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Foreign invaders bring back the beloved monarchy? 
Guaranteed success and internal stability.
NKVD just needs new uniforms and a new name.
Guaranteed success and internal stability.
NKVD just needs new uniforms and a new name.
Not by much. Still have Moscow and Stalingrad to go, then the death of Stalin.
Foreign invaders bring back the beloved monarchy?
Guaranteed success and internal stability.
NKVD just needs new uniforms and a new name.
I'm thinking "Okhrana," no negative connotations there.
The Russian Question is one that is being debated at the highest levels, I assure you. Among other things, there's a former Austrian Galician officer named Melnyk in Kiev, and the Byelorussians, and the Turks' claims on the Caucasus... suffice it to say that the Autocrat of All the Russias will be a title, not a truth.
And that Fritz von der Schulenburg is Papen's new advisor on Russian policy, with a dim view of the Crown Prince's idea of reconstituting Russia.
To Do:
- Moscow
- Stalingrad
- Valkyrie
- Fallout
- The Postwar Order
---
- The French Crisis
- Southeast Asia
- Into Space
- The Passing of Kaiser Wilhelm
- Epilogue
---
Siegerkranz 2?
Not a whole lot happens in the Far East or Africa; the British return to the Asian mainland was (by 1953, anyway) by way of Hanoi. The Americas do deserve some attention, because the United States (again, by 1953) was on the verge of dissent-induced revolutionary collapse. I could probably create artificial tensions there thanks to Papa Eicke and his pro-apartheid views, Lettow-Vorbeck and his more enlightened views, and the crisis created by the death of Jan Smuts in '48, but the region's mostly quiet.
If you can travel back in time and persuade the Prussians to change the lyrics, I'm willing, but not 'til then.
Though any sequel that got written would look a lot more like Kaiserreich Germany, wherein it is discovered that preserving empires is often more difficult than creating them.
Just finished reading through the whole AAR and it has been excellent reading. I am quite intrigued at how you will create German Technologies for the future. The first man on the moon, Wilhelm Volkmann?
Also, there will be German space stations and intercontinental rocket planes by 1970. And by 1990, the Fatherland has spread to the moon.
104. Momentous Decisions
Reichskanzlei
Berlin, German Empire
23 June 1944
It was hard not to contrast Berlin of 1918 with Berlin of 1944, Ernst Volkmann found. He remembered the catastrophic days of the end of the last war from leaves - pinched, worried citizens, somber faces, lines for the most basic staples, even fist-fights over a loaf of black bread or a two-kilo bag of potatoes. In contrast, men in uniform promenaded down Unter den Linden with their women, the fashions that in any other era would have debuted in Paris on display here. The Hohenzollern influence was clear: long dresses and high collars, no displays of leg or breast for the Berlin crowd in the Kaiser's shining new era.
If the difference between the old and new Berlin were not stark enough, there was the difference in his own role: no more a makeshift pioneer company commander, he was a general now, a Generalleutnant no less, equivalent to a division or corps commander! The transformation was, of course, due to Ingeneurkreis Westerplatte, but that responsibility was at least equal to that of a corps commander. That was what brought him from Bad Schlema to Berlin, and why the Bendlerblock had seen fit to grant him a staff car, complete with general's flags flapping at the fenders. It was time to brief the Chancellor, the War Minister, and the Kaiser himself on the progress at Bad Schlema, and whether it was even needed in the face of recent events.
The car park at the Chancellory was already half-filled with vehicles when Ernst arrived; he saw the Marshal's personal flag - the black eagle of Prussia, clasping two batons, rather than the proper flag of a field marshal - drooping from the fender of an ostentatiously dusty Kubelwagen, and the massive Maybach limousine favored by the Chancellor. Maybach was producing fewer cars each year, with an increasing percentage of their output going to the war effort, but Papen didn't seem to be suffering from it, he mused. In comparison, his own vehicle seemed almost out of place.
The Chancellory guards, white-gloved and chrome-helmeted, stood to attention and saluted at his approach in a clatter of hands against stocks. They carried the old Mauser K98s, complete with fixed bayonets, as a matter of show. After the attempt on Schleicher back in the 1930s, and the attempted assassination of the Kaiser in '39, it seemed exceedingly unlikely that these were the true guards. He returned the salutes, nodded absently to his driver, and continued in to the briefing, attache case with his transparencies and slides tucked under his left arm.
When he arrived at the great briefing room, the men he thought of as "his side" were already ranged across the front row. There was General Becker, amused beneath his bushy moustache, and Doctor Heisenberg, whose presence was largely superfluous in a gathering primarily composed of officers but whose Nobel gave them a certain cachet. General der Flieger Wever sat there, smiling in encouragement, with Major Francke and his pilot's clipboard seated beside him. Francke gave a thumbs-up and a nod, the signal that the He 277 was what they had hoped. For the first time at one of these semiannual meetings, a slight, balding man who looked overworked and harassed appeared with them; from other meetings, he knew the man was Albert Speer. His presence with the "Uranium Club" was a bit of a surprise, but a welcome one. Against them were ranged a variety of powers: Udet, still doubtful of the need for four-engined bombers, practically the entire Army establishment, represented by Bock himself, the very sickly-looking Chief of the General Staff, Generalfeldmarschall von Brauchitsch, the Chancellor, and a handful of high-ranking generals from the Bendlerblock. Keitel, Jodl - these were professional officers, looking down their noses at a jumped-up Stahlhelmer with no stripes on his trousers.
At precisely nine o'clock, he began the briefing. "Gentlemen. I am Generalleutnant Ernst Volkmann, of Ingeneurkreis Westerplatte. This briefing concerns the current status of the Apparatus at Bad Schlema, and is classified Top Secret - Special Access, Named. If you will each consult your briefing books..."
The briefing was actually very straightforward: the centrifugal separators were online and the Bad Schlema pile was in self-sustaining reaction now. Thanks to theoretical work and extensive lobbying by Professor Einstein, the pile was in fact producing sufficient electricity that it was no longer connected to the national power grid. The most significant piece of news, however, was that a Device was nearing completion.
"What, Volkmann, is a device?" Keitel asked airily, voice filled with silky condescension. Ernst ignored his tone and replied evenly, "The goal of this project initially, General, was the development of a uranium-explosive device of significantly higher energy-to-mass yield than conventional explosive based on the work of Doctor Heisenberg." He gestured to the physicist, who inclined his head in a bow, and continued. "The initial construction, because it is both crude and intended as proof of concept, is too large for aerial delivery or conventional artillery. Thus, for lack of a better name, it has been called the Device." Keitel, an artilleryman by trade, snorted and shook his head, scribbling notes. Bock, voice dry, continued the questioning.
