August in Berlin comes with a warm balmy summer, at least in comparison to the cold gray war before it and the cold gray winter that looms from October with a terrible turnip-headed smile. You are Arthur Biermann, walking with a companion in central Berlin – you'd prefer your companion was Magda from the policemens' bar at Spandau, but policemen can't be choosers. You're near the Platz der Republik, thronged with all and sundry here in August. The great sweep of manicured grassland near the Reichstag is home to protestors against something or another, home to the odd picknicker and couples taking the air along the Siegesallee with its sweep of overdone Kaiserine sculpture. You grin a little as you remember the Odol mouthwash advert that parodied it, line upon line of Odol bottles standing where the fierce moustaches of Prussian patriots jut out towards whoever passes them by beneath the linden trees. Replacing Otto von Bismarck with an Odol bottle makes the walk far more entertaining, you'll give the Siegesallee that much at least.
"And what, mon ami, is so entertaining?" Your companion isn't that entertaining, sadly. Monsieur Poirot is regarded with a mix of anger, veiled disdain and consternation in Police Station Spandau, and you're damn sure you don't want him around. He stares at the statues you pass by with a sort of academic detachment, neat monocle and fussily groomed facial hair seeming as a French rebuttal to Bismarck standing six feet tall on his plinth, "This monument to militarism is hardly that funny, I would say."
You take a minute to side-eye M. Poirot as the two of you walk towards the massive towering bronze figure of the Siegessaule – the angel of victory – standing on her plinth as she stares at the Reichstag. The Belgian is as nattily dressed as he was the first time you'd met him, and his academic detachment as he observes Berlin – hungry, gray, wartorn Berlin – sparks something in you. "I was remembering the impressions that the constables at Spandau do, some of them are very good." You smile with a bit more malice than amusement, "Some of them are of coworkers, to puncture the ego you might say."
"Indeed." The Belgian looks at you once, nods and walks on with precise little taps of his cane on the ground as he moves. Every footstep precise, every gesture choreographed, as if a puppet on a string. "I would hope that I am not among them."
"Oh, you are." You grin as you tell the Belgian this, Poirot turning to frown at you while you walk. "Some of the men think you're too tidy to have been a policeman, you know." Poirot's frown grows deeper and he glares at you for a moment before turning away in some sort of French huff. You're not much of a nationalist, but for a moment you feel that old Otto on his Odol plinth would be proud.
"The constables do not know the importance of tidiness, Detective Biermann." Poirot looks at you with something undefinable in his expression, and for a moment you're reminded of the rumors that this little Belgian was a terror in the trenches. There's a bulge in his suit-jacket that tells of a pistol, and his cane is heavy and metal-shod, the Belgian's quiet, precise gait reminding you of the sergeant and trench-raider who ran your squad with an iron hand at Verdun. "Tidiness is paramount, and it can keep one alive."
"Indeed." You change the subject before things turn tense, orders from the superintendent echoing in your mind. The Belgian is an Entente arms inspector, indulge him and keep him from anything sensitive. "What makes you tag along with me, then? This is a routine murder check, what looks like some paramilitary murdering people in Spandau. Nothing that concerns the treaty inspectors."
The lindens of the Siegesallee turn thinner and younger as you come to its terminus, the great bronze angel of 1871 soaring overhead and shining in the sunlight. Someone's cleaned the old girl up, it looks like, and someone else has hung the old black-red-white flag from her stone plinth. Defiance? Perhaps. Poirot interrupts your speculation with an amused, half-thoughtful voice, cane tapping on the ground as if in emphasis. "There have been six murders with military-grade rifles in the Spandau area, all of them near the war plants and areas of known Communist agitation. The murders have been committed with rifles and have thoroughly disfigured the dead, but not a man has heard anything. Spent brass casings are scarce on the ground, so the shooting was accurate. All the dead were from known organizations opposing the peace and the disarmament."
"And it's the last that you're most concerned with." You won't lie about the trace of bitterness in your voice, and the black-red-white flag on the angel before you seems to remind you of what once was. "As a treaty inspector, that makes sense. I suppose." You pat your pocket for a smoke before stopping, reminding yourself of how much they cost. You had a smoke on the way here, and another will come once you're done meeting your informant at the Siegessaule.
Poirot nods, taking out a cigarette holder and lighting up before he replies. He pointedly doesn't offer you a smoke, and you don't ask. "It does, but I was a policeman before the war, mon ami. The problem itself is an interesting one, six murders in rapid succession and the entire area not hearing anything. The arms plants are emptying and the rifle inventories seem to check out, barring minor irregularities. The only ones to explain both are the workers at Spandau. And the dead are those who have no reason to love those workers, Communist-aligned that most of them were." He gestures at the bronze angel whose plinth you're now standing before, "Militarism like that is now no longer a part of Germany, yes. I am to make sure of that. But it is not that alone that drives me."
Militarism like that he says, standing there and smoking French cigarettes from a neat little holder. You feel a flush of anger again, and you look away from Poirot for a moment before speaking. You wouldn't trust yourself to be dispassionate otherwise. "The angel here is the heaviest and most expensive woman in Berlin, as we say. We're not very reverential of authority here, not the way the French seemed to be. They shot their men, you know, near Verdun. Mass mutiny. We were better soldiers, but we weren't there for war and war alone." Poirot makes a little skeptical noise from the side, and an old man with Wilhelmine facial hair glares at you as he walks by.
You don't hold his gaze. You're here with someone who's all but French, after all.
Still. "So, monsieur Poirot, you look at what we call the cheapest woman in Berlin and you call us militarists. For a pfennig you can get on top of her and have a view of the city besides, what more could you want from German militarism?"
That, at least, gets an amused snort. "Then perhaps I am the mistaken one, eh? And that avenue of generals' statues that we passed is similarly just an avenue and nothing more. Not a monument at all, perhaps." There's a dry ironic twist to the Belgian's words, and you just shrug. This isn't your business, and the little Belgian seems to alternate between infuriating and coldly menacing. Your orders were to babysit him if need be, and that's what you'll do.
"Maybe," you say, and eye the crowds for the man you were to meet. "We're here to meet someone who the Special Branch managed to insert into the plants, here at the Siegessaule because he doesn't want to meet in private. Doesn't trust us anymore, apparently."
"Does not trust German police. I cannot imagine why." Poirot blows out a cloud of smoke, the corner of your eye catching the drifting smoke's movement and reminding you of shellfire and flares and 1918. "So this man is part of the KPD's remnant cell structure?"
"In a sense." You spot a thin, nervous-looking man with a high collar and the flat cloth cap of a factory worker, walking fast and wearing glasses that you know he doesn't need. "And here he is."
His name is Otto Braun, and his code-name per the files in the Special Branch's Intelligence department is Gemutlich. One look at Braun's pinched face, darting eyes and nervous mannerisms prove the lie, though. Gemutlich means genial, cozy almost, and there's none of that about the factory worker that comes up to you and asks for a cigarette before nodding in your general direction while he lights up, "You called me here about the Reds and their arms, detective? The reports are already in, and I can't afford to be seen here. What else do you need?"
Braun is nervous about being seen with a Belgian and a detective, and you're damn well aware that your boots, your manner and your clothing gives that away no matter how much you try. So you decide to do away with the usual pissing contest – the man's already feeling threatened and there's no need for pushing any further, "Six dead in the last two weeks near the war plants, all of them former frontschwein and men of the Stahlhelm. Johann Strauss, Ernst von Lossberg, Paul Anton von Brockdorff, Erich Soder, Matthias Krause, Egon Becker. All of them shot, and nobody heard any gunfire. All of them found dead near the war plants. This speaks of someone who knows how to shoot and how to deal with witnesses – that screams Red Front to me."
"I already told-" Braun makes a pushing motion, stepping back away from you – you take a step back as well, having loomed over the man almost out of habit while you made your statement. "I told you. All of you. The Red Front Fighters' League is disbanding, too much of the police on them. Shootouts aren't what they want right now – anyone doing a shooting would be shot in turn and dumped in the canal. They have discipline, even if you police don't believe that."
Poirot's cane taps on the ground, his gaze on Otto Braun as he speaks. "This man is not lying when it comes to that, mon ami. The Red Front does have discipline, at least from the reports that were handed to us at the arms control board. They are not likely to commit random shootings. Only when needful."
"Then why were they needed?"
Braun shakes his head jerkily at your question, "I don't know and I already said they didn't do it. You can take your pet Frenchman and his theories and put them out of here, it's bullshit." He takes a long drag on his cigarette as if to calm himself, the summer sun beating down overhead onto his jacket and cloth cap – Braun is conspicuous here, and from the way he hunches a little he knows that. "The Red Front is going underground, hiding from the army and your bunch. You know about the sweeps in Bavaria and the south. They're running scared right now, and they need to reorganize now that their revolution isn't coming anytime soon."
You nod, that was about what you'd expected. Still, "So they won't shoot for nothing. But this was near the war plants. This was near the disposal points for war machinery, where my colleague here," You nod at Poirot who smiles at Braun, the smile never once reaching his eyes, "My colleague inspects the material before the French dispose of it. So what if the dockets were fiddled and the Red Front was hiding arms? What if the Stahlhelm knew?"
Braun swallows once, eyes darting to the bronze angel you stand beneath as if to beseech her for aid. "No. They're not doing that, I don't think. And if they were it would be an inner circle thing. Not something I'd know about, and they'd know who talked." He glares at you for a moment, "I've already told you that what I know is in those reports. Go there and search with your pet Frenchman, then, and leave me out of this. I don't want any of it." Braun's eyes are tired, his face is pinched and thin, and he isn't the sort who'd lead this. You know that.
But he's lying. The summer wind picks up a little as you nod at him and wish him well, the breeze itself scenting a lie. The question is, what is Braun lying about? The Red Front? The arms? The murders? You're not sure. Poirot interrupts your thoughts, "So now what now, Detective Biermann, now that your informants have not been fruitful? This is the third one that we have tapped."
You drop the butt you'd been smoking and crush it absently underfoot, squinting a little in the sunlight. "Now we talk to the proletariat, and we hope that the vons und zus who are pushing this investigation don't call for my head."
AN: Part I, Part II out on Sunday, then turn updates. I did say there were three narrative parts per turn, this is as much historical story as it is a quest. Putting this out today because I won't update tomorrow, have some things to take care of.
Scheduled vote count started by mouli on Mar 24, 2021 at 9:11 AM, finished with 69 posts and 45 votes.
[X] No: The court has has its verdict. The state will be seen to respect the courts. This might anger some in the army, but they are marginalized in any case – sympathy for the enemy is not a good career move. And as far as the paramilitaries are concerned, we cannot win them over with mercy in any case.
[X] No: The court has made its verdict and it will be carried out. Judicial independence is preserved. You, the Chancellor, have yet more friends' blood on your hands.
- [x][The generals] Yes: Commute them selectively, of course. The ones that have influential relatives in the army and the ones less likely to be a problem later on can serve out a prison term. The others are too dangerous, and the 'security battalion' men are simply vile. This will please the army to some extent, and will make the Chancellery appear merciful...but mercy can seem weak.
- [x][KPD] Commute: The KPD was once the SPD, or at least a part of it. The Chancellery and much of the Reichstag know the defendants, at least some of them. A pardon is too inflammatory, but prison is something that can be done for the less dangerous and less fanatical of the defense, and would ease the minds of much of the left-SPD and former USPD rank and file. Even if it costs us in opinion and stability.
It took a month, or thereabouts, as it turned out. You're walking through Spandau with the damned Belgian at your side yet again as you let that frustrated statement out, a month of hammering your head against what informants you had in the KPD. From what you can tell, that rat Braun might have been telling the truth after all – but then why were the dead all Stahlhelm members? It made no sense. And that, then, was why you were accompanying the damned Belgian as he went about his official duties. Turning to look at Poirot neatly dressed in a gray three-piece suit and silver-topped cane, you're again struck by what a contrast he is in comparison to Berlin. To Spandau, where you step around grime and the odd bit of horseshit that hasn't been cleaned up from the battered cobblestoned streets. "So, Monsieur Poirot, what does the esteemed Entente arms inspector wish to inspect today?"
"He wishes, mon ami, to inspect the Mauser-Werke at Spandau." Poirot's cane picks its way ahead of him past a pothole, and his accent draws eyes from the windows of boarded-up Spandau while you walk. Your uniform and his obvious status seem to deter the riffraff, but even here you're now a French stooge – you wish you didn't have this duty, this shepherding of a Belgian fusspot. "The Mauser-Werke has had a few irregularities that are consistent with the war that was fought this year, and I just want to make sure that they are indeed the product of war damage."
"And not someone selling off the arms, you mean?" It's illegal under German law as well as the Treaty, but you can feel a bit of sympathy for the workmen who would do it. The plants are closed and the area is empty, men hunting for work elsewhere while the cartridge plants are closed. "You want to check the machinery and the goods stocks for disposal in France, then?"
"Indeed." He side-eyes you for a moment, "I realize that you were in the army, Detective, and you may be a member of the Stahlhelm as well. But I must admit, I am concerned about such organizations and what they may do with arms that are sold to them." He shrugs, apologetically and with a note of something undefinable in his voice, "The concern for treaty compliance is a duty, yes, but the concern for how the weapons are used is another. There are far too many armed groups that are calling for illegal repuidation of the treaty. And its reparations."
"Some of us agree with that. And Germany allows freedom of speech."
"But not freedom of armament." Poirot ducks past a shower of some sort of rubbish and a curse from a second-floor window, the residential tenements growing more rickety as you come to the great concrete walls that surround the Mauser-Werke compound. Even here, it's a long ways to the entrance. "You have spent weeks on this problem of the left wing, and you yourself have noted that the other side is just as much a danger. I will advise you, mon ami, that international law has weight above and beyond preferences, and I am here for that. Not for German laws and regulations, not for the biases of a German policeman. That is an interest, no more."
The Belgian's voice is iron-hard, the sort of noncom's bark that casts your mind back to the war. Give your orders, you'll have to be careful with that, the sort of conviction that drives a German nationalist making this fussy little former policeman come to Berlin where his very voice makes him a target. You in the meantime are just tired, "So you've been going through the dockets for arms shipments that I can't access and can't read because I'm German?" There's no little bitterness there, "At least tell me if they're selling the damned weapons."
"No." He shakes his head as you come to a great iron gate, over the gate is the curlicued steel lettering Mauser, "No, they are not selling the rifles. Or at least, the totals are correct. My concerns are for the ammunition, as I have said, and to check that I require an onsite inspection."
"And no army backup?"
"I do not want the German army to back me up." He smiles for a moment, turning to you as his cane raps on the gate in great echoing bursts of noise that sends a crow perched on the wall flying away. "I would have brought the British embassy garrison, mon ami, but I have not. Out of consideration for your feelings."
The gate opens with a creaking groan, the site staffing short after the war ended. The gate's opening is filled with a hulking man that looks at you and identifies you as police, rasping out a question of, "What does the filth want here?"
Poirot tips his hat and hands the gorilla a paper, thick vellum stamped by the Ministry of War. "We are here to inspect the dismantling. The detective is my escort."
You get a suspicious glare, the Belgian gets another one, and Herr Gorilla turns away from the two of you and barks out a brief Come as he walks into the factory. He missed his calling at the Tiergarten Zoo, this one. When you tell this to Poirot he smiles thinly, and reminds you that appearances can be deceiving. You just shake your head. "If you have information I need, tell me. I can't do this with you hiding the arms dockets from me."
