Range and Direction Finding’ or ‘RDF.’ This equipment lets them see, on a special glass electronic screen, illuminated green dots that indicate aircraft. RDF cannot tell the size of the ‘planes, nor can it tell if they are friend or foe, but if you see 12 dots taking off in France and crossing the English Channel, then it’s reasonable that is our boys on one of their party outings to London. So, the British RDF is the eyes of the British air force. Now, this new apparatus requires very tall radio masts and the British have built a series of these stations dotted along their southern coast. So, in today’s modern war, removing this critical and central facility is our first job—it is not, as my former boss used to endlessly boast, about shooting down enemy ‘planes, and the glories of flying circuses, etc. That may have been how it was done in the dashing and glorious days of the air knights of the Great War, but in these modern times, the economic aspects are the most important.”

  “The second area we have identified is a simple one—the air fields themselves. If the enemy ‘planes have nowhere to land, then that will be a problem for them. This affects their bombers more than their fighters—it is often possible to land a modern all-metal monoplane fighter in a decent sized meadow, but even then it becomes the time-wasting task of refueling the fighter that can take a full day or two, and jacking up the wheels that have sunk into soft meadow grass. So after we cripple the RDF stations, we will attack the enemy airfields from a height of just 1,000 meters. Both JU-88s and Stukas will attack in waves. The goal is to destroy the entire length of the enemy runway, not just create one or two potholes. For maximum effectiveness, we will attack in the very early morning when the English bombers are returning from their raids on Berlin and the Ruhr. These English bombers will all be low on fuel and with a very small margin of error. And in contrast to the enemy fighters, the bombers only crash land in meadows, as bombers are far heavier than the fighters, the bombers dig in on contact, the whole thing goes arse over tit—the enemy heavy bombers must land on proper runways.”

  “The final one is 100-octane fuel. The backbone of the RAF is the Rolls Royce Merlin engine—they use it in just about everything. Most important are their heavy bombers and their Spitfire fighters. Now, these engines were originally designed and tuned to run on 87-octane fuel. But we know from our Dutch friends at the Shell company in Holland that the RAF has been working since 1937 to convert all the Merlin engines to run on 100-octane. And the performance improvement is significant; according to the Dutch, the British have gotten a 50% increase in boast pressure, which translates into about 200 extra horsepower. And our own pilots have compared 87 to 100 in the 190s and they too all report significant improvements, and these were blind tests as well—our pilots did not know if they were using 87 or 100. The only thing stopping the British in completing this conversion is lack of 100-octane—they’ve converted about one-third of the engines.”

  “Now, the British get their all 100-octane from the Americans and from Trinidad. They offload this 100-octane spirit in Plymouth and Liverpool, then it is transported it to the various aerodromes in the South East of England by rail. After the first two phases are complete, the Luftwaffe will begin attacking Plymouth, not with bombers but with special flights of 190s. In each flight there will be 12 aircraft; nine will be conventional, while three will be equipped with a 45 mm cannon. To allow for the extra weight of this armament and to maintain the performance all the machine guns have been stripped from these modified machines.”

  “The plan is to send a large armada of bombers to London in three streams. Even without the RDF stations, the British will scramble their fighters to intercept this raid. While they are flying North, the special flights will race over to Plymouth in t
he South West corner of England, and will destroy the main storage facilities in Plymouth. Of course, these tanks are all thin walled, and in contrast to heavy oil used in tanks and ships, 100-octane aircraft spirit is extremely volatile—a single hit from one of our 45 cannons and the huge tank explodes. Our plan is to strip Britain of all 100 octane fuel in four weeks—of course, this means the one-third of the ‘planes already converted to 100 will be forced to run on 87 and this will cause many problems—our boffins have done experiments and have found the engine life is halved, assuming the engine does not explode in mid-air from massive pre-ignition.”

  Jodl smiled, “And then?”

  Matter-of-factly, Milch said, “we start back at the first phase as rebuilding the RDF stations will be the Britishers’ top priority. I discussed this with little Paul and he wisely pointed out that we can create a huge news bonanza by telling all neutral countries that we are now eschewing all civilian targets. The British cannot respond in kind as the Ruhr is so old that the workers’ houses are cheek-to-jowl to the various Krupp works. In Goebbels’ view we can get a great deal of sympathy.”

