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Dont worry I'm sure the Reich will get around to liberating those commies once they Mop up the Traitor Legions and reclaim the eye of terror berlin.
Yes,
Chapter 365: Mobilis in Mobili
Somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea between Carthage and Palermo
For some while the voyage of the Second Imperial Battle Fleet, commanded by the decorated admiral Ruprecht von Spee, was marked by no incident. For the first day after the great fleet left the harbor of Carthage and sailed towards Sicily, just as the old fleets of ancient Carthage set sail for the Roman colonies thousands of years ago, all went according to plan. The eleven submarines assigned to guard the fleet made sure no enemy fleets approached the transports, and the battleships, with their imposing guns, were a brazen show of force, intimidating everybody in their path. Mihailo Princip, now a corporal in the Imperial Marines, went about his day chatting with his fellow squad mates, passing the time until they stormed the beaches of Palermo (or wherever the fleet decided to drop them off). It was like the calm before the storm, he thought. All was quiet and peaceful here on the high seas, as it should be.
He had just finished thinking that when numerous alarms started blaring on all of the transport ships, and officers emerged onto the deck barking orders. Without another thought Mihailo rushed in the direction of the nearest door, but he didn't get far before the first bombs started falling. Airplanes screeched overhead as the battleships' antiaircraft defenses lit up, lobbing thousands of lead projectiles skywards. He looked up and saw several Angeloi fighter planes descending towards the battleships, guns blazing, as enemy bombers circled around for another run at the transports.
The ship lurched as its helsmen threw the engine into reverse, throwing Mihailo off his feet. The transport beat to port, sweeping in a semicircle, trying to get away from the bombers. The battleships and destroyers tried firing their weapons at the Angeloi planes, but they only shot down a few of them. The Angeloi, though, had much better luck hitting their large targets. One bomb fell on top of a transport, and the resulting explosion blasted the superstructure to pieces, throwing men and flaming debris into the ocean. Torpedos slammed into other transports, capsizing them within minutes as men jumped overboard into the flaming oil-thick waters like ants.
Mihailo didn't realize he had stopped in his tracks until a bomb dropped right in front of him, destroying the deck just several feet away. He promptly started running in the opposite direction.
Above, loyalist interceptor aircraft had finally arrived and started engaging the enemy bombers, but they were still helplessly outnumbered. However, their presence still drew several bombers away from Mihailo's ship, which started limply slowly away from the fight, escorted by two destroyers. For a second, he thought they were going to get away.
Then a torpedo slammed into the side of the ship, right where the fuel reserves were stored, and the resulting explosion hurled Mihailo into the sea, giving him no time to grab the rails.
---
Although he was startled by this unexpected descent, he at least retained most of his senses at the time. He recalled being dragged about twenty feet under the surface. His training as a Marine meant he was a good swimmer, so with two vigorous kicks of the heel, he came back to the surface of the sea.
His first concern was to find the fleet. Had anybody seen him go overboard? The immediate gloom was profound. He glimpsed several black masses, several of them trailing smoke, disappearing eastwards. It was the fleet. The Angeloi planes, meanwhile, were turning away to the north, probably heading back to the airbases in Naples, and the loyalist planes headed westwards, back to Carthage. He felt he was done for.
"Help!" he screamed, swimming in vain in the direction of the fleet.
His clothes were weighin him down. The water glued them to his body, paralyzing his movements. He was sinking again, suffocating...
"Help!" That was the last shout he gave as his mouth filled with water. He struggled against being dragged back into the depths just as somebody seized him, pulling him abruptly back to the surface of the sea and onto a piece of floating debris. Mihailo found his rescuer to be a blonde-haired skinny man, apparently the only other Marine from Illyria.
"Oh, hey, Slobodan," said Mihailo, "You also survived?"
"Yeah," said Corporal Slobodan, "Thank God we're alive!"
"But what about the fleet?" said Mihailo.
"I think they've presumed everybody from our ship die din the explosion," said Slobodan.
"Then we're done for," said Mihailo.
"Perhaps," said Slobodan, "But we've still got a few hours before us. We probably didn't get that far from Carthage."
"We're a day away," said Mihailo, "We don't have a day."
"Well, would you rather we wait here and do nothing?" said Slobodan.
"They'll come back," said Mihailo, "They will."
So, having concluded that their sole chance for salvation lay in being picked up by the fleet, they had to take steps to wait for them as long as possible. Consequently, Mihailo decided to divide their energies so they wouldn't both be worn out at the same time, and this was the arrangement: while one of them lay on his back, staying motionless with arms crossed and legs outstretched, the other would swim and propel his partner forward. This towing role was to last no longer than ten minutes, and by relieving each other in this way, they could stay afloat for hours, perhaps even until the next day, by which point somebody, Angeloi or loyalist, would surely have found them.
Near one o'clock in the afternoon, Mihailo was overcome with tremendous exhaustion. His limbs stiffened in the grip of intense cramps. Slobodan had to keep him going, and attending to their self–preservation became his sole responsibility. After a couple hours Mihailo heard the other Marine gasping; his breathing became shallow and quick. He didn't think he could stand such exertions for much longer. For a Marine, he tired out quickly.
"Go on! Go on!" Mihailo told him.
"Not helping!" Slobodan shot back.
Night fell. Past the fringes of a large cloud that the wind was driving eastward, the moon appeared. The surface of the sea glistened under its rays. That kindly light rekindled their strength. Mihailo held up his head again. His eyes darted to every point of the horizon, hoping to see the fleet. He was at the end of his strength; his fingers gave out; his hands were no help to him; his mouth opened convulsively, filling with brine; its coldness ran through him; he raised his head one last time, then he collapsed. . . .
Just then something hard banged against him, and he instinctively clung to it. Then he felt himself being pulled upward, back to the surface of the water; his chest caved in, and he fainted. . . .
For certain, he came to quickly. He half opened my eyes, finding Slobodan sitting next to him.
"Where are we?" said Mihailo. "What are we sitting on?"
"You're lucky we found this floating island or something," said Slobodan.
"Floating island?!" said Mihailo. "Have you gone mad?"
"See for youself," said Slobodan, pointing at what he was sitting on, "Unless you're mad as well, it's made of boilerplate steel."
Slobodan's words caused a sudden upheaval in Mihailo's brain. He swiftly hoisted himself to the summit of this half-submerged object that was serving as his refuge. He tested it with his foot. On impact, it gave off a metallic sonority. It was apparently made of riveted plates. There was no question now. They were stretched out on the back of some kind of underwater boat that, as far as he could judge, looked like an extremely large submarine. But neither the loyalists nor the Angeloi had the technology to build a submarine like this.
"Does this submarine have a crew?" asked Mihailo.
"It probably does, but since we arrived here it hasn't shown a sign of life."
"It hasn't moved at all?"
"No. It just rides with the waves, but otherwise it hasn't stirred. Odd behavior, given it's probably a military prototype. Maybe the crew's dead?"
"But we know that it's certainly gifted with great speed. Now then, since an engine is needed to generate that speed, and a mechanic to run that engine, I conclude: we're saved."
"I wouldn't be so sure about that--" Slobodan begin as the submarine lurched forwards, throwing up bubbles at the stern where propellers churned through the water.
Mihailo hoped it didn't submerge.
Moreover, the moon then disappeared and left the two Marines in profound darkness. They had to wait for daylight to find some way of getting inside this strange submarine.
As for any hope of being rescued by Admiral Spee's fleet, that had to be renounced completely. They were being swept westward, away from the warzone and into Angeloi-controlled waters, and Mihailo estimated that their comparatively moderate speed reached twelve miles per hour. The propeller churned the waves with mathematical regularity, sometimes emerging above the surface and throwing phosphorescent spray to great heights.
Near four o'clock in the morning, the submersible picked up speed. They could barely cope with this dizzying rush, and the waves battered them at close range. Fortunately Slobodan's hands came across a big mooring ring fastened to the topside of this sheet–iron back, and both of them held on for dear life.
Finally, the long night was over. Daylight appeared. The morning mists surrounded them, but they soon broke up. Mihailo was about to proceed with a careful examination of the hull, whose topside formed a sort of horizontal platform, when he felt it sinking little by little.
"Oh, damnation!" Slobodan shouted, stamping his foot on the resonant sheet iron. "Open up there, you antisocial U-boat crew!"
But it was difficult to make himself heard above the deafening beats of the propeller. Fortunately this submerging movement stopped.
From inside the boat, there suddenly came noises of iron fastenings pushed roughly aside. One of the steel plates flew up, a man appeared, gave a bizarre yell, and instantly disappeared.