"That is treaty business, detective." You get another apology from the Belgian as you walk into the shadowed main floor of the Mauser-Werke, its lathes and machine tools either ripped off their steam-lines and dismantled or sitting cold and dead. "I am not allowed to show them to you, since they are French documents. And you are unable to get them from the Ministry of War, for reasons that I cannot fathom."
You can, and you know what that reason is. You friend whispered it to you, in the Special Branch canteen. Two words, Black Reichswehr, two words you'll never breathe to this Belgian who walks beside you.
The Mauser plant is not the largest of them, nor is it the most modern – this is an old cartridge plant, and you know from the beer-garden gossip that it used to make civilian firearm loads before the war came. It's a vast single hall dotted by half-dismantled machinery and equipment, rooms to the sides for specialists to examine the output and to work. A few workers stare at you as you walk inside behind Poirot, and their gazes are hard, their faces expressionless. Carefully so, in your eyes. You're careful to keep your face neutral and utterly still, one hand in your jacket and on the Luger as Poirot greets the foreman in a pronounced Belgian accent.
Foreman Gorilla turns out to be one Klaus Metzger, who claims to have led the line for decades before the war. He glares at Poirot as if holding him personally responsible for the plant closure, and rumbles out something to do with the workers here, "My men are as angry as I am, Frenchman. None of your excuses. What do you want from us now that you've torn apart what we had?"
Metzger might have a point, but some of his 'men' aren't in full agreement. They shift a little, one of them whispering something to another as they gather to watch Poirot in a loose half-circle around the two of you. Hercule Poirot ignores that, tucking one hand in his coat near the pistol-holster and keeping the other on his cane, "I am here as expected, monsieur, to inspect the arms shipments and the machine tools. As the treaty commands. You have had me here before, I think."
"Didn't want to remember that." It's a heckling voice from your left, and when you turn to check who it might have been, all that greets you are a dozen-odd blank faces and carefully neutral eyes.
You just nod once and turn back to the foreman as he speaks to your irritating Belgian charge. Sometimes you wish you'd applied for the Saxon police – even that would've been better than this.
Metzger just stares for a minute before sharply nodding, "Come. The consignments are at the spur, the machinery is being dismantled in the back. What is it you want to check?"
"Both. We shall start with the machine tools, I think." Poirot's cane taps out a staccato beat on the factory's flooring as he moves, and you can see the ruins of the dismantling as you pass the assembly line by. Steam vents and piping for the machinery, now sealed off and broken away from the tools that they fed. Massive holes in the line where filling machines did their work. Empty hoppers for materials. Poirot in the meantime has turned his inquisitive little half-French eye to the machines at the back, disassembled and unrecognizable to you. "Those are the ammunition fabrication machines, then?"
There's a rumble of agreement from Metzger, standing to one side as Poirot ducks past a rack of parts towards the scattering of machinery at the rear of the plant. He's moving from one to another, carefully inspecting each major component and at times taking out a magnification glass as he goes. Metzger watches it for a long moment before turning back to you, and you're uncomfortably aware of Foreman Gorilla's stare and the workers at your back.
Your hand's still on your Luger, in your coat.
"Relax," says Klaus Metzger, amusement tinged with something else in his voice. "The Frenchman will be a while, the machinery is not something small to inspect. Not the way we made it, eh?" He jerks his head behind you, and there are six more workmen there. "Some of us don't appreciate this, and we do a bit of mischief now and again."
"Is that so." You're carefully neutral on it, for all that this is technically in violation of what the workmen were to do.
"Indeed." Metzger points at the plant floor and tells his men to take care of the shift, turning back to you now that your back is clear. "Some of us are better workers than others, mind. The plant saw a great deal of KPD during the war. Both wars."
"And you want to report something?"
"No, no." He shakes his head ponderously, "I want to know where you stand on that, detective. The Frenchman will no doubt call us dangerous, but some of us believe in a better Germany. What about you?"
Your hand is sweaty on the Luger's handle and you can see Poirot looking in your direction for a moment before turning back to what looks to be some sort of machine tool spare parts case. In the meantime, you're on edge and tense, sweat prickling the back of your neck and your curiosity driving things onwards. "I think that a better Germany needs more than just pranks on the French. And I think that we aren't in shape for that right now."
Metzger nods, "Then we can talk later, detective, when we're in shape for that." There's an ironic twist to his words, and he seems amused by something.
"Is there something I ought to know, Foreman?"
Your question is barbed and obvious, giving the foreman an out. He shakes his head, and flatly says No.
He's lying.
Before you can continue that line of conversation, Poirot returns, heralded by the tap of his cane against the flooring. Metzger touches his forelock as the Belgian comes in, a parody of respect that you know now is absolutely false. "Anything you need, mein Herr?"
"Indeed." Poirot hands over a sheet of paper with several lines written on it, and you can't read it from here, six feet from the Belgian and with Klaus Metzger half-between the two of you. "There are a number of components listed as sold, and more that are listed as wastage. I want to compare that with the sales ledgers. And lastly," The Belgian turns to the loading docks' entrance, "The rifles there. I want to examine some of them."
Metzger frowns, no doubt irritated that the Belgian went to the loading docks without him. He shakes his head, "The ledgers and the information need to come from management. The rifles need paperwork from the Reichswehr. That is a Reichswehr order, at least in part."
"I see," says Hercule Poirot, perfectly polite, "We shall take our leave, then." He leaves with the eyes of the plant at his back and you walking escort, and your shoulders itch a little as you leave, expecting something to happen.
Nothing does.
Hercule Poirot turns to you the moment you're past the gates and out of earshot from Metzger, and says in a very distant tone, "I think that it is an arms smuggling operation, mon ami. There is too much missing for anything else." Spandau Police Station
September 30th, 1920
Lieutenant von Manteuffel is the very image of a junker, a slim hawk-nosed Prussian who stands in the Spandau police station with a hint of condescension. You don't like him already. With the captain absent and von Manteuffel asking to question you and Hercule separately, you're not sure what to expect when you walk into the captain's office. The lieutenant offering you a slug of the captain's stash wasn't it, though. Von Manteuffel smiles slightly, "Your captain's on the take, detective. As is half the station, I would think. What do you think of that, eh?" He sips a bit of the cognac he's found, and waits for you to answer.
You take your time, shifting in the cushioned chair. Poirot lights up one of his French cigarettes in the meantime, and von Manteuffel's irritated glance in that direction buys you a second or two more. "Sir. What the captain does is not my business, that's the Ministry of Justice. Perhaps you should make a complaint?"
The lieutenant gives you an exasperated glance, "Shut up, detective." He turns to Poirot, "Monsieur Poirot. How did you know this was an arms-smuggling operation? How did you know about the Mauser-Werke?"
"I used my little grey cells to best effect, lieutenant," smiles Poirot before he explains things, von Manteuffel visibly irritated by this point. "The parts manifests were short. Parts were missing from the list, small ones that are always marked up as wastage. The wastage was too high for a plant that size and experience, to boot. The foreman claimed twenty years or more there, and he had terrified a lot of the force into silence. To have wastage even then? No." He shakes his head vehemently, little round Belgian face as firm as it gets. "No. Thrice, I say no. Missing barrel assemblies, missing breech parts, missing quality assessment tools. A missing cartridge loading kit. Quite a lot."
"So you called in the Reichswehr." The lieutenant is watching Poirot warily, and you are as well.
The Belgian seems almost flattered by the attention, a performer in the arts of deduction just as he is in dress and mannerisms. "So I asked my comrade what to do, rather. I was of the opinion that the French Army unit assigned to embassy duties was to enforce treaty provisions, but Detective Biermann was able to convince me otherwise."
You don't recall it going that way, you remember telling Poirot that calling in the French would mean a riot. Still, von Manteuffel gives you a nod of thanks from across your captain's desk and you just nod back. Keeping a blank face, as best as you can. Poirot continues with relish, probably at being able to demonstrate how clever he is, "We warned the Reichswehr and waited for three hours, and the shooting then died down. Checking the rifles confirms things. I would no doubt assume that the same stolen arms were involved in the murders that Detective Biermann is investigating." He looks at you slyly, "Those were former soldiers, one of them a Junker, no?"
"The victims have a right to privacy," you say as you shake your head. The Prussian on the other side of the table gives a thin smile on hearing that, and you're just torn between tiredness and amusement. "I can't tell you anything, Monsieur Poirot."
"Perhaps. Still, I would ask that you come with me, Detective." He stands suddenly, and nods at the lieutenant. "I have something to show you in the evidence lockers."
The evidence lockers have a single solitary rifle and a clip of ammunition, the same sort of thing that you remember using since 1915. The Belgian lifts the weapon with the ease of practice, stripping it down and showing you the breech assembly, "See that, and tell me what you think."
"It's worn down to nothing," you say with surprise, the evidence lockers seeming to crowd in on you from all sides. The lieutenant nods as you speak, seemingly already having been briefed on this. "This is an old rifle, something for scrapping and recycling. Not a new gun."
"Indeed." You're then handed a cartridge, and Poirot takes the rifle off your hands to stow it. He has another round in his hand, this one disassembled and the charge exposed. "This is a handloaded round, as are most of the rounds that the plant shipped. The powder charge is lighter, and most of the tooling for this sort of loading was missing. Marked down as waste."
"So this was...what? Lighter rounds, quieter rounds?"
Von Manteuffel nods, "Indeed. Metzger was selling what he took to a wide range of organizations, and some of them decided that they wanted it to be exclusive. So that led to a gunfight." The officer smiles thinly again, "The foreman was very cooperative when we explained who he had killed and what publicizing it would mean. So now we have names."
"Sir." You cast your eyes at Poirot, "The Belgian is here, is that…?"
"The Belgian provided the information." Von Manteuffel nods cordially at the two of you, "I can see that there is still catching up to do, gentlemen. Good day." He sweeps out of the grotty evidence room, probably to somewhere more congenial, and you're left surrounded by lockers and locked evidence. And the Belgian.
Poirot just smiles at you, "The hunch was the third victim, mon ami. He was a member of a prominent ultranationalist group, calling for an end to the Treaty. He had evidence of membership on him at the time of death, or so I have been told. And the foreman claims that the kill was accidental. Unintentional. Something about a liar."
"Gang wars." The Belgian's words spark something in your mind, though, reminding you what you told him...and what you haven't. "Still. You have no idea about the membership. How did you? I was the only one on the scene and the reports are sent up and classified. The only way you'd know is if you bribed someone." Or… "Or if you were there." You whisper the last sentence out in a horrified whisper, wild conjecture and bloodsoaked imagery warring with the dapper Belgian in his gray suit.
In the back of your mind is the whisper I am here for the Treaty, not for German laws.
Hercule Poirot just smiles. "Detective work has always been a passion of mine, mon ami. I thank you for the opportunity, and I will remember you kindly later on. I am to retire from the Arms Commission now, and I think I will make use of my talents elsewhere." His smile is polite and friendly, his eyes flat and expressionless like a shark, and his moustache waxed to perfection.
You shake his hand and murmur pleasantries, and that is the last you see of Hercule Poirot.
The Organization Consul has seen a marked drop in membership and supplies over the course of Turn 1 in Berlin, and a lesser impact has been seen in major cities in southern Germany. Follow-on options available next turn.
--[X] The Silesian Sore: Silesia is seeing a full blown insurgency and the troops of Freikorps Oberland that have been used for internal security there are acting in a manner that would exacerbate things. We need to get the province in line and use the courts to do so legally while sending in the federal police and – perhaps or, perhaps and – the army. DC35. Stabilizes Silesia a little, enforcing guidelines for law enforcement and purging the local police forces as needed to maintain stability.
Rolled: terriblewriter: 1D100 → 21( (21) )
Event rolls...d100=71. 70-80: Paramilitaries and confessional polarization
Options: Deploy the army? Deploy the federal police? Allow the League to maintain order?
Rolls: Poland: [Hidden]
Briefing to the Chancellery: The Silesian Situation
Abstract: The situation in Silesia is volatile, driven by violence and tensions between Germans and Poles as much as anything else. At present we have a breakdown of public order in most major cities, with districts organizing their own vigilante justice groups and attempting to subvert the order imposed by the state. In rural areas in Silesia (such as they are) we have the issue of Polish subversion of the peasantry and the miners attempting to strike. This is primarily being driven by ethnic tensions between Germans and Poles, which have been inflamed by the heavy-handed methods that the Triumvirate made use of to conscript locals and keep public order. Germans in the area have something of a siege mentality, using their greater prominence in local governance to ensure the federal police and garrison enforce laws in a preferential manner. This in turn leads the Poles – who until the end of the war have been primarily law-abiding – to take up protest actions, strikes and in extremis foment unrest and riots. This has also fed into the religious tensions left from the Kulturkampf, as the Triumvirate forces deployed to the area to keep order considered the Polish Catholic Churches to be hotbeds of unrest and organization, which in turn gave the local conflict a confessional flavor that will be difficult to erase – witness how long it has taken to smooth over the scars left over from Bismarck's ill-advised Kulturkampf. We note that the Jewish communities in the area have cooperated fully with German authorities, and are a useful locus of support for the state in Silesia.
The primary driver of unrest in the area and the primary instigator of Polish radicalization is the Polish Military Organization (PMO), an underground partisan movement that saw its origins in the war. The PMO benefits from smuggled arms coming across from Poland, primarily arms, explosives and mortars. They have been the instigators of shooting incidents that have led to federal police and Freikorps crackdowns and were notable for harassing Triumvirate forces in the area. The heavy-handed response of the state fed into their narrative, creating a feedback loop of Polish radicalization. The Allied military commission in the area, now reconstituted with the end of the civil war, appears to be ineffectual in stopping the arms shipments and unable to restore order for the plebiscite.
The army has already begun to relieve formerly Triumvirate-aligned Freikorps in the area and replace them using contractor and field police units drawn from the so-called 'Black Reichswehr'. This is insufficient to restore order, and also insufficient to contest the area with French and British policing forces should the reinforcements be ordered back out by the Allies.
The Allied garrison is primarily French, drawn from units of the French regular army and colonial forces. Their officers appear to be uninterested in enforcing a fair plebiscite, and predictably are standing aside while the Poles undermine public order in Silesia. They do, however, strenuously object to further deployment of Reichswehr, Sipo or Freikorps units to the area, primarily on the grounds of ensuring the neutrality of the plebiscite. British forces are no more than a single battalion, and are too small to effectively enforce order without French cooperation. However, we note that the British commander in the area has made overtures to cooperate with 'local authorities' rather than the German state, and we can use that to allow 'local forces' comprising federal police and Freikorps to reinforce British efforts to maintain a fair, free plebiscite. The sting in the tail here is that the fairness then depends on the British, who have a more biased notion of that than we do.
The alternative to cooperation with the British is to reinforce the forces in the area with whatever we have. We can use the units of the Reichswehr, claiming a border emergency, and rely on the Poles being too hammered by the Soviets to reciprocate, or we can use the federal police and the Freikorps. To step away from this situation and trust the French would be the height of idiocy and is not to be considered at all, for to do so would be to cede Silesia entire to the Poles.. Breslau, Silesia
September 19th, 1920 Fritz (II)
It's cold in Silesia, and you shiver a little as the train pulls into Breslau's main station. The thick smoke of the coal-burner drifts overhead, merging with the industrial haze of the city into a thick, gritty fog that you can almost taste, a fog that reminds you of tear-gas and choking banks of mist on the Somme. There's a roughly encouraging slap on your back from the trooper behind you, and you straighten up reflexively in response. Some things stay with you, and by now the actions of order of march are a familiar thing, bone-deep and muscle-memory. The entire platoon lines up on the platform once off the coaches, another platoon on either side, a full company of infantry on the train and more to debark once you're off the platform. The company sergeant-major calls for attention in a long roaring command, and you and the rest of the men with you stand to it in a great rippling noise of boots on concrete, rifle butts slapped as your shoulder arms. The routine is comforting after the past few weeks, even if you've gone from a corporal's stripes to a private's bare sleeves in the time since the civil war ended.
