Shock & awe – words we came to know in March 2003 with Operation Desert Fox. A revolutionary new military tactic using revolutionary new weapons. But were the shock & awe tactics new or had they been around for a long time.

Let me illustrate my point from long long ago – about 480BC. The great Chinese military strategist, Sun Tzu, found one technique for achieving this which he recommended to his emperor. The emperor asked him if it would work on women. He said it would. So the emperor told Sun Tzu to prove his point by turning his concubines into a precision marching troop.

At Sun Tzu’s request the emperor had the concubines summoned before him. Sun Tzu told them that they would now be trained to be a military marching troop. They laughed at him. He had the head concubine beheaded. He asked again. The ladies still laughed at him. The next most senior concubine was beheaded. Before you knew it the concubines had been turned into one fine precision marching drill team. Beheading people to inspire fear and submission was the idea that he had been promoting to the emperor. He’d made his point.

So it was that in 2003 the Americans updated Sun Tzu’s tactics with a metaphorical style of beheading of their own – the launching of their high tech aerial attack on Baghdad on 19 March 2003 - a prelude to the beginning of Operation Desert Fox. In this programme I’m going to be talking about what could have been Hitler’s war winning shock and awe.

Tag words: Shock & awe; Operation Desert Fox; Sun Tzu; Adolf Hitler; Lancaster Bomber; Boeing B-17; V-1; Hanna Reitsch; Nazi Germany; Nuremburg Rally; 1936 Berlin Olympic Games; Triumph of the Will; Olympia; Leni Riefenstahl; Professor Focke; Me-163 Komet; Me-262; Robert Ritter von Greim; Herman Göring; German Blitz; Peenemünde; Bletchley Park; Dr R.V. Jones; Werner von Braun; V-2; Cruewell; von Thoma; General Ismay; Bodyline Committee; Crossbow Committee; Lord Cherwell; Winston Churchill; Third Reich; General Walter Dornberger; NASA; National Medal of Science; Apollo series;