[X] Checking under the bed
D100 = 57
There's a knock at the door of your office, and Kathe is quick on her feet to open it. You think you see Otto for all of the two seconds it takes for your wife to address this interloper, and then the door shuts.
"A telegram for you, dear. From the Nuremberg Office."
That statement fills with you with a mixture of dread, and anxiety. You've not heard of anything nasty happening, but after what happened to your printing press, well, you're not exactly in the highest of spirits. You thank her, and open the letter.
TO: State Minister for Health, Hugo von Strauss
Operational security in Nuremberg has been increased following the events of the previous months. Two Ministry Officials have been relieved of their positions, pending review.
You put the telegram to one side, and let out a sigh of relief. It would appear that, at least within the health ministry, you have resolved the worst of the 'brown scare', and you can now direct your attention away from the nasty business of purges, and to the much more pleasant work of helping the people of Bavaria recover from the Great Depression.
-[X] Network with other departments
D100 = 75
With the Crown Prince as intermediary, you've made friends within his personal guard, as well as with the Minister for Security.
Your plan to begin properly making friends and allies amongst the Emergency Government's ministers goes much smoother this time, as you're not getting panicked messages about potential fifth columnists infiltrating the State Government anymore, allowing for a proper sit down.
Naturally, given your increasing concerns about both Hitler, and the potential for his using the 7th Infantry division to bring down the Emergency Government, your first port of call is with the Minister for Security.
A Military man by nature, Rupprecht has chosen several of his former wartime comrades to serve within the Emergency Government, and you recognise, now up close, the Minister for Security quite readily. Rudolf von Xylander, a man with whom you have a passing acquaintance from the 1920s, as you were both members of the DNVP, back then.
The two of you swiftly hit off, talking about your time in the war, and catching up (as best you can) on the goings on within your respective noble families. You are familiar with the Xylanders, of course, as back when you still readily embraced your birthright, your father insisted on networking with them.
You bond, especially, over your fears about the NSDAP. Unlike you, the Xylanders have no issue with members defecting to Hitler's Demagogic Death cult, at least not yet, but Rudolf's younger brother has been getting in trouble with the NSDAP Club at his university, and he's worried that the poor, hotheaded lad might be getting in over his head.
Throughout the fortnite you make a point of meeting to catch up with Rudolf, and it pays quite strong dividends. You're soon friends, and as well, being an 'Officer of the People', he makes sure that you're on good terms with members of the Prince's personal guard, and the military men making sure that the State Hall will not be overrun, if attacked.
You've made a new friend. Rudolf von Xylander, Former Colonel in the Royal Bavarian Army.
-[X] Recruitment! (Bavaria - Rural population: Base your recruitment campaign on the success of the Emergency Government's agricultural plan.)
D100 = 86
Trading on the name of the Crown Prince, as well as some well timed arrests of crooked businessmen attempting to illegally foreclose on someone's land, have caused a strong swell of support for the movement.
"Freeze! In the name of the Crown Prince, you're all under arrest!" the radio belts out a dramatic recreation of the arrest of several Land Speculators, whose property was raided just the other day. The Moratorium on foreclosures has certainly made your government popular, but it has ripped the rug out from under the worst kinds of capitalistic parasites.
Ordinarily you wouldn't tune into such low brow radio shows, but you've learned it pays dividends to keep an ear close to the shows that the masses enjoy so much. Especially when it comes to recruitment propaganda!
You've assembled a small coterie of people you trust (for the most part) to begin writing and printing recruitment posters both for the State Government, and your rather informal (and underequipped) militia. Thanks to the string of High Profile arrests, and the shutting down of that Nazi ragsheet the People's Observer, you've got more or less total media control of Rural Bavaria, for now.
Franz lays out the plan for the next few weeks of propaganda across the Rural Areas of the state, outlining a three pronged offensive to both break the back of the NSDAP, and to cement the government's support.
- Coverage of the LftElkB roll out, highlighting the great progress that the construction will bring, as well as jobs and security
- Massive publication of NSDAP crimes during the Munich Crisis, with full-page pictorials of mass-graves, mixed in with eye-witness testimony and emotional appeals built around rural farmers who'd come into town to sell produce, only to be cruelly gunned down by people claiming to protect them.
- Finally, an appeal to the rural population's love of the Crown Prince, with plans to have him sit down for a full body painting in his military attire, with the painting then being replicated on billboards across the countryside.
It's a detailed plan, and you sign off on it after some deliberation. Some part of you is hesitant about going so hard after the NSDAP, so soon after Munich, but then you remember the attack on your clinic, and give it an approval stamp with no more hesitation.
