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[Continuation] Schwarz-Rot-Gold: An Interwar Germany Quest

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Xela63 said:
I don't like that considering we've lost like 80% of our iron ore mines and much else in the Great War. We are a greatly weakened Germany, right now we can't afford to be a bullwark. We're more of a paper tiger right now.
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I disagree. I am certain that the outcome of the Poland losing to the Soviets alongside the Soviet's succession being thrown into doubt will result in an interesting position for us to play in. A greatly weakened Germany just guarantees that things will interesting.
 
Not to mention that we may well get the very region (Upper Silesia) Xela references via the Fall of Poland.
 
pretty much what charles said. No fucking way we can regain the polish corridor, silesia or danzig from the poles, should they manage to repulse the soviets. If they are however desperate for the survival of poland itself, they might be willing to part of those mostly german regions against some actual assistance
 
Changing my vote on the last item:

[X]The Heir is Dead


Honestly think a looming red scarce might help the Entente loosen the strings a bit, might end up being a crapshoot, specially given how much the French were hurt by the war and their other issues, but...
 
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Chaos Blade said:
Honestly think a looming red scarce might help the Entente loosen the strings a bit, might end up being a crapshoot, specially given how much the French were hurt by the war and their other issues, but...
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Considering we'll probably not be able to cover the increased reparation's cost, I do think it is worth taking the chance. If we had to pay what is owed now at the start of the previous quest, we'd be in a budgetary deficit of 33%, which is an insane amount. The numbers might change from the previous one, but I wouldn't count on that.

There is a reason the German economy imploded on the early 20s, and the circumstances are probably actually worse than then for us, at least financially. Anyway, besides that I am very interested to see how that will shift the European balance of power, and what implications it will have on our relationship with the Entente and Central Europe.
 
Also people are really overestimating the soviets here. They are incredibly overstretches, their nations is in ruin, they are fighting enemy forces in the baltic as well, who otl not only defeated the soviet attempts at conquering them but even launched an offensive that almost took leningrad. The soviets aren´t even an actual natiion at this point. They are fighting the fins, the different intervention forces, the whites in the east, in th caucasus and the polish resistance, both in the czechoslovakian bridgehead and in the mainland will be hellish on their already hopelessly overstretched supply lines. That isn´t even to mention the internal powerstruggle that will soon occur in the soviet union.

Sure there are soviets who, blind from ideology, want to sweep into germany. That is a good thing. The soviets at the moment are fighting on so many fronts and are so overstretched in material and supply situation that they otl weren´t able to conquer the baltics. Against the, in the civil war battle hardned Reichswehr, who´s right next to it´s supply bases who doesn´t have to deal with endless polish partisans? We´d almost certainly ravage them and that would give us the perfect excuse to advance into the polish corridor and danzig, given the proven threat of soviet invasion
 
Everyone like the omake? i was inspired by an old story and John Wick... only this time, no one special died.
 
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To make things clear just how incredibly incapable of serious large scale offensives in the scale of ww1 the soviets are, here is an extensive video on the estonian soviet war



Even "large" soviet offensives like the white push on moscow or the soviet polish war (mediocre by ww1 standards) had poor troop coordination on the micro and macro level (both played a crucial role in the otl polish victory on the vistula. On the micro level soviets military units lacked interdivisionary cooperation and coordination, which lead to parts of the soviet army essentially just keeping on advancing and leaving the battle when they meet no polish resistance, allowing a devasting flanking manouver for the poles in the hole this left in the soviet order of battle and the macro level where stalin simply refused to attack warsaw from the south with the armies under his command because of inner party rivalry). The soviets lack artillery any any meaningfull manner, have poor morale, poor troop quality, poor discipline and even their actual numbers aren´t that overwhelming, given that they are fighting everywhere.

In short i see not how we could lose against the soviets in a war that is close to our borders and supply and communication lines.
 
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Canon Sidestory: Memories, Part I
  • Sidestory
    • Memories, Part I
    When this bleedin' war is over
    No more soldiering for me
    When I get my civvies clothes on
    Oh, how happy I shall be.
    ​
    Oxfordshire
    1920

    The sun shines over England, the larks are calling as spring comes to an end, and the winter wheat is growing well this year. The golden glow of sunlight dapples the leaves on trees that have stood here in the village of Juniper Hill for generations, some of them for longer than there has been a British Empire. The village itself is a tiny one set like a thatched, inhabited and somehow seemingly ancient jewel amid the vibrant green hills of England, twenty-five households strong and every one of them a countryman's home. Here in Juniper Hill, when looked upon from afar, it almost seems as if the war had not happened. That peace had returned in full.

    Juniper Hill, like thousands of other villages across the length and breadth of England, does not rebuff that assumption. It does not mourn demonstratively or act as a home for monuments to grief as in France, as in the villages of the devastated Zones Rouge or the six eternally dead communes of Verdun. It does not see yet more war and shellfire, for it is not in unhappy Germany. Juniper Hill, to an outsider who appears worth talking to, will say that things are not too bad.

    The fields are tended, now, as the summer harvest ripens and 1920 seems as if it will be a good year. One can tell, as they ride into the village, that the land is not the tiller's – the fields around Juniper Hill are enclosed and walled off, a nameplate at their entranceways and the ever-present prowling form of the bailiff a reminder that England has her terrible inequalities even in the fair green countryside. Each of the men in those fields has their own little plot, besides what they till for the squire, each of them living off the land with the village of twenty-five households having its own carefully tended hierarchy of farm laborers, ploughmen, carters, shepherds, stockmen and blacksmiths.

