It is expected to be an American project; something the British are fine with, Montgomery is finally ready for his strike against Italy itself, and the British and Commonwealth forces plan to strike in June as well. Like almost everything Bernard Montgomery does, the invasion is slow, meticulously well-planned, and designed to greatly aid his own reputation. Like with most American field operations of the war, the British are only mildly consulted, and Bernard Montgomery vows that it will be British and British only who strike against Italy in May. The massive casualties caused by X-Day (D-Day will remain a lexicon for failure in the American language until the end of the century, and beyond) have only reinforced the fervent isolationism of Robert Taft, he is only too glad to pledge agreement with his predecessor's suggestions for postwar German occupation zones, and even carry them further. American casualties have been high, fifty thousand dead and wounded, but they're nothing compared to the failed D-Day. Even if the initial fifty-three specially modified Ju-290s had all been able to reach their targets (the Brooklyn Naval Yards, Gracie Mansion, and Wall Street), the main effect would have been nothing more than a pinprick to the already-enraged American behemoth.
With the fall of the Philippines, there's really nothing left but Downfall; American planners in Formosa are already putting the finishing touches on the organization of the attack on Okinawa, planned for sometime in early September. The SS officer isn't a particularly able pilot, but he does have loyal crews, men on loan from Reinhard Heydrich as part of his deal with Hermann Goering. Reinhard Heydrich has successfully supplanted him as Reichsfuhrer SS, using the Goering raid as justification (after all, Himmler couldn't even see the Great Raid preperations, right under his nose!), but Hitler has offered his old friend a chance to redeem himself as commander of the troops on the Dutch front. His tactics paid off. December 20, 1945 as she takes off from her isolated airstrip near the former Korean border. They catch twenty-nine Ju-290s over Long Island Sound, just off the city of Huntingtdon, an hour or so later, just as the sun is breaking in the east. The jet engines can work for 15 hours, which means that about half the time they'll work for about that long, give or take an hour or two. There are, of course, no discussions of any sort of internationalist organization after the war; indeed, all four leaders are increasingly weary of the League of Nations, which is just a living joke at this point.
Soviet troops have by this time taken Romania and Bulgaria, and with their forces very near the Hungarian border, Admiral Miklos Horthy, regent of Hungary, has made his decision. Already the commander of the Wehrmacht forces in Italy, von Witzleben, is on their side, along with all of his staff. Among those now in American hands is Jonathon Wainwright, final commander of American troops in the Philippines before their surrender in 1942, and Richard Sorge, alleged Soviet spy and former German diplomat. The final plane manages, against all odds, to drop her bombs in full Battle of Britain style. Lubeck, Hamburg, Wilhelmshaven, and Bremen have now all been destroyed from the air in the space of a very few weeks by the British and Americans. This makes it just as easy to find a word containing the short vowel as it is in a Malay dictionary printed in the Arabic character, for instead of having to look up such a word as nschaya or psaka under two or three different vowels, the student will be able to find it at once from the sound. This was to result in an expansion of Russian influence and the establishment of a state of Israel in Palestine.
That was not so hard, though I had to figure out where to put them so that I could control them individually. The atmosphere in the court of Louis XVIII was tense. In Italy, things are better (for the Allies, anyway.) Those tanks which aren't Italian are usually the obsolscent Panzer IVs; and most of the soldiers still have Mauser '98s. Which it does. American troops in the Low Countries have taken terrific casualties; the German army up there has the Panther and King Tiger as its standard model panzers, and nearly every man has an MP-3 assault rifle. Heinrich Himmler's terrible generalship has let the Americans drive to the North Sea in most places, forcing the Wehrmacht back to defensive lines around the city of Arnhem, in eastern Gelderland. None of the Ju-290s survive; most are swatted from the air and crash into the Long Island Sound, a fortunate few manage to land on American soil, or jump from burning planes to parachute to ocean or land. One frustrated pilot manages to drop a portion of his bomb load on Long Island; they land in an abandoned warehouse area, killing five and starting a major fire that will do some millions in property damage.
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