Free Eagles at War by Walter J. Boyne Page A

his left eyelid drooping, hatred implicit in his stony gaze.
    Hafner noticed him looking at it, and said, "I keep that to remind me that I was not always this way. I don't know whether it's vanity or penance."
    Even Weigand was embarrassed by the conversational turn, and asked, "Well, what exactly are you building here, Bruno? I was expecting a Hermann Goering Works, and all I find is a spiderweb of frame sheds."
    "This is far more important than the Hermann Goering Works, even though it won't make me the money 'der Dicke makes from that. This is a working model of the new German industrial base.
    You're seeing in miniature what German industry must become by 1942. We've got to get started producing on a monumental scale."
    He spun his chair around and glared at them. "Do you know how many changes were made in the Ju 88 before they finally began production?"
    Protocol demanded silence from Josten, and Weigand said, "I have no idea."
    "More than thirty-five thousand!" Hafner launched into a diatribe, a catalog of the mistakes Germany was making in their war effort. Josten felt a cold shudder of apprehension as Hafner ticked off the errors—making too many kinds of aircraft, too many types of engines, too many parts. "Everybody thinks Germany is one big Krupps; it's not, it's just a group of toy factories, almost what they call 'cottage industries.'"
    "That's America talking, Bruno, just like your rogues' gallery of welders and secretaries out there. This is Germany."
    "Yes, it's America talking, and Germany better listen or we will get our arse kicked, just like in 1918."
    Weigand's nose and mustache quivered as he sensed opportunity like a fox sniffing chickens.
    "So what are we to do, Bruno?"
    "This 'spiderweb of frame sheds,' as you call it, is a model for a central German industrial complex. I've gathered some of the best practical engineers in the country, not a pack of; selfish academics wishing to write papers for each other, but people who can do things. And I've filled it with operating machinery and staffed it with experienced factory workers, people from that 'rogues' gallery' on the wall, men and women who know what they are doing, without worrying about the red tape that clogs up Udet's offices."
    Weigand nodded. Udet had made a shambles of the traditionally efficient German bureaucracy. At last count the Inspector General of the Luftwaffe had forty-three major departments reporting directly to him; he couldn't manage even one of them.
    Hafner's scarred face glowed with animation as he grew more excited. "The first step is to rationalize what we are producing now, standardize all of the fasteners, the tools, the jigs; then we decide on what's the best, not just from performance considerations, but from availability. It doesn't make any sense to call for chrome piston rings that will last for a thousand hours in an engine that won't run for two hundred before it's blown up. Put in pig-iron rings and forget it."
    "But why this spiderweb?" Weigand asked in bewilderment. "Why not do it all on one site like the Russians do, like Ford did in Detroit?"
    "First, efficiency; second, dispersal. I want to build five or six complexes modeled on this one, spread all over the east and south of Germany, away from the RAF. They'll be mutually supporting, like a bridge truss; if a ball bearing plant gets bombed out in one complex, we'll be able to supply it from another."
    "And what do you want from me?"
    "I don't want from you, I want for you. We are going to need someone to supply labor on a scale we've never conceived of before."
    "But Bruno, everybody wants labor. You know we are near full employment now. That's why most factories are only running one shift—no workers."
    "Full employment! What a joke! We have damn few women in industry. And we've got six hundred thousand Jews in this country, most of them professionals or in retailing."
    Josten felt his attention focus sharply as he thought of Lyra; this was getting close to