    On the fields that line the road from Brackley in Northamptonshire is winter wheat growing tall and golden, stalks rippling in the wind as summer draws near. Here one might see 'Pumpkin' Gardiner with his tall swaying gait and red, veiny boozer's nose, always willing to come to the wall and tell a lost stranger the way back to town. One might see the enormous quarter-horse that pulls the plough in planting time and pulls the wagons outside it, with 'Boamer' Jervis on the cart-seat and the squire's carpentry in the back as he goes from Juniper Hill to town. Jervis is a grumpy man, and the big quarter horse knows it as well as anyone else in the tiny village. When a stranger comes along the road, they had best watch their car's paint and finish, for a flashy stranger draws curses from old man Boamer Jervis.

    The village itself, as a car struggles over dirt roads and the narrow streets that lead to it, is tiny. There is a single inn with what seems to be more boozers than normal in England – perhaps it is the juniper? Perhaps the gin, here in what seems to be a village named for the fat red berries that make it, that grow wild in the ditches of the roadside.

    A driver or a lost stranger might stop for a sip at the Crown, the single inn of Juniper Hill with its carefully tended roofing tiles painted a bright green and its floor strewn with rushes as though the nineteenth century had not yet ended. Gas-lights are too expensive for Juniper Hill and the electric has yet to come, and a stranger would have to sup by candle-light should they wish to eat or drink here. The wind might whistle through tiny gaps in the joinery, for all that every visible one would be doggedly found and patched as the inn ages. So it is in this corner of England, its people living their lives in all weathers and eternally accompanied by it even indoors.

    Much like the rest of England, then, it is a place that prizes endurance. A stranger here would be told that things went on, that life went on, and that one musn't flinch from life. One musn't flinch from pain or hardship should it come. A stranger here in 1920 might be told this snappishly and with no little rancor by old man Boamer Jervis, the carter's eyes beady and red-rimmed as though he had been weeping – a fact or assumption that he would strenuously deny. A stranger might be told that nothing is wrong, that things are getting better, and they might be told this by friendly old Pumpkin Gardiner, the same farm-laborer whose red boozer's nose is tended by ale after ale every night, far past nightfall and well into daybreak despite a seeming weakness to the booze, a susceptibility that no hardened drinker would have.

    The visitor would naturally be curious albeit somewhat discouraged. Said visitor, should they be a respectable one, would be able to walk about and see the church, a stone building seeming to be too large for a small community and with a single doddering old C of E priest who eyes any stranger from the altar with an unblinking gaze. It would take a second glance and a long look for someone to realize that the old man in his vestments is blind.

    At the wall of the church is a small brass plate, and on that plate are eleven names. Ten names in a neat double column, and a single one after that all alone at the bottom. Eleven names, all young men, from Juniper Hill with its twenty-five carefully tended households. One of those names is Gardiner, and another is Jervis.

    At the very bottom of the plaque is the curlicued decorated date. It reads August 12th​, 1916.

    When the war came, Juniper Hill did not flinch. It sent its young men out to France, and there they remain eternal, like a thousand thousand others from the length and breadth of the British Isles and further beyond through the Empire.

    A look at the plaque, and one might reconsider their impression of Juniper Hill.

    There are no young men in the fields, no little lad following their father to the fields or being chivvied to school or even skiving off to steal fruits from the squire's apple trees. There are no young men in Juniper Hill, and one would realize with dreadful clarity what it means for Boamer Jervis to tell you about endurance as he stares with red-rimmed eyes. What it means for Pumpkin to tell you that things are getting better, and better still as tankard follows tankard at the Crown.

    Juniper Hill did not flinch, and England did not either.

    And now? They are tired.

    Inspired by Flora Thompson's 'Lark Hill', a fictionalized version of her childhood through the First World War, at the village of Juniper Hill. Ported over from the SB thread.
     
  • Sidestory
    • Canon Sidestory: Memories, Part II
  • Sidestory
    • Memories, Part II
    This is the word that year by year,
    While in her place the school is set,
    Every one of her sons must hear,
    And none that hears it dare forget.
    This they all with joyful mind
    And bear through life Eke a torch in flame,
    falling fling to the host behind-
    "Play up! Play up! And play the game!"
    ​
    It was built in 1440, it was rebuilt century after century in lavishly funded renovations, it was the home and cradle of an elite class that built the British Empire. It is, in a very real sense of the world, a holdover from another age. For better or for worse. That fact is evident in the plaques to great alumni that line its walls, the overdone and elaborate spired architecture of the school's lecture halls, the vast sweeps of carefully tended playing fields with their cricket and rugby boundary lines marked off in chalk-white over the green grass and meadowflowers.

    The children here, as we look into the halls of the ornate, recently-renovated main building in 1914, are on the cusp of adulthood. The dining halls are filled with chatter and cheer as old banners and flags and solemn plaques line the walls as if to remind the children of who they are and where they are – when that does not suffice to maintain order, the teachers move in. Young, earnest and painfully new, much of the staff teach the new disciplines – chemistry, mathematics, the sciences with which Britain claimed to have won the world. Eton College has educated the children of the elite for centuries, and its masters have had that fact drilled into them.

    Here is the son of a Liverpool magnate, whose father's estate is fat with the money born of empire and whose family now looks for social cachet. Here is the son of the Duke of Argyll, Scottish nobility stretching back to before the reign of Victoria and the French Revolution. Here is someone in between, a son of one of the 'new nobility' who won their knighthoods in the scramble for Africa and who made their gold from the blood of that continent in the Rand goldfields. All of them are almost about the graduate, all of them are blissfully insulated from the proud tower of Edwardian England with its cracking foundations borne of centuries of brutal inequality and rising tensions among the labouring class. All of them – or almost all of them, save for perhaps Charles O'Reilly whose father was an Irish Unionist at the Curragh – have imbibed well the sort of rhetoric that Eton specializes in providing.

