Storm Front

Chapter Twenty-Five

Reichstag, Berlin

8 August 1985

Hans Krueger wrinkled his nose as he stepped into the council chamber and took his seat at one side of the table, facing the Reichsführer-SS. Several ministers and military officers were smoking, a sure sign of their agitation, while the Fuhrer was looking around as if he thought he was actually expected to direct the meeting. Hans gave Adolf Bormann a nasty look, then eyed the Reichsführer-SS. Karl Holliston had called the meeting and, judging by the papers in front of him, it was going to be a long one.

“The meeting is now called to order,” Holliston said, taking control as soon as the last councillor was in his seat. “Heil Hitler!”

“Heil Hitler,” the councillors said, in unison.

Holliston didn’t give anyone else a chance to override his control of the meeting. “It’s spreading,” he said, simply. “Our failure to put a stop to this right from the start” – he threw Hans a nasty look – “has encouraged others to defy the Reich.”

“You speak of the trade unions,” Hans said, calmly. Someone had to be the voice of reason at the table. “Or is there something I’ve missed?”

“The trade unions are not the only problem,” Holliston snapped. “There are hundreds of little groups springing up everywhere, discussing the leaflets and comparing notes. We have this piece of shit” – he took one of the papers from the table and waved it in the air – “to tell us just what imprudent demands these… these Valkyries demand!”

“The Choosers of the Slain,” Hans mused, as he took the sheet of paper. “Odd choice of name for a dissident group.”

“It’s a deliberate insult,” Holliston thundered. “Something must be done!”

“We know who the ringleaders are, at least in the factories,” Luther Stresemann said. The Head of the Economic Intelligence Service leaned forward. “We could round them up and arrest them – or simply order them fired.”

“The problem isn’t that simple,” Hans warned. “Each of these… ringleaders is a symptom, not the disease itself. We’re pushing our industrial base to the limit and our trained workers are finally pushing back.”

“Forming a union without government permission is flatly illegal,” Holliston sneered. Hans would have privately bet good money that Holliston was feeling the heat from industrialists who were closely connected to the SS. “Every member of each and every union should be thrown into the camps.”

Hans resisted, barely, the temptation to sneer back. “You are talking about arresting two-thirds of our trained workforce,” he said. “Good luck getting the damned Gastarbeiters to run a modern manufacturing plant!”

“The Gastarbeiters are not permitted to do more that dig ditches and plant crops,” Holliston pointed out. “Such jobs are reserved for good Germans!”

“Yes, the Germans you’re talking about throwing into the camps,” Hans said. Holliston was right; the training for industrial jobs was reserved solely for Germans, although a handful of non-German Aryans might be allowed to join if they showed promise. “You put even a tenth of our total workforce out of work and our economy will go straight into the shitter.”

Holliston took a moment to gather himself. “We cannot allow them to defy the government like this,” he said, in a markedly calmer tone. “And that set of demands” – he jabbed a finger at the paper in front of Hans – “is unthinkable.”

Hans looked at the paper and was tempted to agree. Some of the demands were reasonable – he would happily have agreed to end the war in South Africa if he could – while others… others were impossible to grant without undermining the Reich beyond hope of repair. The whole concept of free elections was absurd. It wouldn’t be long before the population started electing politicians based on who could make the best promises, not on practical matters like experience, understanding and common sense.

“And we cannot act against them openly, either,” he said. “If even the most optimistic report is accurate, Reichsführer, word is spreading too far too fast. The unions can bring the country to a halt just by going on strike.”

“Then we clobber them,” Holliston snapped.

“And who will run the industries afterwards?” Hans snapped back. “We’re going in circles!”

“This is all your fault,” Holliston said. “Bringing in American ideals…”

“We had an industry before the start of the war,” Hans pointed out, smoothly. “Those Panzer tanks that smashed Poland, Denmark, France and Russia didn’t just spring into existence, you know. And we had to do whatever we needed to do to keep up with the Americans. A Panzer III wouldn’t last two seconds on a battlefield facing the latest American tank!”

He took a breath. “This situation has gotten badly out of hand,” he said. “Right now, our falsehoods about the war have been exposed and so the population no longer trusts us. They are forming private groups and discussing discrepancies between our words and reality. It will not take them long to find other times when we lied to them.”

“For their own good,” Holliston said.

Hans met his eyes. “We tell ourselves that,” he said, although he doubted it was true in Holliston’s case. “But I don’t think they agree with us.”

“I will not see us going all the way back to the days when Germany was stabbed in the back by the Jews and Americans and stamped into the ground by the French and British,” Holliston said. “And I will not hand power over to a bunch of anarchists who don’t have the faintest idea of how to form a government, let alone make the hard decisions!”

“So tell me,” Hans said. “What do we do?”

