On Hacking - Richard Stallman

On May 4, 1945, in the early morning hours, 200,000 Americans leave Norwich, sailing hard and quick for West Flanders in the beginning of the largest naval invasion in history. 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. The initial problem with the Great Raid of May 8, 1945 was that it was just not a very good idea to begin with. Of the initial fifty-three bombers scheduled to take off at 1700 sharp on May 7, seven simply don't. Reich has ways of ensuring fleeing refugees don't block the roads, and they're effective. Hermann Goering, visiting a moderately secret Luftwaffe base in southern France, gets the good word that almost two years of work has paid off; they've an engine for the forty-seven completed planes that can actually sustain flight for 15 hours straight. In order that one may pronounce correctly, it is just as important to know on which syllable the stress should be laid as it is to have every word spelt phonetically. To the surprise of no one (except perhaps himself) President Robert Taft authorizes use of nuclear weapons in both Europe and Japan as soon as they are viable.

In the United States, President Taft moves quickly, greatly ramping up the air defense network over the East Coast and beginning construction of warning radar stations all up and down the East Coast. The Aurora fire destroys most of Harlem; America's civil defense is brave and well-organized, but green as grass. Taft speaks personally in New York City two days after the raid, showing surprising fire as he vows to pay the Germans back a hundred-fold for what they've done. Still, he was better than her current attachment, the military attache to the Chilean consulate in New York. Describes her speaking tour of New England, meditates on the virtues of manual labor, and reminds her readers that the truckmen of Burlington are suffering real privation during their strike. Her crews are rested, ready, at general quarters; and the men manning her AA guns are veterans to a man. Despite the greater success of the German armies, Hitler's drug addictions have proceeded apace, and the man largely sequestered in the Berghof is not the champion of 1939, or even 1943. Lots of people take note of the Fuhrer's apparant mortality, everyone from Hermann Goering to Reinhard Heydrich to the Army Chief of Staff for Italy, Claus von Stauffenberg.

Already the commander of the Wehrmacht forces in Italy, von Witzleben, is on their side, along with all of his staff. Many officers, including the commander-in-chief, Erich von Witzleben, have moved their families down to Italy to join them. Civilian casualties have been heavy as well; the Germans have released the tens of thousands of refugees from the terror bombings onto the roads, blocking the American advance in many places and causing many accidental raids on fleeing civilians. The great defect of Malay vocabularies printed in the Roman character has always been the difficulty of finding many of the words owing to variations of spelling. The Malays have a remarkable aptitude for adopting foreign words, which in most cases become assimilated to the Malay style of pronunciation, the spelling being sometimes changed to suit the new pronunciation. Morale in Germany is a mix of elation and despair; America has been struck and hurt (the attack on New York has been greatly played up by propaganda as total destruction.) but Germany is being struck and hurt worse nearly every day. Secretary Donovan's first act in office is to order Curtis LeMay to resume his terror raids; this time in conjunction with the British over Germany.

This plan of having a different system for roman- izing foreign words causes great confusion in a vocabulary and has been avoided as far as possible in this work. They were so bubtly different that only the highly trained Rothschild agents could detect the change. 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 image of a screaming Belgian girl fleeing down a shattered road soon becomes one of the most famous photographs of the war. Arriving at the Exchange amid frantic speculation on the outcome of the battle, Nathan took up his usual position beside the famous 'Rothschild Pillar.' Without a sign of emotion, without the slightest change of facial expression the stony-faced, flint eyed chief of the House of Rothschild gave a predetermined signal to his agents who were stationed nearby.