    The graduating class at Eton of 1914 are the sort of young men who would grow into the same sort of men who built an empire on the blithe belief in British superiority and a determined confidence in a civilizing mission, the sort of thing that led to great and terrible deeds across the sea in the Empire.

    When the war comes in 1914, the graduating class thus chooses to enlist. Charles O'Reilly becomes a lieutenant in the 5th​ Infantry Division, leading a platoon of young men from London with a brash confidence that belies his nervousness. Michael Davis from Liverpool joins the army in the Guards, his father arranging it with Lord Derby at his son's insistence. Davis joins a regiment where he is an outsider and has no chance at rising, a place that gives his father the social cachet he craves and gives Davis himself the feeling that he's doing what he has to do. For Archie Campbell whose father's castle looks out over Loch Fyne all grim and ancient, the Household Cavalry are the place to be. It's what his father wants, and for this one single time so far, Campbell and his father are in agreement – the war has come, and Archie Campbell has to play the game and do his duty.

    1914 comes and goes in shellfire, at Mons and Le Cateau as the British Army of before the war gives its all and dies for it. The Old Army does what it was paid to do, and the gentleman officers or new enlistees from Eton are there in those serried ranks of khaki on the plains of northern France.

    It is 1915. There are pictures in the dining hall that appear far younger than the alumni alongside them. Charles O'Reilly smiling out through sepia, the Victoria Cross beneath the photo-frame and a note that says Ypres. There is Michael Davis unsmiling in a single painting from three years before graduation, his father unable to find another picture and unwilling to come near school after his son died aflame. The note beneath the image says Grenadier Guards, Loos. There are more names, on the lips of the faculty and the students and determinedly not mentioned officially.
    Britain is at war, says the headmaster. We have our duty.

    Another class goes out. Another class joins up in khaki. With them is James Hanna, whose father is a Brigadier and who claimed that he wouldn't be put into the combat arms because of it.

    A year passes. Photographs of students are in the dining hall, quiet subdued siblings of the fallen eating where there once was laughter. The masters are older now, retirees called up for the war while their younger brethren have donned the uniforms the students did.

    Nobody is sure what happened to most of them. The mathematics master came back, in December of 1915. He is missing a leg, and he is snappish now. Surly and irritable, where he used to be a student favorite. His face is pale and thin, his eyes baggy.

    Shell shock, says the headmaster. The students learn the new phrase as dutifully as they learn their Latin – or perhaps more dutifully.

    They will use it much in the years to come.

    It is 1916. There's a poster smuggled into the dormitories and pinned up on 'Frenchie' Wilson's wall, the eyes of Lord Kitchener staring out at the onlooker and saying that England needs her sons. It's the same thing that the elderly Scots P.E. instructor barks at them as he limps around the cricket field, between telling stories of Africa and the Boxer War. When Britain calls for volunteers, the graduating classes of 1916 make up an entire battalion on their own, a thousand young men from Eton come to the colours as one of the Public Schools Battalions. For many of them it's a lark – Frenchie Wilson somehow makes corporal to his friends' amusement. The class clowns are every bit as amusing in uniform as they were outside of it. The physics master joins up, painfully earnest and concerned for his students – for James Douglas this is as much a teacher's duty as the lecture halls are. Douglas is made a lieutenant for his trouble, Archie Campbell's brother pulling strings for a teacher that the unruly upper-crust Etonians have a soft spot for.

    It is 1916. It is the Somme, and the Pals – the Public Schools Battalion – are to cross No Man's Land when their officers' whistles blow. The graduating class move up as one, up from the jumpoff trenches and into the scything fire of German machine-guns, singing all the while. Frenchie Wilson starts it, singing the school song as they move up when James Douglas' whistle blows, the same school song that brings back memories of happier times and home.

    The Public Schools battalion is marked combat ineffective in HQ that day, a notecard removed from the general staff's planning brief. For Major General Henry Wilson, his son was there.
    Wilson's hand is rock-steady as he write his reports. The attack was not a success.

    James Douglas receives the Victoria Cross for courage under fire, for bringing back two of his wounded students.

    It is posthumous.

    Eton goes on.

    It is 1917. There are black wreaths hung on the walls. Nobody will admit to what's technically a breach of school rules, but the masters are mind to let them be. The students are quiet, and the students are few in number. Some of them laugh and joke and play the same pranks that their grandfathers did, but it has a forced air about it. As though they are attempting to forget. Most of the masters are old men now, bearded and reminiscent of a past age – when they tell stories about the Empire and the glory days of the scramble for Africa, their pupils listen with a feverish intensity. Again, as if to leave the present behind for a single golden moment.

    It is 1917. A draft has been passed.

    Eton does its duty, and the graduating class are swept into the army. Jock Cunningham whose father was a squire and whose ancestors have been squires since before the Conquest is a class clown, a clumsy oaf who takes pride in his oafishness – or so his Latin master says. The Latin master is a thin young man who is missing half a leg, and he blinks back tears when Cunningham proudly informs the class that his draft card has come. Cunningham's parents pull strings, and he gets a lieutenantcy in the Grenadier Guards with Archie Campbell as his captain.

    Gas chokes the fields of France as men drown in the mud of Passchendaele, and the Guards are called up for the spearhead. The Grenadier Guards, with their gentleman-officers and their fiercely cultivated tradition are called upon to take an impossible objective in mud and blood and gas, and they die doing it in droves, driven on by discipline and the weight of a tradition heavier than lives.

