Ragnarok

Chapter Three

Berlin, Germany Prime

29 October 1985

“That’s the latest set of reports, Herr Chancellor,” Field Marshal Gunter Voss said, as he tapped the updated map. “The SS lines are definitely beginning to solidify.”

Volker Schulze, Chancellor of the Greater German Reich — or at least the part of it that accepted the authority of the Berlin Government — nodded in irritation. He’d hoped, against experience, that the SS stormtroopers would have broken completely, but they were trained to rebound from defeat faster than any other military unit in the Reich. It had been years since he’d served alongside them, yet he still recalled how little difference losing the CO — or even the NCOs — had made. The SS, whatever its flaws, had been a meritocracy. A skilled stormtrooper — assuming he had good Aryan blood — had every prospect of rising in the ranks.

“I see,” he said, finally. Life had been a great deal less complicated last year, when he’d been nothing more than a factory foreman. “Can you keep thrusting forward?”

“Not until we get our logistics network up and running,” Voss said. “Herr Chancellor, we simply don’t have the logistics to push them further back.”

“Work on it,” Volker ordered. He knew Voss was right. No one had ever seriously contemplated having to fight a civil war, of all things. The Reich had countless contingency plans — everything from an invasion of Britain to a defence of Occupied France — but none of them had ever been put into practice. “I assume we are continuing to harass them?”

“Of course,” Voss said. “But we’re reaching the point of diminishing returns. Even our air supremacy is under threat.”

Volker scowled as he contemplated the map. The Luftwaffe had largely joined the provisional government, once the Reich Council had lost its grip on power, but the air force had paid a high price for its decision. A number of bases and aircraft had been destroyed, either by sleeper agents or cruise missiles, while the remaining pilots were exhausted and running out of supplies. They had planned for an intensive operational tempo, he’d been assured, but — once again — the Reich’s planning had not matched reality. He had a nasty feeling that he would have to order the air force to reduce its operations soon, before exhaustion and poor maintenance took an even greater toll on its pilots.

A shame we can’t send the navy, he thought. The Kriegsmarine had been solidly behind the rebels from the start, save for a handful of warships that had fled harbour and escaped to the east. They’ve done very little so far.

He shook his head in annoyance. It was a foolish thought, unworthy of him. The navy couldn’t come to grips with the SS, not when the SS was largely landlocked. Maintaining a blockade of the handful of ports in Germany East was largely pointless. The Americans weren’t going to sell supplies to the SS. And if the Chinese decided to pour fuel on the fire by shipping weapons to Germany East, there was nothing the Kriegsmarine — or anyone else — could do about it.

“Order the Luftwaffe to do whatever it sees fit,” he said, finally. “If they feel they have to reduce their operational tempo, they can reduce their operational tempo.”

Voss didn’t argue. That worried Volker more than he cared to admit. He’d been a stormtrooper, but he’d never reached high command. Voss, on the other hand, was a Field Marshal. He’d never hesitated to point out the limits of Volker’s experience before…

…And if he wasn’t arguing, it meant the situation was truly dire.

Volker looked down at the map, silently translating the pencil-drawn symbols into something understandable. Berlin was safe now, ringed by panzer divisions and infantrymen who’d force-marched from the coastal defences of France to the heart of the Reich. But the SS had utterly devastated the land between Berlin and Warsaw. The reports pulled no punches, none at all. Every last bridge had been destroyed, every last village and town had been devastated… improvised mines had been scattered everywhere, covered by a handful of commando teams who’d fired a couple of shots at the advancing soldiers, then scattered into the undergrowth and vanished.

And the enemy defence lines are forming, Volker thought, coldly. They’ll be ready for us soon.

He sighed, then looked up at Voss. “If we leave them alone for six months,” he said, “they’ll be ready for us.”

“Yes, Herr Chancellor,” Voss said.

Volker rubbed his eyes. He’d often considered emigrating to Germany East; he’d planned to emigrate, once he reached retirement age and his children were married off. And he’d visited, during his career. He knew just how tough the easterners were. Given time to raise and deploy a new army, they could make the cost of winning the war intolerable. If it had been possible, he would have accepted sundering the Reich in two. But he knew, all too well, that Karl Holliston wouldn’t accept anything less than the reconquest of the entire Reich.

There can be no peace, he thought, morbidly.

“Field Marshal,” he said. “Could we win before the first snowfall?”

Voss looked unsurprised by the question. Volker rather suspected he’d been considering the issue himself.

“Perhaps,” he said, finally. “We don’t know when the snow is going to fall.”

“But we could still chew them to ribbons,” Volker mused. “They’d either have to abandon vast tracts of land or fight us.”

