Chapter 985: A Bright Light

Were the Germans a bunch of vegetarian, prayer-chanting goodie-two-shoes? Obviously not. While the German occupation forces had been diligently playing the role of liberators, at their core, they were still out-and-out aggressors. There was no need to hide it, no need to embellish it. They were here to expand their country’s territory, to use the sword in their hand to win space for the nation’s plow.

These young German soldiers were using their own lives, their own faith, their own passion to build a beautiful future for their motherland. They firmly believed that their sacrifices would eventually be rewarded, that their efforts and contributions were worthwhile.

From their perspective, all of this was a just and meaningful cause. The passion they poured out, their transformation into murderers—it was all for the right reasons. This could also explain why those demons who killed without batting an eye could, to this day, still enjoy the worship of later generations in a certain shrine. Because the time when these demons became the sinners of other nations was precisely the time when they were expanding their territory, their blood flowing in rivers.

So do not try to change another nation’s view of fascism; it is all in vain. A nation that strives for self-improvement does not need to call on its opponents to remember the pain of war, but to trample its former enemies under its feet! When the wolf-like army, with its horses and sabers, charges into the enemy’s capital, a broken temple that houses memorial tablets will no longer be a pillar of shame in history, but just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill exhibition hall.

Based on this belief, the soldiers of the German Wehrmacht, without the slightest hesitation, worked the bolts of their rifles, chambering the cold bullets. Their leather boots struck the concrete ground, and squad after squad of soldiers, like fierce tigers and wolves, charged into the already-burning workers’ dormitories.

“What are you doing? Ah…” With a miserable scream, a door was kicked open from the outside by a powerful force, and then the sound of a submachine gun came out, a staccato of shots, the muffled thud of bullets hitting the walls, and the cries of children and the screams of the wounded. The night here was no longer silent, and the air was no longer fresh. The smell of burning and the stench of blood were everywhere.

“Crack!” “Rat-tat-tat!” “Help me!” “Fight them!” All sorts of sounds were intertwined, a cacophony that was the only melody here. A little girl charged out of the sea of fire, her small, rosy face streaked with black soot. She looked up timidly and glanced around, only to find that the scenery around her was so unfamiliar.

A German officer with his guards passed by here and saw the little girl who had just escaped the flames. He turned his head and looked at this small life, then raised his hand, pointing his cold gun muzzle at her.

The crisp sound of a gunshot echoed in the night sky. With a “crack!”, the little girl’s frail body fell by the side of the burning building. There was no pity, no sympathy here, because a few minutes ago, the people here had used up the last little bit of soft humanity in the hearts of the Germans.

“Don’t listen to their explanations! Don’t look at their age! If you encounter any living target, open fire! Clear the rooms one by one! Clean every corner! Before the American planes bomb, finish your work!” the officer said, stopping by the little girl’s body. He then raised his arm, signaling the soldiers behind him to hurry up and act.

And so these soldiers passed this officer and charged towards the houses that were filled with flames and thick smoke. The sound of gunfire became denser, and the scene became even bloodier. In an open space in the distance, German soldiers were grabbing women by the hair and pushing them into a square. Then, a machine gun that had been set up on the side began to roar, and in an instant, blood was splattering everywhere.

The American bomber formations, which had lowered their altitude, were struggling to find their targets. The entire plan had too many links, and they were too intertwined, which had caused all sorts of major problems when the bombing plan was being executed. After all, a plan was just a plan. When it was implemented, there would inevitably be all sorts of variables.

For example, now, the designated fires on the ground had not appeared. For a night bombing, this was a very fatal interference. If they were to drop their bombs blindly without any indication, it was very likely they would only scratch the Germans and would not achieve the decisive effect of a surprise attack at all.

Just as everyone was struggling to find the five-pointed star-shaped ground target, a glimmer of light appeared on the ground. It was unknown if it was a village or a factory. In any case, an observable light had appeared there. Before the American pilots could even confirm if those lights were the target they were looking for, the fires rapidly grew larger, eventually forming a burning sea.

“Number 1! Number 1! I see the fire on the ground! I see the fire on the ground!” an American pilot shouted excitedly over the radio. And in his headset, at this moment, the news from the other flight crews also came in. “This is Number 4, I also see the firelight! I repeat! Number 4 has spotted the firelight!”