    Jock Cunningham makes captain. Archie Campbell doesn't make it back.

    There is another sepia photograph in the dining hall at school, Campbell's face smiling out with some Frenchwoman at his side. His father can't bring himself to object to that.

    It's too late, after all.

    1917 comes and goes. 1918 rolls in with artillery fire and the last draft from Eton of the war. The class is half the size of what it was before the war, and the masters are universally the old or the crippled. They are twitchy, the students caricaturizing their twitchy masters who jump at loud noises.

    They are told that this is shell shock. They nod and memorize the phrase. Their brothers tell them about it in letters from the front.

    When the draft comes, Eton does its duty one last time. The graduating class stands in line as they take draft cards from the mail, and they don their khaki in unison. They are painfully young now, barely old enough to shave and not half as self-confident as the ones that came before.
    Nevertheless, they go.

    Armistice Day 1918 is celebrated, but quietly. Black wreaths and photos line the walls of the school. There are plaques and donated medals that rest beneath the photos. There is word that there will be a monument, a memorial.

    The students take it all in with wide eyes. The masters are tired or old or both, and the students are young. Between the two of them is a hollow generation.

    Eton has come through the war, but Eton has changed forever. Its students and its masters played the game and did their duty by their country.

    And they died for it.

    What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
    — Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
    Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
    Can patter out their hasty orisons.
    No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
    Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
    The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
    And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
    What candles may be held to speed them all?
    Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
    Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
    The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
    Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
    And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds
    -Wilfred Owen
    ​

    AN: Something from the squire's side of the fence. Votes will close in two hours.
     
  • Sidestory
    • At its core. I do not see the Entente giving us any slack. If anything they're more likely to prop up the leftover Curzon-Poland. They certainly aren't going to let Versailles fall to pieces just a year after it was signed.

    And while the threat of Soviet invasion is merely a threat at the moment, the effect of any communists right on Germany's borders is going to embolden the far left and further radicalise the right. It'll be a propaganda field day and there's no better way to whip them into a frenzy. We really can't afford that.

    We'll be left with a broken buffer, the right screaming for the blood of both the Soviets and anyone unwilling to take up arms against the reds and no concessions from the Entente.
     
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    Dutch said:
    And while the threat of Soviet invasion is merely a threat at the moment, the effect of any communists right on Germany's borders is going to embolden the far left and further radicalise the right. It'll be a propaganda field day and there's no better way to whip them into a frenzy. We really can't afford that.
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    well, i can easily see some soviet party official drunk on the world wide revolution launch an invasion into germany, they´d just get their shit pushed in for something like that.

    For propaganda, the far left has been pretty defanged in the civil war. Sure they can be annoying terrorists but in the end that is all they´d be, an annoyance. If the threat of the soviets can keep the far right of our throats, the better, especially since we can throw them at the soviets once the war starts, taking care of two problems at one
     
    AllenWalker said:
    For propaganda, the far left has been pretty defanged in the civil war. Sure they can be annoying terrorists but in the end that is all they´d be, an annoyance. If the threat of the soviets can keep the far right of our throats, the better, especially since we can throw them at the soviets once the war starts, taking care of two problems at one
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    This, I have to correct. There were risings and major strikes IRL after the demise of the Spartakusaufstand in 1920, 1922-23, and streetfighting after that with minor strikes later. The KPD will likewise remain a force in politics in Germany, and you will have to act to marginalize or sideline them if that is what you want to do - they may have been discredited among some of the population, but not all.
     
    Dutch said:
    At its core. I do not see the Entente giving us any slack. If anything they're more likely to prop up the leftover Curzon-Poland. They certainly aren't going to let Versailles fall to pieces just a year after it was signed. Loyd George and Millerand
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    I just can't see them investing even more on a country that has proven it cannot defend itself or prevent the Soviets from waltzing into Eastern Europe. I think they'll just wash their hands off the Poles and leave them to their fate, the Czechs and Romanians are the ones who'll take the slack of propping up the Polish rump state in my opinion.

    And the Entente is not stupid, if the Poles couldn't resist the Soviets with a much larger and well equiped army than us with no burden of reparations, why would they think a crippled Germany could? We know with hindsight they'd probably lose, and we do have a secret reserve of troops, but if Poland falls, the Soviets will look like a steamroller them. At that point I think they'd realize leaving us this vulnerable is a big mistake.
    Dutch said:
    And while the threat of Soviet invasion is merely a threat at the moment, the effect of any communists right on Germany's borders is going to embolden the far left and further radicalise the right. It'll be a propaganda field day and there's no better way to whip them into a frenzy. We really can't afford that.
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    The rightists wouldn't dare pull a move that the Soviets could take advantage of, especially considering their track record of losing when they do so. And the KPD is not nearly the threat they were six months ago, they're pretty much leaderless and:
    mouli said:
    Status: Growing, Cell Structure, Excellent Agitators
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    As you can see, they work in cell structures now, since their hierarchy was demolished by the war. They can be a pain in the ass, but no way they can pull off another uprising on that scale again. Now we'll execute whatever officers that haven't gone underground and clamp down on the areas they have support. We'll also enact the legislation we promised during the war, that will hopefully steal some of their supporters.
     
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    mouli said:
    This, I have to correct. There were risings and major strikes IRL after the demise of the Spartakusaufstand in 1920, 1922-23, and streetfighting after that with minor strikes later. The KPD will likewise remain a force in politics in Germany, and you will have to act to marginalize or sideline them if that is what you want to do - they may have been discredited among some of the population, but not all.
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    that´s generally the annoyances i was talking about. Militarily though, aka cw2, the far left isn´t a state to launch that as some in the thread have feared
     
    @mouli Um so do I get a reward?