============
"Brothers! Do not be led astray by False Shepherds! As it is said in Ezekiel 34 - 2 'Woe to the shepherds of Israel who have been feeding themselves! Should not shepherds feed the flock?'" A preacher exhorts in the public square of a small town, holding up a paper exposing the latest of many corruption scandals to rock the seemingly cursed branch of the Bavarian NSDAP, this time about yet more (supposed) financial malfeasance, and a (supposed) string of murders attempting to cover it up.
The town had long been a hotbed of radical nationalism, having lost fully half its sons in a losing war, their sacrifice betrayed by urban elites who cared little for the rural poor that bled and died for them. The total collapse of the local economy after 1929 had, in the minds of many, validated their turn away from the BVP, to the NSDAP. Any voice calling for moderation, or claiming that the Nazis were just as hypocritical as the Urban, Wealthy Elites (Who were the biggest backers of the NSDAP) were aggressively shouted down, beaten, and chased away as traitors.
Oh what a difference a year had made. The exposure of Nazi hypocrisy had caused something of a crisis of faith within the town. They'd sheltered dozens of SA men after the failed uprising, and now not one of them was still to be seen. Most had fled to Austria, others had simply vanished in the night, having raided the cupboards of their hosts and risking the brutal winds of winter.
Where men had once congregated in the single local beer hall after a day of backbreaking labour in the fields, to gripe about the failures of the government, and how the Bohemian Corporal would save Germany from the Depredations of Liberalism, Socialism, and the Jew, the now congregated to gripe about how
Herr Hitler, once held in such high esteem, was clearly a stooge of the clique of International Financiers and Urban Capitalists that so tormented the town's economy.
They had a new saviour, and a portrait of him hung above the bar. Rupprecht von Wittelsbach, Crown Prince of Bavaria, and the State Commissioner currently being feted as the one true saviour of Bavaria, in all good and loyal newspapers across the Free State.
DnPB recruitment amongst the rural classes has doubled your membership numbers, to a hair under a quarter of a million. (Roughly 6.5% of the Adult population)
-[X] Found a paper. (If the paper is founded in time, use it to bolster your recruitment efforts.)
D100 = 18
Things go well, until they don't.
You've come to dread calls in the night. Nothing good ever seems to happen beyond the hours of 10pm. The streets fill with drunks out for fights, and all sorts of immorality occurs when that happens. Back when you ran a surgery (All of, what, a few months ago?), it was the kind of thing you dreaded to hear about.
Some Reichsbanner boy, or very unlucky Jew, caught out in the open and set upon with sticks and pipes. But that, you could handle. You're used to that kind of thing, as terrible as it is. This new world reminds you in a lot of ways of your trench surgery. Endless crisis. Endless bodies. Never enough material to save everyone.
Were you a younger, weaker man, without Katherine to hand to keep you sane, you might've turned to the bottle, as you suspect the Crown Prince has. As it stands, Katherine is a constant companion keeping you sane.
When the phoneline goes off at 3am, she's the first out of bed, rushing to check what's gone on. The State Hall had been getting bomb threats from the so-called "People's Resistance" which, you've been told, is either a KPD cell, a NSDAP cell, or some hellish chimera of both.
You're barely awake and into your slippers when Katherine comes back, her face grim in the low lighting of a hastily ignited lamp. "Hugo, dear. There's been an incident at your printing press. They say Franz has been shot." You're midway through wiping the sleep from your eyes when that last line sinks in.
Franz, shot? It's not an unusual state of affairs, but you feel a great knot of dread in your stomach either way. He's been a lucky man to survive being shot so many times, and you fear his luck may have run out.
"They didn't say how he is doing, but apparently he requested you come to the Press as soon as you're able to." You nod, and despite how comfy the slippers promise to be, you set about getting properly dressed, for a given value of it. Glasses, yesterday's shirt, yesterday's pants and suspenders.
"I've called Haber, he says he'll bring a truck and some men around. Just in case this wasn't...well." As brave as she's been, you can tell your dear wife is starting to think back to the attempt on your lives. Despite your tiredness, you pull her in for an embrace, and kiss her on the forehead.
"It'll be alright, Katherine. I've known Franz for years. It'll take more than a few bullets to stop him. And, I'll have Haber post some guards at the door. Make yourself some tea, and try to get back to sleep, alright?" She nods, and you continue to hold her for a few moments longer, before kissing her again, and slipping out into the living room, where your overcoat is still where you dumped it.
Pulling it on is a welcome block against the cold, and you make a point of grabbing your luger from the third drawer in the kitchen. With a quick check to make sure it is loaded, you slide it back into your coat holster, and head outside in the bracing night wind.
=========
Twenty five minutes earlier
It was a dark and cold night, much like they'd had all winter. The roads in Munich's industrial district were all but abandoned, save for a few brave truck drivers willing to take extra pay for night work. One such truck turned a corner, skidding on the icy roads enough to make the driver's knuckles go white for a moment, before he regained control.
