It is early July, 1944. After the ghastly losses in the winter and spring campaigns, several major units of the Soviet Army have mutinied. Heavy fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces is becoming widespread, to the relief of the decimated German forces on the East Front, who are simply standing back and catching their breath. Entire units of NKVD have been slaughtered to a man by both sides. Widespread civilian riots over food and fuel shortages have started in major cities and towns. Beria has arrested and executed Stalin, and was himself assassinated a day later, starting a round of arrests and executions involving even the Politboro. In essence, SSSR is headless....and powerless.



On the West Front, the late June deaths of Generals Eisenhower and Patton in a vehicle accident have thrown the West Front in to turmoil, leaving General Montgomery in charge. The air assaults have suffered horrendous losses from the new jet fighters of the German Air Force armed with air to air missiles with radar warheads, reverse engineered from captured US arty shells with radar fuses. Since the air war is at a virtual stalemate, the ground forces of both sides are fighting with renewed vigor in France. The quantitative superiority of the Allies is slowly being offset by the qualitative superiority of the Germans, even as German units are being quietly transfered west from the now relatively quiet East Front. Hitler has disappeared, no word on when or why. The commanding generals of the German Army have taken over prosecution of the war and are actively seeking an end to hostilities, but so far to no avail. Like the Soviet NKVD, the German Gestapo has been emasculated in the civil and military turmoil of the early summer as riots spread across Bavaria and thence north protesting the lack of food and the call up of 15 year old boys to the colors. It is not considered healthy to announce that you are either NKVD or Gestapo.



Meanwhile, at the Henschel Fabrik, work proceeds apace now that the bombing campaigns are virtually a thing of the past. Production of the King Tiger is ramping up, and Panther production is at an all time high. The problems with the KT final drives, very much overstated by Allied propaganda, have been resolved. And in a back shop, the work on the Tiger 1 to adapt a different and more powerful main gun to the Tiger 1 turret proceeds, even though officially Tiger 1 production has ceased. The main problem was with the recoil system, and this has been solved. Also, German spies in USA have not been dormant, and have indeed found an interesting development from some 15 years ago by the Pace Armored Car Company of Chicago, purveyors of armored trucks for banks. This information was communicated to the Fatherland in April 1940, and promptly ignored at the time. Henschel was given the information in January 1944 as an afterthought, to their utter dismay at the delay. Engineers and master technicians have been working 24/7 to develop this new information for production. Other improvements include a new prime mover, more powerful and reliable to overcome the increased weight of the Pace Project as Henschel calls it, and other secret developments to be fitted to the venerable test bed.