"My question, General, is simple. When you began, we were under the threat of possible Soviet attack at any moment and you promised it would be a potentially war-winning weapon. As I'm sure you know, Moscow fell three days ago, and I received a report this morning that Stalingrad is now Tsaritsyn again... or perhaps Knyazitsyn, hard to tell these days." Bock gave his thin-lipped, wintry smile, and Ernst realized that there was a joke somewhere in there. "In any case, General, I would say the war is in fact won. What purpose is there to your Device?" Papen leapt into the attack alongside the Marshal. "Yes, General, why are we bothering with this? We're pouring a battleship's worth of Reichsmarks into your pile every month, why should we not just pave that money pit flat?"
Wever raised a hand. "I believe I can answer, with your permission, General Volkmann?" the Luftwaffe man asked; Ernst nodded gratefully.
"I would respectfully suggest to the Chancellor that the British parked a great many months of development at Scapa Flow, and it availed them little. Frankly, every month of research that gets built along the North Sea is shoveling money into the past. I mean no disrespect to the Kaiserliche Marine, but the attachment to months of construction is a distraction from future development and a silly attachment to a weapon that can be empirically proven to be obsolete." Ernst was somewhat shocked at the straightforward attack on the fleet's battleship obsession; Bock blinked, then guffawed before replying. "Regardless of that, answer the Chancellor's question, General. Without insubordination this time."
Ernst took a deep breath and stepped into the opening. "Sir, this is almost certainly not Germany's last war. It's only a matter of time before France recovers - look at us after Versailles. It would be better for us if we remained ahead of them." Keitel leaned over to Jodl and murmured audibly, "Ahead of France calls for very little." Jodl nodded, half-smiling, before Bock stilled them with a look.
The Chancellor continued his attack. "Nevertheless, General, we have a firm commitment to rebuild Russia. This ridiculous expenditure on Bad Schlema is sure to affect our efforts there!" It was Speer who deflected this one. "Not so, Chancellor. I'm sure that the military could tell you better, but initial reports from... Tsaritsyn -" he had trouble with the name, and choosing the appropriate name in the post-Soviet world - "indicate that the city was captured largely intact. It was one of Stalin's major manufacturing hubs, and its intact capture means that much of Soviet industry is unharmed. There is the matter of conversion to our standards, but at this point, I think the Russian recovery can pay for itself, in terms of raw materials and finished goods both." Papen looked whitely furious at his economics minister, but Speer was right; it was just an area of total disinterest to the playboy chancellor, who usually waved aside economic considerations.
Brauchitsch coughed, looked apologetic, and asked his own question. "General. Please tell those who have never attended one of these briefings... what do you expect the Device to do?"
He blinked; he had forgotten that some, like Keitel and Jodl, had never attended one of these briefings before. "Sir... we expect just the prototype to yield approximately the same output at detonation point as ten thousand tons of conventional TNT explosive. For short, ten kilotons. The Device is projected to weigh approximately ten tons," he added hastily, knowing that one of the logistics men from the General Staff was sure to ask. Brauchitsch, already pale, paled further, Bock's lips pursed at the more refined projection, and Keitel blinked. "That... is simply impossible," he sputtered.
"So was the Race to Moscow," Bock interjected, clicking his pen decisively. "All right, Volkmann. Do you think you can get it down to bomb size by next year at the latest?"
"Yes, sir."
"You have twelve months. I expect to be notified before you test the Device, as, I'm sure, does the All-Highest. After that, funding goes to other projects if you don't show results. Dismissed." The meeting ended with that, with Papen's jaw flapping in surprised frustration.
Wever and Francke closed on Ernst Volkmann, all smiles and cigars now. The Luftwaffe's bomber proponent grinned ear-to-ear and clapped him on the shoulder. "Even better news, Volkmann. The Heinkel people listened for a change. Francke here's already started picking crews for a bombing Staffel."
Francke nodded gloomily. "Fat lot of good it'll do us. Ten kilotons, you say? We're going to be trying to outrun a tidal wave. We're going to have to retune the 277 if you want to outfly that kind of blast."
On that sobering note, the three of them returned to the bright Berlin sun, the contrails of a pair of Luftwaffe jets far above the city.
---
Franz von Papen went from the Device meeting to another, equally unsatisfying meeting at Charlottenburg Palace, where the Reich's foreign policy makers, including the Crown Prince, were gathered in Wilhelm's great office. It was a genteel, inclusive meeting, not a commoner in the room and everyone laughing at some joke of the Kaiser's when the Chancellor arrived. He saw Fritz von der Schulenburg, his pick to replace the aging, tired Neurath, raise his teacup in greeting, half-swallow, and begin to stand, then smiled and waved away the pleasantries. "I apologize, I was delayed at the Chancellory. The Uranium Club again. Bock resolved it," he added, glossing over his own loss of input and pretending to have given the Marshal the opportunity to deal with the problem.
"Now, Franz," the Kaiser said, gesturing to the teapot and a remaining teacup, "we were about to start serious discussions about what to do about Russia." Papen took his tea and sat, sipping and nodding. "Please, continue, I'll catch up."
The situation as laid out was conceptually simple and devilishly difficult in reality. There had to be a successor to the Soviet Union. The question was how many successors, and how great a degree of German intervention was needed. Germany was at this point firmly committed to the restoration of the Romanov dynasty, but the degree of their restoration - a full-blown Autocrat of All The Russias, or a more modest solution? The Crown Prince saw the full-scale restoration as the most reasonable solution, as it would take generations to establish any degree of stability and the current Grand Duke would likely be exceedingly grateful.
Papen rejected it out of hand. For one thing, the opportunistic Finnish government had begun feeling out an alliance. Their price was one Papen was quite willing to pay: some of the Russian land in the Murmansk Corridor. It cost Germany nothing, and played to his personal policy of weakening Stalin's heirs. Second, the Sultan had already been guaranteed the Russian Caucasus. Third, Papen sincerely believed that it was Germany's destiny to "civilize" the Baltic countries, not return them to Russian rule. Finally, he had been persuaded by his Russian expert, Friedrich Werner Graf von der Schulenburg, the former ambassador, that the partition of Russia was not only inevitable, but mandatory if there was never to be the threat of a great east-European superpower again.
The argument lasted well into the afternoon; despite the people involved, it became increasingly rancorous. Neurath looked positively exhausted; Schulenburg's lips stayed permanently pursed and drawn; the Crown Prince began pacing compulsively. At this point, compromise seemed impossible and the entirety of the Kaiser's Russian policy turned on two men, Papen and the Prince.
Thus, as the sun began to wane, Papen found himself leaning over the Kaiser's desk, flat of his hand pounding vehemently against the surface. "No, Majesty, it is simply unacceptable. Un-ac-ceptable! There is no reason to return the realms of the Tsars to the Grand Duke - they cast his cousins out of their own will, and hardly invited him back in, so please, All-Highest, I understand your interests, but it's hardly the same concern!" He straightened, backing from the desk and gesturing at Schulenburg. "Majesty, listen. We have armed the Grand Duke's lackeys already, and we have liberated Russia. But the idea that the Romanovs have a right to 'all the Russias?' The Ukrainians don't even consider themselves Russian, and we have made firm commitments to this man Melnyk that we would honor Ukrainian independence. If the Ukrainians go free, Russia loses its breadbasket and is hamstrung..." He let out the last with relish, lingering long enough to give the Crown Prince a moment to speak.