Sergeant-Major Kretschmann paces past the company on parade, past the machine-gunners and the signallers of the Third Platoon on your right to the cold-eyed, scarred Eastern Front veterans of the First Platoon on your left. He's the same sort of mean little whippet-thin man that you remember from 1915, severe and harsh and unfalteringly brave, every inch the senior NCO. He barks out a reprimand at a poor bastard from 1st Platoon and takes his place at the column's head, as the captain begins to speak. You and the rest of 2nd Platoon relax ever so slightly now that the sergeant-major is out of sight, and you let your thoughts wander a little while Captain Forster talks about honor, restraint and the importance of Silesia.
You used to be in the army proper, clad in field-gray and wearing Gott Mit Uns on your belt-buckle the same as any Prussian grenadier. Now you're in a nondescript uniform of patchy gray and brown, the unit blazons on your sleeve now no more than a single black shield marked with a white number 3, for Third Company of what's called the Black Reichswehr. You're officially a pioneer unit, a contractor labor unit that's armed in order to defend itself and made up of Freikorps. Officially, you're not an army unit at all.
The quartermaster sergeant at the base in Frankfurt an der Oder had Regular Army unit insignia, and he winked at you when you signed the enlistment form and told him who'd referred you. You snort a bit in the line, as Captain Forster reminds the lot of you to maintain restraint.
Yep, this is the army even now. You're still in the army, Fritzl. No changing that.
To your left are three other privates and the corporal, heading up what's supposed to be a nine-man section. Privates Rolf Neubauer and Wilhelm Reiss, both from Berlin and both of them quiet, controlled, careful sorts, falling into line and handling their guns with practiced efficiency. Reiss and Neubauer are bayonet-men, to hold the traverses of a trench while grenadiers flush out the enemy. In line with them is Private Lennard Eichelberg, grenadier and far too twitchy for your liking. He's seen shit on the Western Front, the same way you did, and it broke something inside him. Tall and thin and muttering at odd times, Eichelberg is your fellow grenadier. Clearing the trenches with explosives and gas, while Neubauer and Reiss hold the traverses.
No trenches here, Fritzl.
Now, men, you will barrack with the federal police…says Captain Forster, high and reedy in the early-morning light. The gray early-morning light that reminds you of industrial Spandau, reminds you of home. You swallow a lump in your throat, automatically shouldering arms as Corporal Kinzinger yells at the lot of you to follow him. Matthias Kinzinger is a fat, angry man, someone that wears an Iron Cross on his lapel even when he's supposed to be clandestine, someone who leads the section by fist and fear.
You weren't like him. You don't really like the fucker at all, come to think of it. But he leads from the front or so the army grapevine says. Better than most.
"So what now, we patrol fucking Breslau?" Eichelberg's rasping whisper drifts back to you grumpy and jaded, tired from the troop-train as Corporal Kinzinger chivvies the lot of you to barracks. "We squat here with the fucking Poles until the French decide to lop Silesia off of us?"
You just nod once, slowly, before remembering that Lennard isn't about to turn around and see that and you don't want him to do that. So you hiss back, "Yes, we fucking are. Get in line before Fatty sees you and shut up." Kinzinger isn't watching the two of you now, but you don't want to wind up with the latrine tender fatigues – and you'd prefer the other grenadier doesn't get them either. He's twitchy and on edge enough, push him more and, well...your mind shies away from that thought.
Remember 1916, Fritzl? You deliberately don't, keeping thoughts of the mines and artillery of Verdun well away.
"Halt!" The order comes after ten minutes of marching, a short walk past shuttered windows and the jumble of houses and shops near the railway station. Kinzinger holds up a hand and barks out the halt order, snapping to some approximation of parade rest as an officer comes out of the building to see a company column waiting in front of it. Sergeant-Major Kretschmann bawls out orders to stand to, the company strung out in brown and gray with rifle-butts resting on the ground, watching the area and watching the barracks.
Out of the building comes an unshaven man with captain's bars on his shoulders, a gray uniform with a nonregulation armband on its side, his helmet blazoned with a death's head on the side. He sways a little, glares at the wall of the barracks – someone's painted a Polish flag on it – and nods at Captain Forster. There's a muttered exchange, and Sergeant-Major Kretschmann roars out another order to wait in place, Corporal Kinzinger echoing that and pulling out a pipe as he sets his pack down.
Lovely. The fucking locals can't even get moving in time. The rest of the section echoes your thoughts – these men claimed to be soldiers. It's almost insulting.
Pick one option to mitigate the breakdown of public order in Silesia:
[]Reinforce the SiPo: The Sicherheitspolizei or SiPo are the armed federal police, reinforced since 1918 with everything from rifles and light mortars to armored cars. They're a light infantry paramilitary in all but name and the French want hem dismantled, but they're numerous enough to pacify Silesia for the moment given a bit of luck. This will, though, cost money and also require us to make excuses to the French. Costs 5 Budget from next turn, angers the French (raising DCs for all negotiations). DC30 to restore order, on failure will partially restore order and improve the situation incompletely.
[]Reinforce the Locals, Work the English: The British are willing to work to enforce a relatively unbiased plebiscite, or at least that is what their commander says. They're only a single battalion who are willing to work through local police and Polish community leaders, and we can reinforce the local police using police drawn from the state authorities, hoping the British are negotiating in good faith – but can we rely on that? DC45 to restore order, may improve on failure or may not, potential for the Poles to rig the plebiscite. Will irritate the nationalists.
[]Exert Ourselves: We have the manpower and we're just out of a civil war – use the residual presence of Triumvirate paramilitaries as a pretext to move the 2nd Infantry Division from Stettin, backed by SiPo and state police. This is almost certain to get the Polish Military Organization to pull back and allow us some leeway to ensure a fair and suitably biased plebiscite, albeit at the cost of greatly angering France. Will greatly please the nationalists, will greatly anger the French (all negotiation DCs greatly raised, ie by 20 or more), risks border clashes with Poland (hidden roll), guarantees restoration of order, costs 10 Budget from next turn, greatly increases favorability of referendum on Silesia. AN: Apologies for the delay. We return. Votes are open and will remain so for two days.
[]Plebiscite on Prussia: We have to run the plebiscite for the breakup of Prussia, and that means we have to make sure the vote is free and fair in spite of paramilitaries, right-wing parties and the army. It'll be a chancy thing, but a victory here will be a vindication of the republic and beneficial for federalism in the long term – the Prussian tail cannot be allowed to wag the German dog. DC60.
Rolled: mouli: 2D100 → 33(25 +8)
Chancellery Synopsis: The Situation of Prussia Submitted to the Chancellery as of September 19th, 1920
The objective of this report is to provide the Reich Chancellery with information relating to recent events that have affected the ongoing Prussian State Reorganization plebiscite. With legislation for the splitting of the Free State of Prussia passed by the Reichstag on September 3rd, 1920 in the wake of the Civil War, the role of the government has been the organisation of a plebiscite that would allow regions within the Free State of Prussia to choose between having their own state within the framework of the German Republic or remaining with Prussia under the laws and governance of the Prussian Landtag. With the Landtag dominated by major cities to the east of Prussia and the landed interests east of the Elbe, it was foreseen that the plebiscite would see the bulk of the West breaking off to form their own Lander in the form of the proposed states of Hannover, Schleswig-Holstein, Rheinland, Westphalia, and forcing a splitting off of a state of East Prussia to allow that enclave to effectively govern itself.
However, we note that the apparatus of this plebiscite has already seen extensive sabotage and voter intimidation. In Hannover, we have seen local army commanders (General von Schleicher and the units of Wehrkreis-VI) utilizing contracted military police (under the so-called Black Reichswehr) along with their own troops in some cases to prevent voters from voting for the dissolution of Prussia. The setup of voting machinery near anti-Prussian localities, the spreading of information regarding the plebiscite, the unbiased nature of vote-tallying, all of it has seen significant influence from the army. Under these conditions, the plebiscite cannot proceed in Hannover, and is virtually guaranteed to give a result that the army would want – namely the preservation of Prussia undisturbed. Under the justification of anti-Communism and 'dealing with the KPD' we have seen the army move against the state, and there are few means of direct recourse.
It is similar in other regions of Germany, all across old Prussia. The army has either stood aside while far-right paramilitary groups and organizations engage in widespread intimidation and street-fighting, or has assisted them in doing so. The police have been unable to restore order and in many cases east of the Oder have proven unreliable in doing so. The reliance of the state on Freikorps organizations associated with the so-called Black Reichswehr to restore order in areas that were formerly under KPD occupation has backfired here, as those organizations have acted in the interest of Prussian integrity rather than standing aside for the plebiscite.
The state still has tools to restore order, thought his would necessitate a confrontation with the army. To engage in such a confrontation so near to the end of the civil war over what is a deep change to German is inadvisable, and it is clear that the army requires us to negotiate. The army does not want another war either, and to force the civilian government to come to the table completely is something that might force another uprising – KPD activity has not ceased and remains an irritant in western Germany. We have to reach a compromise of some sort with the army, rather than confront them force-on-force.
Their grievances are many and their perceived status as the single monopoly of force in Germany has been severely damaged in the time since 1918, let alone since the end of the civil war. The status of Infantry-Division 'Deutschland' as an elite capital guard unit has eroded their ability to threaten direct action against the state. The reinforcement of the SiPo since 1918 with armored cars, mortars, heavy weapons and trained infantry has made the army less necessary for restoring order against paramilitaries. The proposed Grenzschutz under the Interior Ministry have made the army believe that the state is building up counterweights to them. The dissolution of Prussia, while not directly eroding their prerogatives, runs counter to the oath that every Prussian officer swore on commissioning, to keep the integrity of the Kaiser's patrimony intact – it is thus a sufficiently emotional, symbolic thing that the army cannot stand aside. It is clear that concessions will have to be made… The Bendlerblock,
Berlin, September 29th, 1918
Along the banks of the Landwehr Canal, the same still stretch of water where the dead lie restless from the Spartakusaufstand once the army was done, stands the Bendlerblock. You almost reflexively cast a glance at the canal as your motorcar pulls up to the building, old regrets, old dead friendships and old memories bubbling up like bitter bile to remind you of your sins. It came to violence, that cold day in 1919, but you dearly wish it had not. Nevertheless, what is done is done. You shake your head a little to clear it, your aching joints from a bout of the flu still causing you grief as you get down from the car and feast your eyes on the classical facades of the Bendlerblock.
You have memories of this place too, for all that they are not fond ones.
It's same grand building where old Father Neptune, fork-bearded Alfred von Tirpitz himself, had dreamed up the risk fleet and the Imperial Navy. You remember his drive, the burning ambition that whispered in the Kaiser's ear and gave forth in thunderous speeches on the Reichstag floor, spending millions of marks on great gray battleships that now rest on the seafloor. The Bendlerblock has changed since then, a far cry from what was a center of ambition and inter-service rivalry. It's diminished, much like everything else these days.
You might have your revolution, Friedrich, but there's a long way to go yet.
That stray thought is rammed home when a sergeant in army field-gray at the doors salutes you with cold eyes and stiff formality, ushering you inside under a painting of a battleship flying the old imperial ensign. At his back are a pair of sentries, peeling off from door-guard duty as if to ensure you go where you're bid. This way, Herr Chancellor is the sergeant's murmur, and you let the soldier guide you through as your eyes flit from people to décor to the young NCO ahead of you. Behind you is the steady click of hobnails on marble flooring, as if to punctuate the carefully blank gazes that you draw from officers as they go about their business here in the army's beating heart.
"In here, Herr Chancellor," says the sergeant with a carefully neutral voice and eyes that seem to track your every move. The two infantrymen that were at your back station themselves on either side of the door that your guide opens. He gestures you inside, and with one look at the soldiers on either side of the door, you decide that discretion is the better part of valor – there's no need to begin with a fuss over something pointless. So you adjust your hat and coat, walk inside to what looks like some sort of staff briefing room, and meet the eyes of three familiar faces.
Paul von Hindenburg meets your eyes with something like anger in his own, uniform resplendent in bemedalled glory, harking back to the old empire. Von Hindenburg stands in the center of the little knot of generals ahead of you, and the other two seem almost overshadowed by his bulk – the Field Marshal is the leader here, then. At his left is General Hans von Seeckt, the same closed expression and calculating air about him that you remember from the civil war. At von Hindenburg's right is General Kurt von Schleicher, commander of the western Wehrkreis-VI and the man that Erzberger warned you about – this, then is the tool for von Seeckt and von Hindenburg, the youngest of the three generals in the room.
They all seem angry, standing together and waiting for you – no doubt someone sent word. They set up this ridiculous production of sentries at the door, sergeant as a guide and standing to receive the Chancellor they hate. It ought to intimidate you, perhaps. A year ago it would have.
Now, after six brutal months of civil war and simply too exhausted to be intimidated, you simply take off your hat and hang it on the stand near the door, nodding politely to the three of them as you enter. "Generals. Herr Field Marshal. You requested a meeting in the Bendlerblock?"
Paul von Hindenburg seems to pause for a moment, waiting for you to follow some script. He nods once more to himself than to you, gesturing to a chair at the briefing table. "Herr Chancellor. Please, take a seat. We have much to discuss in regards to recent state policy."
You take a seat on one of the hard, wooden chairs, elbow jabbing into something on the table as you settle in. You suppress a curse, picking up what looks to be some sort of figurine, setting it aside on top of a map and well away from you. Von Hindenburg takes a seat on a chair opposite you on the rectangular map-table, chair groaning under his weight, and his two subordinates take their seats on either side of him.
The army seems intent on presenting a united front today, it would seem.
Hans von Seeckt is the one to open things, not the field marshal. His rasping voice is almost threatening, harsh despite the politesse with which he delivers the army's message. The other two – Von Hindenburg resting his hands on his belly and glaring, von Schleicher with the yellow electric lighting reflecting off his bald head – they sit and wait for General von Seeckt to finish, as though he were the one who had planned this. "Chancellor," he says, steepling his hands on the table, "The army has objections to the dissolution of the Free State of Prussia. We are of the opinion that it is rash, ill-thought-out, and risks handing western Germany to the Reds once you cut off the saner parts of Prussia from the west. Prussia as she is now is the anchor of Germany, and not something lightly cast aside."
Beneath the general's gray-clad elbow is lettering in angular black, marking off Schleswig-Holstein by the Elbe where so many died over the summer. Von Seeckt's eyes are calm, as if waiting for you to make some expected countermove.
He's here to bargain, then.
You flick your gaze towards von Hindenburg and von Schleicher, picking your words carefully as you answer. There's a tension in your gut, a reminder that you're walking a tightrope here. Stress enough to give you an ulcer, or maybe it already has. "At the same time, General, the obverse is also true. The west is growing faster than the east and the KPD has its hooks into the western half of Prussia. Given the sheer size of Prussia, he who controls it controls the Reichstag. I do not want a risk of Prussia going Red, or even the Prussian Landtag seeing a hint of KPD control. To slice off the more contentious regions of Prussia is quarantine, no more than that."
