I Became Stalin?!

Chapter 142

Wheeeeee wheeeeee

[Citizens, the air raid has begun. Please calmly evacuate to the designated shelters. This is a real situation. Citizens…]

The siren announcing the air raid sounded and the familiar broadcast flowed from the speakers.

People quickly hid in the buildings and underground, avoiding the streets where ominous shadows loomed. 

Far away, bang! bang! explosions were heard and people trembled as they felt the ground shake.

“Where did the powerful Luftwaffe go?”

People asked. Where did the glorious imperial air force go and let the German homeland be bombed like this?

At first, massive bombings were carried out on the Ruhr industrial area and the Schweinfurt factories. 

The citizens were stunned by the sight of dozens of planes flying out of the clear sky, dropping bombs and leaving.

Where did those planes come from?

“Our fighters don’t even intercept those bombers, what are they doing?”

“The situation on the eastern front is not good…”

“Hey! What are you babbling about!”

People murmured. 

The war that seemed to end so easily dragged on, and more and more people were drafted into the army because the situation was getting worse.

The evidence was the bombings that started to fall on the big cities once or twice. The major cities of Germany, and the Germans didn’t know because of the information control, but the bombings were also inflicted on the industrial cities of Britain, France, and Italy.

But this ended with just murmurs. 

The Gestapo listened carefully to the noise of the citizens with a cold eye and pounced on them, dragging them somewhere.

Quite a few people disappeared. No one knew where they went. The battlefield? Or… the ‘factory’?

****

“What the hell is our air force doing!”

“Mr. Chancellor. Calm down…”

Air Force Chief Goering and Fighter Wing General Werner Mölders had to sweat profusely to calm down the raging chancellor.

The huge bombers developed by the United States flew from far across the Atlantic and dropped bombs on German cities, then flew straight to the Soviet Union in the east. Then, not long after, they flew back from the east and dropped bombs again and ran away.

The German air defense network could not cope with these bombings at all.

“They approach from such a high altitude that our fighters can’t reach that altitude to intercept the bombers. 

Also, due to the power outage to the eastern front, we are not enough to defend the entire empire’s allies…”

“You got so much budget and you can’t stop a damn bomber? Damn, you’re such an incompetent bastard…”

“Mr. Chancellor, I’m sorry to say this, but a large part of the budget is being used for the research and development and production of the latest fighters that you ordered.”

Mölders pointed out and the chancellor gritted his teeth and glared at him.

The air force had spent a considerable budget on the chancellor’s order to develop and deploy ‘innovative and excellent’ new weapons.

There was no sign of the results yet, but in the meantime, the United States had developed and deployed new medium bombers first.

In fact, this mess was similar for all the armies. 

Dozens of improvements came out and they didn’t know that the economy of scale and productivity due to skill would increase. 

Skilled workers were dragged to the battlefield due to labor shortages and unskilled workers filled their places, but they needed time to become skilled, and they disappeared as soon as they were drafted.

“Also, there are a lot of defects in the fighters. The workers’ work motivation is seriously lacking!”

“What do you want me to do about that?”

Of course, it would be to stop dragging the skilled workers from the air force factories to the front line and to place proper workers instead of those who were almost enslaved and abused, but it was no different in most fields.

The middle-aged and older ladies who started to come to the factory because they had no way to support their families after their husbands or sons died early in the war contributed to increasing the production. 

They had been in the factory for a long time, and compared to the senile, dim-eyed old men, the snotty kids, the foreign slave laborers who couldn’t communicate and were abused, they were the best workers. 

The conservatives of the Nazi party didn’t like the German women leaving their homes and coming to the workplace, but they shut their mouths now.

“···Please at least allocate more rare metals! Due to the lack and quality decline of steel, engine defects are constantly occurring. Your Majesty, please don’t let the elite pilots of the Luftwaffe die in vain!”

“···I’ll consider it.”

This time Mölders gritted his teeth. 

The hydroelectric dam that was responsible for the development of the Ruhr region broke and the power was scarce, causing a lot of trouble in aluminum production. 

The bombers were ordered to make them out of wood if possible.

That wasn’t all. They got the Mediterranean, but the Balkans and Turkey fell into the hands of the Soviet Union, and chrome became scarce. 

The bearing factory burned down and the chrome, which was essential for the production of wear-resistant steel, ran out, and defective bearings popped out randomly.

The reliability of the aircraft dropped as these factors piled up, and the authorities repeated the words wait, I’ll consider it. But even the chancellor did this?

“···Thank you.”

***

The Americans were burning with infinite malice.

The numerous exile governments that gathered in the United States mobilized their immigrant groups in the United States to create anti-German and anti-Japanese sentiments. 

The media, who smelled money and advertising, stimulated them with provocative articles.

[New atrocities revealed! The horror stories of human experiments by the Axis!]

[The painful death of human guinea pigs ‘logs’! Could it be Americans?]