A few moments later, eight strapping fellows appeared silently, their faces like masks, and dragged them into the hatch.
The brutally executed capture was carried out with lightning speed, giving Mihailo and Slobodan no time to collect themselves. He didn't know how Slobodan felt about being shoved inside a probably Angeloi submarine, but as for himself, he was shivering all over. Who was he dealing with? An Angeloi crew, at the helm of a fearsome new submarine that could break the Kaiserliche Marine's back?
The narrow hatch had barely closed over him when he was surrounded by profound darkness. Saturated with the outside light, his eyes couldn't make out a thing. He felt his bare feet clinging to the steps of an iron ladder. Forcibly seized, Slobodan was behind him. At the foot of the ladder, a door opened and instantly closed behind them with a loud clang.
They were alone. Where? He could barely even imagine. All was darkness, but such utter darkness that after several minutes, his eyes were still unable to catch a single one of those hazy gleams that drift through even the blackest nights.
Meanwhile, furious at these goings on, Corporal Slobodan gave free rein to his indignation.
"Damnation!" he exclaimed. "These people are about as hospitable as the Angeloi! All that's lacking is for them to be Angeloi! I wouldn't be surprised if they were, but believe you me, they won't be forcing me to salute Markos without my kicking up a protest!"
"Calm yourself, Slobodan my friend," Mihailo replied calmly. "Don't flare up so quickly! We aren't in a kettle yet!"
"In a kettle, no," the other Illyrian shot back, "But in an oven for sure. It's dark enough for one. Luckily my Serbian knife hasn't left me, and I can still see well enough to put it to use. The first one of these bandits who lays a hand on me—"
"Don't be so irritable," Mihailo said, "And don't ruin things for us with pointless violence. Who knows whether they might be listening to us? Instead, let's try to find out where we are!"
He started moving, groping his way around. After five steps he encountered an iron wall made of riveted boilerplate. Then, turning around, he bumped into a wooden table next to which several stools had been set. The floor of this prison lay hidden beneath thick, hempen matting that deadened the sound of footsteps. Its naked walls didn't reveal any trace of a door or window. Going around the opposite way, Slobodan met up with him, and they returned to the middle of this cabin, which had to be twenty feet long by ten wide. As for its height, neither of them could determine it.
Half an hour had already gone by without their situation changing, when our eyes were suddenly spirited from utter darkness into blinding light. Their prison lit up all at once; in other words, it filled with luminescent matter so intense that at first Mihailo couldn't stand the brightness of it. From its glare and whiteness, he recognized the electric glow that had played around this underwater boat like some magnificent phosphorescent phenomenon. After involuntarily closing his eyes, Mihailo reopened them and saw that this luminous force came from a frosted half globe curving out of the cabin's ceiling, some kind of electric light.
"Finally! It's light enough to see!" Slobodan exclaimed, knife in hand, staying on the defensive.
"Yes," Mihailo replied, "But as for our situation, we're still in the dark."
This sudden illumination of the cabin enabled Mihailo to examine its tiniest details. It contained only a table and five stools. Its invisible door must have been hermetically sealed. Not a sound reached our ears. Everything seemed dead inside this boat. Was it in motion, or stationary on the surface of the ocean, or sinking into the depths? He couldn't tell. Such technology was far more advanced than anything that the Reich could put on its U-boats. And yet everything had an antique feel to it...
But this electric light hadn't been turned on without good reason. Consequently, Mihailo hoped that some crewmen would soon make an appearance.
He was not mistaken. Unlocking noises became audible, a door opened, and two men appeared.
One was short and stocky, powerfully muscled, broad shouldered, robust of limbs, the head squat, the hair black and luxuriant, the mustache heavy, the eyes bright and penetrating, and his whole personality stamped with that southern–blooded zest that, in Gallia, typifies the people of Provence. The Gallic philosopher Diderot has very aptly claimed that a man's bearing is the clue to his character, and this stocky little man was certainly a living proof of this claim. One could sense that his everyday conversation must have been packed with such vivid figures of speech as personification, symbolism, and misplaced modifiers. But Mihailo was never in a position to verify this because, around me, he used only an odd and utterly incomprehensible dialect, probably Occitan or something.
The second stranger deserved a more detailed description. Without hesitation, Mihailo identified his dominant qualities—self–confidence, since his head reared like a nobleman's above the arc formed by the lines of his shoulders, and his black eyes gazed with icy assurance; calmness, since his skin, pale rather than ruddy, indicated tranquility of blood; energy, shown by the swiftly knitting muscles of his brow; and finally courage, since his deep breathing denoted tremendous reserves of vitality.
Whether this individual was thirty–five or fifty years of age, Mihailo could not precisely state. He was tall, his forehead broad, his nose straight, his mouth clearly etched, his teeth magnificent, his hands refined, tapered, and to use a word from palmistry, highly "psychic," in other words, worthy of serving a lofty and passionate spirit. One unusual detail: his eyes were spaced a little far from each other and could instantly take in nearly a quarter of the horizon. This ability was strengthened by a range of vision much greater than his own. When this stranger focused his gaze on an object, his eyebrow lines gathered into a frown, his heavy eyelids closed around his pupils to contract his huge field of vision.
Wearing caps made of sea–otter fur, and shod in sealskin fishing boots, these two strangers were dressed in clothing made from some unique fabric that flattered the figure and allowed great freedom of movement.
The taller of the two—apparently the leader on board—examined them with the greatest care but without pronouncing a word. Then, turning to his companion, he conversed with him in an unknown language.
The other replied with a shake of the head and added two or three utterly incomprehensible words. Then he seemed to question Mihailo directly with a long stare.
He replied in clear German that he wasn't familiar with his language. The man simply stared at him, obviously not understanding German. Both of them tried speaking Greek, and when that failed, they tried Norse and then even Latin and Serbian, but nothing they said registered. The two men silently withdrew from the cell and shut the door behind them.
"Oh come on!" said Slobodan. "How do they not know German?"
As he was saying these words, the door opened. A steward entered. He set the table and laid two place settings as the other two men left the room.
"There's something serious afoot," Mihailo said, "and it bodes well."
"Bah!" replied Slobodan. "What the devil do you suppose they eat around here? Turtle livers, loin of shark, dogfish steaks?"
"We'll soon find out!" Mihailo said.
Overlaid with silver dish covers, various platters had been neatly positioned on the table cloth, and they sat down to eat. Assuredly, they were dealing with civilized people, and if it hadn't been for the electric light flooding over them, Mihailo would have thought they were in the dining room of some fancy hotel in Vienna or Constantinople. However, he notced that bread and wine were totally absent. The water was fresh and clear, but it was still water—which wasn't what Slobodan had in mind as he ranted about how they had forgotten the beer. Among the foods they were served, Mihailo was able to identify various daintily dressed fish; but he couldn't make up his mind about certain otherwise excellent dishes, and he couldn't even tell whether their contents belonged to the vegetable or the animal kingdom. As for the tableware, it was elegant and in perfect taste. Each utensil, spoon, fork, knife, and plate, bore on its reverse a letter encircled by a Latin motto:
Moving within the moving element! It was a highly appropriate motto for this submarine, so long as the preposition in is translated as within and not upon. The letter "A" was no doubt the initial of the name of the strange individual in command of this mysterious submarine.
Slobodan had no time for such musings. He was busy wolfing down his food, and without further ado Mihailo did the same. By now he felt reassured about our fate, and it seemed obvious that their hosts didn't intend to let them die of starvation.
But all earthly things come to an end, all things must pass, even the hunger of people who haven't eaten for fifteen hours. Their appetites appeased, they felt an urgent need for sleep. A natural reaction after that interminable night of fighting for our lives.
"Me, I'm out like a light!" Slobodan said as he lay down on the cabin's carpeting and was soon deep in slumber.
As for Mihailo, he gave in less readily to this intense need for sleep. Too many thoughts had piled up in his mind, too many insoluble questions had arisen, too many images were keeping him awake. Where was he? Who owned this submarine? What was his allegiance? He felt—or at least he thought he did—the submersible sinking toward the sea's lower strata. Intense nightmares besieged him. In these mysterious marine sanctuaries, he envisioned hosts of unknown animals, and this underwater boat seemed to be a blood relation of theirs: living, breathing, just as fearsome... Then his mind grew calmer, his imagination melted into hazy drowsiness, and he soon fell into an uneasy slumber.
He had no idea how long this slumber lasted, but it must have been a while, because he woke up completely refreshed. He was the first to awake. He immediately began a careful reexamination of the cell. Nothing had changed in its interior decorations, aside from the fact that the table was cleared. It was still a prison cell.