"You go farther than mere quarantine, Herr Chancellor." Von Hindenburg's rumbling voice is angry and slow, like a distant thunderstorm. His moustache bristles with what you reckon is genuine outrage – this is someone for whom the oath to to the Kaiser and Prussia matters more than the army's power, and that makes the old man dangerous. Von Hindenburg's ham-sized hands rap on the table in emphasis as he speaks, "You speak in the plebiscite of allowing East Prussia and Anhalt to choose their own states if need be, and slice off part of Magdeburg and Saxony. That would leave a rump state, a Mark of Brandenburg and no more than that. That would do what Frederick the Great avoided, more than a century and half after the fact. That is no quarantine."
Unstated is the demand that you explain that discrepancy. Your throat is dry. You don't swallow. They negotiate like generals, these three. They batter with threats and with anger until they get a breakthrough, and you will hand them no weakness. Not even if your side aches fit to burst. "I cannot be seen to prefer one state over another. Not after the war." They know you're not talking about the Great War, "The war already polarized Germany, and I cannot afford to be seen to be punishing the west after the fact. They starved, gentlemen. They died in droves because of the communists. To further quarantine them overtly is not something I can without risking a Communist resurgence."
A thin argument. But one that von Schleicher seems to acknowledge, by the way that he nods grudgingly at your words. Still, though, he's not someone to take that rebuke unchallenged. "What is to stop the state from partitioning the east as it will the west? The plebiscite is structured for a vote across all of Prussia, by each of the proposed Lander. What is to stop the republic from dismembering its greatest state?" Kurt von Schleicher is a man who would rather see you shot as a communist than talk to you, and it's evident in every fiber of his being as he speaks. He's angry, he's tense and the thought that his precious Kaiser's patrimony would be dismembered like this is something that he cannot tolerate.
"Indeed. And that does not even take into consideration the other side of it all." Von Hindenburg's fat finger stabs onto the map at Breslau, "You are allowing a vote in Silesia. At present the situation is far too volatile, and to allow Poles to discuss the fate of the Kingdom of Prussia is something beyond the pale here, Ebert."
You spread your hands as if helpless, injecting a hint of helpless frustration into your voice as you address von Hindenburg, "I do not govern as a king, Herr Generalfeldmarschall. I am elected and I have a coalition to satisfy. There are those that have an interest in reducing Prussian influence, whether that is from a constitutional view or a regional view." von Schleicher frowns while von Hindenburg nods, and von Seeckt is utterly still – yet you know that they're already thinking about Hugo Preuss the constitutional scholar and Matthias Erzberger the Catholic politician. As smoothly as you can, in a voice that's cracking a bit from use, you continue. "I proposed the vote and they demanded a wider one, so I assented. Better to get a quarantine, and in any case I have confidence in the eastern areas – in Old Prussia – voting the correct way."
"Indeed they shall," says von Seeckt, looking at you as though he knows the bullshit you're peddling, "But we still have the issue of a great legacy, a symbol, being cast aside. The army cannot simply stand by."
"We have already had a civil war, General." You point at the west of the map-table with its depiction of Hannover and Thuringia, tumbled unit counters lying like mounds of the dead atop the black lettering like crusted blood marking off places that became battlefields all those months ago, "The quarantine of the western parts of Prussia aims to keep another from taking place." Will the generals call your bluff and demand a walking-back? Will they threaten?
Von Schleicher glares at you for a moment, but the others are more contemplative. They know the stakes. It takes a single eternal moment, as old Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg stares at you as if attempting to see if you're bluffing or not...and he folds. "Very well. We can see about the vote, but that leaves the east. The army reserves the right to oversee those areas that were under Triumvirate jurisdiction, as you well know."
"The same for the west." Kurt von Schleicher's demand is met with a shaking of the head from the other two, and your offer of federal police to 'ensure a correct vote' is met with similar frowns. Well and so, at least now they're talking terms rather than threats.
Hans von Seeckt, General Staff intriguer that he is, takes a hand in breaking the deadlock. Long, thin fingers more suited to a pianist than a general trace an outline on the map, "That area, Chancellor, can be kept under emergency rule while the rest of Prussia returns to normal." He gestures at what is the Rhineland, Thuringia, Schleswig-Holstein, Hannover, Westphalia, and the western areas that are under French occupation, "The areas that were under KPD rule can be kept under emergency powers if we give them their vote. The east can be trusted to vote appropriately, considering its more stable nature."
Its more reactionary nature, you're tempted to say, but you don't. The field marshal leans over the table, all imposing bulk and medals, glaring at you as if to kill you by sight alone, "So tell us, Ebert, what can you offer? This is a great symbol that you are destroying, a symbol whose demise will threaten the stability of Germany. The army will need resources to maintain order under these circumstances."
Pick one concession: The plebiscite can be considered to be a qualified success, splitting off the aforementioned areas from Prussia, as per the map in the Apocrypha threadmark. The east is untouched, and the army has ensured that those areas have voted to remain with Prussia.
[]Berlin Garrison: The garrison at Berlin is at present the Infantry Division 'Deutschland', and that has the army's staff rather disgruntled. They propose to 'reinforce' the capital with the units drawn from the Black Reichswehr, headquartering that organization in Berlin, and moving the Deutschland Division to Stettin where it has more 'firing ranges and facilities for training'.
[]State of Emergency: The western Lander will begin their new lives under a state of emergency run by General von Schleicher, who aims to violently suppress communist agitation through liberal use of the army and army-backed paramilitaries. This will also hand the army substantial power to shape local politics in this area, so be wary. The army expects this state of emergency to last at least six months, subject to negotiation after that, and to last no longer than eighteen months.
[]Disbanding the SiPo: Rather than completely dismantle the organization as the French want, fold it into the Black Reichswehr and the army-affiliated Freikorps and Reserve units. Their equipment will now be held at army garrison posts and they will report to the army's Military Police Liaison Corps, allowing the army to effectively control the Interior Ministry's primary armed force. On the other hand, the French want the SiPo disbanded in any case – perhaps it is better to have them around in some form or another?
--[X]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. ---[X] 20+5(×5=25) = 25 Budget, 45 reparations.
Paris
October 2nd, 1920
The train pulls into the Gare d'Austerlitz from the east, plastered with flags of the garrison units in the German Rhineland and with bearded poilus riding aboard. It flies a German flag, a new and different one from the Kaiser's old black-red-white, and when it pulls smoothly into the Parisian railway station there is a crowd waiting to meet it. They crane their heads, jostling one another and elbowing for room, for now is the time to see the fruits of French victory.
The yellow lights of the station shine buttery-gold off the bullion that the soldiers haul out, chests open for a moment to give the crowd a glance at the payments from Germany. Buttery gold and lustrous, adorned with the Kaiser's whiskered face frowning out onto victorious France. There is silence for a moment, as if stunned that the money would even come, before there is a susurrus of whispering – just this much? Simply a few chests of gold, as recompense for the millions who shed blood in the fields of France from the Marne to Verdun, for the millions of dead and maimed from France and her empire?
The ugly note in the crowd's voice is forestalled when the captain in command of the detachment announces that the first shipment has come in.
The first.
Perhaps the German may still pay, and perhaps the victory may not be a hollow one. For there are still poisoned fields in France, wherein lie a lost generation.
Strike More Than Two: Labor militancy in the United States is at an all-time high, with workers in the great industrial cities of the U.S. steel belt downing tools and striking in protest at wage cuts, wage freezes and firings. Industrialists have retaliated by using threats, bribes, African-American strikebreakers – most notably in Chicago – and less salubrious methods such as outright thuggery to prevent workers in America from winning what has turned into a battle of attrition. The gains made by workers in all nations during the war were mirrored in the United States, with wages at war-related plants rising throughout the war thanks to America's role as the Allied foundry and factory. Those gains are now threatened by peacetime and its glut of labor, and that in turn has forced the American working class to mount a desperate attempt to keep what it has gained. It remains to be seen how far things will go. Unrest has already led to violence in the U.S., with police, and legislation to curtail labor militancy in wartime has already severely hurt the American labor movement's organization.
One Last Loan: The House of Morgan and its allies have agreed – apparently after much negotiation and cajoling – to underwrite one last bond issue by the French and British Governments on the New York money markets. The French government in particular is utterly out of gold and bullion barring a last emergency reserve, and has borrowed to the hilt to finance its war effort. With Germany being seen as possibly too devastated to pay out its reparations in full, France is viewed as a major credit risk. Britain by contrast has far more rope but is also heavily indebted – without the House of Morgan and other financiers underwriting what is in effect a rollover loan to ensure that their debtors don't go into bankruptcy, the Allied situation would be parlous indeed. This last loan is already risky, with capital in the U.S. having been soaked up by the Liberty bonds and interest rates moving ever upwards. It remains to be seen how the bond auction goes.
Congressional Debt Politics: With France being utterly out of money and floundering, with Russia certain to default on its war debts, the United Kingdom apparently mooted at one point a unilateral declaration of forgiveness for debts owed to it by France and the Russian Empire. That would have been an implicit condemnation of the American insistence on all debts being paid in full and potentially have paved the way to renegotiation of Allied war debts – which in turn may have allowed the reparations for Germany to be renegotiated. That has been scrapped by a Congress that is irate at the idea of Britain shaming America into forgiving debt – with Wilson incapacitated by a stroke and the executive weak, new legislation forbids unilateral debt renegotiation by the Presidency, at least with respect to Allied war debts. The U.S. Congress seems to believe that beggaring its allies makes for good foreign policy.
Smug Isolation: America is seeing a presidential election that is not at all the hotly contested race that many expected – Woodrow Wilson is out of the running and the Republican challenger has managed to successfully blame much of America's circumstances on the other party. While the Republicans were one of the most interventionist parties in 1916, the current president-elect is Warren Harding who won on what seems to be a platform of returning to normalcy. America has tasted war and intervention abroad, and has not found it to her liking. The Democratic candidate James Cox carried little more than the Southern U.S., and his running mate Franklin D. Roosevelt was little use in securing the North against a strong Republican opposition. Both of the Democratic politicians appear to be political lightweights, and America seems destined for isolationism – except when its business and monetary interests are threatened. War debts are and will remain a major issue.
Interest Rate Rises: The French bond issuances and emergency credit extensions of 1920 have since dried up with the end of President Wilson's policies, ever since his stroke. While an emergency extension of $200m was granted in April of 1920 and further deferrals of interest payments were authorized by rolling interest into principal, American patience has run out now that peace has come to Germany. The German payments during the last half of 1920 have been too little to aid a vastly indebted France, and France has thus had to resort to the money markets. The New York money markets have thus bought French bonds at the punishing interest rate of eight and a half percent, and with one last French bond issuance in the wings, it is not clear now whether Paris will be able to maintain financial independence or whether it will have to appeal to London to underwrite one last loan. Whatever the case, America is not the friend it once was.
Consolidation: The Mexican Revolution came to an end in May of 1920, and since then the policy of President Alvaro Obregon has been one of consolidation. Targeted concessions to major interest groups, eroding the power of the ultraconservative Mexican officer corps, and land reform to satisfy the peasantry and populists. The Mexican state has also begun what seems to be a tilt towards the USSR, with murals portraying Lenin and Trotsky on the walls of state buildings and Mexican government propaganda taking on a far more left-leaning tone that it had earlier. While American pressure seems to be attempting to keep Mexico from 'turning left', it has as yet done nothing visibly – and the actions of President Obregon have been no more than words and wind. At present, Mexico is occupied with the land reforms promised in its 1917 Constitution, although that may change.
South America
Possible Continental Recession: The economies of many nations in South America rely on commodity exports – such as Brazil and Chile, for instance. The Brazilians made a great deal of money selling sugar, coffee and rubber to the Anglo-French alliance, reaping the benefit of a drastic reorganization of British shipping to rationalize distance-fuel costs and evade German commerce raiding. The Chileans made a killing on copper, used for shell drive bands and wiring of all sorts. Both of those have seen demand drop postwar, as nations either tighten their belts and cut down on war production, or as nations find alternative routes in peacetime and attempt to erect tariff barriers like the British Imperial Preference scheme. Commodity prices are diving as more and more raw material enters the markets, and the nations of South America will not be able to reap the profits they once did. Is a recession brewing?
Southern Giant: The most healthy-seeming economy in the Southern Cone at present is Argentina. The Argentine national bank, the BNA, has pursued a policy of allowing private banks to shed risk and use potentially unreliable securities as collateral, which has allowed Argentina to weather the commodity downturn as cheap credit allows its producers to stay open for the drop, as it were. Large Argentine gold stocks, built up over the war as food exports such as beef and wheat, have been an invaluable buffer for Argentina, and food products have seen less of a drop than directly war-related materiel recently. The southern giant in South America seems to be the brightest spot in the continent, at least for the moment.
Not Yet Pink: A number of Communist parties have been recently established in South America, drawing now on the Argentines as much as the Soviets for inspiration. There seems to be a greater emphasis on peasant organization and on militant opposition to the state than there was even in Germany, and that has been theorized to be due to the more autocratic nature of some governments in the area. Labor unrest has as yet not been as much of an issue as it is in the United States, however, as more workers are organized things may change. Clandestine organizing has already been a major focus of police activity in the more autocratic nations of South America. Notable are organizations such as the Chilean Communist Party that have grown a great deal, in spite of the economic gains made by the region during the war. It is clear that it is not only absolute gains but relative that fuel unrest - inequality is a powerful engine.
Middle East and North Africa
Mandated Lines: The mandates that were dictated to the Ottoman Empire at the signing of the Treaty of Sevres and were once occupied by the Allies in wartime are now firmly established under League of Nations 'supervision'. French troops have raised the tricolor in Syria, the British have taken Mesopotamia, Palestine and Iraq, and the Arabs have been tossed no more than a few puppet kingdoms and an independent Hejaz. The French have already started to reach for border gains in Syria, with the Ottomans occupied in attempting to put down the Turkish Revolution. French troops have begun to probe the border and skirmish with the troops of the Turkish National Assembly, simultaneously aiding the Ottomans and securing more territory for the Mandate.
Khaki Thinned: The 'serried ranks of khaki' that took the Middle East are being sent home, as Britain demobilizes her conscripts and the Indian Army to lessen the fiscal strain of 1920. The Secretary of State for War has agreed – in a public statement – to cut the garrison force for Mesopotamia and the puppet Kingdom of Iraq to no more than six infantry battalions by 1924, claiming that the use of bomber aircraft can compensate for shortcomings in troop number. Whatever the case, it is clear that Britain's new territories are not an unalloyed gain, and that their costs seem to be forcing the Empire to compromise. There is a similar drawdown of British forces across the Middle East, barring garrisons at Suez, Aden, Palestine and Iraq. The bulk of the troops in Iraq and Aden seem to be from the British Indian Army, to boot.
Egyptian Independence Inconclusive: Egyptian magnates and independence movement leaders have been in talks with the British Government to allow Egyptian independence – complete independence – since last year, but the talks continue to grind on. Egypt is restive and is wealthier, stronger and more populous than the other nations in Britain's Middle Eastern sphere – should she rise, Britain will have major issue on its hands. As a result, voices in London continue to call for a compromise solution. The question is, what compromise on independence will Egyptians accept? Britain wishes to retain control of the Canal Zone and canal corporation, to retain control of Egyptian finances to ensure that Egypt pays her debts, and Britain wishes to have a say in Egyptian foreign policy. All of this runs counter to Egyptian nationalists' desires - they remember that British warships shelled Alexandria and invaded their nation to take control of Egyptian finances and trade, and the seemingly abstract concession of a debt commission has symbolic weight.