    Also not to sound annoying, but the title @Mr. Sandman helped me come up with for that make is Wir Sind Verloren and I put that on there.
     
    Mr. Sandman said:
    I just can't see them investing even more on a country that has proven it cannot defend itself or prevent the Soviets from waltzing into Eastern Europe. I think they'll just wash their hands off the Poles and leave them to their fate, the Czechs and Romanians are the ones who'll take the slack of propping up the Polish rump state in my opinion.
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    Because the basic plans for a Polish state were something Curzonish during the peace conference, with anything else being whatever the Poles could get their hands on. The French and British are fine with a reduced Poland. They can work with that.

    And the alternative would be German rearmament, which they flat out can't allow.

    Mr. Sandman said:
    The rightists wouldn't dare pull a move that the Soviets could take advantage of, especially considering their track record of losing when they do so. And the KPD is not nearly the threat they were six months ago, they're pretty much leaderless and:
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    It is not a putch I fear, but the effects on electoral politics and the popularity of the far right.
     
    Dutch said:
    Because the basic plans for a Polish state were something Curzonish during the peace conference, with anything else being whatever the Poles could get their hands on. The French and British are fine with a reduced Poland. They can work with that.

    And the alternative would be German rearmament, which they flat out can't allow.
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    Sure, but plans and circumstances change. The whole ideia of Poland is to be a buffer in Eastern Europe to distract the Germans and whatever power filled the vacuum there. A rump state can hardly fulfill that role, and it'd be a waste of resources to prop it up if it can't do it's job. The Czechs I could understand giving them support, but that's it. They have more reasons to go softer on us than a useless Poland.
    Dutch said:
    It is not a putch I fear, but the effects on electoral politics and the popularity of the far right.
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    The far right will be less popular than irl and the Zentrum and SPD now have a track record of cooperating. What you are stating is an electoral concern, which we'll have to deal with anyway. They will be a pain in the ass with the Soviets as neighbors or not. The difference is they'll be less likely to do something super stupid lest our not so friendly neighbor barges in. If we're that worried about them, we can shoot their leadership in the trials, consequences be damned.

    Anyway, my point stands, a strong Poland is a terrible neighbor to have, that would only serve as a buffer to the Soviets. While them being reduced to a rump state opens several interesting to us. Now it is time for me to sleep, night to y'all! I guess I'll see the results in the morning.
     
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    Votes are called.
    Scheduled vote count started by mouli on Mar 13, 2021 at 6:19 PM, finished with 316 posts and 59 votes.
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    (Noncanon Player Omake) To Fly like a Bird
  • Apocrypha
    • To Fly like a Valkyrie

    Reinhard Wolfff POV

    Somewhere in Eastern Germany 1919.

    It was a dream to fly.

    Men had dreamed it for decades...centuries...millennia and when it came.

    When it came it was filled with Wonder and Glory.

    And then the Great War came around to Ruin the fun of it all.

    Now you weren't one to complain, you actually managed to stay out of trouble long enough to become a pilot.

    And it wasn't easy given your...predisposition for "Ungentlemanly Conduct."

    Now...during the War, things weren't easy to get with the blockades, the lack of raw material and equipment and a willingness to pay to get it.

    Fortunately, you were a pilot, of decent rank, so getting things was easier then if you were a grunt in a trench.

    But the real thrill is the mess you made WHILE flying...now you were no Red Baron, Eight kills is nothing compared to his legendary record but it was in many eyes a sign of promise.

    A promise that had nearly gotten you hanged when you tried to liberate some goods and tried to sell them on the Black Market.

    As well as telling a few men just what you felt about Ludendorff and his Freikorps.

    Getting out of that mess left you nearly penniless but then again, that's life.

    ------------------------------------------

    The Door opened revealing an older man in a Military Uniform, you knew he wasn't with the full endeavor, nor was he a paramilitary like the last man who had gotten you on this side of the interrogation.

    No...he was a Sicherheitspolizei, or security police, one of the Waimer Government attack dogs on the national level, so he by obligation couldn't just attack you for any number of petty reasons like the rest of the men running around with weapons claiming to be the government.

    In fact it is likely the only reason you were still alive.

    "Hmmm….State your name for the police record?" He said calmly as you put your hands on the table.

    "Do you want me to include my rank as well?" You said patting the old trench coat you wore, one of the few things you had left after your home was burned down, well the coat, your gun and a longing for flying.

    "No sir...from what I heard you were demobilized along with the rest of your unit." He said.

    "Reinhard Wolff,Formerly Leutnant of the Imperial Air Corp. There I said my name now are you going to go hang me before dawn and dump me in an unmarked grave or are you actually going to go through the effort to put on a farce of Justice with extra steps and then hang me?" You said crudely as the older man seemed to scoff for a moment.

    "I am a servant of the law of this republic, Herr Wolff, we are not barbarians looking for a scapegoat to punish." He said.

    "Look outside lately? We can barely do shit without some brand of the Mob of the Week bitching about everything." you said.

    "That's democracy for you...a violent endeavor barely kept civil. But its been working out for us so far? So I'm not one to complain." He said with only the slightest hint of bitterness.

    "Smuggling? Really a man of your talents? And at your age? Twenty One?" He continued.

    "I'm Twenty Two." You said.

    "Hmm...and what do you actually want to do with your life?" He said.

    You were quiet, and above all, in thought.

    In thought about the rest of your life, something that you had never really considered since the war ended. Mostly all you wanted to do with your life was try to fly again and have a decent meal.

