(Coventry was bombed by 449 German bombers of Luftflotte 2 (2nd Air Fleet) under the command of Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring, who, according to many sources, led the mission personally. The overall purpose of the mission was to disrupt manufacturing in the automotive and munitions industries and to destroy the homes of the factory workers in the city. It was also in retaliation for the Nov. 8th R.A.F. raid on Munich. About 30,000 incendiary bombs were dropped, with an additional 500 tons of high explosive bombs. 554 people were killed, 865 were wounded. 75% of the housing was damaged or destroyed, St. Michael's cathedral was destroyed.

The conspiracy folks have claimed that Churchill knew, through Ultra decrypts, of the impending attack, but did nothing to defend against it because he did not want Ultra, the source of the information, to be compromised. This is not the only instance where modern historians (because it's only modern historians who know about Ultra) claimed that Churchill or the British in general, knew of an attack and did nothing to protect against it. Their argument is completely understandable, and it sounds reasonable. If one reacts to information that is secret, the enemy will know how you obtained the information. Therefore, if the British had increased the defenses or evacuated Coventry before the attack, the Germans would have known that the British had cracked the Enigma code and would have changed the code or machine. Sounds right, but it's not. There were other sources of information that could have been drawn upon for the British to have figured out that Coventry was the target. Additional defenses or even an evacuation would not necessarily have alerted the Germans to the fact that their code had been compromised.

[As a historical note, the Germans never knew for certain, during the war, that the Enigma code had been broken. Admiral Karl Dönitz, the head of the U-boat arm and later the head of the entire German Navy, even long after the war, did not believe that the enigma code had been broken. The navy conducted three investigations into the integrity of the code, and each time the conclusion was that the code had not been compromised. To the best of my knowledge, Dönitz, to his dying day, believed the code was secure and unbreakable. He died in 1980, four years after the existence of Ultra had become public. I say this on the strength of speaking to a personal friend of Dönitz and asking him this very question.]

There is also something else which must be considered, even though the British had "cracked" the Enigma, that did not mean that they knew every detail of what the Germans were planning, thinking or doing. There were many types of Enigma machines and even more codes per machine. Each service used a different code, and within these branches, a different set of codes were used for various units within the branches. For instance, in the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) U-boats used one code, weatherships used another, surface ship used another, Hilfskreuzer used another, merchant ships used another and so on. The same was true for other branches of the Wehrmacht. Some of the various codes were never broken by the British. There was also a time lapse, they did not type a code in and a few seconds later they knew what the whole message was, it took hours, sometimes days to break the message. Many times, by the time the signal had been deciphered, the attack had already happened, therefore knowing about the attack through Ultra was useless. Historians and researchers need to be careful when making such claims, and should be aware of what time and date the signal was finally deciphered. Having a deciphered signal stating that Coventry was to be attacked on Nov. 14 at 8 p.m. was not much help if it was not decoded until 9 p.m. that night.

One must also remember what the purpose of Ultra was. It was to learn what the Germans were going to do, and to take measures to defend against it. In the Battle of the Atlantic against the U-boats, this was critical. If the Admiralty received a notice from an Ultra decrypt that a line of U-boats was stationed at a certain position, they would reroute the convoy around the threat. They did not let the convoy sail into the U-boat trap because they did not want to give away how they got their information.

There is a movie called The Imitation Game, which overall is very good, but one of the many errors they made was to put a scene in the film where, just after they cracked the code, they decided to keep the information a secret to protect the integrity of Ultra. In the film, one of the ships was a troop transport, and one of the men in one of the ships was a brother of one of the people who cracked the code. He thought they could signal the convoy to save it, but was told, we can't do that because the Germans will know we broke their code. This is absurd, saving convoys was one of the primary uses for the Ultra decrypts. When they knew something concrete, they always signaled the convoy to save it.

Nevertheless, these facts don't seem to deter the conspiracy minded person, facts never do. And until the end of time the accusation will be made and people will believe it.

In the Coventry case there is some evidence that the British had some information, but did not have the full details until the raid had begun. Not having the date and target precluded any additional defensive measures or evacuations from being carried out. Of course, they knew that any city was a target on any date, but you can't evacuate every city every day, and you can't add additional protection to every city or target, because if they could have done, they would have done. The British government, the Royal Air Force and the British people acted in the most heroic fashion against terrific odds.)

(Never think that the German people did not suffer due to Adolf Hitler, because they did.)

(The Synchronicity Conundrum strikes again. My neighbor, not more than five minutes ago, was complaining to me how his flight was delayed for four hours yesterday. I wonder how he would have felt had he waited for five days?)

(The "quarters" was the infamous Warsaw Ghetto. At that time about 350,000 Jews were put inside the walled area that was only 1.3 square miles in size. By July of 1942, before the deportations to Auschwitz and other death camps, the population was at or near 500,000.)

(New closing tome for shops on Monday.)

(Eight British night bombers shot down - On approach to Berlin or over the Reich's capital.)

(After the victory, we will develop the German welfare state into the most exemplary in the world!)

[Sounds like Hitler had his own "build back better" plan, just like Joe...]