"Russia is already hamstrung by the loss of the Caucasus," he snapped, "which we've already given the Turks as a reward for not falling on their own swords. There's no reason to weaken Russia further, when it's obvious to any fool that the Turks are going to implode and when that happens... we'll need every friend to the east we can find. Father, we've already put the Turk in charge of the fates of every Christian in the Balkans, do we really need to disassemble Russia? This plan creates a Balkan knot that stretches from Kamchatka to Lvov. You think we can keep on top of that boiling pot?" Ludwig Ferdinand's finger stabbed accusingly at Papen. "We have been lucky so far, Chancellor, and that cannot last forever."
Papen bit back his immediate reply, then, smoothing his waistcoat, composed himself to reply. "Highness, I wish I could agree. If we take Russia apart, each of the pieces will be almost strong enough to contend with the others, and all of them will be beholden to us to make up that gap. Maintaining that balance to our east is simple," he concluded, glancing at Wilhelm, who sat, indecisive and frowning behind steepled fingers. "All-Highest, please. Let us look sensibly at this instead of relying on sentiment. The Grand Duke is not in the same situation we were in 1934. He will be, at best, propped up by German arms. Committing those men east of the Urals for any length of time is... madness, Majesty."
Wilhelm stared off into the distance, gazing out the window over the two bickering men, mouth moving silently, then abruptly snapped back to them. "We have agreements with Melnyk?" he asked, fingers drumming on the desktop. Schulenburg nodded rapidly; the agreements had been his work, meant to pry the Ukrainians from the Soviets. They had been remarkably ready to agree. "Then I see little choice, Chancellor. If we partition the Ukraine, the other Russian nations are going to ask for their way, too. Though we of course have to resolve the Volga German problem," he concluded, the last sentence more musing to himself than serious discussion.
Papen glanced at the Crown Prince in gloating triumph. The look he received in return was a clear harbinger of what was to come when Ludwig Ferdinand inherited, but for the moment, that was far in the future. For the moment, the Papen-Schulenburg partition plan had been accepted, and the Grand Duke would remain the Grand Duke.
Reichskanzlei
Berlin, German Empire
23 June 1944
It was hard not to contrast Berlin of 1918 with Berlin of 1944, Ernst Volkmann found. He remembered the catastrophic days of the end of the last war from leaves - pinched, worried citizens, somber faces, lines for the most basic staples, even fist-fights over a loaf of black bread or a two-kilo bag of potatoes. In contrast, men in uniform promenaded down Unter den Linden with their women, the fashions that in any other era would have debuted in Paris on display here. The Hohenzollern influence was clear: long dresses and high collars, no displays of leg or breast for the Berlin crowd in the Kaiser's shining new era.
If the difference between the old and new Berlin were not stark enough, there was the difference in his own role: no more a makeshift pioneer company commander, he was a general now, a Generalleutnant no less, equivalent to a division or corps commander! The transformation was, of course, due to Ingeneurkreis Westerplatte, but that responsibility was at least equal to that of a corps commander. That was what brought him from Bad Schlema to Berlin, and why the Bendlerblock had seen fit to grant him a staff car, complete with general's flags flapping at the fenders. It was time to brief the Chancellor, the War Minister, and the Kaiser himself on the progress at Bad Schlema, and whether it was even needed in the face of recent events.
The car park at the Chancellory was already half-filled with vehicles when Ernst arrived; he saw the Marshal's personal flag - the black eagle of Prussia, clasping two batons, rather than the proper flag of a field marshal - drooping from the fender of an ostentatiously dusty Kubelwagen, and the massive Maybach limousine favored by the Chancellor. Maybach was producing fewer cars each year, with an increasing percentage of their output going to the war effort, but Papen didn't seem to be suffering from it, he mused. In comparison, his own vehicle seemed almost out of place.
The Chancellory guards, white-gloved and chrome-helmeted, stood to attention and saluted at his approach in a clatter of hands against stocks. They carried the old Mauser K98s, complete with fixed bayonets, as a matter of show. After the attempt on Schleicher back in the 1930s, and the attempted assassination of the Kaiser in '39, it seemed exceedingly unlikely that these were the true guards. He returned the salutes, nodded absently to his driver, and continued in to the briefing, attache case with his transparencies and slides tucked under his left arm.
When he arrived at the great briefing room, the men he thought of as "his side" were already ranged across the front row. There was General Becker, amused beneath his bushy moustache, and Doctor Heisenberg, whose presence was largely superfluous in a gathering primarily composed of officers but whose Nobel gave them a certain cachet. General der Flieger Wever sat there, smiling in encouragement, with Major Francke and his pilot's clipboard seated beside him. Francke gave a thumbs-up and a nod, the signal that the He 277 was what they had hoped. For the first time at one of these semiannual meetings, a slight, balding man who looked overworked and harassed appeared with them; from other meetings, he knew the man was Albert Speer. His presence with the "Uranium Club" was a bit of a surprise, but a welcome one. Against them were ranged a variety of powers: Udet, still doubtful of the need for four-engined bombers, practically the entire Army establishment, represented by Bock himself, the very sickly-looking Chief of the General Staff, Generalfeldmarschall von Brauchitsch, the Chancellor, and a handful of high-ranking generals from the Bendlerblock. Keitel, Jodl - these were professional officers, looking down their noses at a jumped-up Stahlhelmer with no stripes on his trousers.
At precisely nine o'clock, he began the briefing. "Gentlemen. I am Generalleutnant Ernst Volkmann, of Ingeneurkreis Westerplatte. This briefing concerns the current status of the Apparatus at Bad Schlema, and is classified Top Secret - Special Access, Named. If you will each consult your briefing books..."
The briefing was actually very straightforward: the centrifugal separators were online and the Bad Schlema pile was in self-sustaining reaction now. Thanks to theoretical work and extensive lobbying by Professor Einstein, the pile was in fact producing sufficient electricity that it was no longer connected to the national power grid. The most significant piece of news, however, was that a Device was nearing completion.
"What, Volkmann, is a device?" Keitel asked airily, voice filled with silky condescension. Ernst ignored his tone and replied evenly, "The goal of this project initially, General, was the development of a uranium-explosive device of significantly higher energy-to-mass yield than conventional explosive based on the work of Doctor Heisenberg." He gestured to the physicist, who inclined his head in a bow, and continued. "The initial construction, because it is both crude and intended as proof of concept, is too large for aerial delivery or conventional artillery. Thus, for lack of a better name, it has been called the Device." Keitel, an artilleryman by trade, snorted and shook his head, scribbling notes. Bock, voice dry, continued the questioning.