Slobodan woke up and muttered something under his breath. "Is it time for breakfast yet?" he said.
"Maybe not," said Mihailo, "Nobody's shown up yet."
Neither of them said another word, and each of them withdrew into their own thoughts. Mihailo realized that Slobodan was getting dangerously mad. The other Marine paced in circles like a wild beast in a cage, randomly striking the walls with his foot and fist. The hours passed, and their hunger returned, but the steward did not appear. Slobodan was getting more and more riled, and Mihailo dreaded the inevitable explosion when somebody did show up.
For two more hours Slobodan's rage increased. The Serb--it was quite obvious now he was from Serbia--shouted and pleaded and slashed the walls with his knife, but to no avail. The sheet-iron walls were deaf. Mihailo didn't hear a single sound. The submarine itself hadn't moved, as he would have felt the vibration of its hull as the propeller turned. The dismal silence was utterly terrifying.
Just then he heard a noise outside. Footsteps ran on the metal tiling. The locks were turned, and the door opened as the steward entered the room.
Before Mihailo could even react, Slobodan lunged at the poor man, threw him down, and grabbed him by the throat. The steward gasped for air as the Serb drew his knife. Mihailo tried rushing over to pry Slobodan off the steward when he was abruptly nailed to the spot by several words pronounced in perfect German:
"Calm down, Corporal Slobodan Jovanovic! And you, Corporal Mihailo Princip, kindly listen to me!" shouted the commander of the submarine.
At these words Slobodan stood up quickly. Nearly strangled, the steward staggered out at a signal from his superior, whose face revealed nothing of the resentment he surely felt towards the Serb. In silence the two Marines waited for the outcome of the scene.
Arms crossed, the commander studied them with great care. After a few moments of silence, the commander spoke again.
"Gentlemen," said the commander in a calm voice, "I speak German, Greek, Latin, and Norse with equal fluency. I could have answered as early as our initial interview, but I wanted to make your acquaintance first. Your two versions of the same narrative, perfectly consistent, established your identities for me. You two are Marines in the Kaiserliche Heer, on your way to attack the Angeloi in Sicily. Mihailo Princip, you are the son of Gavrilo Princip, a friend of the Crown Prince; I knew I recognized you. Slobodan Jovanovic, you're just an Imperial Marine trying to make a difference in your war. I haven't set foot in the Reich since Franz Joseph was Kaiser, but if you're invading Sicily, I would imagine things have gotten quite bad on land."
"Who are you?" demanded Slobodan.
"My name is Petros Arronax," said the commander, "I was once a professor of natural history at the Paris Museum. Forty years ago I was entrusted with a scientific mission abroad to investigate mysterious sightings of a metal whale, upon which I found myself aboard this vessel."
"This is the Nautilus then!" exclaimed Mihailo. "You're Professor Arronax!"
"What, the Professor Arronax who wrote that memoir that got adapted into that Julius Werner book and then disappeared?" said Slobodan.
"This would explain his disappearance, then," said Mihailo.
"Yes, that was me, forty years ago, when I was much younger," said Arronax, "But I am a different man now. Like my predecessor I grew tired of the affairs of men on land after the horrors of the Weltkrieg and tracked down this submarine."
"Your predecessor," said Slobodan, "So Nemo did exist? Where is he?"
"Dead, I'm afraid," said Arronax, "He was an old man when I first met him, and he was on his deathbed when I returned to the Nautilus. He entrusted the submarine and its crew to me, on the condition that I look after his family."
"His family!" exclaimed Mihailo. "I didn't know Nemo had family."
"Yes, his family," said Arronax, "But let us discuss that later."
He called out for the steward and barked some orders in another language. Turning back to them, he said to Slobodan, "A meal is waiting for you in your cabin. Kindly follow him and don't try to choke him again."
"That's an offer I can't refuse!" Slobodan replied as he finally left the cell.
"And now, Mihailo," said Arronax, "Our own breakfast is ready. Allow me to lead the way."
Mihailo followed Captain Arronax, and as soon as he passed through the doorway he went down an electrically lit passageway. After a stretch of ten meters, a second door opened before him. Mihailo entered a dining room, decorated and furnished in austere good taste. Inlaid with ebony trim, tall oaken sideboards stood at both ends of this room, and sparkling on their shelves were staggered rows of earthenware, porcelain, and glass of incalculable value. There silver–plated dinnerware gleamed under rays pouring from light fixtures in the ceiling, whose glare was softened and tempered by delicately painted designs.
In the center of this room stood a table, richly spread. Captain Arronax indicated the place Mihailo was to occupy.
"Be seated," said Arronax, "You must be famished after what you've been through."
His breakfast consisted of several dishes whose contents were all seafood. They were good but with a peculiar flavor to which he quickly grew accustomed to.
Arronax stared at him. "Most of these dishes are new to you," he said, "But you can consume them without fear. They're healthy and nourishing. Like Nemo I too renounced terrestrial foods long ago, but I'm none the worse for it. My crew are strong and full of energy, and they eat what I eat."
"So, all of this is seafood?" said Mihailo.
"Yes, Corporal, the sea supplies all my needs," said Arronax, "Everything comes to me from the sea, just as someday everything will return to it. Here alone lies independence. Here I am free."
Arronax noticed that during their conversation, Mihailo had finished his breakfast.
"Now, Corporal," he said, "If you'd like to inspect the Nautilus, follow me."
Arronax stood up, and Mihailo followed him. At the end of the dining room, a double door opened, and he entered a room whose dimensions equaled the one he had just left.
It was a library. Tall, black–rosewood bookcases, inlaid with copperwork, held on their wide shelves a large number of uniformly bound books. These furnishings followed the contours of the room, their lower parts leading to huge couches upholstered in maroon leather and curved for maximum comfort. Light, movable reading stands, which could be pushed away or pulled near as desired, allowed books to be positioned on them for easy study. In the center stood a huge table covered with pamphlets, among which some newspapers, long out of date (the most recent was from 1918), were visible. Electric light flooded this whole harmonious totality, falling from four frosted half globes set in the scrollwork of the ceiling. Mihailo stared in genuine wonderment at this room so ingeniously laid out.
"Captain Arronax," he said to his host, who had just stretched out on a couch, "This is a library that would do credit to more than one of the Kaiser's palaces, and I truly marvel to think it can go with you into the deepest seas."
"Where could one find greater silence or solitude, corporal?" Captain Arronax replied. "Did your study at the museum afford you such a perfect retreat?"
"No, sir, and I might add that it's quite a humble one next to yours. You own 6,000 or 7,000 volumes here . . ."
"12,000, Corporal Princip. They're my sole remaining ties with dry land. But I was done with the shore the day I boarded the Nautilus a second time in 1918. That day I purchased my last volumes, my last pamphlets, my last newspapers, and ever since I've chosen to believe that humanity no longer thinks or writes. In any event, professor, these books are at your disposal, and you may use them freely."
Mihailo thanked Captain Arronax and approached the shelves of this library. Written in every language, books on science, ethics, and literature were there in abundance, but he didn't see a single work on economics or military strategy—they seemed to be strictly banned on board. One odd detail: all these books were shelved indiscriminately without regard to the language in which they were written, and this jumble proved that the Nautilus's captain could read fluently whatever volumes he chanced to pick up.
Among these books he noted masterpieces by the greats of ancient and modern times, in other words, all of humanity's finest achievements in history, poetry, fiction, and science, from Homer to Victor Hugo, from Xenophon to Michelet, from Rabelais to Madame George Sand. But science, in particular, represented the major investment of this library: books on mechanics, ballistics, hydrography, meteorology, geography, geology, etc., held a place there no less important than works on natural history, and I realized that they made up the captain's chief reading. There I saw the complete works of Humboldt, the complete Arago, as well as works by Foucault, Henri Sainte–Claire Deville, Chasles, Milne–Edwards, Quatrefages, John Tyndall, Faraday, Berthelot, Father Secchi, Petermann, Commander Maury, Louis Agassiz, etc., plus the transactions of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, bulletins from the various geographical societies, etc., and in a prime location, those two volumes on the great ocean depths that had perhaps earned Mihailo this comparatively charitable welcome from Captain Arronax.
"Sir," he told the captain, "Thank you for placing this library at my disposal. There are scientific treasures here, and I'll take advantage of them."
"I didn't expect that much appreciation from a man like you," said Arronax, "You're a soldier. I thought you would be more focused with your war."
"Captain, yes, I am focused on fighting the Angeloi," said Mihailo, "But I'm not an uncivilized brute. My father taught me the importance of learning, of both science and faith. I try to balance them as best as I can."
