Turn 2: January-July, 1921
Hamburg, 1920
Alfred Hugenberg is not a man that would normally come to Hamburg, least of all in these times – Hugenberg is the ardent nationalist, the revanchist, the man that wanted the war. He is the great newspaper-man of the German right, the blaring mouthpiece of
volkisch ideals across the length and breadth of Germany, from the cold northern coast of the Baltic to the high, snowcapped peaks of the Alps. He is a man, in other words, that would prefer not to touch formerly-Communist Hamburg with a fifty-foot pole. He would prefer to touch it with artillery and possibly with the army, or so one would be pardoned for thinking.
He comes, eventually to a series of small graves. Here lie those that attempted to fight the KPD when it rose, often violently, and Hugenberg is surprised that these dead men were given a burial in the first place. It wasn't what he would've done for the communists, at least. He reads off names here, old friends who he's come to say one last goodbye to – he has little else, now. Friends dead, companies bankrupt, Krupp disavowing him after he sided with the wrong faction in the civil war.
Eventually he comes to the name
Hugo Stinnes, and near it the name
Emil Kirdorf. Industrial titans, both of them, the greatest industrialists in Germany, some of its wealthiest men, and men who thought the right sort of thing. Hugenberg's sort of thing, his sort of opinion. His friends, his backers, the ones that he would have righted Germany alongside, had they lived.
Yet here they lie, in plain graves in an obscure corner of half-ruined Hamburg.
Alfred Hugenberg seems to pause for a moment, impressive moustaches drooping ever so slightly. Ebert lived, Luxemburg lived. His friends are dead. For Alfred Hugenberg as he lays a lily on their graves, there seems to be no justice in this world.
You have 100-15 (Rationing Expenses)-10 (One-Time)=75 Budget.
You have a Reparations payment of 80 Budget to meet. You have not paid the last installment in full and have fallen behind the raw material quota.
Your Stability is at 20/100
Critical Areas of Instability are: Silesia, East Prussia, Western Germany
Your Coalition Stability is at 50. See the Grand Coalition Informational for more.
Your Economic Indicators are:
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Currency: Unstable, Improving: Your currency suffers from a specie shortage, massive debts being held by German banks that you cannot easily pay, and specie hoarding taking place due to the civil war. Reparations payments have seen gold that is irreplaceable flow out of the nation. The central bank is screaming.
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Debt: Excessive: You have war debts that you cannot pay and reparations payments that you have to meet. You have to stabilize the debt load or the economy will face collapse. Bear in mind that part of this is due to the devastation of the civil war tanking business credit and forcing banks to rely on bond repayment to stay solvent. Bailouts have partially solved that issue, but there is insufficient information to deal with the debt load that is nonstate – better insight is needed.
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Commodities: The main shortage is of food, and wartime rationing is still in force. There is enough to maintain the 2,500 calories per man per day, but no more than that. And a lot of that is filler. The situation is not helped by the harsh frosts of 1920, which portend a poor harvest in the year to come.
Opinions:
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The Army: The Army is alarmed by the actions that have been taken by the government, but some of the army backs those actions and some does not. The army's major fault line at present is between republican/south-German officers and Prussian monarchists, and the army has recently come out of a civil war that the republic won faster than expected. The army is slowly dealing with that fault line by selectively halting and ending careers, leading to an increasingly North German and seemingly Prussian force with time – it will take years, but the Reichswehr is already a political force at the upper echelons. Von Seeckt is now wary of the state and is acting to secure his power base.
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Judiciary: The older judges are staunchly antirepublican and the younger ones are more tepid in their opposition. There is still a significant risk of the judiciary remaining opposed to the government despite recent events that have seen judges openly side against the far-right, and allowing the nationalists or ultranationalists to use their right to a trials as a platform for publicity is dangerous.