    None of those have actually happened yet so you still had something to do with your life but after that…

    After that it was a fine blank. No true future, no plans and no obvious future.

    You were lost and it was a difficult thing to come to terms with.

    "So am I going to prison?" You asked.

    "Depends on the Jury at this point...if you're lucky you'll only get a fine...if not two years in prison. But given how things have been going lately they might drop some things all together and drop you on the street scarcely with the clothes on your back. Or even less if they really hate you." He said.

    "Hmm, so where can a pilot actually find a Job should I walk out of this unscathed?" You said.

    "Hypothetically… Well I can think of a few people in Germany that will like a young man that knows how to fly a plane...Passengers across the German States to cities and regions in a day or so...or at least what some of the types in the Newspaper are chatting about?" he said.

    He then handed over a Newspaper. "A full plane made of Metal...they call it a Junkers F-13. Say they are going to fly passengers in it...so Things to consider."

    "It's an entirely different kind of flying, flying people." You said.

    "But it's something to consider." He said. "If nothing else."

    "I'm gonna fly again...and I pray that the Jury is at least in some ways sympathetic." You said.

    Then you stopped . "Why are you even talking to me at all?"

    "You seemed like the sort of person that needed some advice after everything you've been through." He said.

    That had been the kind of advice you've been waiting for, a year worth of waiting for that.

    Now...you wait.

    It didn't matter now, you had a goal, you had a plan you can work towards, and that gave purpose.

    And with purpose, nothing could stop you.

    Now you wait, as your judgment is coming soon.

    -----------------------

    AN: First Omake, trying to get the feel of the world, and getting the idea of the Lost Generation.

    Also Reinhard isn't evil or malicious, just desperate and without any purpose in his life like most of his generation.

    At least he stayed away from all the drugs and most of the paramilitaries which is a miracle, because that might get him off the hook if he does well .

    And really this is here to have a little fun with a little Aviation History thrown in.

    Enjoy.
     
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    0.1: Waffenstillstand
  • Threadmarks
    • 0.1: Waffenstillstand
    [Winning divergence: []Eagle Unbowed]
    Bedenke das Ende​
    Katharinenhospital, Stuttgart
    August 1920

    When you woke, the guns were silent. Around you was silence, silence save for the quiet rustle of the duty nurses checking on patients in the ward and the snoring of the other patients. You shake your head for a moment, as if to make sure that your ears are alright. You've been in a field hospital before. You've been off the line before, for a bit. You know what it's like to be off the line and this isn't it, and so when the nurse comes to check on you the first thing that you ask her is, "Where am I?"

    She smiles, as if she's heard that question a thousand times before. Perhaps she has. "You're in hospital, Private-" She checks your chart and then mumbles something under her breath, "Corporal Muller. "Your unit was badly hit in that last offensive, and you had severe bleeding and an infection. You were delirious the past week."

    "Hospital." You close your eyes as if to banish the world outside, bone-deep ache of weariness reminding you that you're too damn tired for this. You look at the nurse again, pretty as a petal in her uniform and watching you, waiting for an answer. Your throat is sore, and your body reminds you as you eye the pretty nurse that you're too damn tired even for that. "Where? There's no guns, fraulein."

    "Nurse Strecker will do." The nurse is calm, again answering as though she's heard this before. She passes you a glass of water, and you drink with attention on her as you do. "There's no gunfire because you're in Stuttgart. You were brought behind the lines to recover now that the armistice has been signed."

    "The armistice?" You know an armistice. 1918. You'd got as drunk as a lord that day, and you can still remember the hangover.

    Nurse Strecker smiles, cheery and somehow relieved, "The Communists surrendered last week, Corporal. The war is over. The army's demobilizing. Your unit as well, apparently." She passes you a card and moves on to another patient when he moans out something, and you're left squinting at vellum for a few minutes before deciding that you'll read in better light when you're better rested.

    And so morning comes and goes, in what you're later told is the Katharinenhospital in Stuttgart. Far from the front indeed, and damn near the French. The parchment turns out to be a letter of discharge from the War Office, telling you that as a frontschwein you're entitled to fuck-all else except a token discharge payment and your greatcoat, and would you sign off at the paymaster's tout suite.

    "Sign here," says the paymaster as he squints at you, as if he's trying to make sure you haven't shoved a Luger up your arse to smuggle to some Freikorps that's hard-up for small arms. "Good. Now, you've turned in your rifle? Your gear? You can keep your coat."

    "Y-" You stutter for a moment, remembering the wounding, the mortar fire that sent you here to Stuttgart, the fact that your entire section is dead. A tiny voice in your head reminds you that you've somehow managed to get old Heinrich Wilckes the former regular killed, and tells you that you're a little failure, Fritzl. You shake your head past that, forcing it aside, "Yes. I was wounded, I don't know happened to the rifle. The rest of it I turned in."

    That gets a double take, and the paymaster just nods once and mumbles to himself. "Aye. Nasty one, that was. We didn't knock out the mortar team and machine guns, and they held their nerve to the end before opening up. Bastards." He looks at you with more sympathy and less of the cross-examination, "You have anything lined up, Corporal? Job, family, anything?"

    You swallow. You didn't have a job when you joined, you had the army. You joined in 1914, and you've been at war all your life or so it seems, sometimes. A hand reaches up to adjust your webbing on nervous reflex, and then you realize you're not wearing webbing anymore. You're not a soldier anymore. "No. Nothing. Parents died two years ago. I joined up in the draft for 1914."

    "Jesus." The paymaster's pen scrawls something on a piece of paper, and he hesitates once before asking you, "That Iron Cross on your docket the real thing?"

