Friday 26 July 2019

Could This Be True?

when France was occupied by the Germans in 1940, 



major French factories like Citroën were forced to produce equipment for the Nazis, Citroën president Pierre-Jules Boulanger knew he couldn’t just refuse to produce anything, but he also knew he had to do something to impede the NAZIs, Pierre had a plan, at the bottom of the article mention is made in John Reynold’s book Citroën 2CV and describes Boulanger’s sabotage efforts. Of course, he instructed workers to set a nice, leisurely pace when building trucks (likely Citroën T45 trucks) for the Wermacht, but that’s fairly obvious. What was brilliant was Boulanger’s idea to move the little notch on the trucks’ oil dipsticks that indicated the proper level of oil down just a bit lower, by moving the notch down, the trucks would not have enough oil, but German mechanics would have no idea, because, hey, the little notch on the dipstick says its just fine. Then, after the truck has been used for a while and is out deployed somewhere crucial, the engine seizes up, and you’ve got a lot of angry, stranded, vulnerable Nazis, it’s such a fantastic act of sabotage: it’s extremely cheap to implement, it’s subtle, there’s no way to see something amiss is happening as the trucks are being built, and it delivers its blow away from the site of the sabotage and when it will cause the most inconvenience and trouble, is it true? I would like to think so!


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