  Milch immediately caught himself, “Of course, what he does is fine, but it is my job, gentlemen, to ensure no enemy aircraft ever attacks the Reich—I don’t want to have to eat a broomstick.”

  The generals and field marshals roared their approval at this inside joke.

  Milch’s simple, three-pronged approach worked far better than he could know. Churchill had a slight collapse after spending 15 minutes in a drunken fit screaming at the head of Fighter Command, Hugh Dowding, at the Whitehall underground command bunker. Dowding had not said a word during the unconscionable tirade, but had made it clear to Jock Colville that his retirement was effective the next day. Once sober, Churchill tearfully plucked and pleaded with Dowding, but to no effect. Alan Brooke, who witnessed this outrage, had told the repentant prime minister than one more such episode, under any circumstance, would result in Brooke’s own resignation.

  A scandal of this size could not be kept quiet for long in the fish bowl that was the London clubs. And sure enough, before the week was out Stimson had been given all the gory details. Stimson’s source was not a surprising one—Lord Halifax, the British ambassador in Washington, and Churchill’s former rival for the prime ministership.

  16: Mimi’s Sparrow

  Cristobal, Panama

  Saturday, 29 November 1941

  For Mimi, Saturday was always her favorite day—no school and no painful kneeling in church for an hour recalling her sins for the past week. Not yet a teenager, Mimi struggled each Sunday to find sins to confess to her mother’s God; she hoped as she grew older it would be easier—her eldest sister Maria, 18 years old and already married, assured her that shortly Mimi’s sins would blossom.

  Over the past two months, every morning Mimi would rush to open the blinds of her room to say hello to her two new friends, which she had christened Mama and Quick Fox. Mama rarely moved, just gently swaying, always calm and serene, while Quick Fox was the opposite—never seeming to stop moving, darting here and there, never still.

  But to Mimi’s surprise and sadness, Mama was gone. Mama had grown to be a silent friend to Mimi. Mama had arrived after church on the first Sunday in October, that foul day of rain and lightning and thunder, when the clock on the tower of the Town Hall had been hit by lightning and had stopped. Mimi leaned out her window and looked from one end of the bay to the other, but there was no Mama. Quick Fox was there, dashing around as usual, like a fly caught in a glass jar. Mimi would ask Father Koannes tomorrow about Mama—the German Father was wise and gentle to her and all the children of the parish.

  Mimi was not alone in her disappointment about Mama’s sudden disappearance—just about everyone in the town had been pleased by the arrival of Mama and Quick Fox. The townspeople knew of Mimi’s two friends more formally as the aircraft carrier Tancho and the destroyer Suzume of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

  A year before the arrival of the two ships, three Japanese bars had been established on the waterfront. For the first few days, the existing bars had naturally seen these newcomers as competition that would have to be shut—one way or another. But before any action could be taken, the three spotlessly attired Japanese proprietors had entered each established bar as a group and bowed deeply. The Japanese explained—speaking beautiful Spanish—that Japanese tradition demanded that the Japanese compensate their honorable colleagues for any lost business. The leader of the trio explained that the Japanese would like to pay 500 U.S. dollars each week as “Honor Rent” to each of the established bars.

  “Would this be acceptable?”

  The established bar owners could not believe their luck. Like clockwork at noon every Wednesday, the leader of the trio would appear at each of the bars, bow deeply to the amused owner, and pass over a small brown paper envelope containing the “Honor Rent.” A local gang had planned a robbery of this arrangement, but Little José of the Spanish Mermaid had heard of this and had the leader’s legs broken—“just to tell all what would happen” if anyone had ideas of hurting the golden Japanese goose.