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Civil Service: A substantial chunk of the civil service owe you their lives, for smuggling them out of the collapsing other sides of the civil war. The civil service has also seen Ebert as a steady hand on the tiller of the state both before and after the war, and is willing to cooperate for now. As long as the government doesn't do something stupid. Like collapse the nation to pay reparations. Or declare war on Poland.
You have three dice per category. You may double down. You may not triple down.
Treasury Section:
[]Tax Reform (0/100): A core plank of the Zentrum's desired policies and one that is grudgingly accepted by the DDP is the shifting of the tax burden from the lower and lower-middle classes to the upper classes, and they justify this in terms of Catholic charity and social responsibility. This reform is to be paired with a raise in taxes, and while it'll be unpopular it will probably allow us to pay down reparations and reduce the burden on the common man. There are cautions that tax hikes will be unpopular and harm the economy, but we have little choice in the wake of the war.
I will also roll for resistance and lobbying from the wealthy for this action. This will cause more of the wealthy and upper middle class to vote opposition.
[]Reorganizing the Reichsbank: The Finance Ministry handled the Reichsbank during the war, but that has to be avoided now that the peace has come. We need a proper governing board and regulations for the Reichsbank, and we can use the Reichsbank as an autonomous regulator of monetary stability rather than doing it from the Finance Ministry. The issue is recruitment and organization – the civil service is thin on the ground and overstretched.
Roll determines quality, sets up the Reichsbank upper echelons. It is highly advised this be done within the first few turns.
[]Price Controls: While unpopular, the re-imposition of wartime price and wage controls is needed for the vast majority of commodities and jobs in order to prevent further destabilization of the currency. The industrialists hate the idea of it – barring those involved in the export trade – and the workers dislike it but are a tad mollified by the fact that it is rather patently needed before the currency begins to inflate into nothing. Price controls will buy us time in which the economy may recover, or time in which to hire expertise to make a deeper study of the problem – but time that we need, either way.
DC40, institutes price and wage controls. Inflation and currency instability calms somewhat. Unpopular, will cost coalition stability with the DDP.
[]Securing Expertise: The DDP and its leading lights have had the bright idea of ensuring that the Reichsbank and Finance Ministry are not our only sources of economic information by setting up an institute for the study of what some in England are calling the Business Cycle. The so-called Berlin Institute for Business Cycle Research is to examine economic data and produce policy recommendations, in addition to acting as an institute of higher education.
DC15, costs 5 Budget, improves quality of economic information. Slight concession to the DDP.
Justice Section:
[]Religious Rights Enforcement: The Triumvirate viewed the Catholic Church in the East as a means of Polish agitation – which, to be honest, it may have been. They thus made sure to 'deal' with priests who were recalcitrant in providing information on insurgents. There was a smaller anticlerical push in certain parts of western Germany, where some of the KPD felt that the churches and their staff were inherently reactionary – few died in the west, but restitution is needed for property damage. The Ministry of Justice has already had to file briefs on behalf of a number of religious organizations to enforce the stated rights to religious freedom and freedom of practice. If that means declaring houses of worship to be protected buildings, so be it.
Concession to the Zentrum and DDP. DC30/60, the primary issue being that of restitution, and the issue of taking that from the informal bodies that are Freikorps.
[]The East Prussian Sore: As with Silesia, the East Prussian border provinces are seeing an insurgency with Polish underground units and the radicalization of the Polish speaking population – we need to get that ended, fast. Part of that is enforcing local law enforcement guidelines and prosecuting those who are acting against the laws of the republic – show that we are fair and different from the Triumvirate putschists who ran the area since March, and we have a carrot. The federal police and army are a stick.
DC40. Stabilizes East Prussia a little, as above. Begins the process of the plebiscite, with associated vote options in turn. It is highly recommended this be taken, as the plebiscite will be run this turn come what may.
[]Labor Rights Enforcement (0/100): Now that the SPD have passed their labor rights bills, a framework has to be set up to allow dispute resolution and the enforcement of those guidelines through the courts and the government. That falls to the Ministry of Justice, and it means a massive expansion of the old labor division due to the scope of the legislation. It will be expensive.