Inside the lead aircraft, the American frontline commander looked at the burning target on the ground and muttered in a daze, “This is not the agreed-upon firelight. This is not a five-pointed star. This… this seems to be the target itself.”

“Colonel! We are about to enter the critical point for dropping our bombs! If you don’t give the order, we will lose our first opportunity to drop! Is that the attack target or not! Answer me, quick! Colonel! Please answer me!” the officer in charge of commanding the formation’s bombing questioned the frontline commander loudly. One could hear his voice trembling with nervousness.

“Don’t worry about it anymore! Inform all the bomber pilots to drop their bombs as soon as they see the firelight! It’s possible the friendly forces on the ground simply didn’t have the chance to create a very regular pattern. Begin the drop! Begin the drop!” the American colonel shouted, as if he had suddenly come to his senses.

“Open bomb bays! All planes, open bomb bays immediately! Quick, begin the drop! We’re dropping!” The urgent orders echoed in the headsets. The bellies of all the American bombers slowly opened, and the dense mass of aerial bombs hanging inside was exposed to the airflow.

“General! Because the area that needs to be concealed this time is too large, the air-raid shelters are all full, so a portion of the prisoners of war who are working in the factories and the low-ranking Norwegian workers have not entered the shelters to take cover…” an officer reported in detail on the rebellion that had occurred in the steel processing plants in Norway.

Another man in a suit, his face filled with terror and unease, followed up, “They… they usually behaved very normally. I don’t know why they would do such a thing at a time like this…”

This man was a shareholder of a large local steel mill in Norway. When the German army had occupied Norway, he had, with his own workers and many of the surrounding villages, surrendered at the same time and had joined the Greater German Party. He had therefore been appointed as the vice-chairman of the Third Reich’s Norwegian provincial steel conglomerate, an old man with a great deal of prestige in the local area.

But now, the riots of the Norwegian civilians had created a crisis of trust in the local people for the German military. When he had come, he had even given his last will and testament, afraid that the Germans, in their anger, would take it out on him without any distinction.

Clearly, General von Kleist had no intention of killing him. But in the current situation, to avoid losses had become an almost impossible task. Just now, news had come from the ground observation station that the American bombers had already dropped their bombs in the vicinity of the steel factory complex. The losses were being assessed.

The Americans were bombing. This news had been confirmed, and they were indeed bombing a very important steel factory. This represented that the German Norwegian air defense battle had, in the end, not been able to protect all the targets they had wanted to protect.

“General Kesselring! Why haven’t your night fighter units joined the battle yet?” Kleist asked, looking at the overall commander of the air defense forces, General Kesselring. After all, the German tactical thinking of relying on the air force for air superiority had been passed down to this day. It was not something he could change just because he wanted to. So air defense still had to rely on the air force. This was a matter of course under the German three-service construction system.

“The night fighter units are responsible for the air defense of the mining area. The factory area only has anti-aircraft gun units! There’s nothing we can do about it,” Kesselring said with resignation. “We don’t have enough night fighters. We have to use them in a concentrated manner. This is the established operational plan. I can’t change it at will.”

Kleist nodded, which was his acceptance of Kesselring’s explanation. He then picked up the phone in his hand and gave the backup operational order. “The defense plan has been disrupted by the saboteurs. A portion of the factories are under attack! Initiate the Magician plan!”

The inspiration for this Magician plan came from the Führer, Akado. When he was still the Chinese scholar Gu Changge, he had collected some historical anecdotes about World War II, one of which was about the classic deception operation of the magician Jasper Maskelyne hiding Alexandria.

To use the transfer of lights at night to deceive the bombers, which had no reference point, to drop their bombs on a fake target, to avoid greater losses—this was the essence of the entire plan. And so the German military had hastily set up this plan in Norway, hoping to use it as a final resort to disrupt the Allied bomber force when problems arose.

And so, in a dark Norwegian mountainous area, one gasoline pit after another was ignited, and one after another of the camouflaged targets, which had been simulated to look like ground targets, became brightly lit. This time, it wasn’t just the Norwegian saboteurs who were desperately lighting fires. The German Wehrmacht was also setting many areas on fire.

Some of the woodlands were even doused with gasoline and set on fire. The Germans had really gone to great lengths to disrupt the Allied ground indicators. In just a few minutes, a dozen or so fake target areas had appeared at the same time, a bright light.

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