He scowled at the thought. The SS — and the Heer — was good at slotting newcomers into units and relying on the old hands to teach them the ropes. There was no such thing as a unit completely composed of soldiers — or stormtroopers — fresh out of basic training. But if the SS’s combat veterans were killed, the SS would have fewer experienced soldiers to teach the newcomers how to fight. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, but it was one that had to be faced. A campaign — even a limited thrust eastwards — would make it harder for the enemy to regenerate their forces.

“Yes, Herr Chancellor,” Voss said. “But if we waited six months, we would also be far stronger.”

Volker had his doubts. Germany Prime might possess most of the Reich’s industry, but Hans Krueger had made it clear that their industrial base was on its last legs. The demands of the war hadn’t helped, either. They needed to give the machinery a rest; instead, they’d upped the demands to support the military. Pushing the industry any harder might result in a general collapse. And even if they didn’t have a wave of large-scale failures, they’d still pay a terrifying price for occupying Germany East.

And they might get their atomic bombs up and running, he thought. It was anyone’s guess just how long it would be before the SS unlocked their own bombs. A trained engineer, he’d been warned, might just be able to remove the PAL system and improvise a replacement detonator of his own. What will they do if they have working atomic bombs?

He cursed under his breath. The Siberian missile fields probably couldn’t be turned on Germany Prime, but they could be pointed at America. And Karl Holliston was insane. Who knew what he’d do if he thought he was losing the war? Taking the United States down too might make perfect sense to him. Or perhaps he’d reason that the Americans would retaliate against Germany Prime, giving Germany East a chance to rebuild. Stopping him from using the damned things was worth almost any price.

“We have to move now,” he said, softly. “If we give them too much time, they will use it against us.”

“Yes, Herr Chancellor,” Voss said. “But I should caution you that we need more manpower.”

Volker sighed. Almost every male German in the Reich had some military skills — thanks to the Hitler Youth — but not all of them had gone into the military. They’d started training volunteers even before the siege of Berlin had begun, yet it would take months before the new recruits were ready for the demands of modern war. There was an entire army in South Africa, but getting it back to the mainland in time for the big offensive was impossible. Even disengaging from the South African War was proving tricky.

“See what you can drag up,” he said, finally.

“My staff did have an idea,” Voss said. “We could approach the French or the Italians for manpower.”

Volker looked up at him, sharply. “Are they mad?”

“Italy and France both have good reason to want to keep Holliston out of power,” Voss pointed out, dryly. “Fighting beside us would be better than fighting Holliston on his own, later.”

“Hah,” Volker said.

In truth, he wasn’t sure how to react. The French could fight well, he’d been told, but they’d lost so badly in 1940 that they’d never recovered. Their infantry had a great deal of experience fighting in North Africa, yet could they stand up to combat in Germany East without panzers and jet fighters of their own? And the Italians were laughable. They’d been jokes back in 1940 and they were still jokes. Their empire would have fallen apart long ago if they hadn’t been backed up by the Reich.

And they weren’t interested in crushing the life out of their territories, he acknowledged, ruefully. They might have lost their empires if their subjects hadn’t realised that they were better masters than us.

“If you can convince them to send troops, do so,” he said, finally. “But see what they want in exchange.”

He shook his head in frustration. The Reich simply didn’t have many diplomats. A year ago, the subject nations had known to obey — or else — while the North Atlantic Alliance had known better than to lower its guard, no matter what honeyed words came out of Berlin and the Reich. Now… he didn’t know quite how to talk to the French. Barking orders was no longer possible, but he didn’t want to let the French walk all over him either…

“They’ll want political freedom,” Voss predicted. “And the return of Alsace-Lorraine.”

Volker nodded. The French had made that demand before, back when Gudrun had tried to come to terms with them. And it was politically impossible. There wasn’t a single ethnic Frenchman living in Alsace-Lorraine, not now. They’d all been driven out in 1950, when the Reich had been reshaping Western Europe after the war. The French hadn’t even had the worst of it. Countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands had completely disappeared from the map. The lucky ones — the ones who couldn’t pass for German — had been shipped into French North Africa.

And the unlucky ones were exterminated, he thought, grimly.

He’d been in the SS. He knew how Untermenschen were treated. And yet it had been a shock to realise just how many Untermenschen had been slaughtered. The dispassionate remarks in school textbooks utterly failed to convey the sheer horror of what the Reich had done. Volker wouldn’t shed any tears for Untermenschen who had opposed the Reich, but how many of the Reich’s victims had been enemies? How many of the dead had been Germans who had been wounded in combat or born with defects?

“See what they say,” he said. “But we can’t give them Alsace-Lorraine.”

It was going to be a nightmare, he predicted. The Reich knew how to handle subject states — they supported the Reich and did as they were told, in exchange for what scraps the Reich offered them — but independent states? What would happen when the French started to build up their armoured divisions? Or produce their own jet fighters? Or even develop their own nuclear weapons? Would they want revenge for forty years of oppression?

