Weltkriegschaft

[TheHyphenated1]

HAPPY 1000 REPLIES, EVERYONE!




A tremendous round of gratitude to all the fantastic and supportive readers, commenters and lurkers who've made this feat possible! Who would have guessed all the way back on the slopes of Berchtesgaden that we'd get this far? Thank you! Prost!

[Hardraade]

Congratulations!

[SeleucidRex]

Nice update. How many divisions will you be attempting to invade with?

[trekaddict]

Given the state of British Defences in January 1936 and my experiences with AI build policy twelve to twenty Divisions should be enough, twenty-six if you want to make sure.

[KLorberau]

Congradulations Hyphenated....

Another nice update. Sounds like the bickering is going to tear the OKW / HKK apart (I also don't like that abbreviation....the original is just fine).

Someone mentioned that the invasion of Britain will be the worst disaster for the Royal Navy? With only barges and the small Kriegsmarine, I think just the opposite. Try to keep the Royal Navy occupied somewhere else (Med Sea, etc) until you get troops across the Channel...otherwise the invasion is doomed! But I hope successful instead.

KLorberau

[KLorberau]

Hypenated??? You fall off of the earth or what? Your fans await the next installment of this most excellent AAR....

KLorberau

[TheHyphenated1]

Hello all! I luckily have not fallen off the face of the earth, but have been unexpectedly away. Next update should be not too far off, but I unfortunately haven't been able to make any promises.

Thanks for your patience everyone!

[TheHyphenated1]

Hi Everyone,

Many apologies for the repeated unexpected halts in the smooth progression of our story. The good news is, however, that I am at last free again, and so can expect to be back in the swing of things in the next day or so! Thanks for your patience all!

TheHyphenated1

[dublish]

Huzzah! Happy days are here again!

[Avatar018]

Yay! updates I can't wait.

[Metroid17]

Very nice.

[TheHyphenated1]

Chapter III: The Lion’s Den

Part X

July 21, 1936

More than three months had passed since Helen Krause’s father had been spirited away from the family’s home in Heidelberg by the men in dark suits. Hours later, French soldiers had marched unopposed into the city. Helen had helped her mother late into the night, burning great stacks of her father’s papers. She had forbidden Helen to answer the door, and when all the papers had at last been burned, brought her into her own bed to sleep.

As days passed slowly, Helen’s mother worried that their house would at any hour be searched, looted -- or worse. While her daughter read quietly in her room, she had taken to sitting at the kitchen window with a book, keeping wary watch over the street through a narrow slit in the curtains. They found that they could still pick up most radio stations, and would tune in several times each day, trying to glean whatever news they could from the heavily sensationalized and patriotic reports. The stories of French soldiers in Baden abducting women and children and sending them away in trains were repeated again and again. Helen’s mother had been almost hysterical. Helen, too, became very frightened.

Despite their fears, however, no French secret police had come. Helen recorded in her diary that on April tenth, the third day of the invasion, a few French soldiers had been seen curiously exploring the neighborhood on foot, but had soon left the way they came without incident.

The next day, it was announced over the by then French-controlled Heidelberg radio station that the remaining classes for the year at her Mittelschule had been cancelled. Civilians were encouraged to stay at home on anything but essential business. Soon the Blockleiter, Herr Liebe, had gone to each home, handing out a single can of beans and a box of matches, and reminding each head of household not to cooperate with the invaders in any way.

Helen’s mother kept up her watch at the window, and the days soon blurred into weeks. On a balmy Sunday in May, the last French soldiers in Heidelberg withdrew from the city and back over the Rhine. The police immediately took back control of the local administration, and the next day German soldiers entered the central district without firing a shot.

A part of Helen had expected her father to drive right back into Heidelberg with the columns of liberating soldiers, but this was not so. She tried several times to ask her mother about him, but each time she would change the subject. At the end of May they received a typewritten letter in an envelope marked as from the offices of the Reich Ministry for Science, Education, and Public Instruction.