In the back, though, there wasn't the usual cargo of machine parts, oil drums, or anything else one might find in a truck. Instead, there were Five men, all in plain clothes, shivering as the thin canvas that hid them from the world at large did not protect them from the brutally cold winter air.
"It's time, brothers. Today, we will strike the first, avenging blow against the communists and their traitorous allies." Timo, the oldest member of their Resistance group, began. He'd fought in the uprising just a few months ago. Every other man in the truck listened closely to his words, gripping their pistols and clubs tightly.
"Adolf Wagner was a great patriot, betrayed from within by Jews and Communists who have infiltrated our once great party. They think they have captured our leader, but tonight, gentlemen, tonight we will show them how wrong they are." The truck came to a skidding stop, briefly interrupting Timo's speech, and the window on the back of the cab was wrenched open by the driver, who spoke in a hushed tone, despite their just pulling up in a 3 ton truck.
"We're here. Make sure your guns are loaded, and Dedrick, did you bring the package?" The engineering student in the far back of the truck opened up a battered ammo crate, and pulled out a brown paper parcel, grinning eagerly.
"Of course! How could I forget?" Timo clapped him on the shoulder, chuckling genially.
"Good lad. We'll wait at the fence while you set it up. You'll do your Fuhrer, and your nation, proud tonight." Diedrick nodded, and they all piled out of the truck, their struggles with the cold forgotten as they prepared to perform the most important act of their lives.
Diedrick, for his part, just tried to ignore his nerves as he walked towards the warehouse. He couldn't see any security at the door, but there were also lights on. He couldn't remember what the plan was after his part was done, but that didn't matter. He'd built a bomb that would surely shake the foundations of this corrupt, elitist society to its core.
Standing outside the door, he froze for a moment, and not from the cold. He could hear voices inside, through the thick wooden door. He briefly worried that they'd been led into a trap by the same traitors that had brought down Adolf Wagner and his great crusade against Judeo-Bolshevism, but he swallowed his fears.
Crouching down, he placed the bomb at the foot of the door, and began to unwrap the package. As the protective paper layer, revealing the dynamite one of their patriots had stolen from work. He grinned, prepping the timer for fifteen seconds, and then releasing it.
He barely had time to realise that he'd not created the timer right before a massive explosion knocked him onto his back, his upper body torn to ribbons by the premature detonation. He was dead before he'd hit the ground.
The Warehouse was bombed and ransacked during the week, Franz was shot while chasing off the attackers with a shotgun in one hand, and a broken length of pipe in the other.
-[X] Recruit former officers into the VB
D100 = 58
Several former Bavarian Army officers have been reminded of the oath they swore to Rupprecht's father.
Your new best friend, Rudolf von Xylander, has offered to help you out in your officer outreach. As you hardly joined the Officer's club in the aftermath of the war, he turns out to be a major help, bringing you to smokey back room, after smokey back room, sitting you down with the movers and shakers in the officers scene these days.
You don't make huge headway, at least not at first, but a generous round of drinks or three, some discussion over your collective memories of the war (sanitized, for the most part), and plenty of greasing of the wheels with some generous offers of a stipend for joining does net you a few men, pulling themselves out of retirement, to give your informal militia a real sense of professionalism.
Right at the end of the week, you net some young officer from the 7th Division, who claims to have been rather disillusioned by the Munich Crisis, and brings with him some concerning news. There are rumours floating about the Division that not only is the von Schleicher Government on the brink of collapse, but that Franz Halder, the Division's commanding officer, has been trying to organise training for a 'police action'.
Grim news, if true.
A smattering of officers come out of retirement to provide a degree of professionalism to the VB, and one active-duty officer claims conspiracy at the top of the 7th Division.
-[X] Secure Weapons. (Czech Republic - 88k RM)
D100 = 21
You're not especially surprised when your would-be gunrunners come home mostly empty-handed, despite throwing around a good two thirds of the money you'd sent them away with. It turns out that illegally arming an unsanctioned militia is quite difficult. Who'd have thought?
You've at least got a handful of WW1 surplus, and some contacts that you can hopefully leverage for equipment not designed in the last century. You also realise that even with just a single truck's worth of rifles, bullets, and helmets, that you'll need to actually find a place to store this equipment.
It's slightly worrying that fact slipped your mind, though for now they are sitting, relatively safely, in an old barracks, still packed onto the truck they came into the country on.
Acquired: 150 Mannlicher M95 rifles, 5500 rounds of 8×50mmR Mannlicher, 250 K.u.K Army Uniforms (with Helmet), a crate of seven M17 egg grenades. Contact made with several Surplus Dealers 29k RM returned