He looked around the table, silently trying to gauge support. So far, most of the other councillors were content to watch and wait for a clear victor to emerge, or to see who would make the best offer for their support. It was frustrating, but in some ways it was almost a relief. At least he’d be able to make his case without being interrupted or shouted down.

“The French were supposed to pay us their tribute on the 1st of the month,” he said, after a moment. “That tribute has been grossly reduced because the French are having their own labour problems. The stockpiles of food and raw materials they were also supposed to be sending to the Reich have also been delayed.”

“Send in the troops,” Holliston offered. “Take the foodstuffs by force, then lay waste to the fields to teach them a lesson.”

Hans chose not to respond directly. “Because of that, we have a cash shortfall,” he added, wondering how many of them would understand. “We’ve been sailing too close to bankruptcy for years; now, without the French cash, we may well cross the line and find ourselves faced with massive painful budget cuts. We simply have too many commitments and not enough cash to meet them. For example, we owe the Americans millions of dollars – dollars, not Reichmarks – for our recent purchases.”

“So we delay paying,” Holliston said.

“And so they delay supply,” Hans said. “The Americans are not the French, Herr Reichsführer. They will not accept a promissory note drawn on a bank they know to be failing. Worse, perhaps, they will not supply us with anything else until they are paid in full.”

“We don’t need anything they can send us,” Holliston insisted.

“That’s not the only problem,” Hans continued. “Where do we make our budget cuts? The military? The war? The support payments we make to mothers with more than two children or the pensions we grant to veterans?”

There was a long pause. “We could cut back on our purchase of war materials,” Holliston mused, finally. “We don’t need more tanks.”

“But we do need vehicles designed for counter-insurgency operations in South Africa,” Field Marshal Gunter Voss snapped. “We spent years building up the largest tank force in the world, which is next to completely useless in South Africa!”

“And we can’t stop making payments to veterans,” Field Marshal Justus Stoffregen added, coldly. “We made them promises.”

Which we haven’t been keeping for a long time, Hans thought. There had been a commitment, a honourable commitment, to look after the dead and wounded. But that commitment had been broken in South Africa. Trust in the government, never high at the best of times, was almost certainly gone. But there will be riots if we start cutting the support payments.

Hans tapped the table. “We can cancel some of our long-term procurement,” he said. “The planned sixth carrier can be placed on hold, if necessary” – he ignored the squawk from Grossadmiral Cajus Bekker – “and we can scrap the planned development and purchase of a replacement main battle tank. We already have more than enough nuclear missiles to give the American ABM system a very hard time indeed, if it comes down to total war, and the Americans are unlikely to launch an invasion of the continent. Our security is unlikely to be put at risk.

“The problem, however, is that this will have dangerous knock-on effects,” he added, wondering just how many of them would understand. “If we stop paying for new tanks…”

“We would have more money,” Holliston snapped.

“Yes, and the corporations we would be paying wouldn’t,” Hans said. “They would wind up with a cash shortfall, so they would either have to cut wages – again – or sack hundreds of trained workers. And that will cause more social unrest at the worst possible time.”

“They could go east,” Holliston offered. “We need more farmers…”

“There’s no shortage of farmers,” Hans snapped. “They’re trained and experienced industrial workers. We cannot afford to lose them.”

He looked down at the table. “But even if we do, it will not fix the hole in our budget,” he warned. “The really big expenses are the ones we don’t dare risk cutting. Keeping the garrisons in position to monitor the French alone is quite costly; keeping Germany South a going concern is staggeringly expensive. And the support payments may be the single worst item on the list. We have got to stop handing out money to every woman who has more a child!”

“But we need to keep our population from decaying,” Holliston insisted. “How will the women have children if they cannot afford to keep them?”

“Our population is not in danger of falling,” Hans said.

It wasn’t entirely true, he knew. Industrial societies – and Germany Prime was an industrial society – had significantly lower birth-rates than farming societies. America had had a baby boom after the war with Japan, then the birth-rate had dropped sharply over the following decades. The Reich had escaped the same fate through passing laws that made it easier to afford more children, both through support payments and public honours for women with many children. But now, simply paying the women their monthly allowance was a major strain on the public purse. Who knew what would happen, apart from massive civil unrest, if the payments were ever cut?

“The Untermenschen breed like rabbits,” Holliston said. “We have to keep up with them.”

“The Untermenschen are unlikely to pose a major danger, at least for the foreseeable future,” Hans countered. “Our current problems lie with the so-called Valkyries.”

“The corporations will not allow any independent trade unions,” Friedrich Leopoldsberger said, coldly. The Industries Minister was their creature, Hans knew; the Ministry of Industry was, perhaps, the most deeply corrupt ministry in the Reich. “There are corporate-sponsored unions to handle the workers and their concerns.”

“Unions which do nothing more than identify and marginalise troublemakers,” Hans pointed out. “Can the corporations afford to lose half of their workforce?”