The cheap tabloids were ecstatic by the shocking news that burst out every day. 

Even if they just wrote the facts as they were, they were so eye-catching and stimulating that they sold well, but if they added a little imagination, they sold several times more!

The government also joined in to fuel the anger of the people. At the forefront was MacArthur, the commander of the Allied forces in the Pacific region.

MacArthur, who had to flee shamefully from the Philippines, which was no different from his family’s territory, by the Japanese, was boiling with rage against the Japanese and the Axis. 

He didn’t want to bother them with ‘a few bombers’ like now, he wanted to cross the Pacific and trample on the Japanese mainland as soon as possible.

“We will return to the Philippines! There we will kick the asses of the dog-like Japanese and wave the flag of victory. Long live America! Long live freedom!”

“Waaaaaaa!”

The press conference room of General MacArthur was more like a meeting place between an actor and his fan club. 

The supporters of MacArthur who gathered from all over cheered every time he said a word, and the flashlights that the reporters burst added to the frenzy.

Wearing sunglasses and chewing on a corn cob pipe, General MacArthur, who was talking about how to beat the Japanese, was the star of the newspaper.

***

“We must advance to the Philippines!”

“···.”

Of course, being a star didn’t mean he always had the right strategy. 

The navy admirals sighed and shook their heads or clenched their heads.

MacArthur was doing everything he could to return to the Philippines and Japan. 

He used his own reputation, the support of the media and the public, and the influence of his family and the military.

The navy couldn’t stop him.

“Damn it…”

A navy admiral muttered. Oh God, please do something about that bastard.

The navy lost a lot of its voice after the disaster at Pearl Harbor. 

The fleet power was also weak, and the words of MacArthur, who said that ‘the soldiers who failed to guard’ were unforgivable, hit the navy hard in the media.

Of course, MacArthur wasn’t very good at guarding the Philippines either. People who knew his disgrace of being trapped in the Bataan Peninsula with more than 100,000 troops and barely escaping knew very well.

The problem was that the government, fearing the decline of the army’s morale, packaged it as a heroic last stand and a retreat of a great general who swallowed his pride. 

This way, MacArthur became a national hero in an instant, and the navy became lazy and weak ones who failed to guard.

Advancing to the Philippines was like going around the Pacific, but those who pointed this out were sold as cowardly cowards. 

The Japanese army had set up various defensive positions on the many islands in the Southeast Asian waters and waited for the Americans to attack.

“Advancing through the Marshall Islands and the Marianas would be much more effective in reducing casualties. General MacArthur.”

“If you wanted to reduce casualties, shouldn’t you have guarded better at Pearl Harbor? Even now, the people of the Philippines, Indonesia, and New Guinea are waiting for America to bring freedom! We can’t increase their sacrifices any more!”

“…”

No one could argue with that sarcastic remark that mocked the navy. MacArthur smoked his pipe and looked around.

“If the Japanese want to isolate themselves on the islands of their noses, that’s fine with me. We will liberate the important islands first, and then attack their lifeline, the oil fields! I have an appointment with the reporters now…”

“With the lives of the navy…”

Some admiral muttered.

The navy’s support was inevitable for attacking and occupying the islands. 

Even for landing, not only the army, but also the marines under the navy were deployed to support the landing. It was the navy’s skill that was passed on and the credit that MacArthur took.

The navy had to watch this because of their previous record.

The public loved MacArthur. Even if he was a troublemaker and a jerk in the army, the public didn’t care. They praised the ‘hero’ General MacArthur.

The people who knew that the Soviet Union was having fun with strategic bombing on the European front wanted to secure a bridgehead near Japan and harass them, but MacArthur wanted to go back to the Philippines.

“Why is General MacArthur doing that?”

“I don’t know? I heard that…”

People murmured. What MacArthur wanted to do by monopolizing the spotlight. 

The sharp-eared ones had heard a word or two about MacArthur’s intentions.

“He said he would definitely go back to the Philippines, and he would stay in the army until that promise was fulfilled, not running for the election. So he wanted to make the Philippines and Japan surrender as soon as possible and run for the next election…”

“Is that true?”

“I heard that the Republican Party contacted General MacArthur under the water. The other candidate, Dewey, is too liberal…”

It was time to talk about the election. Roosevelt announced that he would run for the election again as a candidate for the election scheduled for November 44. Then the problem was who the candidate of the other Republican Party was. What if it was MacArthur?

It started to make sense why he was pushing himself. If he wanted to show himself as a presidential candidate in front of the reporters and the public, it would be more appropriate to liberate the big islands than to bomb Japan.

Anyway, the counterattack began. They would smash the Japs.

Although it was much later than the Soviet Union, which started to push Germany from the beginning… It was worth waiting to launch a few battleships.

The people cheered.

“Kill the Japs, kill more Japs, kill even more Japs!”