Arronax nodded in approval. "I should have expected better from a Princip," he said.
He opened a door facing the one by which he had entered the library, and Mihailo passed into an immense, splendidly lit lounge.
It was a huge quadrilateral with canted corners, ten meteres long, six wide, five high. A luminous ceiling, decorated with delicate arabesques, distributed a soft, clear daylight over all the wonders gathered in this museum. For a museum it truly was, in which clever hands had spared no expense to amass every natural and artistic treasure, displaying them with the helter–skelter picturesqueness that distinguishes a painter's studio.
Some thirty pictures by the masters, uniformly framed and separated by gleaming panoplies of arms, adorned walls on which were stretched tapestries of austere design. There Mihailo saw canvases of the highest value, the likes of which he had marveled at in private Reich collections and art exhibitions. The various schools of the old masters were represented by a Raphael Madonna, a Virgin by Leonardo da Vinci, a nymph by Correggio, a woman by Titian, an adoration of the Magi by Veronese, an assumption of the Virgin by Murillo, a Holbein portrait, a monk by Velazquez, a martyr by Ribera, a village fair by Rubens, two Frisian landscapes by Teniers, three little genre paintings by Gerard Dow, Metsu, and Paul Potter, two canvases by Gericault and Prud'hon, plus seascapes by Backhuysen and Vernet. Among the works of modern art were pictures signed by Delacroix, Ingres, Decamps, Troyon, Meissonier, Daubigny, etc., and some wonderful miniature statues in marble or bronze, modeled after antiquity's finest originals, stood on their pedestals in the corners of this magnificent museum. As the Nautilus's commander had predicted, my mind was already starting to fall into that promised state of stunned amazement.
"Corporal," Arronax then said, "you must excuse the informality with which I receive you, and the disorder reigning in this lounge."
"Sir," Mihailo replied, "Are you an artist as well?"
"A collector, Corporal, nothing more. Formerly I loved acquiring these beautiful works created by the hand of man. I sought them greedily, ferreted them out tirelessly, and I've been able to gather some objects of great value. They're my last mementos of those shores that are now dead for me. In my eyes, your modern artists are already as old as the ancients. They've existed for 2,000 or 3,000 years, and I mix them up in my mind. The masters are ageless."
"What about these composers?" Mihailo said, pointing to sheet music by Weber, Rossini, Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Meyerbeer, Hérold, Wagner, Auber, Gounod, Victor Massé, and a number of others scattered over a full size piano–organ, which occupied one of the wall panels in this lounge.
"These composers," Captain Arronax answered, "are the contemporaries of Orpheus, because in the annals of the dead, all chronological differences fade; and I'm dead, corporal, quite as dead as those friends of yours sleeping six feet under!"
Captain Arronax fell silent and seemed lost in reverie. Mihailo didn't disturb his meditations but continued to pass in review the curiosities that enriched this lounge.
After the works of art, natural rarities predominated. They consisted chiefly of plants, shells, and other exhibits from the ocean that must have been Captain Arronax's own personal finds. In the middle of the lounge, a jet of water, electrically lit, fell back into a basin made from a single giant clam. The delicately festooned rim of this shell, supplied by the biggest mollusk in the class Acephala, measured about six meters in circumference; so it was even bigger than those fine giant clams given to Franz Joseph by a Salian dynatos, and which the Hagia Sophia has made into two gigantic holy–water fonts.
Around this basin, inside elegant glass cases fastened with copper bands, there were classified and labeled the most valuable marine exhibits ever put before the eyes of a naturalist. Mihailo never fancied himself a scientist, but this collection really engaged his interest.
The zoophyte branch offered some very unusual specimens from its two groups, the polyps and the echinoderms. In the first group: organ–pipe coral, gorgonian coral arranged into fan shapes, soft sponges from Syria, isis coral from the Molucca Islands, sea–pen coral, wonderful coral of the genus Virgularia from the waters of Norway, various coral of the genus Umbellularia, alcyonarian coral, then a whole series of those madrepore, among which he noted the wonderful genus Flabellina as well as the genus Oculina from Réunion Island, plus a Neptune's chariot from the Caribbean Sea—every superb variety of coral, and in short, every species of these unusual polyparies that congregate to form entire islands that will one day turn into continents. Among the echinoderms, notable for being covered with spines: starfish, feather stars, sea lilies, free–swimming crinoids, brittle stars, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, etc., represented a complete collection of the individuals in this group.
An excitable conchologist would surely have fainted dead away before other, more numerous glass cases in which were classified specimens from the mollusk branch. There Mihailo saw a collection of incalculable value: an elegant royal hammer shell from the Indian Ocean, whose evenly spaced white spots stood out sharply against a base of red and brown; an imperial spiny oyster, brightly colored, bristling with thorns, a specimen rare to imperial museums, whose value was estimated at 20,000 marks; a common hammer shell from the seas near Penglai, very hard to come by; exotic cockles from Senegal, fragile white bivalve shells that a single breath could pop like a soap bubble; several varieties of watering–pot shell from Java, a sort of limestone tube fringed with leafy folds and much fought over by collectors; a whole series of top–shell snails—greenish yellow ones fished up from Eimerican seas, others colored reddish brown that patronize the waters off Penglai, the former coming from the Gulf of Mexico and notable for their overlapping shells, the latter some sun–carrier shells found in the southernmost seas, finally and rarest of all, the magnificent spurred–star shell from Mittagsland; then some wonderful peppery–furrow shells; several valuable species of cythera clams and venus clams; the trellis wentletrap snail from Tranquebar on India's eastern shore; a marbled turban snail gleaming with mother–of–pearl; green parrot shells from the seas of China; the virtually unknown cone snail from the genus Coenodullus; every variety of cowry used as money in India and Africa; a "glory–of–the–seas," the most valuable shell in the East Indies; finally, common periwinkles, delphinula snails, turret snails, violet snails, Roman cowries, volute snails, olive shells, miter shells, helmet shells, murex snails, whelks, harp shells, spiky periwinkles, triton snails, horn shells, spindle shells, conch shells, spider conchs, limpets, glass snails, sea butterflies—every kind of delicate, fragile seashell that science has baptized with its most delightful names.
Aside and in special compartments, strings of supremely beautiful pearls were spread out, the electric light flecking them with little fiery sparks: pink pearls pulled from saltwater fan shells in the Red Sea; green pearls from the rainbow abalone; yellow, blue, and black pearls, the unusual handiwork of various mollusks from every ocean and of certain mussels from rivers up north; in short, several specimens of incalculable worth that had been oozed by the rarest of shellfish. Some of these pearls were bigger than a pigeon egg; they more than equaled the one that an explorer sold the Shah of Persia for 3,000,000 marks, and they surpassed that other pearl owned by the King of Israel, which Mihailo had believed to be unrivaled in the entire world.
Consequently, to calculate the value of this collection was impossible. Captain Arronax must have spent millions in acquiring these different specimens, and Mihailo was wondering what financial resources he tapped to satisfy his collector's fancies, when Arronax interrupted him:
"You're examining my shells, Corporal? They're indeed able to fascinate a naturalist, but I have never seen anybody else fascinated; for me they have an added charm, since I've collected every one of them with my own two hands, and not a sea on the globe has escaped my investigations."
"I understand, Captain," said Mihailo, "I understand your delight at strolling in the midst of this wealth. You're a man who gathers his treasure in person. No museum in the Reich owns such a collection of exhibits from the ocean. But if I exhaust all my wonderment on them, I'll have nothing left for the ship that carries them! I have absolutely no wish to probe those secrets of yours! But I confess that my curiosity is aroused to the limit by this Nautilus, the motor power it contains, the equipment enabling it to operate, the ultra powerful force that brings it to life, the designs that make it far superior to the most advanced of our submarines. I see that most of your literature is dated to either 1865 or 1918. May I learn—"
"Corporal Princip," Captain Arronax answered him, "You'll be free aboard my vessel, so no part of the Nautilus is off–limits to you. You may inspect it in detail, and I'll be delighted to act as your guide."
"I don't know how to thank you, sir, but I won't abuse your good nature. I would only ask you about the purpose of this vessel—"
"Corporal, I will explain everything in due time. But beforehand, come inspect the cabin set aside for you. You need to learn how you'll be lodged aboard the Nautilus."
Mihailo followed Captain Arronax, who, via one of the doors cut into the lounge's canted corners, led him back down the ship's gangways. He took him to the bow, and there he found not just a cabin but an elegant stateroom with a bed, a washstand, and various other furnishings.
Mihailo could only thank his host.