The Treaty: The signing of the Treaty of Sevres has dismembered the Ottoman Empire and formally deposed its government in the Middle East outside of Anatolia, and the signing of the Treaty has made the current Turkish government seem no more than a puppet. The Caliph and his ministers seem to be a relic of a past age, paraded out before Istanbul to say what the Allies want them to say, and the end result seems to be a major defection of Turkish nationalists to the side of the National Assembly and Mustapha Kemal.
Revolutionary Warfare: The Turkish Revolution grinds on, with more and more defections from the old Ottoman government to the National Assembly. Were this solely a war between Turks, it would be a quick one – it is not. The Turks have to now contend with an invasion from Greece, which began in early 1920 and has rapidly advanced inland into Anatolia against what seems to be no more than token Turkish opposition. However, notes from the few agents that still report to the Wilhelmstrasse in that area say that the retreat is an organized one, and the Turks are drawing the Greeks away from their strongholds on the coast of Anatolia into more favorable terrain. At the same time, a peace between Turkey and Armenia has secured the National Assembly's flank – it is clear that Mustapha Kemal is planning something significant to deal with the Greeks.
AN: Part II with Asia, Europe and so on tomorrow or day after. Once votes close here, I will be able to write out the European portions of the news update and then summarize the turn in a German News update. Then we have Turn 2. Voting remains open.
News of the World, Part II: Or: Ebert Gets An Ulcer
News of the World, Part II: Or: Ebert Gets An Ulcer
The Entente Cordiale
Ireland Ablaze: The Irish Republican Army has been a constant thorn in the British side throughout 1920, and the hamfisted British response to the IRA has been anything but helpful in stabilizing Ireland. A series of ambushes, sniper attacks, bombings and steady political agitation raised tensions and the hackles of British occupation forces, which in turn resulted in the imposition of martial law across wide swathes of Ireland. That, together with the deployment of recently demobilized servicemen as an Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary and the use of the so-called 'Black and Tans' in maintaining order has led to the war being more an occupation than a policing action – in the UK's own backyard. This culminated in the burning of Cork in 1920, where an Auxiliary unit went 'wild' after being ambushed and looted or burned a large chunk of Cork city. Ireland's war grinds on, and the quick, clean victory that Britain wanted and needed is nowhere in sight.
London Indebted: Interest rate spikes in the American money markets have cut deeply into the postwar government's spending plans, and have in turn resulted in loud calls for cuts in imperial defence to compensate for the increased burden of national debt payments. London can afford to pay down its debts – unlike France, Britain has the assets, the manpower and the markets to earn its way back to solvency – but London's room for maneuver has been severely curtailed by the American insistence that all war debts have to be repaid. The British money markets are not what they were in 1913, and the financial center of gravity appears to have moved across the Atlantic to the soaring spires of New York City. Will it remain there? Only time will tell.
Debt Quarrels: Tensions are rising between the Allies on the topic of war debt repayment, and Britain is pivotal to the discussion in a very different way from France. The UK was the guarantor of Allied debt after 1915 until the American entry into the war, and stood as backer for the majority of Russian war loans issued on the New York money markets. In addition to that, the UK lent heavily to its fellow allies, and those loans are a drag on London's balance sheet. The Americans insist on priority of repayment, while London is far more sympathetic to France than the Americans are – that alone is one major issue. The second? The Russians borrowed heavily and the new RSFSR does not intend to pay up, leaving London holding the bag. Either some agreement is reached about the Russian war debt or London will see a minor crisis. For now, it has the reserves to weather this, but that will severely test British solvency.
Balancing the Trident: In 1914, the Royal Navy was the world's largest and most capable naval force, a fleet that was second to none. The Royal Navy has submitted an ambitious build plan to the UK Treasury to retain that crown, in order to knit Britain's far-flung maritime empire together and ensure imperial defence. The Treasury took one look at this build plan, involving multiple new battlecruisers, super-battleships and escorts along with the completion of the existing war orders, and threw a fit. The UK cannot maintain its arms race, and that has spurred whispers in Parliament about going along with the proposed American disarmament plan – the question is how to disarm? Should Britain and America come to an agreement, the assumption seems to be that the rest of the world will follow, at least with respect to their navies.
Instability in France: France is seeing a debt crisis impact its reconstruction efforts, as German materiel deliveries fall short thanks to the German Civil War and its aftermath – gold has gone to pay off the Americans and the labor provided by German PoWs over the course of 1919-20 has dried up. What is left is the use of German reparations and payments to aid in rebuilding northern France, which is devastated – France cannot borrow easily, and that spurs more demands on Germany. The city of Paris is seeing the debt crisis impact its municipal services, as the loans it secured in 1919-20 have a higher rate of interest than before. Similar cuts have been seen in second-tier cities of France. A strike wave across the nation by workers who aim to keep their wage increases or demand more due to rising inflation does not help the nation at all.
Inflationary Pressure: Much like the other combatant nations, France and Britain are now seeing inflationary pressure as price controls and rationing is relaxed and the war-workers who have money to burn are able to spend. This is in turn eating away at the spending power of the bulk of the working class and the demobilized soldiery, who are restive as a result. The workers want to retain their livelihood and the industrialists do not want to hike wages due to the current situation in global markets – the end result has been rising labor unrest in Britain and France. Less so in Britain, buoyed as it is by a minor economic boom in the wake of the war's end.
French Army Restructuring: The cost of recent campaigns in Syria and the Middle East, together with the superb performance of the French colonial infantry both during and after the war, have prompted a heated debate about the fate of the French Army. With the war won, all parties seem to agree on slashing the army budget, but there are those on the French right who are now pressing for a more colonial army, one that draws on Senegalese, North Africans and Legionnaires to fill its garrisons in the Mediterranean and abroad. This is the brainchild of one General Charles Mangin, who has for a large chunk of his career been an advocate for the Senegalese soldier – when led by white officers, of course.
Western Europe
Neutrality Shocks: The Netherlands had a good war, selling to both sides and acting as the German window to the world. They were Herbert Hoover's headquarters for a brief period as the Great Humanitarian fed the displaced and homeless in the war's wake. With the collapse of German purchasing power thanks to the Civil War and the glut of commodities on the global market, the Dutch are seeing a rapid drop in export earnings and their colonial market is too underdeveloped to compensate. The result is a major shock to the Dutch economy, one that will last for no little time.
Feasibility Over Revenge: The Belgians are possibly the most devastated party in the war, a nation that was under German occupation for most of the war's duration as well as a battlefield. Belgian workers were forced to supply the German war machine, electrified fencing kept the Belgians in place and at times killed them, and German reprisals were harsh. That is in addition to the wasteland that much of Flanders has become. Belgium cannot finance its own reconstruction and thus requires materiel and money from Germany – the French demands are thus viewed as insane, in that they will jeopardize German ability to pay and therefore leave Belgium without recourse. The Belgians want a payment plan that aims for a total almost as large as France, but spread over a far larger time horizon – initial tranches are large, later ones are smaller and the plan aims to complete payment by the far-off date of 1950. While Belgium cannot get this past its allies, it shows the direction of thought that Belgium is taking.
A Good War and Peace: Denmark has been the primary supplier of food for Germany since the war and the British blockade began, and continued to do that task in peacetime and during the Civil War. Denmark is thus flush with German gold and industrial goods, and is able to splurge a little on its public programs in the wake of World War I. Alone of the neutrals in Western Europe and unlike even Sweden who has seen iron ore exports to Germany drop precipitously, Denmark has had a good war and a good peace.
Southern Europe
Moves to the Rif: Spain has seen unrest and border skirmishes in Morocco as its assertive policy of colonization and 'raising the flag' have met with stiff resistance from the indigenous population. Spanish infantry are poorly paid and poorly trained, and have come off worse in recent skirmishing than the Moroccans. Spain has thus decided to beef up its elite colonial infantry, Moroccan Regulares and the newly raised Spanish Legion, and arm them with the suspiciously German-pattern equipment being produced by SECN courtesy of Vickers. It would seem that Spain is set on advancing into the Rif in spite of opposition and in spite of the cost.
Italy Ablaze: The so-called Biennio Rosso, the two Red Years, are going to soon turn three – the Italian Army ran headfirst into an organized unit of former conscripts when clearing Milan and ran into barricades in the dense maze of Turin's old city – the end result has been inconclusive, bloody urban warfare. Further strikes across Italy's industrial north and wildcat labor action in the southern ports has fueled a sense of being besieged in the Italian Government, and caused a split in the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). Some of the PSI have openly backed the workers of the Italian north, and the rest are now pointedly standing aside – and the Confederation of Trade Unions has decided to tap its strike funds to keep the northerners in food and fuel for the winter. The hesitancy that the state had about sending in infantry allowed the workers to fortify, and now the only option is a long siege – or a heavy bombardment. Both options have been unpalatable enough to prevent their use, but events may force the Italians' hand.
Balkan Chaos: The Balkans are a chaotic mess as newly independent nations begin to assert themselves and violate the Treaty of Trianon's protections for ethnic minorities in the bargain. The Croats and Serbs are busy quarreling and outright skirmishing over Bosnia, the Bulgarians and Greeks and everyone in the area are salivating over Macedonia, and the Albanian nationalists have taken the preoccupation of Italy with domestic matters as a chance for full independence from the Italian sphere. Old Questions – the Bosnian, the Macedonian – are now nice and lively again, turning the Balkans into a festering cauldron that Germany is well advised to stay out of.
White Terror: The Hungarian Soviet Republic fell in the first half of 1920, and the newly restored Kingdom of Hungary has seen a reactionary terror that seeks to wipe out any trace of the socialist left that spurred the Hungarian Revolution. At least four hundred have been given summary trials and executed, more have been executed without trial, and the bulk of the victims appear to be Jewish. While the ebbing Terror of 1920 is far less than last year, it has still seen hundreds dead throughout Hungary.
Austrian Woes: The Austrian economy remains in the toilet as the surrounding region is unable to act as a market and a supplier for industrialized Austria. Austria moreover is unable to even trade effectively with Germany due to war damage and Italy due to the ongoing Italian crisis – without partners and a great-power patron, the Christian Socialists of Austria have been unable to deal with its economic woes. This has allowed a rising far-right to make its voice heard, streetfighting in Vienna and demanding an Anschluss with Germany as a means of at least ensuring that Austria is not eternally an economically moribund minnow.
Central Europe
Silesian Simmer: Rolled: 38, pass: Silesia remains in a state of flux as German federal police have mounted an impressive series of raids throughout the state intent on finding and disposing of arms and ammunition hidden by the Polish Military Organization. That has brought the SiPo into conflict with Polish border troops and the Polish underground, as well as bringing protests from the governments of France and Poland. While the situation in Silesia has stabilized for the moment, the French have already demanded the partial withdrawal or partial disarmament of federal police and paramilitaries from zones under plebiscite, claiming that the presence of German state units is jeopardizing the fairness of the vote. The Poles are in the meantime overstretched and preoccupied with the results of the Russian campaign, and therefore not in a position for forcing the issue.
East Prussian Tensions: Border clashes and tensions over East Prussian territory with Poland are rife, and the garrison in East Prussia has already seen Polish regulars backing up the insurgents in places. They are careful not to push too far, but they are pushing – and the reprisal actions taken by local army commanders is not aiding in restoration of order. German ultranationalist paramilitaries have already committed atrocities, and while the course of 1920 has seen some stabilization on that score, the SiPo are overstretched and the army unable or unwilling to fully restore order. The Poles are angry and denouncing 'anti-minority' actions by Germany. The plebiscites scheduled for 1920 in East Prussia have been held and are being held as we speak, but the mere presence of German garrisons in disputed areas is drawing claims of voter intimidation. Given the status that East Prussia has in the Prussian mind, and the fact that the local garrison is primarily right-wing paramilitaries and the Reichswehr, those claims are possibly with foundation.
Miracle on the Vistula: The Polish Army succeeded in taking the Russians in the flank as they moved up to take Warsaw, as the bulk of the Russian Cavalry split off from the main body to besiege Lwow rather than keep their station. That threw the Russians into disarray and allowed the Poles to push them back from Warsaw, although deft generalship from the Russians turned what was a rout into an organized fighting retreat – the Poles have won and pushed the Russians out of most of western Poland but are now exhausted. The Russians for their part are apparently willing to negotiate – they have already sent out feelers asking for a peace deal. This has been accomplished with substantial German aid that is being airbrushed from the histories, to be replaced with the French arms and advisors that arrived on the eve of battle. While the Poles are still unwilling to be reasonable, some of the more pragmatic ones are now willing to talk. Pilsudski is now a legend in his nation, for better or for worse.
Russia
Doctrinal Disputes: The defeats in Poland have made the Russians sit up and take notice of the fact that the working class of Europe did not in fact rise up in revolution but instead picked up guns and shot back at the Bolsheviks. While some of the proponents of a more internationalist approach have published about the German War and the rising of the KPD as evidence of the revolutionary fervor brewing in Europe, that faction has taken a heavy loss in the wake of the Polish War. Those who were deeply involved in the planning for a proletarian Poland have had to admit that their approach was perhaps premature, notably Leon Trotsky.
Decossackization: The process of decossackization and de-clericization in western Russia and Ukraine continues under Yakov Sverdlov, who has declared the Cossacks and priesthood to be enemies of the revolution. The priests have either fled or remained to organize some last hopeless resistance, and those who remained are the most hardline elements of the Russian Orthodox Church. Together with the Cossacks, they have no hope of resistance and are being targeted by an ever growing RSFSR. Every incident where the Cossacks leave civilians dead is another propaganda victory for the Bolsheviks, and every victory the Whites win is another victory too dearly bought. All that is left is the dying and the purging, not the war.
The Old Boss Is Back: The Caucasus have been formally secured by the Red Army, and Russian gold is now flowing across the Caucasus to the Turkish National Assembly. The RSFSR seems to consider Mustapha Kemal to be a useful buffer against the capitalists and the Ottomans, and if he wins then so much the better – for that reason then, the Russians are sending arms, rubles and expertise. As for the rest of the Caucasus, the Russians are busy restoring order and GOC of the Russian Eleventh Army seems to be attempting to augment his troops with locally raised Muslim units to fight a brewing insurgency in the North Caucasus. The two murshid of the Naqshebandi Sufi brotherhood – Imam Najmudin of Gotzo and Sheikh Uzun Haji of Salty have declared a holy war against the Soviets. They are not likely to succeed.
Solicitation: The RSFSR has been devastated by the war and by the Russian Civil War, which is still ongoing. Railways have been torn up or run beyond any hope of useful operation, roadways are destroyed shadows of what they once were, infrastructure has been burned to avoid falling into enemy hands, machinery has been looted or smashed, and the peasantry have been terrorized by almost every side. To repair this will take a wealth of expertise and industrial machinery that Russia does not have and cannot produce in any timely manner – what she has instead is gold. The Soviets have already sent out feelers to their neighbors regarding the export of industrial tooling for gold, although to formally recognize the RSFSR would be incredibly imprudent for anyone wishing to maintain a working relationship with France and Britain. It is not as yet an option for Germany, not in the wake of the civil war – not when the leadership of the KPD fled to Russia.