"My question, General, is simple. When you began, we were under the threat of possible Soviet attack at any moment and you promised it would be a potentially war-winning weapon. As I'm sure you know, Moscow fell three days ago, and I received a report this morning that Stalingrad is now Tsaritsyn again... or perhaps Knyazitsyn, hard to tell these days." Bock gave his thin-lipped, wintry smile, and Ernst realized that there was a joke somewhere in there. "In any case, General, I would say the war is in fact won. What purpose is there to your Device?" Papen leapt into the attack alongside the Marshal. "Yes, General, why are we bothering with this? We're pouring a battleship's worth of Reichsmarks into your pile every month, why should we not just pave that money pit flat?"
Wever raised a hand. "I believe I can answer, with your permission, General Volkmann?" the Luftwaffe man asked; Ernst nodded gratefully.
"I would respectfully suggest to the Chancellor that the British parked a great many months of development at Scapa Flow, and it availed them little. Frankly, every month of research that gets built along the North Sea is shoveling money into the past. I mean no disrespect to the Kaiserliche Marine, but the attachment to months of construction is a distraction from future development and a silly attachment to a weapon that can be empirically proven to be obsolete." Ernst was somewhat shocked at the straightforward attack on the fleet's battleship obsession; Bock blinked, then guffawed before replying. "Regardless of that, answer the Chancellor's question, General. Without insubordination this time."
Ernst took a deep breath and stepped into the opening. "Sir, this is almost certainly not Germany's last war. It's only a matter of time before France recovers - look at us after Versailles. It would be better for us if we remained ahead of them." Keitel leaned over to Jodl and murmured audibly, "Ahead of France calls for very little." Jodl nodded, half-smiling, before Bock stilled them with a look.
The Chancellor continued his attack. "Nevertheless, General, we have a firm commitment to rebuild Russia. This ridiculous expenditure on Bad Schlema is sure to affect our efforts there!" It was Speer who deflected this one. "Not so, Chancellor. I'm sure that the military could tell you better, but initial reports from... Tsaritsyn -" he had trouble with the name, and choosing the appropriate name in the post-Soviet world - "indicate that the city was captured largely intact. It was one of Stalin's major manufacturing hubs, and its intact capture means that much of Soviet industry is unharmed. There is the matter of conversion to our standards, but at this point, I think the Russian recovery can pay for itself, in terms of raw materials and finished goods both." Papen looked whitely furious at his economics minister, but Speer was right; it was just an area of total disinterest to the playboy chancellor, who usually waved aside economic considerations.
Brauchitsch coughed, looked apologetic, and asked his own question. "General. Please tell those who have never attended one of these briefings... what do you expect the Device to do?"
He blinked; he had forgotten that some, like Keitel and Jodl, had never attended one of these briefings before. "Sir... we expect just the prototype to yield approximately the same output at detonation point as ten thousand tons of conventional TNT explosive. For short, ten kilotons. The Device is projected to weigh approximately ten tons," he added hastily, knowing that one of the logistics men from the General Staff was sure to ask. Brauchitsch, already pale, paled further, Bock's lips pursed at the more refined projection, and Keitel blinked. "That... is simply impossible," he sputtered.
"So was the Race to Moscow," Bock interjected, clicking his pen decisively. "All right, Volkmann. Do you think you can get it down to bomb size by next year at the latest?"
"Yes, sir."
"You have twelve months. I expect to be notified before you test the Device, as, I'm sure, does the All-Highest. After that, funding goes to other projects if you don't show results. Dismissed." The meeting ended with that, with Papen's jaw flapping in surprised frustration.
Wever and Francke closed on Ernst Volkmann, all smiles and cigars now. The Luftwaffe's bomber proponent grinned ear-to-ear and clapped him on the shoulder. "Even better news, Volkmann. The Heinkel people listened for a change. Francke here's already started picking crews for a bombing Staffel."
Francke nodded gloomily. "Fat lot of good it'll do us. Ten kilotons, you say? We're going to be trying to outrun a tidal wave. We're going to have to retune the 277 if you want to outfly that kind of blast."
On that sobering note, the three of them returned to the bright Berlin sun, the contrails of a pair of Luftwaffe jets far above the city.
---
Franz von Papen went from the Device meeting to another, equally unsatisfying meeting at Charlottenburg Palace, where the Reich's foreign policy makers, including the Crown Prince, were gathered in Wilhelm's great office. It was a genteel, inclusive meeting, not a commoner in the room and everyone laughing at some joke of the Kaiser's when the Chancellor arrived. He saw Fritz von der Schulenburg, his pick to replace the aging, tired Neurath, raise his teacup in greeting, half-swallow, and begin to stand, then smiled and waved away the pleasantries. "I apologize, I was delayed at the Chancellory. The Uranium Club again. Bock resolved it," he added, glossing over his own loss of input and pretending to have given the Marshal the opportunity to deal with the problem.
"Now, Franz," the Kaiser said, gesturing to the teapot and a remaining teacup, "we were about to start serious discussions about what to do about Russia." Papen took his tea and sat, sipping and nodding. "Please, continue, I'll catch up."
The situation as laid out was conceptually simple and devilishly difficult in reality. There had to be a successor to the Soviet Union. The question was how many successors, and how great a degree of German intervention was needed. Germany was at this point firmly committed to the restoration of the Romanov dynasty, but the degree of their restoration - a full-blown Autocrat of All The Russias, or a more modest solution? The Crown Prince saw the full-scale restoration as the most reasonable solution, as it would take generations to establish any degree of stability and the current Grand Duke would likely be exceedingly grateful.
Papen rejected it out of hand. For one thing, the opportunistic Finnish government had begun feeling out an alliance. Their price was one Papen was quite willing to pay: some of the Russian land in the Murmansk Corridor. It cost Germany nothing, and played to his personal policy of weakening Stalin's heirs. Second, the Sultan had already been guaranteed the Russian Caucasus. Third, Papen sincerely believed that it was Germany's destiny to "civilize" the Baltic countries, not return them to Russian rule. Finally, he had been persuaded by his Russian expert, Friedrich Werner Graf von der Schulenburg, the former ambassador, that the partition of Russia was not only inevitable, but mandatory if there was never to be the threat of a great east-European superpower again.
The argument lasted well into the afternoon; despite the people involved, it became increasingly rancorous. Neurath looked positively exhausted; Schulenburg's lips stayed permanently pursed and drawn; the Crown Prince began pacing compulsively. At this point, compromise seemed impossible and the entirety of the Kaiser's Russian policy turned on two men, Papen and the Prince.