5 Budget per assigned die. Sets up a labor rights board and agency under the MoJ. Mollifies left-SPD a little, stabilizes the western parts of Germany a little. Industrial unrest eases somewhat.
Interior Section
[]Relief Funds and Rebuilding: There is already a ministerial body attached to the Interior Ministry that is to handle the affairs of day-to-day rebuilding and reconstruction of the devastated parts of postwar Germany. The main issue is to scale this up and give it legislative permanence rather than handling it under the office of the Chancellery and the ministries. That takes money, but allows further money to be disbursed to states and local governments for rebuilding, and more effective oversight on spending.
DC35, expands and sets up a Reichstag-backed relief and reconstruction agency for Western Germany under the MoI. Slowly improves situation in Western Germany. Costs 10 Budget per turn. Requires no further action. May lead to further inflation, dependent on roll.
[]Housing: One of the core planks of the SPD and agreed to by the Zentrum was the provision of public housing. There is a severe housing shortage in areas that were heavily fought over – such as Frankfurt an der Oder, Hannover and Hamburg. We can rectify this through building state-funded and initially state-run housing projects, providing employment as well as housing to the workers who work on them. That is suboptimal in the long run, as it requires constant federal attention rather than running autonomously as a state agency, but the scale of the issue is large enough to require large-scale action.
DC30, costs 15 Budget, alleviates housing shortages and relieves immediate housing needs after the winter of 1920, raises Stability somewhat, inflation dependent on roll.
[]Reparations: We can pay back the reparations in kind as well as cash, although that means risking the destabilization of the economy as we take commodities out of circulation to hand them to the French. While the Allies have agreed to an incentive payment of five marks per ton of delivered coal and are willing to heavily credit us for deliveries of machinery, they also want hard currency. Badly. And the French Army has made noises about marching out of its bridgehead to the Ruhr if those demands are not met.
Reparations are to be paid as follows: Up to twenty Budget, it is one-for-one and paid in hard currency/specie. After that it is paid in coal and in kind, at one-for-five rate of exchange. Allocate budget as a write in. Example: Paying twenty-five Budget gives 20+(5x5)=45 paid reparations. Paying over the total reduces the reparations to pay later on. The more reparations are paid, the more resentment builds up over their payment.
[]Federal Police Reform (Urgent) (0/100): The French have demanded that the federal police lose their armored cars and their heavy weapons, and want the green uniforms changed out for blue as green is too close to camouflage. We also have to expand the federal police and deploy them in force in East Prussia and Silesia, perhaps folding some of the to-be-disbanded response units into the army or into border patrol troops attached to the Interior Ministry – either way, the disbanding will be slow-walked to keep Germany together, but made enough of a production out of to keep France happy.
5 Budget per assigned die, mollifies France a little, stabilizes East Prussia and Silesia a little. I will roll for police atrocities, as the federal police (or Sipo) tended to be heavy handed.
[]Land Reform Stage One (0/50): We have to set up an initial commission for redistribution of estates and lands confiscated during the civil war, and this commission can also deal with the properties and assets the republic confiscated in the west from the KPD-occupied territories. While it will be slow, it will be fair and sure. Better that than the alternative.
On completion, allows land redistribution and actions for dealing with assets acquired in wartime.
Foreign Section
[]Reparations Renegotiation: The reparations payment schedule is being negotiated in London and it might be a good idea to send Rathenau across and make sure that the post-civil-war republic has a voice. It isn't one that will be listened to or listened to with any sympathy at least, but at least we shall be there. And perhaps we can make our case – we cannot argue with force anymore, and we therefore have to make do with words.
DC70/90/140, present for two turns, results each turn determine reparations payment schedule. At present Three (3) successes.