Famine Brewing: The black market in grain and foodstuffs in the Russian Empire grew and grew during the war and has metastasized to everywhere in the RSFSR due to inefficiencies and wartime issues in food distribution – not to mention the rather punitive nature of War Communism when levied on the peasantry. That, combined with a harsh frost this winter, has led to a spike in black-market food prices and what appears to be hoarding by the peasantry. There may be famine in Russia this coming year of 1921.
Asia
Dominion Denied: India was denied Dominion status in 1919 and given no more than a promise of 'working towards attaining the development necessary to attain Dominion status' under British governance and increasingly repressive viceregal rule. The treatment of the Ottoman Caliph under the Treaty of Sevres has been the spark to the tinder in this regard, driving Muslims in India to the streets in a mass movement that has been rapidly capitalized on by the rest of the INC. A wave of strikes, protests and civil disobedience have grown and grown, and Britain has already tried repression once – will they try it again?
Rulers of the East: The Russians have begun pushing east and have easily broken past White Russian lines in the Urals and Central Siberia. Japanese forces have already begun to pull out, leaving no more than token garrisons in Eastern Siberia and substantial forces in the Pacific Coast – but the Japanese remain intent on shipping arms to the Whites in the area. They would rather not have a Soviet neighbor, it would seem. The mounting cost of the Siberian intervention is straining Tokyo's finances, and there have already been rice riots in Japan in 1918. The nation requires peace and a cutback in military spending, especially as peacetime brings its own domestic woes and blessings. For many politicians in Japan, it is time to reap a peace dividend.
Imperial Compromise: Versailles saw the Chinese delegation deployed to foil a Japanese push into China during the negotiations, but at the same time the Allies were very willing to cast that delegation aside when Japan acceded to a compromise. The Empire of Japan is now a member in equal standing with the other powers who administer China's national finances and debt, restricting Chinese borrowing and debt to credit lines that are now also subject to Japanese oversight. This is no small concession, and while it has preserved the Open Door in China, it has also enraged Chinese nationalists.
Sales and Marketing: We're not sure why Krupp of all people forwarded this, but apparently the Vickers Corporation has opened a new sales, storage and assembly premises in Shanghai for artillery, ammunition tooling and small arms. They seem to want to capitalize on the recent instability in China that has come in the wake of the Zhili War.
AN: Turn 2 probably Wednesday. If I did a dumb with this update let me know. Subtext is present, discussion recommended and discussion keeps the quest going. Props to @LonelyWolf999 for giving good discussion above.
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:
→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.
→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.
→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:
→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.
→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.
→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.
-[X] The East Prussian Sore(x2): 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. (x2)
Rolled: mouli: 2D100 → 28(6 +22)
Report to the Reichstag: An Overstretch of the Security Forces Filed by the Interior and Justice Ministries on March 23rd, 1921
We file this report in response to the recent attempts at restoration of order in the East, particularly in areas of East Prussia that are contested by Poland and formerly under occupation by Triumvirate forces. The border areas that were to be adjusted via League of Nations plebiscite were those that immediately abutted the area of Soviet control in northern Poland early in 1920, and thus were also home to a substantial Freikorps and irregular force commitment from Triumvirate high commanders. This was intended to fulfill the dual role of restoration of order in contested areas as well as deterrence against Russian incursions across the border in the name of 'liberating' East Prussia for the KPD. These forces were primarily composed of East Prussian junkers who were too old or too young for conscription into Triumvirate forces, and thus tended to be heavy-handed in the methods that were used for restoration of order. One example of this can be seen in the attached interview with former Major Klaus Hermann Hartwig, who served in the imperial army from 1890 to 1915 before retiring with honors. He notes that a significant influence on the counter-partisan tactics that he utilized in suppression of the Polish Military Organization were drawn from those used by Lothar von Trotha in the East African conflict and the German Army's tactics in Belgium. The question then arises – well and so, now that there has been use of the army's old methods, how effective were they?
The answer, as it turns out, is not very. The PMO has had a ready supply of recruits in those Polish-majority districts on the border thanks to the ethnically and linguistically targeted measures that were pursued by the Triumvirate. While wholesale shooting on the scale of East Africa was deemed unnecessary – and thankfully so, for this is not Africa and we do not need African methods – the commanders in the area made extensive use of hostage-taking, forced quartering and summary execution of partisans. The Poles in turn tended to radicalize in consequence, and the PMO thus waged a considerable campaign in the border zones before its suppression by German border troops in the ending stages of the war – and the start of September 1920.
With order restored on the border, then, one might ask: What is left? We have yet to fully restore order in the contested districts, with voter intimidation rife and the PMO having recently bombed the police station in Ortelsburg last week. The Freikorps and Grenzschutz in the area have in turn resorted to reprisals on suspected PMO collaborators, along with a policy of sabotaging the plebiscite through the use of intimidation, ID checks and checkpoints and other means that have irritated the French Army representative in the area. While East Prussia is not degenerating into the chaos that we feared, its situation remains uncertain – the PMO still being able to operate and the Grenzschutz engaging in disproportionate retaliation means that the vote is not likely to be as smooth as we wish.
Underhanded tactics may be required.
Vote at turn end, three votes to make in total this turn.
-[X] 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. mouli: D100 → 9696
Close enough
Twenty Five Years: A Retrospective Taken from Vorwarts, February 13th, 1921
Before the Great War, the labor movements of Germany had only just freed themselves from the chains of outlawry with which the governments of the empire had attempted to suppress them, but at the same time as we all know from bitter experience, never rose high in imperial governance. The structures of the old imperial state prevented any expression of proletarian grievance and prevented the masses from influencing policy, by design and by action of the elite class. Yet the movement grew, from the socialist unions of northern Germany and the East to the Christian comrades of the Ruhr to our more radical comrades in the Rhineland, the movement grew to encompass the millions of workers in Germany by the eve of the Great War.
The war changed all that. The war forced the socialist unions as well as the Christian ones into the arms of the state, into supporting the war effort to preserve Germany from the consequences of a victor's peace imposed by the British and French. We did our utmost to do that, and we failed. This patriotic policy divided the movement, and the resultant 'wild' strikes from workers and organizers who opposed an accommodation with the state were increasingly troublesome for the war effort and the party as a whole. This split would fester and grow into the splitting of the old SPD, the formation of the errant USPD and the more malevolent KPD whose rising in the west made the civil war far worse than it had any reason to be.
In 1918, at the time of the peace, though, that was still in the future. The Revolution had dethroned the monarchy, demolished the elite structures that kept any trace of mass influence on state policy, and allowed the Party to promise a fundamental rebalancing of the role of labor in society and the economy. That was derailed by the peace of 1919, the Spartakusaufstand, and the civil war that followed in 1920, but with the war's end the time has come to deliver…
Continued in Gustav (II)
-[X] Reorganizing the Reichsbank(х2) : 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.
Rolled: mouli: 2D100 → 101(34 +67)
[Hidden roll for [redacted] on table: Nat 1]
Result: Schacht
Berlin, 1921
Hjalmar Schacht is a man under a cloud that he feels is perhaps undeserved. He has always been something of an outsider, named as he is for an American and now working as a business-friendly economist in the government of the SPD. He is a man to whom grievance has come easily, yet the charges against him are not that hollow. Schacht knows this, which is why he was so quick to take his party leader's offer of a prestigious post in the Reichsbank – running the Reichsbank – rather than continue to attempt to 'make it' in the more lucrative world of German commercial banking. For it was Hjalmar Schacht who funneled army occupation funds through his old employer, the Dresdner Bank, and it was for that scandal that the SPD and Zentrum moved to block his candidacy – the DDP made sure he got it, and for that the banker knows that he owes them a great deal. For all that he might disagree with Hugo Preuss, for the moment Schacht will be a good soldier and work to stabilize the economy. Once that is done, then he will have some more freedom, or so he thinks to himself as he moves into a tiny office in the Treasury and begins a process of phone calls, barked orders and chain-smoking.
What did he do? He sat on his chair and smoked in his little dark room which still smelled of old floor cloths. Did he read letters? No, he read no letters. Did he write letters? No, he wrote no letters. He telephoned a great deal – he telephoned in every direction and to every German or foreign place that had anything to do with money and foreign exchange as well as with the Reichsbank and the Finance Minister. And he smoked. We did not eat much during that time. We usually went home late, often by the last suburban train, travelling third class. Apart from that he did nothing.
-Secretary of Hjalmar Schacht, Fraulein Steffeck, when asked about her work at the Reichsbank. (quote taken from wiki)
-[X] 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.
Rolled: mouli: D100 → 62
Grand Opening: The Berlin Institute for Business Cycle Research Taken from the newspaper Volkswacht
The Berlin Institute of Business Cycle Research opened this Monday, both to a fresh intake of students and for its first open house, an introduction of the institute and its missions statement to the public. The Berlin Institute is a small place at present, an institute headed by Dr. Ernst Wagemann with no more than a dozen faculty and a similar number of students who have relocated from other universities in Germany, but it has potential to grow. Its missions are inherently suited to the current economic and political climate, being the study of the economic boom-bust cycle, the factors influencing economic boom-bust cycles and inflationary pressure, and the applications of this research to state policy. The last mission statement is the most salient, for the current administration has a deficit of expertise thanks to the war and the civil war devastating the ranks of government. Any informed policy will likely draw from the Berlin Institute for data and supporting evidence, at least informed policy made by the Treasury. The Reichsbank with its newly independent comptroller Hjalmar Schacht is another domain entirely, concerned with the currency of the Republic and not with economic planning per se.
A New Source of Worry: Uncertain Missions from Berlin Taken from the newspaper Vorwarts
The Ebert Government has, apparently due to the uncertainty of the economy and pressure from the more bourgeois elements of the cabinet, acceded to the creation of a private policy institute in Berlin. Named the Berlin Institute for Business Cycle Research, it intends to 'study the German economy with respect to boom and bust cycles' and use those studies as aids in the planning and enacting of rational economic policy. While on the surface this is to be applauded – after all, rational economic planning would also mean investment in the working class rather than further handouts to those that own the factories – this can also mean very different and more concerning things. This was the same rhetoric used to justify the armaments program of 1917 and the attendant repression of labor, all in the name of rationalization for the common good. The Berlin Institute is staffed by those that have not had to labor in the war plants or the trenches, and their policy prescriptions will in all likelihood have a differing definition of 'common good' than the common people will. This newspaper is ready to be pleasantly surprised, but it cautions the Chancellery to keep the economists on a short leash and prevent a cult of expertise from developing around national economic policy.
AN: Short update today to get my hand in, so to speak. Larger ones over the weekend. Not the best update I've written, but something is better than nothing and this is half the turn.
-[X] Reparations(50): 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.
Autopass
The Belgian border is patrolled, but only lightly. Why bother, when the Allied armies are on the Rhine and Germany is demilitarized? So this railway crossing from Germany to the land it once occupied is manned, in the dead of night, by no more than two sleepy infantrymen. The Customs men are long since asleep, the barriers lowered for the night and the infantry raising them up for one single train and no more.
It's not as if there's much traffic from Germany in any case. The war saw to that. The same war that left the Belgian side of the border a devastated ruin, a flaming wreck of a nation that had sat supine under a jackboot for four long years. Perhaps the soldiers in the guard-house are from Louvain, that city with its great university library now left in ashes by German artillery and all too many of its houses have empty seats at the table every evening. Perhaps the Belgian border troops are from Antwerp, that great seaport of the Channel that was bombarded by the Royal Navy when German submarines used it to slip into the sea and harry London's merchant fleet. Perhaps the border guards are from Ghent, or Liege, or Brussels, or a dozen other towns and cities scarred by the War. By Germany.
At the end of the day, the fact remains the same. The infantry remain tense on border duty despite the victory, despite the reparations coming in, despite it all, out of muscle memory and bitter lessons learned over four bloody years. The night is cold and silent, and the younger of the two border troops can almost imagine the rattle, the rustle and soft whistle of wind through bones, so near to the electrified wire fence that the Germans built on the Belgian border. To keep the occupied labor inside.
The train comes in like a great black herald of the damned, whistling fit to burst one's eardrums and immense in the silent night. The barrier is raised and the train slows almost impossibly so, its immensity coming to a smooth halt with the caboose perhaps twenty meters from the border post.
Inspection is the terse demand made by the Belgian infantry, the younger man with bayonet at the ready and his older comrade not half as tense or nervous. The older infantryman boards and pokes around, a trunk begrudgingly opened for him by the German train guard revealing glittering gold stamped with the Kaiser's face.
The old soldier's hand slips to his rifle-strap on seeing that face. Perhaps he lost a sister, perhaps a mother, or a brother or father or son. He gazes at the bright gold for a long moment before nodding at the German and getting off the train, waving it on with its cargo of little golden Kaisers, Wilhelm come to Belgium in more comely form than 1914.
The two border guards sigh for a moment and light up a smoke, a relief from the cold night air. And so the spring rolls on.
-[X] Federal Police Reform (Urgent) (0/100) (х2): 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. mouli: 2D100 → 30(29 +1)
Report to the Reichstag: Federal Police Demilitarization Progress
This report is intended to inform the Reichstag on progress made by the Chancellery on the demilitarization of the Sicherheitspolizei (hereafter SiPo) and their reorganization as a purely civilian federal constabulary. This began in response to French demands at Treaty negotiations for a demilitarization of the SiPo, with the current makeup of the federal police – complete with armored cars, heavy weapons and brigade-level organization – deemed to near to the sort of organization that an army would have and therefore not in compliance with the Treaty of Versailles. The demilitarization and reduction in force of the SiPo was deemed to be best approached as a gradual process, and outright disbandment or hurried disarmament were decided by the Reichstag and Chancellery to be suboptimal. As the French have already levied separate objections to the existence and makeup of the Grenzschutz units intended for border patrol, we cannot simply fold the militarized components of the SiPo into the Grenzschutz and be done with it.
Instead, a phased reduction in force has been planned and begun in the western regions of Germany nearer to the Allied military's zone of occupation. Arms and armor formerly attached to SiPo commands are to be stored for later use. Multiple uses ranging from sale to the army have been mooted, but the government has decided on a plan of arms caches and arsenals attached to military district commands, under SiPo oversight. Rural Landespolizei are to act as sentinels for Inter-Allied Military Commission inspections and to aid in concealment of arms caches. Paramilitaries such as the Black Reichswehr are to act as heavy support for a disarmed or demilitarized SiPo.
Some among the SPD have raised the notion of a volunteer Landwehr akin to the Napoleonic era, perhaps in an attempt to proletarianize what was earlier viewed as a primarily bourgeois achievement. Such a Landwehr would not be possible as an organized, chartered arm of the state and would have to be formed 'bottom-up' using either political parties or associated organizations. The Reichswehr would have the final say on which paramilitaries are to act in support of the army. As a result, the so-called Volkswehr concept has promise in that it would open up a far broader base of reserve personnel for national defense, but it would undermine the traditional primacy of the Prussian officer corps – who even now dominate the Black Reichswehr to an astonishing degree.
The progress of disarmament has been as planned in the west, with the French representatives in western Germany willing to attest to compliance with treaty demands. In the east with its ongoing insurgencies, progress has been far slower – and the east will require more work than the west, due to the larger deployments of SiPo in the area. Further work is required, and a rapid withdrawal would lead to further incidents such as the Allenstein post office siege of last month – and the possibility of them going worse. The post office siege was defused with the arrest of the Polish partisans who had seized the central post office in the town, rather than the local garrison commander's preferred option of an urban assault supported by mortar fire in the city center.