Thus, as the sun began to wane, Papen found himself leaning over the Kaiser's desk, flat of his hand pounding vehemently against the surface. "No, Majesty, it is simply unacceptable. Un-ac-ceptable! There is no reason to return the realms of the Tsars to the Grand Duke - they cast his cousins out of their own will, and hardly invited him back in, so please, All-Highest, I understand your interests, but it's hardly the same concern!" He straightened, backing from the desk and gesturing at Schulenburg. "Majesty, listen. We have armed the Grand Duke's lackeys already, and we have liberated Russia. But the idea that the Romanovs have a right to 'all the Russias?' The Ukrainians don't even consider themselves Russian, and we have made firm commitments to this man Melnyk that we would honor Ukrainian independence. If the Ukrainians go free, Russia loses its breadbasket and is hamstrung..." He let out the last with relish, lingering long enough to give the Crown Prince a moment to speak.
"Russia is already hamstrung by the loss of the Caucasus," he snapped, "which we've already given the Turks as a reward for not falling on their own swords. There's no reason to weaken Russia further, when it's obvious to any fool that the Turks are going to implode and when that happens... we'll need every friend to the east we can find. Father, we've already put the Turk in charge of the fates of every Christian in the Balkans, do we really need to disassemble Russia? This plan creates a Balkan knot that stretches from Kamchatka to Lvov. You think we can keep on top of that boiling pot?" Ludwig Ferdinand's finger stabbed accusingly at Papen. "We have been lucky so far, Chancellor, and that cannot last forever."
Papen bit back his immediate reply, then, smoothing his waistcoat, composed himself to reply. "Highness, I wish I could agree. If we take Russia apart, each of the pieces will be almost strong enough to contend with the others, and all of them will be beholden to us to make up that gap. Maintaining that balance to our east is simple," he concluded, glancing at Wilhelm, who sat, indecisive and frowning behind steepled fingers. "All-Highest, please. Let us look sensibly at this instead of relying on sentiment. The Grand Duke is not in the same situation we were in 1934. He will be, at best, propped up by German arms. Committing those men east of the Urals for any length of time is... madness, Majesty."
Wilhelm stared off into the distance, gazing out the window over the two bickering men, mouth moving silently, then abruptly snapped back to them. "We have agreements with Melnyk?" he asked, fingers drumming on the desktop. Schulenburg nodded rapidly; the agreements had been his work, meant to pry the Ukrainians from the Soviets. They had been remarkably ready to agree. "Then I see little choice, Chancellor. If we partition the Ukraine, the other Russian nations are going to ask for their way, too. Though we of course have to resolve the Volga German problem," he concluded, the last sentence more musing to himself than serious discussion.
Papen glanced at the Crown Prince in gloating triumph. The look he received in return was a clear harbinger of what was to come when Ludwig Ferdinand inherited, but for the moment, that was far in the future. For the moment, the Papen-Schulenburg partition plan had been accepted, and the Grand Duke would remain the Grand Duke.
Papen is going to follow Bismarck's steeps. That is, he's going to have his ass kicked out of office with the new Kaiser
What about those who fought for their own independent Caucasian states against Soviet Union? Return home to Turkey?
Papen is going to follow Bismarck's steeps. That is, he's going to have his ass kicked out of office with the new Kaiser
Pretty much, but just like with Bismarck, he figures that's in the future, why worry about it now?
Yes. Turkey has cores on that entire region. Essentially the new Russian southern border will be a line Rostov-Grozny. I see zero chance for this to work as a long-term solution.
Probably not even as a short-term solution. Although as long as there is no high-key insurgency against the Turks, and the Turks don't press their "sovereign rights" too harshly on the locals, a fragile peace could last for a couple of years. It will still explode eventually though...
Five words: "No deals with the Bolsheviks!"
For the remainder of the '40s, that'll pretty much be the case. In the 1950s, though... that's a story all its own.
105. The Day The Earth Stood Still
The capture of Stalingrad precipitated a crisis in the Soviet leadership. Upon receipt of the news, Stalin, aboard a train between Gorky and Kazan en route to the new "people's redoubt" in the Urals, stood bolt-upright, grabbing his right temple and crying out incoherently before toppling almost into the lap of Comrade Molotov. He died of a sudden stroke, at the age of sixty-three. Immediately, the infighting over the remains of the Soviet Union began.
In western Russia, of couse, the Grand Duke had already proclaimed the return of the Romanovs, though that was supported mainly by the German army. Farther to the west, the Byelorussian government formed the Grand Duchy of White Ruthenia - a "grand duchy" in name only, as it was ruled in practice by a regency council headed by the able political schemer Bishop Venedict Bobkovski, of Brest-Litovsk, and so long as he was able to create a state "in God's image," the bishop saw little reason to end the regency council.
To the south, the Ukrainians were divided between the leadership of old-guard officer Andrei Melnyk and the radical, charismatic young Stepan Bandera. Bandera suffered one critical weakness in the contest: All of the German government's agreements, made through the agency of the Austrian government, were with Melnyk. The former Austro-Hungarian rifle officer therefore found himself summoned to Vienna, then Berlin, conferred with an astonishing number of titles and honors in a short period - many of the Austrian honors backdated to the Great War - and sent to Kiev, where a Hindenburg-inspired crowd hoisted him on their shoulders and proclaimed him the Grand Duke of the Ukraine.
In the Soviet Union itself, a power struggle developed that was all the more fierce for the dwindling rewards which it promised. It was as if Molotov, Bulganin, and Beria were determined that there was no higher title than "Tsar of the Ruins," as a German newspaper article dubbed them. They formed a shaky triumvirate in June and July, but by August, Molotov had rallied the Party faithful, suborned Beria, and accused former Deputy Defense Commissar Bulganin of failing to do his utmost to prevent this collapse. It meant little in practical terms: already Lazar Kaganovich had proclaimed an independent fortress-state of the Caucasus republics, since German armies had isolated the region by the first week of August. Kaganovich had all of the Soviet Union's oil, but none of the factories needed to keep his tanks running; Molotov had all of the factories, but none of the oil.
Politically, things were nearly as bad on the German side of the front. Though publicly the royal family made common cause with the Chancellor, it was difficult to keep some news of the rift between Crown Prince and Chancellor from leaking out. The great pillar of the German state - the army - was meanwhile busy eating its own tail. Marshal von Bock, having achieved the impossible, was actively seeking a replacement for the ailing Walther von Brauchitsch, whose heart troubles had made it impossible for him to continue serving as chief of staff. At the same time, he sent General Heinrici, whose artillery had made the assault on Moscow feasible, on a fool's errand to capture Arkhangelsk. The Marshal had never forgiven Heinrici for his staunchly-held position on the treatment of Polish soldiers, and the rivalry looked likely to continue, as Heinrici's command suddenly became "Army Group Worchuta" and was detailed to a slogging march to the north end of the Urals.