"Your stateroom adjoins mine," he told him, opening a door, "and mine leads into that lounge we've just left."
Mihailo entered the captain's stateroom. It had an austere, almost monastic appearance. An iron bedstead, a worktable, some washstand fixtures. Subdued lighting. No luxuries. Just the bare necessities.
Captain Arronax showed him to a bench.
"Kindly be seated," he said.
Mihailo sat, and Arronax began speaking:
"Captain Nemo, the original captain of this vessel, was a Paramara prince, the Prince Ranjit, the youngest son of Samrat Chakravartin Purandaradasa. When he was ten, his father sent him, like his older brothers and sisters, to the Reich, where he received a complete education, and it was the intention of the Samrat Chakravartin to have his son able some day to be a great military leader.
"From ten years of age until he was thirty, the Prince Ranjit, with superior endowments, of high heart and courage, instructed himself in everything; pushign his investigations in science, literature, and art to the uttermost limits.
"He traveled all over the Reich. His birth and fortune made his company much sought after, but the seductions of the world possessed no charm for him. Young and handsome, he remained serious, gloomy, with an insatiable thirst for knowledge.
"The Prince Ranjit became an artist, with a lively appreciation of the marvels of art; a savant familiar with the sciences; a statesman educated in the Roman court. In the eyes of a superficial observer, he passed, perhaps, for one of those cosmopolites, curious after knowledge, but disdaining to use it; for one of those opulent travellers, high-spirited and platonic, who go all over the world and are of no one country. But he was first and foremost Indian in his heart.
"He returned to India in the year 1869. He married a noble Indian woman whose heart bled as his did at the woes of their country. He had two children whom he loved. But domestic happiness could not grant him true happiness. Eventually he wished to fly from the world and its tribulations altogether, and he gathered together twenty of his most faithful companions and disappeared.
"He became a man of science. On a desert island in the Pacific he established his workshops, and there he constructed a submarine after plans of his own. He named his submarine the Nautilus, gave himself the name Nemo, and disappeared under the sea.
"During many years, the Captain visited all of the oceans, from one pole to the other. Pariah of the earth, he reaped the treasures of the unknown worlds to fund his long trek through the seas. For years he had no communications with his kindred, when, during a night in 1900, three men were thrown upon his deck. They were myself, my servant, and a Kanatan fisherman. These men had been thrown overboard by the shock of the colision between the Nautilus and the imperial frigate Siegfried, which had given it chase.
"Captain Nemo learned from me that the Nautilus, sometimes taken for a gigantic mammifer of the cetacean family, sometimes for a submarine apparatus containing a gang of pirates, was hunted in every sea.
"Captain Nemo could have thrown these three men, whom chance had thrown across his mysterious life, into the ocean. He did not do it, he kept them prisoners, and, during seven months, they were able to perceive all the marvels of a voyage of 20,000 leagues under the sea.
"One day, a year later, these three men, who knew nothing of Captain Nemo’s past life, seized a lifeboat belonging to the Nautilus and attempted to escape. But just then the Nautilus was upon the coast of Norway in the eddy of the Maelstrom, and the Captain believed that the fugitives, caught in its terrible vortex, had been swallowed up in the gulf. He was unaware that the Roman and his companions had been miraculously thrown upon the coast, that the fishermen of the Loffodin Islands had rescued them, and that the Professor, on his return to the Reich, had published a book in which seven months of this strange and adventurous navigation was narrated. He would not know any of this until I returned.
"For a long time Captain Nemo continued this mode of life, traversing the sea. One by one his companions died and found their rest in the coral cemetery at the bottom of the Pacific, and in time Captain Nemo was the last survivor of those who had sought refuge in the depths of the oceans. He continued on, reaching the age of sixty as the Weltkrieg began. As he was alone, it was necessary to take his Nautilus ashore to recruit a new crew, which he did.
"Landing up and down the coast of the Reich, he covertly recruited a new crew to man his submarine, gaining more and more knowledge about the world, all the while seeking out the one who would carry on his legacy. He learned of a great war that he enveloped both the Reich and India against their enemy in China, a war that had claimed millions already. But he refused to involve himself in the affairs of men. And so after he got enough men to maintain his submarine, he prepared to submerge once again.
"In 1918 I was walking along the beaches of Normandy when I came across the Nautilus beached on the shore. I boarded the ship before it could submerge, where I told Nemo of what had occurred since we had last met. I told him that his father had been overthrown by his own generals, who now ruled over India with an iron fist. These generals were now hunting the rest of his family. For once, Nemo actively paid attention to the affairs of those on land. He asked me what was the fate of his children, and I said I didn't know. Without another word he gave the order to dive and sailed out towards India. However, along the way, he contracted a rare and serious illness, and nothing we could do could stop his health from deteriorating further. By the time we had crossed through the Suez Canal he was on his deathbed. One of his last words was to name me as his successor, seeing in me a similar desire to cast away all ties with the land. I admit, I no longer wanted anything to do with anybody after the war.
"We beached the Nautilus in Maharastra, not far from the ancestral Paramara estates. We helped Nemo get out of the submarine and take his first steps on land in decades. We rushed to the estate as quickly as possible. His two sons had been killed in the civil war against Bose's troops, but two of his grandchildren had survived the chaos, a boy and a girl named Jayasimha and Sita. But almost as soon as we found them, we came under attack as some of the crew had betrayed Nemo after being paid off by Bose. In the fighting we managed to get away, but Nemo was shot. The gunshot wound only worsened his condition, and he died on the way back to the Nautilus. We buried him on a small island off the coast of Maharastra before leaving India for good."
"I should tell you that Purandaradasa was still alive as of a couple years ago," said Mihailo, "But when the Abyssinians invaded the Indian African colonies, they killed all surviving Paramaras they found."
"That means that Jayasimha and Sita are the only two surviving Paramaras left," realized Arronax, "Sita is the older one. She's the heir to the throne. I never thought I would be protecting the Samrajni Chakravartin herself."
"Where are they right now?" asked Mihailo.
"On the Pacific island where the Nautilus was built," said Arronax, "They are safe there."
"We need to get back to that island as quickly as possible," said Mihailo, "The Reich is at war with China again, and they're slowly taking the Reich colonies in the Pacific. It is a fair assumption that they may attack Nemo's island as well."
Arronax nodded again. "Perhaps we do need to return to Nemo's island. And you are okay with staying onboard the Nautilus?"
"Honestly, Arronax, I think this submarine is far more interesting than anything I've ever done or will do as a Marine," said Mihailo, "And you need some Paramaras to protect. I'm in. The Marines have more men to replace me anyways."
Arronax smiled. "It's good to know that you support us. You remind me so much of myself when I was younger."
He barked some orders over a microphone, and the submarine lurched, slowly turning around and heading eastwards, towards the Pacific Ocean.
- 1
So the descendants of Captain Nemo are going to be the Emperors of India. Out of curiosity, is Sita supposed to be equivalent to Anastasia?
No, Anastasia's equivalent was Sbyslava. Sita is supposed to be the equivalent of Queen Elizabeth II.
It is weird that during that long description of the collection on the Nautilus all I could think about was how it would take one breach in the hull and the whole collection would be lost.
Good to see not all of the Indian royal family is dead. Also, I'm surprised the Indian succession laws allow women to inherit on equal terms as men. How progressive.
Good to see not all of the Indian royal family is dead. Also, I'm surprised the Indian succession laws allow women to inherit on equal terms as men. How progressive.
Well, aint that just convenient. I suppose some new Paramaras needed to be found eventually. I am quite proud of myself that I'm starting to catch your references a little earlier.
That totally won't be happening as they go on a long journey through Axis-controlled waters.It is weird that during that long description of the collection on the Nautilus all I could think about was how it would take one breach in the hull and the whole collection would be lost.
Good to see not all of the Indian royal family is dead. Also, I'm surprised the Indian succession laws allow women to inherit on equal terms as men. How progressive.
And keep in mind that India, being Hindu and all, has different succession laws from the Reich. It helps that the Reich also had absolute cognatic primogeniture since Saint Wilhelmina's reign (though the Augustinian Code says that the Kaiser may also appoint his own successor at will).
I think the "Mobilis in Mobili" title probably helped a bit.
Naw, as soon as they found the submarine I got it. Much better than some previous ones, particularly considering it's been years since I've read 20k.I think the "Mobilis in Mobili" title probably helped a bit.
Ah, there's hope for India yet. I imagine this experience will encourage them to build up the navy when they can.
YOU SPIN ME RIGHT ROUND LIZZY RIGHT ROUND LIKE YOUR WRIST BABY RIGHT ROUND ROUND ROUND.More like good at rotating her wrist.