Dearest Anna and Helen,

It pains me that I have been unable to write to you more often than this. The circumstances under which I am working are very critical, however, and the government is insistent that everything be carried out in the greatest secrecy. The good news is that I have been well, and above all safe these past weeks. I am told that you are managing well enough without me; both of you will no doubt look forward, though, to having me around the house to reach all those jars high up on the top shelf in the kitchen, or move Helen’s bureau when she decides yet again that she’d like it moved. I miss you both, and hope that you are both still doing very very well. I look forward every day to the hour that I shall return; I hope it shall be soon.

With my love,

Harold

The letter was a great comfort to her mother, Helen could tell. She looked at it often when she thought her daughter wasn’t watching -- gazing motionless at its single folded white page. But she was stronger for it.

The summer had come, and with it came a return to what could be considered normalcy in the city. Yet although all their neighbors had resumed their lives as though the French had never come to Heidelberg, Helen’s family remained painfully aware of the absence of its husband and father.

Now, like on so many of the pleasant July days, Helen sat in the parlor, reading one of her books -- a natural history of China. Her mother’s voice called out from the other side of the house.

“Helen, come in here for a moment. I have something to tell you.”

Helen set aside her book and made her way down the hall and into the kitchen, where her mother was waiting for her.

She was sitting at the kitchen table, sorting a bag of dried fruit onto a set of saucers printed with the name and seal of Columbia University. She often brought up important subjects -- either with her husband, as with her imminent departure to care for a dying sister the year before, or with her daughter, as with their move from New York back to Germany -- while performing some kind of menial chore. She kept her eyes on the prunes, cranberries and cherries.

“When you return to school in the fall, I shall be going with you.”

“What do you mean, Mother? You’ve already gone to university.”

“Not as a student, Helen, but rather as a teacher’s assistant.”

Helen looked at her mother for some time, puzzled.

“I have been issued a Worker’s Book, Helen, look...” She produced a small book from her lap and held it out for her daughter to see. On a brown cover was emblazoned a stylized picture of an eagle. Then, in large white letters: Deutsches Reich Arbeitsbuch. There were pages for recording a worker’s biographical information, education and skills, and then many blank cells in which job experience would be recorded. “With Father gone, the government wants me to contribute to society, to ensure that our family remains fully self-sufficient. I’m to go in only three days a week, and help with the lessons for some of the younger children, you see.”

“Previous occupations,” Helen read aloud, still looking at the Arbeitsbuch, “Chemist. Why don’t you go to work as a chemist, Mother?”

“The government... doesn’t need any chemists right now, or at least not in Heidelberg. I’ve been found to be most useful as a teacher’s assistant.” She paused, seeing her daughter’s nonplussed expression. “But there’s good news, Helen. Because I shall be staying at the school after your classes end for the day, you shall be on your own for three afternoons a week. You may need to go to the grocer to buy things or run errands for the Hensels or the Bergmanns, and so I’ve decided to buy you a bicycle.”

“Really?”

“Yes, there is a sale at the bicycle shop, and I thought we might go this afternoon.”

Half an hour later, Helen and her mother walked out their front door and down the street, walking several tree-lined blocks to the edge of the outer edge of the Altstadt district, where there were many stores and businesses. Helen noticed that there were more people out shopping than she had seen since the start of the war.


Business throughout the Rhineland had substantially recovered by the middle of summer, 1936.

Ahead, a long row of shops were all plastered with bright signs in the windows. They advertised massive discounts -- and the streets were crowded with hundreds of men and women trying to get the best prices.

A tall blonde woman from their neighborhood was approaching, waving at them. She was draped with at least half a dozen brightly colored scarves, held a large camera in her hands and was struggling to balance the multitude of shopping bags that hung from her shoulders, forearms and wrists. Drawing level with mother and daughter on the sidewalk, she peered out from around a bag that bore the name of a local jeweler.

“Frau Krause, how are you doing?”

Helen’s mother smiled politely. “Hello Frau Mainke. I -- I have been getting along as best I can.”

“Yes, yes. Look at all these bargains. They are trying to raise the Staatsbürgerschaftpreis, I expect. It’s been increased to 2,000 Reichsmarks.”

“Yes, indeed it has, Frau Mainke.”