In the Caucasus, the Mountain Wolf continued the grinding fight of the summer, urging Busch's Africans on despite their ill-equipped status. To their credit, they advanced in yards throughout June and July; by August, they had achieved a link with Manstein's southern flank, and Rommel's mountaineers ascended Mount Elbrus at the very tail end of August, 1944. Rommel himself made the summit trip despite pleas from his staff not to do so, and had his picture taken gazing eastward through his field glasses. He returned to the base camp and met with Manstein shortly thereafter, signaling the formal transfer of his forces from nominally Turkish to fully German control once more.
It was ironically one of the least-opposed commanders in the Reichsheer who drew the greatest attention, Generalfeldmarschall Guderian. This was partially due to a talent for self-promotion, and partially due to the vast distances and difficult terrain encountered by Army Group Samarkand. Guderian's "belly thrust" into the Central Asian steppe led to a series of sharp clashes with a handful of understrength Soviet formations, but no contests on the scale of the vast encirclements of the Ukraine or Fortress Caucasus. As a result, Guderian, carrying fuel and spare parts with him whenever possible, was able to advance from Shirvan in Turkish Persia to Samarkand in Soviet Uzbekistan in a mere three weeks. Even with the triumph of Kiev, Guderian's feat appeared across the front page of every newspaper in Germany: the father of the Panzerwaffe astride his halftrack, receiving the salutes of his troops as they marched through the Registan at the city's heart. "Guderian of Samarkand" captured the German imagination in a way that even the fall of Moscow could not - it drew attention to the far-flung nature of the war. It also emboldened the Istanbul regime, whose pan-Turkic ambitions now flared up, leading them to demand the Turkmen territories of the old Soviet Union as far as Alma-Ata. Guderian, citing the proximity of Turkish territories and the apolitical traditions of the German army, readily agreed.
At the tail of summer of 1944, then, the German public were left looking at themselves, asking, "We've won the war - why do we keep fighting?" The answer was simple: for all Papen's anti-Romanov realpolitik, the royal family's war was still a very visceral one, and it would not end until the regime which had murdered the Kaiser's cousins was completely toppled. As in Britain, royal family ties would prove critical in the fate of a nation.
---
Test Site One
Auschwitz, German Empire
14 October 1944
"I must hand it to you, Volkmann," Fedor von Bock said, Zeiss glasses lowering from his eyes as they gazed toward the testing gantry, "you would be hard-pressed to find a more desolate place than Auschwitz."
Finding a site sufficiently remote for secrecy, and sufficiently close to civilization to be feasible. Ernst Volkmann had been involved in every stage of this process, and had found it exhausting, but he had finally hit pay dirt in this remote cavalry barracks, close to a rail junction and otherwise totally uninteresting. The barracks had been taken over by a feldgendarmerie company, and the facilities rapidly expanded to accommodate the scientists and engineers who would be present. The Poles in the area had prodded at first, but had been discouraged thoroughly by the stony replies of the chain dogs and the evident secrecy around the site.
"Do you know what I like about you, General?" Bock continued in an almost conversational tone, rare for him. "You never promise the impossible and fail to deliver. Other people promise the impossible in your name, then you deliver anyway. Assuming," he added sourly, "that this demonstration goes according to plan. His Highness does not visit rural Poland often."
Ernst smoothed his uniform front, awkward in his walking-out coat. "It shall work, sir," he replied. It was his turn to look at the antlike men scrambling over the gantry. For weeks, they had prepared the Device, and he knew some of those men had dreamed of the wiring diagrams in their sleep - one had even returned to the work site to correct a wiring mistake he had only caught in his dreams. Ernst himself had mostly had nightmares of a dud bomb, or, worse, some sort of absurd catastrophe, like the discovery that the phlogiston theory had been right after all, and the entire Earth's air supply would catch fire.
The Kaiser was laughing and joking with some of the more junior officers, sharing coffee and cigarettes in a masterful display of the common touch. The moment had not yet come for everyone to file into the specially prepared bunkers, and the officers were mostly dazzled by the royal presence. Ernst, for his part, mostly wanted to speak to another of the royal entourage: Peter. He had seen little of his son over the past few years, thanks to differing assignments and very little time in Berlin for either of them.
Unfortunately, while Bock was talking to him, there was simply no way to track down his son in the entourage. Fortunately, the Marshal was famously laconic, and now that he had exhausted his praise, he merely nodded to Ernst and moved back to the royal party. Ernst breathed a sigh of relief and looked around for Peter, who stood out as one of the few observers in naval uniform. When he finally reached his son, Peter saluted, as was proper, before asking, "What if this works? What does this even mean?" Ernst shook his head. "Too much to explain - think of it as one more bomb."
"Mm. Think they'll ever shrink to the size they can fit on a carrier?"
"Unlikely. Look at how big this one is. Even the design for bombers is... well, it weighs as much as a Messerschmitt and costs as much as a Staffel of them, easily. Why put something that big and that expensive on a ship?"
"Scapa Flow." The two-word answer was sufficient to explain everything. If the Device did what it was supposed to, if it could be shrunk to carrier size, if a fleet could be caught at anchor once more... if, if, if.
Their conversation was interrupted by an aide, a Hungarian physicist named Teller. Ernst's thoughts flickered over Teller for a moment - Jewish, Hungarian, security risk, foreign contacts, but then which of these physicists didn't have those? Not allergic to the war effort like Einstein at least. Teller coughed for his attention. "Yes?" Ernst asked, slightly irritated at his conversation with Peter being disrupted. "Sir," the physicist said, slightly obsequious, "the Device is ready."
Ernst transformed in an instant. "Gentlemen, Generalfeldmarschall, All-Highest - the test is ready to commence, would you please retreat to the shelters?" The gathering began to move, and he watched each of the attendees pick up a set of black-tinted glasses. They would be needed to observe the coming blast directly.
The loudspeaker array around the site began droning out the protocol. "ATTENTION ALL PERSONNEL, CLEAR TEST SITE, TEST TO COMMENCE IN FIFTEEN MINUTES." Everyone became subdued, waiting in tense silence. Heisenberg's thin lips pursed, and he lifted a pencil to them, gnawing unconsciously at the tip. "TEN MINUTES TO IGNITION." Even Bock's reserve fractured, as if sensing what was to come. He leaned against the bunker parapet, glasses raised to watch. "FIVE MINUTES TO IGNITION... FOUR MINUTES TO IGNITION... THREE MINUTES TO IGNITION..." The time clicked away, Ernst glancing down unconsciously to watch the second hand sweeping around. "ALL PERSONNEL DON GLASSES." He put the black-lensed goggles on and looked outward. "TWO MINUTES TO IGNITION... NINETY SECONDS TO IGNITION... SIXTY..." The countdown continued, and he consciously forced his fist to relax. "THIRTY... TWENTY... TEN... NINE... EIGHT... SEVEN... SIX... FIVE... FOUR... THREE... TWO... ONE... CONTACT."