    "Aye." You nod again, standing at stiff not-quite-attention in front of the senior noncom. "Combat. Michael. At the end of it all."

    "Wo alle strassen enden." murmurs the paymaster, and you just nod. "Take this note, and contact the man on it. That address. Tell them that Altmann sent you, and the Organization will have a place for you." He shakes your hand, firm and confident, "Good luck, boy. You need some."

    You step outside the paymaster's tent, and take a moment to stop yourself from heading to the canteen or the barracks. No duty station now, Fritzl. No drinking dens.
    No army.

    You swallow and grimace once, angry at your nervousness. You're not a soldier anymore, but you'll find your way. You have to.

    August, 1920
    Spandau, Berlin

    The Spandau police station is a fortress, a squat and ugly stone building stained from decades of industrial soot and smog that stands amid the factories and tenements of Spandau like some troll, glaring at the world through barred windows and reinforced doors. You always did wonder why nobody here drew extra pay, the station had seen enough fighting in the years since the war ended – and since before that, if what the old-timers here tell you is true. You pass by the door with a nod to the sentry on-duty – ever since the communist insurrection in Berlin a month ago there's been a rifleman at the door – and move inside towards the single desk that you get to occupy. Someone's already stuck a paper on it that says Degenerate. Lovely.

    Your desk has another note on it, a single paper that says the chief wants to meet you. Before coffee, too. You get a sympathetic wince from Constable Steinmann who sits behind you, "Early meeting, then, Biermann? Tell you what," he says as he leans over his desk towards you, "The chief has been meeting with some Belgian for the last couple of hours. Someone from the arms control boards, the bastards that crawled all over the army already. You can catch a coffee and wait."

    "Belgian?" You were taught by a Belgian, but that man was a fastidious little detective, not some arms inspector. "Odd that there would be one here so soon, not a week after the guns fell silent."

    Steinmann shrugs, "Someone who was already here, apparently. The Belgian Embassy sent a letter and the Belgian brought chocolates, so the chief loves him already." He gives you a sly look that you've seen before, Steinmann's thin hatchet-face a poor fit for attempts at guile, "Heard you were in good with the Belgians, then. Some of the boys don't like that."

    You shake your head tiredly, too fucking done with this to bother arguing and coming to terms with the fact that you're not getting that morning pick-me-up after all. Your mentor is in the office with your chief, and you were wanted five minutes ago. So you put on your hat again, straighten up and just nod at Steinmann as you leave. The chief's office is down the hall from the packed office floor that has desk after desk sitting in the open, a plaque announcing the battered wooden door as the entrance to the office of CAPTAIN OLE KISTLER, the man that half of Spandau calls the Bastard Dane.

    The epithet does fit, you think to yourself. It's funny, it's short and once you open the door and have another look at Kistler, you admit that it's descriptive.

    Ole Kistler has a box of Belgian chocolates in his hand and one chocolate in his other hand, sitting opposite the same nattily dressed, fussily moustached Belgian who had acted as a training consultant to the Berlin Special Branch on 'criminal psychology'. You stiffen to attention – some habits haven't been erased by peacetime and Kistler likes the ceremonial, and then you slide your eyes to the Belgian as if to ask him what the hell he's doing here.

    Hercule Poirot notices that, and he smiles at you cheerfully. His eyes, as always, are utterly expressionless, a shark or a doll's eyes in a friendly harmless round face. "Ah, monsieur Biermann, so good to see you. Please, I do not think the captain will mind if you take a seat." He gestures at one of the two chairs at the walls, and you pull one up to the captain's desk and take a seat while Poirot continues. "I am here as a representative of the Belgian government, mais oui, but I am also a somewhat capable detective. I believe that the good captain has an assignment for the two of us, hein?"

    Captain Kisler swallows his chocolate and puts the box in his drawer – you note with no little resentment that you're not offered any – and then puts his elbows on the table and leans forward. The table creaks a little under the burly officer's weight, and his voice is the same gravelly rumble that's extorted half of Spandau, "I have a letter here that's asking for the Special Branch liaison to look into a string of thefts in Spandau. Mostly factory equipment and printing gear, small-scale stuff. The sort of thing that might be taken by communists, if you understand what I mean."

    "Yessir." You know what he means, he means milling equipment, hand-cranked presses and the lathes in small machine shops that one can use to make a rifle. You raided enough of those during the war, and the risings in Berlin last month showed that you hadn't got them all, "So the usual track and smash, sir? Find them, break them, and then arrest the cell?"

    "No." Kisler shakes his head, jowls swinging as he does. His face is red, and there's an edge of anger in his voice – you remember far too late that he was shot at more than once, during last month's riot. There's enough of Spandau that hates him, "No. There's also been rumors of Communist organizing, and a murder in the area. One Hans-Georg Blumenthal. Former officer." His eyes peer at you with a conspiratorial air in the well-lit office, "The nobs are getting antsy, you know what I mean?"

    "I can assist in the investigation, detective." Poirot nods at you and puts a hand on his chest, "I have handled murder investigations in the past, and it will be good to teach. It will stimulate the little grey cells far more than simply searching for hidden arms in Spandau."

    "Right." Ole Kisler rummages through the pile of documents on the corner of his desk, and tosses you a folded-up note on thick parchment paper, "You're also to escort the Belgian through Spandau, through the arms plants. Make sure he survives his inspection." There's a nasty lilt in his voice, "You're good with Belgians, Biermann. Handle it." You're good with Belgians, you fucking traitor is what Kistler is saying, and you know that he's the one who started the damn rumors in the first place.