Koenigsberg
March, 1921
Carl Friedrich Goerdeler is a man of few words, or at least of few words that are wasted. Every one of them has a purpose, even if they do not meet their mark. His coat is torn, his face is pinched and his eyes dart from the street ahead to the Baltic at his side as he walks along the promenade, a new look and a new setting for Goerdeler who did his degree at Tubingen. He pauses to check his watch, and nods to himself as he walks on more slowly – there are fifteen more minutes before his next appointment and plenty of time to get there. There is no need to hurry. It ill befits a candidate for mayor of Koenigsberg.
And there is much to think about besides.
The same madmen that raised a flag of revolt not a year ago have left, fled or rejoined the state that destroyed them in the field. Yet the government of East Prussia is not yet restored to sanity, to peace and freedom from the heavy hand of Ebert in Berlin. The newspapers still bleat with unctuous words of 'peace, land and bread', the editors speak of 'new management', and dependable old Hugenberg seems unable to do much about it at the moment. Some of them, of course, are terrified. The army, the same army that listens to Ebert in Berlin, is what protects them from the bombings and the reprisal raids carried out by the Consul Organization.
Goerdeler remembers the bombings. He suppresses a shiver for a moment, one that isn't coming from the cold Baltic breeze. He shakes his head and walks on, self-control asserting itself over the memories. There is a ways to go yet. Goerdeler walks with quick choppy steps, the march of someone long in the army. He served on the Eastern Front, on the same border that is now aflame from Poles and Jews causing unrest in Germany. He was there in 1917, with von Below and the XVII Army Corps, and he warned them of the Diktat to come – the only way to keep the east was the destruction of Poland as an effective state.
He shakes his head, berating himself for being premature. The Polish eagle so near to Danzig is preferable to the Red alternative. Perhaps things are better this way.
The docks that he comes to are packed, flat-capped dockworkers coming off the early-morning shift. Longshoremen and overseers and clerks, the odd chandler or crewman on the scruffy Baltic steamers, all of them shaking his hand or slapping him on the back as he forces a way through the crowd to a makeshift podium. Someone's piled two crates on one another, and ex-Captain Goerdeler climbs his way to the top before looking out at the crowd. Crowds are familiar, the nationalist dockworkers cheering him on – cheering the lone sane nationalist in the mayoral election – as familiar in their thick quilted jackets as the others who always walk with Goerdeler through life, through war and peace alike. Even absent the dockworkers or other constituents, there is Germany walking with him. There is stooped old Friedrich II with a veteran's haunted gaze, ascetic von Hardenberg with his quill and his laws, and Bismarck towering above them all with a knowing, arrogant gleam in his eye; there is Cicero in the shadows and Cato behind him, whispering, "I would not be beholden to a tyrant". And what a tyrant there is, in Berlin waiting to be born…
There were madmen here says Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, a finger pointed across the Baltic, and they ran. The crowd roars something, and he holds up a hand. Silence. There were madmen here and now they are dead or gone. The Reds in Berlin, the ones who signed the Diktat, call us comrades now that the madmen are gone. The madmen called us comrades as well. I ask you, people of Koenigsberg, are you their comrades?
The crowd jeers, and Goerdeler smiles as he speaks on. There is hope for the future yet, perhaps.
-[X] 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.
Rolled: mouli: D100 → 6
Italy Stability/RE rolls, 2d100 (One PSI, one royalist): Hidden
Payment is the bare minimum. Food/barter goods delayed in transit.
To the Foreign Ministry, to whomever this may concern,
I send word on behalf of the Arms Disposal Commission from the sunny slopes of the Tyrol. The arms that were to be disposed of have been sold to the Italians and contact has been reestablished with old friends in Austria, but things on the southern border remain a shambles. If anything, Austria has it worse than Germany at the moment – while we may have our starving and our freezing thousands, Austria does as well – and it does not have an empire or a nation to aid it in feeding and housing them. And Italy is no help in the matter there.
The Po Valley is aflame, and the anarchists have seized or sabotaged most major rail links from the Brenner Pass to the South of Italy. The Italian Army has begun to mobilize to crush what is a growing insurrection now that cordons have proven ineffective, but the difficulty of moving the arms we sold to the mustering zones at Ferrara render payment either paltry or slow. I would advise an aid mission to Austria soonest and arms to Italy if possible under Treaty restrictions, to avoid the south going Red.
We have not made much money from this deal.
Sincerely,
Gustav Krupp
Sensationalist, but perceptive if one reads the report attached to the letter. Krupp underestimates the Italians, though – the South of Italy will not turn Red easily, and troops from there have come to crush the insurrection.
-Addendum from the Wilhelmstrasse to the so-called 'Krupp Report', April 1921
AN: I will be dropping all projects save this and Creative Destruction, with a reboot of my Warhammer quest in the works maybe in the future. I plan to decouple somewhat from SV and spend more time IRL, now that COVID restrictions are lifted. I won't be off the site entire and this project will possibly be the only one updating for a while, but I think it'd be bettter for me to scale back writing quests.
I'll log in once a day or maybe twice a week. Questions should tag me.
-[X] Widerstand(х2): 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.
Rolled: mouli: 2D100 → 119(25 +94)
Added: +5 from @Baltika9, total 124. Clean pass.
Friedrich,
Burn this letter once you read it. You had asked me about the issues with the army – specifically the recent reorganization that von Seeckt has been undertaking – and I do agree with your concerns. The army appears to be increasingly dominated by Prussians or those who served in the Prussian units of the old army, and moreover by those who advocate the 'Wehrstaat' model. This force risks another outburst of war later on down the line, and another civil war is something that Germany cannot afford – we have won this one, but we cannot afford another. Influencing the army will not be easy, but what is necessary is often not. Your Red heart will no doubt be glad to learn that I have already been thinking on this matter.
Any attempt to influence the composition of the army risks coming across to the General Staff as a breach of the agreement that you and your revolutionaries made with General Groener in 1919. While von Seeckt may not like the agreement, he is holding to it in public and to move against him overtly will lead to a coup d'etat. The Deutschland division is not in Berlin to prevent one. You know the dangers of attempting to meddle with the Army and I will not further belabor them.
Yet we may not have a choice. The new theory among the officer corps, gaining traction, is the concept of a 'Wehrstaat' organized as Rathenau did for military industry. The whole of society devoted to victory in the next war. A totalitarian vision that would give them the status, the means that they require to wage a war of revanchism. While von Seeckt and the higher echelons of the army remain opposed to this and intend to set up a defensive force, the fact remains that the discussions around the Wehrstaat concept and the army's role in a future war of revanchism are not suppressed or censured. They appear to be a focus of Staff College problems and questions. Allowing the General Staff and von Seeckt in particular to stack the army with compliant North German and Prussian senior officers risks disaster for Germany in the long run – not all of us are as eager for the next war.
In addition to this, I have heard concerns about religious and regional polarization in the army, now that the old federal armies are disbanded to leave only the Reichswehr. The Reichswehr remains a Prussian force thanks to its small size, yet the Bavarian and Saxon armies are dissolved. With some of the most effective commanders in the civil war being those monarchs from southern Germany, we would do well to listen to their objections and attempt to make the Army hear them.
Of course, the general feeling is against such a confrontation. To alienate the army, the institution that is seen as a guarantor of stability and the institution that is seen as accomplishing victory in the civil war, would be alienating the public. To seek to influence personnel choices would very much be alienating the army, and the voices calling for more regional representation in the military are as yet only a whisper – they will not be sufficient. Leveraging Bavaria is likewise not an option – the Ordnungszelle is every bit as rightist as the Prussians, simply in a different manner – von Kahr will not aid us in this matter.
We cannot thus seek to increase the diversity in the army by leveraging regional magnates, and to influence recruitment and coveted officer appointments is tantamount to political suicide. If not actual suicide. I instead have planned to work through contacts – more sane contacts than your revolutionaries, people who Hans von Seeckt actually would respect and perhaps listen to. Or whom the army would listen to…
Yours,
Matthias Erzberger The Bendlerblock
February, 1921
The halls of the Bendlerblock are dark, now that the lighting has shut off and most of the little people – the clerks, the civilian staff, the janitorial staff – have gone home. The soldiers are still there, though, by lamplight rather than the blazing electric that the Navy had paid for, when they once used the Benderblock. The duty sergeant salutes you stiffly, formally, and you just nod back as you walk past the main door and back inside the dimly lit corridors. Another worthless meeting with the so-called government, barely able to govern. Wasted time, that would have been better spent here. You shake your head to yourself, passing through the foyer with its great painting of Alfred von Tirpitz and its granite flooring, as you move to the narrower office corridors at the back of the building. The stink of the Landwehr Canal wafts inside as you walk – nowhere as bad as the battlefield, but distasteful. If you weren't chief of the general staff you'd complain about it a bit more, but as it is you have to set an example.
As do we all, Hans comes the stray thought bubbling up like marsh-gas, like phosgene in the mud of the duckboards. We all might have to set an example, we all at the top – but you're damn sure that the civilians aren't. Erzberger with his little Catholic affectations and his shameless prostration before the Allies. Ebert with his destruction of the cultural heart of Germany, the institutions of the German state. At least Luxemburg is dead or gone. You hope for the former.
You're all that's left. Hans von Seeckt, Chief of the General Staff, the shepherd of the German Army. The one institution that did not disgrace itself, that retained its honor, that fought to the end until it could fight no longer. The pillar of the nation, the soul of the state. You are all that's left. And that means you have to keep it pure, keep it capable, until the day comes that Germany can take its place in the sun. Even if that day may be long after you're dead, long after the Treaty has been left in the dust.
The lights are dimmer near Ritter von Thoma's office, and you shake your head for a moment before entering – dark thoughts are all very well, but there is work to be done. Von Thoma rises to salute you before being waved to his seat, and you lean on the closed door for a moment before raising an eyebrow, "Do we have the trucks we need? Requisitioned and ready? We lost too many in wartime, Captain, and we need to make up the numbers fast."
He clears his throat for a moment, stolid square face and carefully trimmed hair covering a bald spot. Ritter von Thoma is a young man with old eyes, his desk strewn with the logistics and supply problems that you gave him as a test. "Herr General. We do, yes. The civilian authorities in Bavaria have been cooperative, confiscation has proceeded apace. Some of it requires compensation, some of it is from suspicious elements and does not."
"Suspicious elements?" You pin the younger man to his chair with a glare, "We're in the Benderblock, man. Spit it out."
He shrugs, "Poles, some of them. Some of it from the disarming SiPo. Some vehicles from the stockpile in the West that the KPD was working with. The government might have had plans, but we need those trucks for defense and transportation, so I had priority." He smiles thinly, "I had the backing of Minister-President von Kahr and General von Schleicher, and the Lander in the West are still under occupation. The government cannot say a thing, sir."
"As if they will." You nod sharply, the younger officer's done his work. "Good, good. Get them ready to ship east, we need the Black Reichswehr under arms and ready to move in case the Poles get frisky. You have to beat sense into a Pole before talking to him." Von Thoma salutes again, bags under his eyes and the mess that is his desk in this tiny office testifying to his state mind. And the hours he's put in.
Still. That's the case for all of you, now. You know that you're tired. For a moment you consider sitting down, before dismissing it – better not to be the terrifying old general too much. Let von Thoma think that you're leaving soon rather than making yourself comfortable in his office. Still, best to make sure he knows the stakes. "It's a lot of work, boy, but we don't have a choice. We've already lost enough. The goal is survival, and that means keeping to the treaty on the surface and being ready."
He nods once, eyes flitting for a moment from you to the portrait of Moltke the Elder on the wall. An old painting, if you're not mistaken – odd that it'd be in a former Navy office, but perhaps they know who their betters are after all. "So we wait, we bide our time and we prepare. And we survive. Keep Germany intact. Even if the scum in the Reichstag won't."
"Indeed." You drop your eyes to the papers on his desk for a moment, lingering on them enough that it's noticed. "That, Captain, is why we are moving trucks around. Why we're working with Ebert on his Reichsbahn. We need to move fast if we have no manpower. Survival is what is at stake, Captain."
"Sir." His eyes are a bit wide. You nod more to yourself than von Thoma, leaving for the last meeting you have in the knowledge that you've at least hammered home the stakes.
And maybe shared the same weight that you're been under since the war ended. Misery does love company.
Your second appointment of the evening is a regular one, always after hours when the civilian staff have gone home and the noncom and troopers on guard are those who you know. Werner von Blomberg at the Troop Office, the Truppenamt, is more senior than von Thoma, and nothing that you've given him was as a test or an exercise. His office is larger, with a plush carpet in the center and a desk behind that, large enough that you do like ragging him about it, "So how goes it in the palace of the Troop Office, von Blomberg?"
"Just as well as it does in the palace of the Chief of the General Staff, Herr General," comes the calm reply as Werner von Blomberg's thick fingers leaf through a thick manila folder, tossing a sheet of paper on the desk as you sit on the other side from him. The lamps flicker for a moment as you sit, and the paper is full of closely-spaced text – its message, though, is clear enough at a glance.
Clear enough that you frown for a moment. "So you've managed to clear the deadwood out, ahead of timetable at that. But the South is raising hell about it and claiming that they're being discriminated against. Rupprecht and von Wurttemberg and their ilk." You snort, the same familiar bile rising up inside you. Maybe it's anger. Maybe it's envy, or frustration or a thousand other things rising up mixed with the memories of the last desperate months on the General Staff. "If only they managed to do their job in wartime rather than after. Then we might be better placed."
"Perhaps," says Werner von Blomberg, giving you a look that could mean damn near anything and doesn't say much at all. "But they're still loud voices from old generals."
"Old generals that we have aplenty." You get a sidelong look and you raise an eyebrow in return, Werner von Blomberg's fleshy Eastern face seeming no more than interested in what you're saying. "We have others who would back us in any case. Von Lettow-Vorbeck. Von Hindenburg. Falkenhayn. Not as if there aren't a great many generals around. The old nobility can wait while we rebuild the Army. That is your department as well as my concern. Quality in training and personnel, quality since we cannot have numbers at all."
Major-General von Blomberg just nods once, and slides another sheet at you. "They're talking about regional issues, about how we're taking on mostly Prussians. Something about regional discrimination. A Prussian army rather than a federal one."
You're almost tempted to give a bitter laugh at the sheer inanity on display. You're here rebuilding the last standing institution in the Reich and all you have to work with are these fools. The scum in the Reichstag, the scum in the palaces and the whining fools of the South. "So what, we're to give the same west that rose with the Communists officer posts in the army? The same nobles that lost the war? The same fools from the east that want another war now, before we're ready?" You lean forward, "Look, Blomberg, you're chief of the Troop Office because you're meant to handle this side of it as well. You do the reorganization too fast, and we have issues like this one. As it is we're having enough trouble with the tumor that is the democratic Reichstag – what I would give to cut that canker from the heart of Germany – we cannot afford more trouble from the south. They were the keystone in the civil war. We need them."
"So – I listen?"
"You listen and promise nothing." You take the sheet and shove it back across the desk, "Tell the people on this sheet that they have valid concerns. Soothe them. We may make some more space later on. But for now we have an army to rebuild and a border to watch – the damned Poles are rebellious again. And let me handle the government."
"You're welcome to that, Herr General." You get a sardonic smile, and you shake your head ruefully in response. Von Blomberg's dark teak-wood desk is neat and tidy, not half as cluttered as yours, and with not half the inanities. The new government can hardly govern, it would seem.