In another bunker, a Hauptmann closed an electrical relay and the spark raced to the Device. A sphere of conventional explosive surrounded about half of the weapon-grade plutonium in Germany, a series of panels not unlike a football focusing the blast inward. When the electrical impulse reached the Device, for the briefest of moments, nothing happened, then the panels exploded, their energy directed inward. The plutonium core was compressed to its utter limit, then slightly beyond, and one by one, its component atoms began to split as neutron struck nucleus.
The explosion, when it came, was unprecedented, transforming from a white-hot bubble to a rising pillar of fire and smoke that sucked in cooler air from below to create a series of toroidal clouds, creating the world's first mushroom cloud. Even fifteen kilometers from the detonation site, where the main viewing party watched, the blast shook the ground and the pressure wave blew off Bock's peaked cap. As he squatted to retrieve it, he glanced up at Volkmann, his usual reserve totally fractured by what he had just seen. "By God, Volkmann, there'll be a Black Eagle in this, at the very least," he swore, dusting the cap, eyes wide and staring. "Nothing like it in the world."
At the other end of the bunker, Werner Heisenberg murmured a line from the Nibelungenlied: "Death's sword was ever too sharp."
The capture of Stalingrad precipitated a crisis in the Soviet leadership. Upon receipt of the news, Stalin, aboard a train between Gorky and Kazan en route to the new "people's redoubt" in the Urals, stood bolt-upright, grabbing his right temple and crying out incoherently before toppling almost into the lap of Comrade Molotov. He died of a sudden stroke, at the age of sixty-three. Immediately, the infighting over the remains of the Soviet Union began.
In western Russia, of couse, the Grand Duke had already proclaimed the return of the Romanovs, though that was supported mainly by the German army. Farther to the west, the Byelorussian government formed the Grand Duchy of White Ruthenia - a "grand duchy" in name only, as it was ruled in practice by a regency council headed by the able political schemer Bishop Venedict Bobkovski, of Brest-Litovsk, and so long as he was able to create a state "in God's image," the bishop saw little reason to end the regency council.
To the south, the Ukrainians were divided between the leadership of old-guard officer Andrei Melnyk and the radical, charismatic young Stepan Bandera. Bandera suffered one critical weakness in the contest: All of the German government's agreements, made through the agency of the Austrian government, were with Melnyk. The former Austro-Hungarian rifle officer therefore found himself summoned to Vienna, then Berlin, conferred with an astonishing number of titles and honors in a short period - many of the Austrian honors backdated to the Great War - and sent to Kiev, where a Hindenburg-inspired crowd hoisted him on their shoulders and proclaimed him the Grand Duke of the Ukraine.
In the Soviet Union itself, a power struggle developed that was all the more fierce for the dwindling rewards which it promised. It was as if Molotov, Bulganin, and Beria were determined that there was no higher title than "Tsar of the Ruins," as a German newspaper article dubbed them. They formed a shaky triumvirate in June and July, but by August, Molotov had rallied the Party faithful, suborned Beria, and accused former Deputy Defense Commissar Bulganin of failing to do his utmost to prevent this collapse. It meant little in practical terms: already Lazar Kaganovich had proclaimed an independent fortress-state of the Caucasus republics, since German armies had isolated the region by the first week of August. Kaganovich had all of the Soviet Union's oil, but none of the factories needed to keep his tanks running; Molotov had all of the factories, but none of the oil.
Politically, things were nearly as bad on the German side of the front. Though publicly the royal family made common cause with the Chancellor, it was difficult to keep some news of the rift between Crown Prince and Chancellor from leaking out. The great pillar of the German state - the army - was meanwhile busy eating its own tail. Marshal von Bock, having achieved the impossible, was actively seeking a replacement for the ailing Walther von Brauchitsch, whose heart troubles had made it impossible for him to continue serving as chief of staff. At the same time, he sent General Heinrici, whose artillery had made the assault on Moscow feasible, on a fool's errand to capture Arkhangelsk. The Marshal had never forgiven Heinrici for his staunchly-held position on the treatment of Polish soldiers, and the rivalry looked likely to continue, as Heinrici's command suddenly became "Army Group Worchuta" and was detailed to a slogging march to the north end of the Urals.
In the Caucasus, the Mountain Wolf continued the grinding fight of the summer, urging Busch's Africans on despite their ill-equipped status. To their credit, they advanced in yards throughout June and July; by August, they had achieved a link with Manstein's southern flank, and Rommel's mountaineers ascended Mount Elbrus at the very tail end of August, 1944. Rommel himself made the summit trip despite pleas from his staff not to do so, and had his picture taken gazing eastward through his field glasses. He returned to the base camp and met with Manstein shortly thereafter, signaling the formal transfer of his forces from nominally Turkish to fully German control once more.
It was ironically one of the least-opposed commanders in the Reichsheer who drew the greatest attention, Generalfeldmarschall Guderian. This was partially due to a talent for self-promotion, and partially due to the vast distances and difficult terrain encountered by Army Group Samarkand. Guderian's "belly thrust" into the Central Asian steppe led to a series of sharp clashes with a handful of understrength Soviet formations, but no contests on the scale of the vast encirclements of the Ukraine or Fortress Caucasus. As a result, Guderian, carrying fuel and spare parts with him whenever possible, was able to advance from Shirvan in Turkish Persia to Samarkand in Soviet Uzbekistan in a mere three weeks. Even with the triumph of Kiev, Guderian's feat appeared across the front page of every newspaper in Germany: the father of the Panzerwaffe astride his halftrack, receiving the salutes of his troops as they marched through the Registan at the city's heart. "Guderian of Samarkand" captured the German imagination in a way that even the fall of Moscow could not - it drew attention to the far-flung nature of the war. It also emboldened the Istanbul regime, whose pan-Turkic ambitions now flared up, leading them to demand the Turkmen territories of the old Soviet Union as far as Alma-Ata. Guderian, citing the proximity of Turkish territories and the apolitical traditions of the German army, readily agreed.
At the tail of summer of 1944, then, the German public were left looking at themselves, asking, "We've won the war - why do we keep fighting?" The answer was simple: for all Papen's anti-Romanov realpolitik, the royal family's war was still a very visceral one, and it would not end until the regime which had murdered the Kaiser's cousins was completely toppled. As in Britain, royal family ties would prove critical in the fate of a nation.
---
Test Site One
Auschwitz, German Empire
14 October 1944
"I must hand it to you, Volkmann," Fedor von Bock said, Zeiss glasses lowering from his eyes as they gazed toward the testing gantry, "you would be hard-pressed to find a more desolate place than Auschwitz."
Finding a site sufficiently remote for secrecy, and sufficiently close to civilization to be feasible. Ernst Volkmann had been involved in every stage of this process, and had found it exhausting, but he had finally hit pay dirt in this remote cavalry barracks, close to a rail junction and otherwise totally uninteresting. The barracks had been taken over by a feldgendarmerie company, and the facilities rapidly expanded to accommodate the scientists and engineers who would be present. The Poles in the area had prodded at first, but had been discouraged thoroughly by the stony replies of the chain dogs and the evident secrecy around the site.
