Ominous music playing while on screen text appears:

The Windmill and the Teenaged Nazi: Into the Meat Grinder

Lottie and Joe are looking at a map of Caen. The camera zooms in on the map and the map goes very large, filling the screen. Lottie and Joe in comparison are small, looking up at the map.

So track them we did, right into the meat grinder known as the Falaise Gap.

The Allies were looking for a breakthrough at Caen – well, what was left of it anyway. Lockheart said it had been bombed to dislodge the Germans, more like pulverised if you asked me.

I told Lockheart I’d catch her later - figured I needed to know more about this Falaise Gap business.

The map grows larger as the figures of Joe and Lottie shrink. Joe turns and walks off towards the library.

So I hit the books, pouring through every two-bit volume in the museum, looking for the scoop on the Algonquin regiment. 

Seems like the Algonquins were heading for high ground above the main road from Caen to Falaise – part of the push through the Falaise Gap to eventually clear the way right through to Belgium.

There was more to know, but my java was blacker than tar by then and it didn’t taste much better. I was going for a fresh refill when a text from Lockheart stopped me in my tracks.

‘12th SS Panzer Division Hitler Jugend.’

Joe gets up and heads out of the library.

Now it was coming together. By the time I got there she was already pulling out a few things to get me thinking, the old SS flag and a dart board of the Furher himself. I’d like to have taken a few shots at him myself, but Lockheart said we had work to do.

Joe enters the exhibit just as Lottie is finishing placing a tall dartboard up against a table. Joe pretends to throw darts at the image of Hitler but Lottie ignores him and heads over to her computer - Joe joins her. An enlarged image of the Hitler dart board appears behind them.

Operation Totalize, that’s what we were talking about. And it sounded like the totalizing was being done by this bunch of teenaged Nazis in the 12th Panzer. 

As Joe is speaking, there are images of bombed out city streets and battle. Joe and Lottie appear in a series of these images as if watching the battle itself.

Lockheart said Hitler himself had put them together - they were notorious, fanatical and relentless. And those were the nice things you could say about them.

Story goes that the Algonquins were trying to seize Hill 195, lead by a guy called Worthington from the British Columbia Regiment.  They were following a plan from up the chain and going at it by night – but between the dark, and the dust, and the chaos, things got messed up pretty bad. Ended up going off course and then wouldn’t you know it, there was the 12th Panzer, pinning them down and picking them off. And no calling for back up - tanks were going up like fireworks, knocking out one wireless after another.

I asked Lockheart why they were hung out to dry- she said no one knew where they were, that the only relief they got was from the fly boys, diving in and strafing those Germans, guess they just followed the string of burning tanks.

Just sitting ducks. I wonder what could have turned the tide for them?

Screen freezes.