“They will come crawling back after a couple of weeks of unemployment,” Leopoldsberger said. “Let them experience life without a regular salary. Let them see what it is like to be without money, without hope of employment. Where else can they go?”

“That would work,” Holliston said.

“And how long would it be,” Hans asked, “before the entire workforce goes on strike?”

He scowled at Leopoldsberger, who scowled back. “You’re thinking in terms of a handful of little men,” he said. “And yes, a handful of bad apples can be isolated and kicked out of the bunch. But thousands of workers, all of whom are already feeling the pinch? You might just start a whole series of strikes if you sacked them… and if that happens, you will find it impossible not to surrender. There are no replacements for trained workers.”

“We could train others,” Leopoldsberger pointed out.

“In time?” Hans asked. “God knows our training system has been having problems too. Or are you planning to bring in the military to run the plants?”

“We couldn’t,” Voss said.

“We could at least try to break their morale,” Holliston said. “If they resist… we’re no worse off than we already are.”

“We’d have allowed them to see their strength,” Hans said, exasperated. “And that will undermine us more than the financial crisis.”

He gave Holliston a long considering look. “It may be time to start considering other ways to save money and put the Reich on a firmer footing,” he added. “Perhaps it is time to bring the war in South Africa to an end.”

“Out of the question,” Holliston thundered. “If we leave, Pretoria will go under and the niggers will rule South Africa. And then Germany South will fall. And then the French, Italian and Spanish empires will fall. And then there will be a black tide washing at the southern coastline of Europe!”

“It’s rather more likely that they’ll have a civil war,” Stresemann said. “The blacks are split into multiple different factions. Several of them are centred around tribes that are only working together because they see the Afrikaners as a worse threat. If the war comes to an end, if they win their freedom, they might start killing each other instead of threatening our borders.”

“The black population of Germany South will take heart from our surrender,” Holliston insisted. “And it will be a surrender! Adolf Hitler himself insisted that not one jot of German land was to be surrendered to the barbarians.”

“Hitler did understand the value of a tactical withdrawal,” Stoffregen reminded him. “It isn’t as if the land won’t be recaptured one day.”

“This isn’t a limited tactical withdrawal to buy time,” Holliston said, coldly. He held up a hand before any of the military officers could correct him. “I know; we often fell back when the Russians lunged at us during the war, just to allow their advance time to stall before we counterattacked and retook the territory, destroying their forces as we advanced. But here, we would be abandoning a government that shares our ideals. Our enemies will not hesitate to take notice.

“Vichy France is already under pressure from its own people. If we abandon South Africa, the French will assume that we will abandon the Vichy Government and rise up against it, forcing us to intervene. The war in South Africa may be bad, but it will be far worse if we have to fight an insurgency in the south of France. Fighting will spill over into our territories and the results will be disastrous. And Spain, Italy and Greece will go the same way. To surrender South Africa risks surrendering the entire Reich.

“And the Americans will not hesitate to take advantage of our weakness. They will ship weapons into France, allowing the French to shoot down our aircraft and destroy our tanks; they may even slip weapons into Germany itself, passing them on to the Gastarbeiters in their camps. We cannot give up now or we will lose everything!”

So we go in a circle, Hans thought. We cannot arrest the rebels, nor can we grant their demands. What the hell do we do?

“We use pressure to convince the trade unionists to give up,” Holliston said. “And we pull out all the stops in searching for this… this Sigrún! We launch a full-scale propaganda campaign to convince the population that the Valkyries will eventually lead Germany to its doom. We make it damn clear that the war in South Africa is necessary!”

“That would force us to admit that we underestimated the situation,” Hans pointed out, smoothly.

“Then let us make that admission,” Holliston snapped. “Let us admit to the mistake, let us put our justification in front of the people and let the true Germans see what has to be done.”

Hans frowned. “And if they reject the arguments?”

“We control the mass media,” Holliston said. “The Valkyries have to sneak around the computer network and leave their damnable leaflets in libraries or hidden under seats on the trains. We’ve even arrested a couple of idiots carting them around the city. They cannot compete with us when it comes to speaking to the people.”

“And yet the people are more likely to believe them,” Hans said. “We were caught lying, Karl. It’s hard to regain trust when you lose it so roughly.”

“Then we tell them why we lied,” Holliston said. “Because there’s no other way to tackle the problem.”

Hans sighed, inwardly, as the councillors started to vote. Holliston, damn the man, had offered them an alternative to either making massive budget cuts or surrendering some of their power. They believed him because they wanted to believe him, because they hoped there was a way out of the crisis without tearing the Reich apart. And nothing he could say would make a difference.

He cursed under his breath as Holliston flashed him a look of triumph, once the voting was over. Who knew? Maybe Holliston was right. But the figures didn’t lie. No matter how he looked at it, there was no way to avoid a major budgetary crisis forever. Indeed, he suspected the crisis would be impossible to hide in less than a month…

…And who knew what would happen then?