"Do you know what I like about you, General?" Bock continued in an almost conversational tone, rare for him. "You never promise the impossible and fail to deliver. Other people promise the impossible in your name, then you deliver anyway. Assuming," he added sourly, "that this demonstration goes according to plan. His Highness does not visit rural Poland often."
Ernst smoothed his uniform front, awkward in his walking-out coat. "It shall work, sir," he replied. It was his turn to look at the antlike men scrambling over the gantry. For weeks, they had prepared the Device, and he knew some of those men had dreamed of the wiring diagrams in their sleep - one had even returned to the work site to correct a wiring mistake he had only caught in his dreams. Ernst himself had mostly had nightmares of a dud bomb, or, worse, some sort of absurd catastrophe, like the discovery that the phlogiston theory had been right after all, and the entire Earth's air supply would catch fire.
The Kaiser was laughing and joking with some of the more junior officers, sharing coffee and cigarettes in a masterful display of the common touch. The moment had not yet come for everyone to file into the specially prepared bunkers, and the officers were mostly dazzled by the royal presence. Ernst, for his part, mostly wanted to speak to another of the royal entourage: Peter. He had seen little of his son over the past few years, thanks to differing assignments and very little time in Berlin for either of them.
Unfortunately, while Bock was talking to him, there was simply no way to track down his son in the entourage. Fortunately, the Marshal was famously laconic, and now that he had exhausted his praise, he merely nodded to Ernst and moved back to the royal party. Ernst breathed a sigh of relief and looked around for Peter, who stood out as one of the few observers in naval uniform. When he finally reached his son, Peter saluted, as was proper, before asking, "What if this works? What does this even mean?" Ernst shook his head. "Too much to explain - think of it as one more bomb."
"Mm. Think they'll ever shrink to the size they can fit on a carrier?"
"Unlikely. Look at how big this one is. Even the design for bombers is... well, it weighs as much as a Messerschmitt and costs as much as a Staffel of them, easily. Why put something that big and that expensive on a ship?"
"Scapa Flow." The two-word answer was sufficient to explain everything. If the Device did what it was supposed to, if it could be shrunk to carrier size, if a fleet could be caught at anchor once more... if, if, if.
Their conversation was interrupted by an aide, a Hungarian physicist named Teller. Ernst's thoughts flickered over Teller for a moment - Jewish, Hungarian, security risk, foreign contacts, but then which of these physicists didn't have those? Not allergic to the war effort like Einstein at least. Teller coughed for his attention. "Yes?" Ernst asked, slightly irritated at his conversation with Peter being disrupted. "Sir," the physicist said, slightly obsequious, "the Device is ready."
Ernst transformed in an instant. "Gentlemen, Generalfeldmarschall, All-Highest - the test is ready to commence, would you please retreat to the shelters?" The gathering began to move, and he watched each of the attendees pick up a set of black-tinted glasses. They would be needed to observe the coming blast directly.
The loudspeaker array around the site began droning out the protocol. "ATTENTION ALL PERSONNEL, CLEAR TEST SITE, TEST TO COMMENCE IN FIFTEEN MINUTES." Everyone became subdued, waiting in tense silence. Heisenberg's thin lips pursed, and he lifted a pencil to them, gnawing unconsciously at the tip. "TEN MINUTES TO IGNITION." Even Bock's reserve fractured, as if sensing what was to come. He leaned against the bunker parapet, glasses raised to watch. "FIVE MINUTES TO IGNITION... FOUR MINUTES TO IGNITION... THREE MINUTES TO IGNITION..." The time clicked away, Ernst glancing down unconsciously to watch the second hand sweeping around. "ALL PERSONNEL DON GLASSES." He put the black-lensed goggles on and looked outward. "TWO MINUTES TO IGNITION... NINETY SECONDS TO IGNITION... SIXTY..." The countdown continued, and he consciously forced his fist to relax. "THIRTY... TWENTY... TEN... NINE... EIGHT... SEVEN... SIX... FIVE... FOUR... THREE... TWO... ONE... CONTACT."
In another bunker, a Hauptmann closed an electrical relay and the spark raced to the Device. A sphere of conventional explosive surrounded about half of the weapon-grade plutonium in Germany, a series of panels not unlike a football focusing the blast inward. When the electrical impulse reached the Device, for the briefest of moments, nothing happened, then the panels exploded, their energy directed inward. The plutonium core was compressed to its utter limit, then slightly beyond, and one by one, its component atoms began to split as neutron struck nucleus.
The explosion, when it came, was unprecedented, transforming from a white-hot bubble to a rising pillar of fire and smoke that sucked in cooler air from below to create a series of toroidal clouds, creating the world's first mushroom cloud. Even fifteen kilometers from the detonation site, where the main viewing party watched, the blast shook the ground and the pressure wave blew off Bock's peaked cap. As he squatted to retrieve it, he glanced up at Volkmann, his usual reserve totally fractured by what he had just seen. "By God, Volkmann, there'll be a Black Eagle in this, at the very least," he swore, dusting the cap, eyes wide and staring. "Nothing like it in the world."
At the other end of the bunker, Werner Heisenberg murmured a line from the Nibelungenlied: "Death's sword was ever too sharp."
A bit of an apology and explanation here.
First, I looked for test sites everywhere I could, even considered using the far northern end of the Orkneys, but none of them suited. In the case of the Orkneys, I would never imagine anyone running a nuclear test in North Sea autumn weather. In the case of the valleys surrounding Bad Schlema, they're remote, but just not remote enough, with a town always over the next mountain. Finally, I turned to Auschwitz for the same reason the Nazis did, and for the same reasons Los Alamos was selected: remote, but not too remote, with a railhead nearby and an existing facility from which to develop the site. Unfortunately, the same conditions which made it the perfect site for an extermination camp also made it the perfect site for a nuclear test site. I looked for an alternative site, there just wasn't a better one.
First, I looked for test sites everywhere I could, even considered using the far northern end of the Orkneys, but none of them suited. In the case of the Orkneys, I would never imagine anyone running a nuclear test in North Sea autumn weather. In the case of the valleys surrounding Bad Schlema, they're remote, but just not remote enough, with a town always over the next mountain. Finally, I turned to Auschwitz for the same reason the Nazis did, and for the same reasons Los Alamos was selected: remote, but not too remote, with a railhead nearby and an existing facility from which to develop the site. Unfortunately, the same conditions which made it the perfect site for an extermination camp also made it the perfect site for a nuclear test site. I looked for an alternative site, there just wasn't a better one.
Fertile Poland?
So close to German border and settlements? Water flowing into Oder/Weichsel? Central Europe?
Wtf.
Something like Persian desert would have made some sense!!!
So close to German border and settlements? Water flowing into Oder/Weichsel? Central Europe?
Wtf.
Something like Persian desert would have made some sense!!!