“Ah, so. Our gain, yes?” Frau Mainke began to walk off and then stopped. “Where has your dear husband been lately, I wonder? Nobody on your street or mine has seen him in some time, and it is causing some people to talk. Nothing’s happened between you two, has it?”

“He’s visiting family. Goodbye, Frau Mainke.” With that, Helen’s mother grabbed her by the hand and pulled her off down the sidewalk.

At the corner, Seiwert & Sons Bicycles had its doors invitingly open. A sleek black boys’ bicycle occupied the front window. Helen’s mother led her in, and exchanged a few quick words with Seiwert, the cueball-bald proprietor, with whom she had evidently already discussed the transaction. He led Helen to the store’s side wall, where a sturdy green girls’ bicycle hung from two steel hooks. He took it down and spun the wheels, listening to the drive chain. A church bell was ringing in the distance. The chain was evidently to Seiwert’s liking, for he instructed Helen to get on it.

She had ridden a friend’s bicycle in Brooklyn, and become a fairly proficient rider for her age, but now felt rather unsteady as she mounted it and attempted to pedal around the store. Several times she had to place her feet on the hardwood floor to prevent herself from falling, but Seiwert looked pleased enough. While she completed several more full circuits of the store, her mother paid, and then entered into a conversation about the war economy.

At last, her mother gave Seiwert her farewell and led Helen back out onto the street. Throughout the city, more church bells were pealing. Helen could see that second story windows were opening on both sides of the street; patrons flowed out of the stores now, welling into a single rumbling crowd. Walking the bicycle, Helen felt herself separate from her mother and enter the mass of people, drawn by the strange intensity of what was happening. She had lost sight of her mother, but made her way only farther onto the packed street. She soon felt herself bump into a tall presence above her.

It was an old man with a white beard and dark grey suit. He took his hat off and peered down at her frankly.

“News from Holland,” the man said, “-- the worst.”

Helen looked at him. His eyes were glistening.

“The Kaiser is dead.”

[trekaddict]

“News from Holland,” the man said, “-- the worst.”

Helen looked at him. His eyes were glistening.

“The Kaiser is dead.”

I may have missed/forgotten something, but why is this bad news?

[Kurt_Steiner]

Perhaps the man was a strong monarchist supporter...

[Enewald]

I wish the Kaiser would have never left Germany in the first place.
He could have kept the people somehow together, stopping nazis and commies taking the power in the streets.

Heil Wilhelm!
Es Lebe der neue Kaiser!

[dublish]

I may have missed/forgotten something, but why is this bad news?

You don't expect all fictional characters to share your views, do you?

I'm surprised things are going back to normal so quickly. Don't these people know there's a war on? You'd think the Nazis were averse to implementing a war economy.

...

Well, I suppose with France out already, there's not much heavy fighting going on, but still.

[TheHyphenated1]

dublish (1), Avatar018, Metroid17 - Thanks for the enthusiasm!

trekaddict, Kurt_Steiner - Kurt has hit it on the head. No doubt many within the government and Party are privately toasting his death, but nonetheless he was a tremendous national figure.

Enewald - To quote a wise philosopher: "Coulda, woulda, shoulda..." Unfortunately, the New Kaiser is more deluded, romantic tramp than stern Prussian aristocrat.

dublish (2) - Schacht is doing his best to pull together resources without impacting morale of the people. Though there is some rationing, especially in the west, it is not yet as significant as it had become by this point in the OTL war.

[TheHyphenated1]

Dear Readers,

Although the past couple of months of our story have been regrettably slow in progressing, I assure you that my interest has not flagged. My schedule has highly unusual these past months, and no sooner have I received some hope of more regularity have things shifted again. While the update schedule has seemed a bit, well, menopausal, lately, Weltkriegschaft is still plugging along. I'm just doing my level best to wrest the slowest-updating crown from El Pip's head . The good news is that III:XI is complete and going up TONIGHT. Thanks again for your continued support and patience .

TH1

[Enewald]

Readers have nothing else to do so they wait. And wait. Untill someone pronounces the aar dead or that one shall continue it.

[KLorberau]

Patiently waiting.......and waiting............and..........zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

This is too good an AAR to give up on.....I shall wait for the next update loyally......

KLorberau