World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF EUROPE: Who Can Last Longer?
Germany tightened up. The news in Berlin was bad. The Axis was losing North Africa. Italy, always uncertain, was growing more uncertain as the threat of invasion increased. Göring’s Luftwaffe had failed to twist the neck of the thunderbird that nested in England and clawed at Kiel, Antwerp, Cologne, Paris, Essen, Berlin. Some 90,000 people had been, removed from industrial Essen’s shattered, scattered homes. War labor was at a premium; war widows were ordered into the factories. But Germany was not yet beaten. Bombing had not knocked her out. Most of the invasion talk so far emanated from Propaganda Minister Goebbels himself. For this talk, the High Command had its own reasons. It was at least doubletalk. Italy needed bolstering. Occupied countries had to be warned that Germany was on the alert for any defections. The Festung Europa was a continent behind a flexible system of interrelated land, air and sea defenses. Berlin, cocking an ear, could hear the enemy admitting that the system