  The three Japanese bars became the focus of drinking on the waterfront, not only because of the cleanliness of the bars—“my God, even the heads are clean,” marveled one U.S. Marine on shore leave—but also because the prices of drinks were the cheapest in the town. Between themselves, the local fishermen mocked the dimwitted Japanese who always paid top-dollar for the fishermen’s catch, and the Japanese always paid in cash, and always in U.S. 100-dollar bills—no more pleading with the local bar owners. Over time, the Japanese opened a restaurant specializing in seafood, which attracted people from all over town. And the Japanese were wonderful hosts; when news reached them of a local family in need, the local parish priest was dispatched with a meal of fish and a small red packet of three U.S. 100-dollar bills, enough for the family to feast every day for six months.

  So when the Japanese announced two war ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy would be visiting, a sense of excitement filled the town.

  When the Tancho and the Suzume arrived, the first act was a visit by the two captains and the ships’ officers to the mayor at the town hall. The captains and officers lined up in front of the mayor and bowed deeply. The leader of the three Japanese bars from the waterfront acted as translator and explained the nature of the goodwill visit, and suggested to mayor that the town be paid $2,000 per week for anchoring rights in the bay. This delightful surprise raised the mayor’s eyebrows and he smiled, showing the gap of his two missing front teeth. The translator had been careful to ensure the two editors of the local papers were present, but “no photographers please, as we Japanese believe taking photos is bad luck.” As with the phantasy of the “Honor Rent,” this silly explanation was not questioned, especially as the Japanese had become the largest advertisers in the two local papers, and they always paid in cash, “even before the ad runs,” marveled the editors.

  It was an ideal arrangement: the Japanese officers had the Japanese bar owners buy fresh fish each day from the fishermen as well as fruit and vegetables from the local farmers. The editors had made some very tentative suggestions about touring the ships; the officers explained that, sadly, this would not be possible and instantly the matter was dropped.

  From the shore the sailors could be seen painting and cleaning the two ships; initially, this was seven days a week, but after a priest had mentioned that working on the Sabbath might upset many of the devout local people, Sunday work was immediately stopped. The townspeople could see sailors in different uniforms moving about. Little did the watchers know that the Tancho held only a skeleton crew of 60 sailors who would change their uniforms three times a day to create the illusion of a full complement. Not that this was of concern—the locals were all benefitting from presence of the Japanese and their bottomless supply of dollars; all 100-dollar bills, or as Sasaki had called them, “Franklins.”

  News of Cristobal’s good fortun
e spread quickly. Then the curious news came back to the town that its sister city at the other end of the isthmus had experienced similar good fortune. At first, the local townspeople dismissed this as simple boasting in the truest of Spanish machismo, then some local merchants returned to say, “No, it is true—Vacamonte has a big, big Japanese warship, also accompanied by a little sparrow. And there were also the new Japanese bars—two in this case. And these Japanese bars were as clean as the ones in Cristobal, and the Japanese business men were just as naive and inept as the ones in Cristobal.”

  17: The Swede’s Bridegrooms

  Nogales, Mexico

  Monday, 1 December 1941

  José Rodrigues shivered as he stood by the black walnut tree in the forecourt of the compound. It was already past ten in the morning and the thin sheet of ice on the pond across the road had just melted. But it was still cold; this was Mexico—wasn’t Mexico always supposed to be warmer than his Spain?

  It was the first of the month and he was looking forward to a visit from his exotic visitor from Mexico City. Sure enough, the dust indicated the arrival of the tall Swede’s white car. The 12-cylinder Cadillac came to a stop in its regular parking place. The Swede emerged from the back seat and greeted José,

  “All ship shape, eh, José?” (Always, it was this greeting.)

  José nodded. The Swede was something to do with the Swedish embassy in Mexico City. José never quite knew and thought it wiser not to ask too many questions as the money was very good and regular and plentiful, and after the past five-year’s torment in Spain, this was a very pleasant change indeed.

  “Well, let’s get on with it, I have a second meeting after this.”

  José knew of this meeting, as the Swede was distinctive in appearance and had been seen entering the Hotel Centrale, according to some of the other Spaniards. The Swede kept a full-time suite there as well as his three Mexican girls, all under 18, who he frolicked with after the duties of the “Bus Company” were completed. And the Swede made no attempt to hide it—as a diplomat, albeit a corrupt one, he had complete immunity, and more importantly, his dollars were always plentiful to everyone with whom he came in contact.