Waving...at the heretics and republicans she is about to purge.More like good at rotating her wrist.
That is, if they find out the submarine exists.
No, Nemo was a Paramara by birth. I said he was Purandaradasa's youngest son. Sita is Nemo's granddaughter.
I wonder how much spellcheck hates the word Purandaradasa...because I would imagine that the answer is a lot.
Chapter 366: The Great Crusade
"The time has come to deal the enemy a terrific blow in Western and Central Europe. The blow will be struck by the combined sea, land and air forces of the Reich together constituting one great legion. On the eve of this great adventure I send my best wishes to every soldier in the loyalist team. To us is given the honor of striking a blow for freedom which will live in history; and in the better days that lie ahead men will speak with pride of our doings. We have a great and a righteous cause. Let us pray that 'The Lord Mighty in Battle' will go forth with our armies, and that His special providence will aid us in the struggle. I want every soldier to know that I have complete confidence in the successful outcome of the operations that we are now about to begin. With stout hearts, and with enthusiasm for the contest, let us go forward to victory. And, as we enter the battle, let us recall the words of a famous soldier spoken many years ago : 'He either fears his fate too much, / Or his deserts are small, / Who dare not put it to the touch, / To win or lose it all.' Good luck to each one of you. And good hunting on the main land of Europe."
-General Hugo Doukas, speaking to his troops on the eve of the Sciacca landings and the beginning of Operation Husky
"Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Imperial Armed Forces! You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the Imperium war machine, the elimination of Angeloi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of the Reich, and security for ourselves in a free world. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely. But this is the year 1942! Much has happened since the Angeloi triumphs of 1940-41. The forces of the one true Kaiser have inflicted upon the traitors great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory! I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory! Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking."
-General Friedrich de Normandie, a speech to his troops a day before the Gibraltar landings and the beginning of Operation Neptune
In the early morning of 1 October 1942, the small fishing town of Sciacca was abruptly awoken by the sound of planes buzzing overhead and its Angeloi sentries shouting orders. An hour later, one sentry reported sighting a large battle fleet moored just off the coast of the town. The local Angeloi military headquarters in Palermo dismissed the sentries' reports as a "false alarm," confident that the loyalists wouldn't do something as stupid as invade Sicily. But it wasn't a false alarm. With the planes circling back to the ships and reporting that Sciacca was only lightly defended, Hugo Doukas ordered Operation Husky to commence.
Four loyalist attacks by airborne troops were carried out just an hour later, as part of the invasion. The landings were preceded by pathfinders of the 21st Independent Parachute Company, who were to mark landing zones for the troops who were intending to seize the Ponte Grande, a bridge over a river just west of Sciacca, and hold it until the 5th Infantry Division arrived from the beaches some 11 km to the south. Glider infantry from the Imperial 1st Airborne Division's 1st Airlanding Brigade were to seize landing zones inland. Strong winds of up to 72 kilometers per hour, though, blew the troop-carrying aircraft off course and the force was scattered widely over southern Sicily between Palermo and Sciacca. Within another hour, though, about two-thirds of the 505th had managed to concentrate, although half the paratroopers failed to reach their rallying points.
The scattered airborne troops attacked patrols and created confusion wherever possible. A platoon of the 2nd Battalion landed on target, captured Ponte Grande and repulsed counterattacks. Men rallied to the sound of shooting and by 08:30 89 men were holding the bridge. By 10:30, a battalion of the Angeloi 75th Infantry Regiment from the 54 Infantry Division Palermo arrived with some artillery. The loyalists held out for another half an hour, when, low on ammunition and by now reduced to 18 men, they were saved by reinforcements from Sciacca. In spite of these mishaps, the widespread landing of airborne troops had a positive effect as small isolated units, acting on their own initiative, attacked vital points and created confusion.
Troops from the 51st Division unloading stores from tank landing craft on the opening day of the invasion of Sicily, 1 October 1942
The strong wind also made matters difficult for the amphibious landings but also ensured surprise as many of the defenders had assumed that no one would attempt a landing in such poor conditions. Landings were made in the early hours of 1 October on 26 main beaches spread along 105 miles (169 km) of the southern coast of the island. This constituted the largest amphibious operation of the war so far in terms of size of the landing zone and the number of divisions put ashore on the first day. The Angeloi defensive plan did not contemplate a pitched battle on the beaches and so the landings themselves were somewhat anti-climactic.
A Britannian crew checks their panzer after landing at Red Beach 2
More trouble was experienced from the difficult weather conditions (especially on the southern beaches) and unexpected hidden offshore sandbars than from the Coastal divisions. Some troops landed in the wrong place, in the wrong order and as much as six hours behind schedule, but the weakness of the defensive response allowed the loyalist force to make up lost time. Nevertheless, several Angeloi coastal units fought well; the 429th Coastal Battalion, tasked with defending the town itself, lost 45 percent of its men, while the attacking Imperial Marines Battalion lost several men to mines, machine-gun and cannon fire.
By the morning of 1 October Hugo Doukas's men captured the port of Sciacca, at the cost of nearly 100 killed and wounded in the 3rd Infantry Division, and the division beat back a counter-attack from the 538th Coastal Defense Battalion. By 11:30 A.M. Sciacca was firmly in loyalist hands and the 3rd Division had lost fewer than one hundred men. Salvage parties had already partially cleared the harbor, and shortly after noon Doukas and his staff came ashore and set up headquarters. About that time the 538th Coastal Defense Battalion, which had been deployed as a tactical reserve, launched a counter-attack. By 2 October, the loyalist assault divisions were well established ashore, and Hugo Doukas gave the order to spread out in all directions and cover as much territory as possible.
The preparatory bombing of the previous days had greatly weakened the Axis air capability and the heavy loyalist presence of aircraft operating from Malta and Carthage kept most of the Axis attempts at air attack at bay. Some attacks on the first day of the invasion got through, and Angeloi aircraft sank the landing ship LST-313 and minesweeper SMS Sentinel. Stukas sank the destroyer SMS Maddox and the Indian African hospital ship Talamba, and in the following days Axis aircraft damaged or sank several more warships, transport vessels and landing craft. Stukas and Lombard-made Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 torpedo-bombers coordinated their attacks with Ju 87 and Ju 88 bomber units.
The Angeloi also hit back at sea. The Second Imperial Battle Fleet came under attack from an Angeloi carrier fleet on the 10th, but the Battle Fleet had tactical, numerical, and technological superiority over the disorganized Angeloi carriers and easily repelled them, protecting the supply lines from Carthage to Sciacca.
But the invasion of Sicily, as bloody as it was, would soon take a backseat to the real fight, which was just beginning further to the west, at the Straits of Gibraltar.
Operation Overlord was the name assigned to the establishment of a large-scale lodgement in Hispania. The first phase, the amphibious invasion and establishment of a secure foothold, was codenamed Operation Neptune. To gain the air superiority needed to ensure a successful invasion, the loyalists undertook a bombing campaign (codenamed Operation Pointblank) that targeted Angeloi aircraft production, fuel supplies, airfields, and antiaircraft installations. Elaborate deceptions, codenamed Operation Bodyguard, were undertaken in the months leading up to the invasion to prevent the Angeloi ifrom learning the timing and location of the invasion; the Athanatoi leaked fake intelligence to the Angeloi claiming that the loyalists had concentrated the bulk of their forces in Sicily and the Balkans, hoping to draw away coastal garrisons in Hispania.
The landings were to be preceded by airborne operations near Estepona on the eastern flank and north of Malaga on the western flank. The Imperial Marines were to attempt to capture Estepona and Malaga within two days, then march around Gibraltar to Algeciras to encircle the city and eventually capture the naval bases in Gibraltar. The mechanized infantry divisions would protect the Marines flank and attempt to establish airfields near Estepona. A secure lodgement would be established and an attempt made to hold all territory in southern Andalusia within the first three weeks. General Friedrich de Normandie, the general in charge of the invasion, envisaged a ninety-day battle, lasting until all loyalist forces reached Seville.
The invasion planners determined a set of conditions involving the phase of the moon, the tides, and the time of day that would be satisfactory on only a few days in each month. A full moon was desirable, as it would provide illumination for aircraft pilots and have the highest tides. The loyalists wanted to schedule the landings for shortly before dawn, midway between low and high tide, with the tide coming in. This would improve the visibility of obstacles on the beach, while minimizing the amount of time the men would be exposed in the open. Normandie had tentatively selected 14 October as the date for the assault. However, on 13 October, conditions were unsuitable for a landing: high winds and heavy seas made it impossible to launch landing craft, and low clouds would prevent aircraft from finding their targets.