“They may be satisfied merely to know that the SS beast has been slain,” Voss offered. He didn’t sound confident. “We will see.”

Volker sighed. “Begin drawing up the plans to take the offensive as soon as possible,” he said. “Even if we don’t have the French and Italians in support, we need to move anyway.”

Which will weaken us if they decide to take matters into their own hands, he thought. The French had a long way to go before they could stand up to the Reich, let alone match it, but what would happen if the German population was thoroughly sick of war? And they will know it.

He sighed as Voss saluted and left the room. If he’d known what Gudrun would unleash, when she’d started asking pointed questions, he would have gone to her father and… and done what? Konrad would still have been left in the hospital, trapped between life and death; his parents, his sister, his girlfriend utterly unaware of his condition. It wasn’t fair to blame Gudrun, he told himself sharply, for everything that had happened. The underlying weakness of the Reich, the steady collapse of the entire structure, had been underway long before she’d been born, let alone reached adulthood.

Her father might have told her not to meddle in politics, he thought. She might have been pulled out of the university and married to someone he chose, but would it have made a difference? Or would we have fallen harder because no one was prepared to stand up and point out that the Kaiser had no clothes?

He looked down at the map for a long moment. He’d approved of Gudrun as a possible wife for his son, back when the world had made sense. And then his feelings had grown mixed when she’d made it impossible for him to hide from the truth any longer. Part of him had been angry at her, even though he’d known it wasn’t her fault. And now she was a prisoner, taken by the SS. Volker knew, all too well, just what the SS would do with her, after everything she’d done to them. He’d hoped Gudrun — or her body — would turn up somewhere in Berlin, but there had been no sign of her.

She’s been taken to Germanica, he thought. And all we can do is hope they give her a quick death.

There was a tap on his door. He looked up to see his aide, looking grim.

“Herr Chancellor,” he said. “Minister Krueger is here to see you.”

“Show him in,” Volker ordered. “And then bring us both coffee.”

He schooled his face into impassivity as Hans Krueger was shown into his office. Krueger was a smart man, but he wasn’t a likeable man. He’d been on the former Reich Council and had switched sides, a little too quickly, after the uprising. Volker had no reason to distrust him — Holliston wouldn’t give Krueger a quick death if Krueger were captured — but there was something about Krueger that annoyed him. The man was more concerned with his figures than the real world.

And those figures can change the real world, Volker thought. There had been something oddly effeminate about the accountants in the factory, the men who could decide — seemingly on a whim — who was worth keeping and who could be fired. And Krueger had something of the same air about him. He was not a manly man. He cannot be trusted completely.

“Herr Chancellor,” Krueger said. He was carrying a leather folder under one arm. “Do you have a moment?”

“Too many of them,” Volker admitted. He wanted to be out there, doing something. “Is this important?”

“I’ve been running the latest set of figures,” Krueger said, quietly. He took a seat and opened the folder. “We’re looking at a total economic crash within three months.”

Volker sucked in his breath. “Are you sure?”

“That’s the best-case,” Krueger said. “Frankly, we’ve been pushing everything too hard over the last decade. We simply didn’t give our industrial base any chance to breathe.”

“I didn’t make those decisions,” Volker snarled.

“I know,” Krueger said. “But we still have to deal with the consequences.”

He looked grim. “It gets worse,” he added. “Food supplies are starting to run out.”

“Then grow more,” Volker said.

“We can’t, not immediately,” Krueger said. “Quite a few farmers were drafted into the army, Herr Chancellor. That had an impact on productivity. But we also drew most of our food from Germany East. Germany Prime — alone — cannot feed itself forever. We have already started expanding our farming capabilities, but it will be several years before they make an impact.”

He sighed. “And if we have an industrial collapse at the same time,” he added, “we will be staring at outright chaos.”

“Take food from the French,” Volker said, after a moment. “Or buy it from the Americans.”

“The French don’t produce enough food to meet our demands — even if they were willing to meet our demands,” Krueger warned. “They never pushed production — they knew we’d steal it. And the Americans will expect us to pay.”

“And we don’t have any cash,” Volker said. The Reich’s stockpiles of foreign cash had always been very limited. “There’s nothing we can use to pay the Americans.”

“If indeed they have the food on hand,” Krueger added. “They might not be able to meet our demands either.”

Volker cursed under his breath. The Americans had been helpful, but he couldn’t help thinking that the United States would welcome a German collapse. Whoever won the war would need to spend years rebuilding, years the Americans could use to make themselves invincible, utterly untouchable. They were already too far ahead of the Reich…

…And they weren’t even his real problem.

He gritted his teeth. “And if the entire population starts to starve…”

“We lose,” Krueger said, bluntly. “We need to take action, quickly.”

“And that means we need this war to end, quickly,” Volker agreed. “And if we don’t win soon, we’ll lose.”