*rubs face tiredly*
I am way, way too goddamn tired for this...
CEASE AND DESIST
1. I'd appreciate not reading things into the character that aren't actually there.
2. He
woke up on Blucher in the Norway campaign. By that point, even if there were any way to materially influence the French campaign, it was well too late. Same goes for Norway, because by this point, no one on the allied side is prepared to counter the invasion short of Blucher going and shooting up the transports. Furthermore, he only became a flag officer after France fell and he was given Bisko. Prior to that, he was a captain of a singular cruiser. The newest in the Navy, perhaps. But still just a single cruiser. And after keeping Blucher intact- which requires some fancy heroics itself -he's already going to be under scrutiny for
that. And that is why he got Bismarck at all. He was in absolutely, positively, no position to go off and defect at any point. Even before he became the face of the Kriegsmarine.
Even were he to somehow sneak off a warship in the middle of a war and find transport to Britain...you think that does any good? Ask Rudolph Hess how the Brits thought about high ranking Germans going to try and talk them into peace deals. Even assuming they trust him at all, which they have no reason to do*, he's
a Captain. If he starts spouting about Army plans, they'd think he's a raving madman. The French hardly trusted their own intel (it's not like there were no signs that the Germans were going through the forests) as it was.
If he tried to do that with the
Soviets after becoming an Admiral? HA HA. Stalin had
actual intel telling him the Germans were going to attack and flat out ignored it. He's not going to trust some random German Admiral telling him this shit. He didn't trust his own intelligence service! Or, if you prefer, he also ignored the British. And the Americans. And the
exact goddamn day of the invasion.
Soviet spy Richard Sorge also gave Stalin the exact German launch date, but Sorge and other informers had previously given different invasion dates that passed peacefully before the actual invasion.
Yeah, Stalin is believing
the German Admiral deciding to pass him the date. Totally.
*Relatedly, Schreiber has no reason to trust the allies. The British strung along German resistance movements IRL. And I'm not talking about the Valkyrie plotters. Toss in the whole 'throw all of Eastern Europe under a bus' and he has
absolutely no reason to believe the allies will listen to him. Not without first making himself indispensable to them.
3. The above ignores that Schreiber has
very goddamn good reason to not like the Soviets, nor to want to help them. Imagine, for a second, that someone goes into your home and shoots your father in the face. You wake up before this happened, and if you let the man who shot your father get beat up by someone else despite the fact you could stop it, would you do it? Schreiber is not a perfect character. He's a very flawed human being, who had a traumatic loss of his family as a kid. He saw it happen to many people.
His father is a child in East Germany right this moment. You would have to be a goddamn saint to go 'yeah, I'll help the people who are going to kill my father in a few decades. The ones who put my country under their boot for those decades, and refused to let go'. He's not helping the Nazis. He's not going gungho on LET'S KILL ALL THE SLAVS.
He's, as a flawed human being, trying to prevent the very real suffering that he- and a lot of people he knew -had to suffer under. That doing so is hurting the Soviets is, in his mind, an unfortunate side effect of this. And this is a perfectly normal reaction to have, considering what he grew up in. He
has hated the Soviets and their lackeys his entire goddamn life. You don't get over that and decide 'imma get a ton of my countrymen slaughtered to help the people I've hated since they took my father as a kid.'
Also, since it was posted as I was writing this:
NO. You do not get to call him a Nazi supporter, when he had to physically stop himself from shooting Hitler in the face.
4. Of
course he's going to keep Bismarck and Blucher alive. Let's ignore all the above stuff for a second. Because if you're going to say he should have let Bismarck (and Blucher) sink like they did? Sure. Why not.
You're telling the man to purposely watch his daughters die. Bismarck isn't quite as much a daughter as Blucher, but the latter? Schreiber loves her like the daughter he never had. He's outright said she's his daughter. And you're saying that, instead of doing everything he can to make his
daughter survive, he should go and get them- and all the men trusting him with their lives, let's remember Bismarck took over 2 thousand men with her IRL -get killed? He should look Blucher in the eye and lie to her about loving her and keeping her alive?
Okay, so Schreiber isn't
a heartless motherfucker who will watch his own daughter die,
and indeed, make it happen that way. Shock and awe.
5. He doesn't want to see Germany win. He doesn't want to watch millions die in the camps and what have you. He hates the Nazis every bit as much as the Soviets, and is working primarily with the more moderate parts of the German resistance. And, contrary to popular belief, there
are moderates in that group. The German Resistance, IRL, was disunited and never agreed on anything. That the Valkyrie plotters are remembered is because they actually had the power to try something.
Oster, notably, is Schreiber's major confidant. The man who kept the Resistance going even at the height of German success in the war, and who got arrested for helping Jews escape. Louis is also there.
You know why he does what he does? Because Schreiber needs to get himself into a hero. He needs to make himself someone the German people look up to. He needs to use the Nazi propaganda tools to his own ends, to create a cult of personality of his own. He can use that to sway people to his side. He can take control, even if he needs to use the firepower of the ships to do it. He has their loyalty, after all.
And again, since it came up:
You assume there is more than
one ship girl running around in the resistance. Or that it's safe to have some girl going around blowing shit up. If it got out, and it would there's always survivors, it would succeed in only tipping the Nazi leadership off that something is going on. And point eyes directly at the guy who knows the most about it.
6. I am getting
very sick and tired of this idea that he is trying to make GERMANY STRONK. Schreiber has outright said he wants Germany to lose and the Nazis to be removed. He hates the Soviets, that's his
only goddamn condition. If he needs to give the Poles clay or what the fuck else you want, he'll do it in a heartbeat, so long as it keeps Stalin out. I feel like there's
way too goddamn much being read into this 'no unconditional surrender' line. Take Japan and the desire to keep Hirohito from being dragged before a court. It's the same thing here.
Do whatever else you want, but don't let Stalin go and rape half the country.
He's been building the resistance,
his own version of it, since basically day one. He's trying to build a relationship with
motherfucking Winston Churchill, specifically to start passing information and work a way to get Germany to surrender to the West.
Schreiber is not a Nazi, nor a Nazi sympathizer. He is not trying to help them or make it to where Germany gets 'Peace with Honor' or other such nonsense.
My god, as a Social Democrat who-verges-Socialist, I hate the Nazis with a fiery passion.
Why the flying fuck would I write a character who is wanting to help them?
*sigh*
This probably sounds harsher than I want it to. But I am well and truly pissed off at this point, from work and having to come home to this.
CEASE IT, OR I WILL LET THE MODS DO WHAT THEY WANT ABOUT IT.