[]Across the Alps: While we haven't had much contact with the Swiss and the Austrians, we can at least spare them some attention while reaching out to Italy – Italy wants arms and is willing to trade in kind and in a small amount of hard currency, while we have artillery to dispose of. Heavy artillery, already mothballed and in storage for transport. I think that we can make a deal, says Gustav Krupp, and the Minister is inclined to believe him.
Sells the heavy guns to Italy. Roll determines payment. Payment floored at 5 Budget one time, and the rest of it in food or in Italian assets.
[]Reaching Out to Poland: There are those reasonable Poles who are willing to work with Germany, a Germany that had supplied them arms and ammunition to beat back the Reds. We can be a powerful ally against the Communists, or we can be an enemy – and the reminder of Ebert standing between Poland and a Communist Germany is powerful indeed. We can't make friends with them and we can't make allies of them, but we can convince a few factions to impede the more rabid ones.
DC55. Attempts to get the more pragmatic Poles to impede the others, using the threat of German radicalization if pushed too far.
Defense Section
[]The Rail Coordination Board (0/50): The germ of a national railway is route planning staff organizations that can handle train schedules and all the myriad screwups that are born of day-to-day rail operation. That board is a civilian organization and will be constituted as the Railway Oversight Board of the Ministry of Transportation, but will also employ several former members of the General Staff as 'consultants' to ensure the trains run on time. This is the General Staff contracting out their own railway board, saving on manpower in the bargain.
Begins the process of a national railway organization with the army's solid backing. DC15 to pass legislation.
[]Widerstand: The army is not all Prussian, and while the Defense Minister is sympathetic to the Prussians that does not mean we all need to be. Use the Zentrum's Catholic ties and Bavarian base to cultivate a network of loyal or at least non-Prussian officers, informally and outside the context of the army. This is dangerous, but potentially can allow the army to be brought to heel someday. We can do this through the Zentrum and allow the Chancellor to disavow the move.
DC80. Cultivates a 'non-Prussian' network in the army. Expect a backlash if discovered, a severe backlash and the resignation of at least one major Zentrum member, damaging the coalition.
[]Laying Down Hulls: Germany is allowed a limited number of coast-defence ships under the terms of the Treaty, and the hulls that were taken by the Communists are scuttled or sunk. We need replacements to at least ward off acquisitive eyes from the east and to intimidate Poland, and also to placate Krupp. This will be a jobs program in Wilhelmshaven, a boost for Krupp and a reinforcement to our tiny navy.
Costs 5 Budget per turn for five turns. This will fulfill the informal promise made to Krupp.
[]Grenzwacht: The army is not allowed to go beyond the 100,000 man figure in the treaty, but they are allowed to employ contractors. Those contractors have often been disguised
Freikorps, disarmed when French arms inspectors came by – that can be done again near the Polish border this time, as a signal to the Poles that we can reply to the near 100,000 men they have on
our border. The Civil War saw Germany raise enough in arms and troops to give the Poles a thrashing, and Poland is near tapped out – patrol the border and see about the Poles coming across. If they do? Not
our fault. We'll even inform the British of our intentions.
DC75, mainly to avoid provoking the French Army. Risks engagements along the Polish border. Placates the nationalists somewhat. Placates Germans about the coalition's ability to defend the nation. A war cannot be won with the French on the Rhine, and the risk lies in the Poles not being seen as an aggressor.
[]Counter-Insurgency: The army is more than willing to act as a backup for Special Branch investigations of KPD insurgent cells in the new states, although that would be setting a rather bad precedent. The western states
were occupied by the KPD, and the Minister of Justice is keen to let us all know that the army is willing to back him up in rooting them out. There are obvious issues here, but also a few good reasons – namely, mollifying the army and dealing with the KPD.
DC50 to find something, below 20 is a shooting. May lead to political unrest in the new states of Western Germany, may lead to the army acting to enforce peace selectively.
AN: Remember when I said no turn until Wednesday? I lied 
Discussion recommended, 12 hour moratorium in place.