    You wish you didn't have to work Spandau and you wish that the captain didn't think you were a Reichstag spy sent here to watch his corruption, but you can't do much at this point. So you sigh, you salute, and you leave the captain's office with Hercule Poirot at your side.

    Hopefully the Belgian will be more civilized company than your captain.

    The end of the war saw the capture of commanders from the KPD and the Kapp-Luttwitz-Ludendorff putschists.
    For the putschists, choose one:

    []Trials: The commanders are mainly field commanders of colonel rank and above and those who were responsible for anti-partisan operations on German soil in Silesia, the sort of commander who shot thirty Germans – some of whom were ethnic Poles - in a day for 'communist partisan activities'. The major field commanders are more palatable to the army and the army wants them to go to a trial that will exonerate them. Fair or easy, that is the choice.

    -[]Easy: The army is at present tense and watching, waiting to make sure that the Republic keeps to the Ebert-Groener agreement. Give the army the task of cashiering their field commanders, and shoot the militia commanders who headed 'antipartisan ops' in Silesia. This will satisfy the army at the cost of leaving the generals who backed the putsch still free to raise hell, albeit from outside the service.

    -[]Fair: Put them on trial, and make it a fair trial for treason. This will nail most of them and anger the army, provided the trials go well. If the trials go poorly, the officers get acquitted anyways and have used the trials as a platform for agitation. At the same time, it will show that we are ready and willing to call the army to account – on the tail end of the war, we won't have a coup from this. But it will mean that we have to placate the army later.

    []Backroom Deals: Cashier those of general rank or above, bar them from politics and hit them with a suspended sentence for sedition – but tell the army that the colonels and brigadiers can rejoin the army. This removes any semblance of legal process for the army and leaves punishment in their hands, and depending on the politics of the army might also mean not all of the militia commanders get a fair sentence – that is to say, not all of them are shot for atrocities.

    For the KPD commanders:

    []Public Trials: Put the few commanders that we have on trial, and make sure that it's a fair one. We have an ironclad treason case in any event, and the trial of the commanders allow us to drive home the victory of the republic over the insurrection – and will also burnish our credentials on the center and the center-right sides of the aisle. The Zentrum wants to see them in court, and we can oblige them – at the cost of leaving those experienced agitators a place to spread their ideas.

    []Gericht: Let the army try the KPD high commanders, since the ones that we captured were former soldiers or serving officers who flipped with the 6th​ Infantry Division. This will almost certainly mean that the high command will be shot, and it will be done quietly, but there will be no martyrs to the revolution made here. The Zentrum will not like it much and will view it as capitulating to the army and the far-right, though, and they have a point. We don't want the army running courts, but can we avoid that in this case?

    AN: Please vote by plan.
     
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    • [X] Plan: Long live the Republic! Long live the Chancellor!
    -[X]Fair: Put them on trial, and make it a fair trial for treason. This will nail most of them and anger the army, provided the trials go well. If the trials go poorly, the officers get acquitted anyways and have used the trials as a platform for agitation. At the same time, it will show that we are ready and willing to call the army to account – on the tail end of the war, we won't have a coup from this. But it will mean that we have to placate the army later.
    -[X]Gericht: Let the army try the KPD high commanders, since the ones that we captured were former soldiers or serving officers who flipped with the 6th Infantry Division. This will almost certainly mean that the high command will be shot, and it will be done quietly, but there will be no martyrs to the revolution made here. The Zentrum will not like it much and will view it as capitulating to the army and the far-right, though, and they have a point. We don't want the army running courts, but can we avoid that in this case?

    We try to nail most of the rightists and give the communists to the army to appease them for doing so. Seems pretty straightforward to me. Also won't give the communists a podium to speak from and to become martyrs. We can do something to appease the Zentrum later on, but this is too important imo.
     
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    Mr. Sandman said:
    We try to nail most of the rightists and give the communists to the army to appease them for doing so. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    So would appeasing the leftists that revolted give them a chance to stir up stuff if we have a say... Soviet Puppet at our border?

    Or am I just imagining the worst-case scenario?

    As for the right-wingers... I really want to say screw them, but we are alienating several militia's that could cause us great trouble.

    Eh, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

    For the REPUBLIC!

    [X] Plan: Long live the Republic! Long live the Chancellor!
     
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    [X] Plan: Everyone Goes to Court!
    -[X]Fair:     Put them on trial, and make it a fair trial for treason. This will nail most of them and anger the army, provided the trials go well. If the trials go poorly, the officers get acquitted anyways and have used the trials as a platform for agitation. At the same time, it will show that we are ready and willing to call the army to account – on the tail end of the war, we won't have a coup from this. But it will mean that we have to placate the army later.
    -[X]Public Trials: Put the few commanders that we have on trial, and make sure that it's a fair one. We have an ironclad treason case in any event, and the trial of the commanders allow us to drive home the victory of the republic over the insurrection – and will also burnish our credentials on the center and the center-right sides of the aisle. The Zentrum wants to see them in court, and we can oblige them – at the cost of leaving those experienced agitators a place to spread their ideas.
    ===
    The Army will just have to wait for appeasement, we must first send a message to the German citizens and to the other parties: the civilian government is in charge here, and it will handle the traitors. We have also upset the Zentrum enough, it's time to stop aggravating them.

    The Army will come for its own concessions, but we'll have to see what we can do about them later. I do not want to risk letting far-right war criminals walk free and join with the paramilitaries mentioned earlier.
     
    [X] Plan: Long live the Republic! Long live the Chancellor!

    No mercy to the commies! Serves them right.

    Edit: Sorry.
     
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