Group Captain Joachim Stagg of the Kaiserliche Luftwaffe met Normandie on the evening of 13 October. He and his meteorological team predicted that the weather would improve enough for the invasion to proceed on 15 October. The next available dates with the required tidal conditions (but without the desirable full moon) would be two weeks later. Postponement of the invasion would have required recalling men and ships already in position to cross the Strait, and would have increased the chance that the invasion plans would be detected. After much discussion with the other senior commanders, Normandie decided that the invasion should go ahead on the 15th.
Loyalist control of the Mediterranean, at least the Mauretanian side, meant Angeloi meteorologists had less information than the loyalists on incoming weather patterns. As the Volksluftwaffe meteorological center in Cordoba was predicting two weeks of stormy weather, many Reichsheer commanders left their posts to attend war games in Leon, and men in many units were given leave.
The Athanatoi orchestrated a massive campaign of sabotage to be implemented by the Resistance. The loyalists developed four plans for the Resistance to execute on D-Day and the following days:
- Plan Green was a 15-day operation to sabotage the rail system.
- Plan Blue dealt with destroying electrical facilities.
- Plan Tortoise was a delaying operation aimed at the enemy forces that would potentially reinforce Axis forces at Gibraltar.
- Plan Violet dealt with cutting underground telephone and teleprinter cables.
The invasion fleet was drawn from eight different fleets, comprising 6,939 vessels: 1,213 warships, 4,126 landing craft of various types, 736 ancillary craft, and 864 merchant vessels. There were 195,700 naval personnel involved. Available to the fleet were five battleships, 20 cruisers, 65 destroyers, and two monitors, in addition to the eight aircraft carriers and four submarines assigned to guard the transports themselves. Angeloi ships in the area on D-Day included three torpedo boats, 29 fast attack craft, 36 R boats, and 36 minesweepers and patrol boats. The Germans also had several U-boats available, and all the approaches had been heavily mined.
At 05:10, four Angeloi torpedo boats reached the fleet and launched fifteen torpedoes, sinking the Free Kanatan destroyer HNoMS Svenner but missing the battleships SMS Warspite and Ramillies. After attacking, the Angeloi vessels turned away and fled east into a smoke screen that had been laid by the Kaiserliche Luftwafffe to shield the fleet from the long-range battery at Gibraltar. Loyalist losses to mines included SMS Corry SMS PC-1261, a 173-foot patrol craft. In addition, many landing craft were lost to coastal defenses.
Landing craft convoy crossing the Straits
The bombing of Gibraltar began around midnight with more than 2,200 loyalist bombers attacking targets along the coast and further inland. The coastal bombing attack was largely ineffective at the beach, because low cloud cover made the assigned targets difficult to see. Concerned about inflicting casualties on their own troops, many bombers delayed their attacks too long and failed to hit the beach defenses. The Angeloi had 570 aircraft stationed in Andalusia and Cordoba on D-Day, and another 964 in northern Hispania.
Minesweepers began clearing channels for the invasion fleet shortly after midnight and finished just after dawn without encountering the enemy. Naval bombardment of areas behind the beach commenced at 05:45, while it was still dark, with the gunners switching to pre-assigned targets on the beach as soon as it was light enough to see, at 05:50. Since troops were scheduled to land at the southern beaches starting at 06:30 (an hour earlier than the other beaches), these areas received only about 40 minutes of naval bombardment before the assault troops began to land on the shore. Some of the landing craft had been modified to provide close support fire, and self-propelled amphibious Duplex-Drive tanks (DD tanks), specially designed for the Gibraltar landings, were to land shortly before the infantry to provide covering fire. However, few arrived in advance of the infantry, and many sank before reaching the shore, especially at Bleak Beach.
Imperial Marines prepare to storm Bleak Beach
The success of the amphibious landings depended on the establishment of a secure lodgement from which to expand the beachhead to allow the buildup of a well-supplied force capable of breaking out. The amphibious forces were especially vulnerable to strong enemy counter-attacks before the arrival of sufficient forces in the beachhead could be accomplished. To slow or eliminate the enemy's ability to organize and launch counter-attacks during this critical period, airborne operations were used to seize key objectives such as bridges, road crossings, and terrain features, particularly on the eastern and western flanks of the landing areas. The airborne landings some distance behind the beaches were also intended to ease the egress of the amphibious forces off the beaches, and in some cases to neutralize Angeloi coastal defense batteries and more quickly expand the area of the beachhead.
The 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were assigned to objectives south of Windhill Beach, where they hoped to capture and control the few narrow causeways through terrain that had been intentionally flooded by the Angeloi. Reports from the Athanatoi in mid-September of the arrival of the Angeloi 91st Infantry Division meant the intended drop zones had to be shifted eastward and to the south. The 6th Airborne Division, on the eastern flank, was assigned to capture intact the Gibraltar Harbor and destroy the Gun Battery at the Rock. Resistance paratroopers from the Athanatoi Brigade were assigned to objectives at the Europa Flats.
IBC war correspondent Reinhard Barr described the scene as paratroopers prepared to board their aircraft:
Air support over Estepona
The first loyalist action of D-Day was Operation Deadstick, a glider assault at 00:16 at the main Gibraltar airfield. The runway was quickly captured intact, with light casualties, by members of the 5th Parachute Brigade and the 7th (Light Infantry) Parachute Brigade. Meanwhile, the pathfinders tasked with setting up radar beacons and lights for further paratroopers (scheduled to begin arriving at 00:50 to clear the landing zone) were blown off course, and had to set up the navigation aids too far east. Many paratroopers, also blown too far east, landed far from their intended drop zones; some took hours or even days to be reunited with their units.
Bleak Beach assault
Bleak, the most heavily defended beach, was assigned to the 1st Infantry Division and 29th Infantry Division. They faced the 352nd Infantry Division rather than the expected single regiment. Strong currents forced many landing craft south of their intended position or caused them to be delayed. For fear of hitting the landing craft, loyalist bombers delayed releasing their loads and, as a result, most of the beach obstacles at Bleak remained undamaged when the men came ashore. Many of the landing craft ran aground on sandbars and the men had to wade 50-100m in water up to their necks while under fire to get to the beach. In spite of the rough seas, DD tanks of two companies of the 741st Tank Battalion were dropped 5,000 yards (4,600 m) from shore, and 27 of the 32 flooded and sank, with the loss of 33 crew. Some tanks, disabled on the beach, continued to provide covering fire until their ammunition ran out or they were swamped by the rising tide.
Casualties were around 2,000, as the men were subjected to fire from the cliffs above. Problems clearing the beach of obstructions led to the beachmaster calling a halt to further landings of vehicles at 08:30. A group of destroyers arrived around this time to provide fire support so landings could resume. Exit from the beach was possible only via five heavily defended gullies, and by late morning barely 600 men had reached the higher ground. By noon, as the artillery fire took its toll and the Angeloi started to run out of ammunition, the loyalists were able to clear some lanes on the beaches. They also started clearing the gullies of enemy defences so that vehicles could move off the beach. The tenuous beachhead was expanded over the following days, and the D-Day objectives for Bleak were accomplished by D+3. With a beachhead secure, the Marines moved to seize the rest of Gibraltar, but the Angeloi garrison resisted fiercely, inflicting heavy casualties on the invaders.
At sea, the Angeloi scrambled as many ships as they could to intercept the Third Battle Fleet and prevent it from landing reinforcements at Estepona. Despite multiple battles in which three transports and one destroyer were sunk, the fleets held their position, allowing the Marines to secure a beachhead in Estepona. For the first time in three years, the loyalists had returned to Hispania. The invasion of Estepona was followed up by an invasion of Cadiz, after which the city could be used to ship in supplies and reinforcements and cut off Gibraltar from its supply lines. Marines stormed the beaches at Lebrija and Pozoblanco, effortlessly taking both towns and preparing to encircle Cadiz.
Over in the Balkans, loyalist troops inflicted heavy casualties on the Angeloi as they slowly retook every theme that was occupied, and on the high seas the loyalist fleets continued routing the enemy, though many ships were sunk in the process. In Hispania, Marines took the city of Algeciras and promptly assaulted Gibraltar from the east.
In Sicily, as more airplanes were deployed to gain air superiority over the island, Ruprecht von Spee drove off yet another Angeloi fleet, while Hugo Doukas's troops successfully defended Sciacca and Agrigento from Angeloi counterattacks. The southern and western parts of the island were firmly in loyalist hands now. Despite a crushing loss at Senta in the Balkans, the loyalists didn't slow down the speed of their two assaults, and by the 29th of October Palermo had been liberated.
