Zero Hour

A feeling of approaching invasion was everywhere, though there was little in last week's air fighting to support it. The Luftwaffe took a rest after the big London raid, then gave the capital an easy time as it swept in along the south coast to hand Cardiff and Bristol blistering doses of fire bombs and explosives. The R. A. F. plastered Bremen hard three nights running, firing the Focke-Wulf factory and large areas of the town, blowing up docks and oil refineries. At week's end German bombers returned to London in another incendiary attack but thousands of cheering civilian fire-watchers stamped out the flames before they could catch hold. Only hint of something new was the mysterious practice adopted by scattered Nazi bombers of dropping their eggs near neutral Dublin.

But the whole world knew that it was to German advantage to strike, hard and quickly, for many reasons: to relieve pressure on backtracking Italy, to batter down the last resistance in the Balkans, to bring France and Spain solidly into the German orbit, to smash the centre of the British Empire--and its No. 1 fleet base--before U. S. help to Britain reaches decisive proportions. The incredibly optimistic British waited for the attack, fortified from beach to beach, and serene in the conviction that "old Hitler's" attempt at invasion would be surest proof of his desperation.

There was evidence that Adolf Hitler was getting ready for just that. For months a common sight in Germany has been the spectacle of picked troops practicing cliff-climbing along river banks. They have been observed plugging away at embarkation and disembarkation maneuvers along the coast. Thousands more have been drilled as parachutists. To carry them across the Channel new concentrations of shipping were known to have been collected from Scandinavia to the Spanish border. Thousands of smaller vessels have been assembled from prefabricated parts, including small, speedy, troop-carrying launches and torpedo boats.

How the German High Command was going to fit the parts together made a favorite guessing game last week. One theory in London had the invasion beginning with swarms of parachutists, backed by Stukas and long-range batteries in France, followed by troop-carrying barges.

A few pessimistic military experts in the U. S. thought the British would last only 108 hours after such an invasion began. Out of the enormous Luftwaffe reserve, Germany was expected to form three vast air fleets of 6,000 planes each, able to sweep the R. A. F. out of the skies and bomb Britain's resistance to bits. After an unending four-day-& -night attack there would be no need for invasion. The home Army would be completely broken, the home Fleet destroyed, the Government ready to capitulate.

The man who knew the German plans was a hardheaded artillery expert named Franz Haider. In World War I he served as a captain and General Staff officer with the Bavarian infantry, has stuck to the same work ever since. As Chief of the German General Staff in 1939 he laid the plans of the Polish campaign, capped them the following spring with the strategy devised for the Western Front. Since his Commander in Chief, Field Marshal Heinrich Alfred Hermann Walther von Brauchitsch, was reputedly dubious about the invasion of Britain, General Haider may organize it himself. The invasion's leadership might well be another behind-the-scenes job.

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