Well and so, that is your burden and yours to bear. Chief of the General Staff. "We can shoot them later, eh? For now we defend the nation and we keep Germany whole. Keep the army whole. Keep continuity. It may be after we're both dead, but Germany's time will come."
"Jawohl."
Reichswehr Practice Range, Stettin Garrison
March, 1921
Mud again, mud once more after four long years of mud on the front. God above, you wish that you didn't have to deal with the damned mud. It gets everywhere, and if you bring it home you get a shouting from Gertrude because your boots stink and stain everywhere. Still, if the mud means that you get time on the ranges and precious ammunition for artillery practice, so be it – mud you shall endure. Stettin doesn't have much else, really, beyond the mud and the practice ranges. And the few soldiers' bars fit for an officer. It's a garrison town and it's always been a garrison town – and seaport – and therefore is more boring than the rest of Pomerania, which is an achievement indeed. What makes things bearable is the post and your family – and the post has been interesting indeed lately. Letters from Matthias Erzberger are always interesting.
This one begins with General Heinrici, and it's pointedly addressed to you as the Commanding Officer, 2nd Infantry Division 'Deutschland'. The name in particular is a statement. And the Minister doesn't disappoint with his opener. I write to you about the recent reorganization in the army. The stance of the army's leadership with respect to concerns raised about the composition of the force and its reductions to maintain treaty compliance have been exceptionally cooperative towards the civilian government, but may have inadverdently offended others in Germany.
Inadverdently, yes. You snort once, your orderly looking back curiously from where he's picking a path through the mud ahead of you. You wave a hand at him as if to say Nothing, and keep squelching through the mud and puddles on the track that leads to field headquarters while reading. Concerns about the force composition, is it? You remember the reorganization here in Stettin. The pensioning off of too damned many. Swabians who spoke and commanded in their odd dialect and their odd half-German accents, fast-talking Rhinelanders and slow, pensive Westphalian farm boys who rose in the ranks through four bloody years on the front. Bright-eyed fiercely Catholic, fiercely defensive Bavarians, quick to anger and slow to forgive. All – almost all – cashiered, save for the Prussians in the Stettin Military District. Stettin Wehrkreis with only the harsh accents of Prussian krautjunker in the officers' mess, all that remains from the treaty cuts.
You'd assumed that the southern districts were seeing the reverse.
"Sir!" A shape looming out of the mist this morning turns out to be plump-faced Oberleutnant Eberhard von Mackensen, here in the 2nd Infantry on family connections and his combat record. A working party trying to get a field gun out of the roadside drainage ditch is behind him, standing to attention for a brief moment before your nod and answering salute sends them back to work. You remember Mackensen from the mess. Flinty-eyed and cold for a young man, combat in the Baltics. Rambles about Jews and Slavs when he's drunk. You're fucking glad he isn't near your wife, half her family are Jews.
The letter, though, is more concerning than Oberleutnant von Mackensen and his lack of tact. Your orderly up ahead has found HQ and waves to you from the few hundred meters away. You wave back distractedly – the paper in your hands has your attention. Erzberger is circumspect to some extent, even with you. You are in a position to influence the future of the German Army and as someone who cooperates with the government I trust you to take the right decisions. The right decisions with respect to the state and the army, the people that make up both of them, and the preservation of peace across all of Germany. One hopes that your family have had a good peace, better than the war. Not a very subtle reminder, Erzberger, of who was shot in the East along with the Poles. Your mouth twists up in a bitter half-smile. Not long before someone mentioned your wife's side of the family even obliquely, it would seem.
"Herr General." The battalion commander on maneuvers today salutes stiffly as you enter, formality personified and not a hair out of place. The HQ is immaculate, the maps laid out and ready, and the rumble of the guns in the distance reminds you that the artillery are already on drill. Three days' maneuvers each for three regiments, and Major Komorowski here is the poor bastard in charge of Day One for 1st Battalion. "Colonel von Rauch has the artillery at work on the range, sir. I have Lieutenant Barenfanger on platoon maneuvers playing attacker, Captain von Francois on defense and Captain Ehrenberg running the rest through drills."
"Any reason why Barenfanger in particular?"
Komorowski swallows for a moment, "Captain von Francois requested that his company have first exercise, sir. After their performance in the last one. I assented."
Good enough. "Carry on, Major. I'll be here to observe before regimentals tomorrow." He salutes again and turns back to his map, as you move up to take a look at it. Komorowski is stiffly conscious of the General's presence, and you suppose he damn well ought to be. The man's half-Polish, a Silesian, and he knows what that means for his career. Fiercely proud, loyal to the bone, but he'll never top colonel if that. The HQ tent for 1st Battalion is thick with stress, with activity from all the dozen staff officers assigned to the unit and the observers who run up with reports, but it's a smooth, practiced activity. The sort of activity that comes from a damn good unit, one that draws from all of Germany rather than just Wehrkreis-II in Stettin.
No, some of those reorganizations weren't the best way to go about it. You obeyed orders and the Army, but some of them might not have been best. The army, after all, was for Germany. All of it, the entire nation that bled in Verdun, screaming in the mud. You listen to the command chatter and watch the map's little icons move around – the lieutenant is being ambitious, attempting to take a simulated bridge by storm against superior opposition. Someone brushes past your elbow, someone else offers Major-General Heinrici a coffee. You take it and hold the warm cup in one cold hand, thinking on what Erzberger wrote.
You're a Saxon yourself, on your belt buckle was Gott mit uns and your oath was not to Prussia. Perhaps the fat little minister in Berlin has a point. You aren't his creature, but you aren't the Prussians' either.
You take the pause in activity in the command tent while the lieutenant evidently scouts ahead for Captain von Francois' pickets to read on. The letter, predictably enough for one from the Zentrum, turns to religion depressingly fast after initial pleasantries. In addition to this, faith is a key to knitting Germany together. Lutheran or Catholic, we are united under God who will guide us, and it is with God's will that we will brave the storm of atheist revolution and irreligious reaction. The work of Friedrich Julius Stahl, of Harnack and your own uncle are exemplars of free thought and theology in an age of stark materialism. The damage that materialism and far-left Marxist thought have done to the moral fabric of Germany are grave, and the army is a place that retains integrity in the public eye even now. A seeming emphasis on the Prussian Union Church under the Kaiser or the Prussian traditions in the Army, for another imposition of Prussia upon Germany, is something that would ill fit the proud tradition of free thought in Germany and damage the army's image in Germany greatly...
Erzberger has indeed done his homework here, to remind you of theology and your uncle, your family. Bible study was a poor second to the army for you, though. You smile a little, quenching it when one of the staff lieutenants notices it – you're not about to bias this exercise from your personal letters. Still, the memories are a warm, pleasant blanket in this day and age. Erzberger might remember the Kulturkampf, but you don't. You were a Lutheran and your forefathers were before you – the Kulturkampf was not your war, it was the Bavarians'.
The map catches your eye for a moment, and the mistake is obvious enough that you have to point it out. You clear your throat and the HQ immediately stills – dry amusement tells you that this is the ideal time to tell a joke. Generals' jokes are always funny. Still, "Lieutenant Barenfanger has not yet learned." You point at the map, where he's made contact with the enemy's pickets at the 'bridge' and isn't pressing hard enough. "He's attempting to aggressively flank out the skirmish line ahead of the bridge, rake them and roll up the rear strongpoints at the bridge as well. He forgets that the 'river' is narrow enough for artillery to rake him over open sights. He is on low ground. Make a note, gentlemen. A similar mistake as last time. The English would not be stupid enough to let this go, and neither will our debrief."
Major Komorowski has a dark look on his face – Gunther Barenfanger will get a rocket today and his captain won't like that. One of the lieutenants at the map-table turns to another one, a crucifix flashing for a moment at his neck and a rosary on his wrist.
Erzberger's tirade on religion suddenly flashes back for a moment. These are your soldiers. Perhaps this religious thing might be your conflict as well, then. This...politicking.
The letter ends with another oblique hint, easily decoded. The minister thinks himself clever, but if you were opposed to him then this would be no more than a moment's thought and a letter to the Bendlerblock. Still, the sentiment is a good one. The people that make up the army are the pick of Germany, and it is a desire of the government to keep things that way. If we cannot have a great army, we shall have a peerless one, and one that draws the best from all across the Reich….
All across the Reich indeed. Influencing the army, are we, Herr Minister?
Your thoughts flit from cold-eyed von Mackensen and his rants to Major Komorowski, trapped at Major and never rising. Your eyes land for a moment on that outwardly Catholic lieutenant, here in Stettin Garrison with your division. Your soldiers.
Perhaps this politicking will indeed be your war as well. Well and so. You have letters to write then, once you come off field exercises. Berlin
March, 1921
Schoenberg is on the edge of Berlin, a Catholic parish but a place that you don't often go these days. Or ever, for that matter. Not your church, not your priest, and for a Minister in the Government not a place that you'd normally go on business. Yet today with the skies slate-gray and the Potsdam Gate ushering you into Schoenberg with its little church of Saint Matthias, you have been called. Letters on cheap paper no better than a Berlin saddler would use, asking – demanding – that Minister Erzberger come to talk rather than bandy words on paper. Letters stamped with the crest of an old, old noble family, to boot. So it is that you alight from the car and nod to your bodyguard, eyes reflexively looking around for a moment, and you enter the little church near Berlin.
It's humble on the outside, your boots clicking on stone flooring and battered wooden pews lining the hall. Red-brick on the outside and no great elaborate crucifix or altar on the inside, yet it isn't all that humble in the grand scheme of things. This, as the letters reminded you, is the beating heart of Catholic charity in Berlin, the most active ministry in the city. By the tenacity of its priest, who rises from one of the pews and beckons to a door at the rear, to the left of the altar. Clemens August Graf von Galen, nobleman turned minister, nodding politely and asking you if you'd like a schnapps before the talking.
"Welcome, Erzberger, to my humble abode." Graf von Galen ushers you to a battered chintzy armchair, taking a wooden one for himself and dragging a side table over with a bottle and two chipped glasses. The room itself is every bit the humble priest's down to the furniture, and he chuckles at your lingering gaze. "Yes, Minister, some of us live humbly. We're not all like that blowhard in Bavaria with his grand cathedral, doing more harm than ten Lutherans by living there. So tell me, Minister, what does your almost-heathen soul want today?"
Father von Galen is charming, looking as if he stepped off an Army recruiting poster and sincere as can be. The barbs still sting. You spent your life working for the Zentrum in the Kaiser's time onwards, and the anger that you feel is a familiar thing. "How was your war, then, Father? I trust we won rapidly enough to spare your parish the worst? Nothing like the Great War?"
He snorts, taking a deep swig of the schnapps and pouring himself more before answering. He gazes at the glass for a moment as if the chipped glass is more fascinating than the discussion or – you almost smile at the thought – the Minister in the room. "My parish was as devastated as the rest of them. Damage and starvation and lost jobs, women without husbands and orphaned children begging. The Turnip Winter first, then the war's end, then the risings before the civil war. All of it. And then that Red rising at the war's end. What do you think is left, Minister?" He smiles sourly as if to rub in the suffering, perhaps a sense of perverse pride in the suffering his good works minister to.
The good father is a staunch nationalist and someone who'd normally praise von Luttwitz, and the biting words that you expected are absent. Von Galen's eyes are baggy and bloodshot, and the schnapps goes down smoothly as you think about what to say. It isn't the blunt dismissal you'd expected. It isn't a Saul on the road to Damascus moment, either. At least you have the schnapps, going down smooth as silk and bursting into warmth once it's down. Pear, you'd wager. "So what is left in this brave new Germany, Father? What do you see for the near future? Are the social programs helping the poor?"
"A little." He shrugs, broad shoulders moving jerkily, unaccustomed to the gesture. Father von Galen rarely says he doesn't know, even by implication. "Your policies are doing some good even here in poor Schoenberg. They are also driving people out of the arms of Mother Church. Those who were there for the soup more than the faith, perhaps." That same sour smile flashing for a moment, the priest's eyes distant as he speaks. "Your brave new irreligious Germany with the Zentrum second to the Reds is a frightening place, Erzberger, I say this with all sincerity. The monarchy is gone, the Church if Ebert has his way will be forgotten. A victor's peace imposed on Germany."
You think for a long moment, looking at Clemens August von Galen and deciding that perhaps he is indeed a man of his word. Or so his reputation would suggest. Well and so, then. You might as well take the gamble. The hair on your neck stands up a little as you speak, tension and nervousness creeping in. "The army is reorganizing into an increasingly Prussian and increasingly Protestant arm of the state. I have seen the objections made by Rupprecht and von Kahr, pro forma ones, and they have been ignored. The army's lower ranks speak of a Wehrstaat that has no monarch or church or democracy, aiming for another war. Von Seeckt is hollowing out the army's soul in the name of Prussia." Bitterness colours the last remark, but you've come this far as it is. Von Galen will keep his word, at the least – you won't hear this spread elsewhere.
The priest sets his glass down with a click on the table, pausing as if to collect his thoughts. "The army obeys its commander. The army is not the province of a junior priest, Minister. What would I do? And why would I urge the army to disobey orders, when the army is what keeps the nation from Bolshevism?"
"The army, yes. The Chief of Staff, perhaps." Von Galen's gray eyes, slate-gray as the clouds of Berlin, snap up to you as he leans back on the creaky wooden chair. The lighting dims a little, evening coming to the city. You swallow for a moment before continuing. "Does the church march in lockstep with the Holy Father, or does the church move as an organization? The army is a bulwark – that I will not deny. But the army can be swayed as its people, as opposed to the Chief of Staff. And perhaps, as there are appeals to the Holy Father, there are appeals to the chief of staff from his organization." You pause for a moment, and then decide to point out the next thing. "You saw the result of a Wehrstaat in the east during the civil war, Father. The concept must be rethought."
"I have seen it, yes." There's a brief, haunted look in his eyes – he has relatives in the east, you remember. Had relatives, perhaps. Clemens August von Galen takes out a pipe and turns it over in his hands, pensively, and then begins to take out tobacco.
So you prod him a little. "Your thoughts, then, Father?"
He doesn't raise his head from the pipe, lighting it with careful concentration from a match. "I will pray for your barely-German soul, Matthias Erzberger. And then, perhaps, I shall write a letter to a friend in the army."
"A war of revanchism is at this point, not something to countenance. The makeup of the army and the current discussion of the Wehrstaat concept...are concerning"
-Captain Gustav Anton von Wietersheim, April 1921
"The priest in Berlin has the right of it, bitter though things are. The army is the soul of Germany, and that is more than Prussia. I wish we had that man in the army rather than the pulpit, but at least he has the right views where it counts."
-Alexander von Falkenhausen to the General Staff, April 1921
"The reorganization of the army may have to be rethought now that certain parties have raised objections. Some of them valid. Doubt this is Ebert, the right-thinkers in Germany have no truck with the man."
-Hans von Seeckt, diaries
"Things seem to be improving, career-wise."
-Oberleutnant Robert Brauer, SPD member, April 1921
AN: Reorganization halted, army lower ranks are somewhat less far-right than they would have been. Some elements of the right are receptive to regionalist/religious overtures on an informal basis from the Zentrum, for all that they dislike the SPD. The significance of the update is a tad enhanced if you recognize the major figures involved.
Many of the individuals involved are historical figures in this update. Feedback is thus welcome.
