Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-41

by William L. Shirer

(An example of the German army’s terrific attention to detail: For three hundred miles along the Autobahn from Berlin to Cologne, broken-down farm implements made to look like anti-aircraft guns from any altitude at all were placed every two hundred yards. Ploughs with the shaft pointed to the sky to look like a gun; rakes, harrows, wheelbarrows, sewing-machines—every conceivable old implement had been carefully arranged to look like a piece of flak,21 so that an Allied pilot flying along the road would get the idea that it was suicide to swoop down on that road. Noticed on the map found in the British plane near Hannover that strong concentrations of German anti-aircraft were marked in red ink. Another purpose of the farm machines of course was to impede the landing of Allied planes on the highway. Telephone posts driven into the narrow strip of ground between the double lanes also served this purpose.)