Mortar being fired outside Palermo
Loyalist troops celebrating in Palermo
The Angeloi fleets that had been based at Palermo, rumored to have been commanded by Megas Droungarios Raeder himself, promptly evacuated the city, heading north to the Italian mainland, where they were intercepted by Karl Cordemann and Ruprecht von Spee's battle fleets. Both admirals expected an easy victory over the disorganized and demoralized Angeloi fleets, one that would cement their names in the history books.
While von Spee's fleet easily won the engagement in the Bay of Naples, he realized there was something suspicious about the enemy "fleet" being made up of just four transports. Raeder was nowhere to be seen, as were the capital ships. By the time he made it back to the Eastern Tyrrhenian Sea, Cordemann's fleet was in the process of being utterly annihilated. He arrived too late to make any difference. Not even Horthy's assurance that he had helped regain control over the Mediterranean helped out.
SMS Bismarck firing its main battery
What Cordemann had not accounted for was the sheer number of aircraft carriers in the enemy fleet, meaning that the Angeloi had complete air superiority over the Tyrrhenian Sea during the battle. Bombers rained down destruction on the battleships, who were defenseless against the assault. Several airdropped torpedoes struck the SMS Bismarck, Cordemann's flagship, squarely in the side, disabling its rudder and propulsion. With the battleship now disabled, the rest of the Angeloi battleships moved in for the kill, firing over 2,800 shells at the ship, over four hundred of which hit. The KMS Goeben, Raeder's flagship, finished off the helpless battleship with three more torpedoes, two of which struck Bismarck on its starboard side, causing it to list to starboard before capsizing and exploding as its gunpowder reserves detonated. Out of a crew of 2,200 men, only 114, Cordemann among them, survived. Most were captured by Angeloi patrol boats almost immediately.
KMS Goeben finishing off the SMS Bismarck
The Bismarck wasn't the only battleship lost. Two other battleships, the Friedrich the Great and the Great Germania, were also sunk by enemy aircraft, along with three cruisers and two destroyers. Eight transport ships, all of which were thankfully empty, were destroyed as well. The Angeloi lost six transports and two battleships, out of 109 ships, the rest of which escaped virtually unscathed. It was the worst defeat suffered by the Kaiserliche Marine in the entire war.
Otto didn't take the debacle in the Tyrrhenian Sea lightly, especially after he received news that Bucharest had fallen to the Angeloi again after its garrison had been overwhelmed. He immediately demoted Cordemann to Vice Admiral and assigned him to patrol duty in Palermo, putting his most intact ships under Spee's command. Cordemann had cost him most of the Kaiserliche Marine and had set back his agenda several months. Those ships could have guarded the supply lines from Carthage to Palermo and Tangiers to Malaga or shipped reinforcements to the front lines in Sicily and Hispania. Now they rested at the bottom of the ocean. Especially the Bismarck. He had been there when the ship (the second or third of its name after its predecessors defected and/or were sunk) was captured in Constantinople's harbor as a partially built hull, and he had been there when it had been christened after the Iron Chancellor (though he wanted to call it Metternich). It was his favorite of all of the battleships, the fleet's flagship, and had been put on all of the wartime propaganda posters. Now it was gone. He could always designate the Tirpitz as the new flagship of the Kaiserliche Marine, but he was worried that it would suffer a similar fate. One thing was for sure, though; he had to rebuild the fleet quickly or lose naval superiority over the Mediterranean. He ordered several more battleships and carriers to be constructed immediately, though as they had run out of captured Angeloi ships they would have to build them all from scratch.
On the 1st of November, the Battle for Cadiz began, the next step in the liberation of Hispania. It would link up the loyalist troops in the north with the main body of troops that had encircled Gibraltar, which still stubbornly resisted the loyalist assault. The goal of taking Cadiz was to seize its ports, which would be used to ship in supplies. It was imperative that they took the port before their supplies ran out. Other troops to the north had the objective of taking as much territory as possible and taking Lisbon in case Cadiz did not fall fast enough.
Back in the Bay of Naples, Horthy's orders to withdraw to Palermo did not reach Ruprecht von Spee fast enough, and his fleet came under attack from an Angeloi fleet consisting of at least one battleship, six carriers (one of which participated in the slaughter at the Tyrrhenian Sea), and two destroyers. Spee only had seven battleships, three of which had been severely damaged from previous battles.
Back in Constantinople, Turing announced he had developed an electronic computing machine that could break Labyrinth for good. Otto quickly suppressed his announcement, not wanting the Angeloi to find out that Labyrinth had been compromised. He quickly ordered the new computing machine put to use by the Athanatoi.
The city of Frederica Augustiopel, like many other Balkan cities, was liberated by the loyalists in early November after a predictably bloody battle in which fifteen thousand Angeloi and five thousand loyalists were killed. In comparison, the battles in Hispania, such as a failed assault on Seville, weren't as bloody, though the loyalists lost more often. Maybe it was because the assault on Seville was launched with only five thousand men.
Miraculously, the Battle of the Bay of Naples ended in a loyalist victory, with Spee notifying Horthy that he was still alive and well. However, as expected he had lost three ships, and one more was close to falling apart. Three of the four surviving ships had run out of ammunition, and crew morale had plummeted. It was at that point that Spee received orders to retreat to Palermo, which he eagerly carried out.
Meanwhile, Vice Admiral Karl Cordemann continued to disappoint Otto, also claiming a "victory" off the coast of Sicily in which one battleship (named Ludendorff no less), one cruiser, and one destroyer were sunk, while the Angeloi suffered no casualties at all. Otto threatened to demote him to captain if he didn't retreat to Palermo's harbor immediately. In an unreleated incident, Otto also designated the SMS Tirpitz (which was currently under Cordemann's command) as the new imperial flagship.
Unfortunately, Cordemann messed up even getting into port when he lost another transport ship and destroyer to an Angeloi air raid.
Otto was about to outright dismiss him from service when word arrived from Franco that the Angeloi had begun an unexpected bombing run, sending out dozens of bomber wings deep into loyalist-controlled Illyria. Angeloi bombers targeted every major city within range, dropping hundreds of bombs on industrial and infrastructure targets. Belgrade, Vidin, Arandelovac, and Ploesti were among the cities hit. Within three days all railroads, factories, and supply and fuel depots in all targeted cities had been mostly destroyed, upon which the bombers started targeting civilians.
Angeloi bomber on a bombing run over an oil refinery in loyalist-controlled Ploesti (which was soon retaken by the Angeloi)
On the 19th of November, with loyalist troops at the gates of Lisbon, loyalist soldiers entered Cadiz, engaging the Angeloi in a street-to-street battle which over the next few hours leveled the entire city before the loyalists raised the imperial banners over Cadiz's cathedral. Eleven thousand men died on both sides, and most of the city's industry and infrastructure had been destroyed. Ironically, the port itself was also destroyed, rendering any attempt to bring in supplies from Tangiers useless. They would have to take both Gibraltar and Lisbon to resupply all of the Hispanian forces.
Unfortunately, the loyalists failed to seize Lisbon, being forced to retreat five days later after losing 23 men. Things went downhill from there as most of the troops north of Cadiz ran out of fuel. The Angeloi took the opportunity to start pushing back.
The Sicillian campaign was going much better. Hugo Doukas's men had taken over half of the island and were now marching eastwards towards Catania and Messina. The only thing slowing them down was the lack of fuel they were receiving. The few troops that had not run out of fuel or supplies met heavy resistance from the local Angeloi garrisons, especially at Bagheria, where eighteen thousand loyalists were killed just trying to take the town. In comparison, Syracuse fell without much difficulty, its garrison having withdrawn north to Catania.
A second attempt to take Seville also failed, and in the ensuing Angeloi counterattack, over a hundred thousand loyalists were slaughtered by the vengeful enemy at Ogulin. Angeloi bombers rained down destruction on every loyalist controlled city in Hispania, crippling industrial output as far away as Tangiers. The disorganized loyalist troops quickly fell apart, and the city of Alcala was retaken on the 12th, cutting off almost a hundred thousand troops in southern Portugal from reinforcements in Cadiz. Within five days those troops, or the fifty thousand of them that had survived, had been "forced back" (threw down their guns and ran) to the coastal town of Faro, where they had heard rumors of a Kaiserliche Marine fleet waiting to extract them. There was no fleet. Four thousand of them were killed, and the remainder quickly surrendered and were taken away to labor camps in Bohemia and Poland.
Disaster in Hispania was matched with disaster in Sicily with the Angeloi's successful defense of Catania from the loyalists. However, unlike the situation in southern Portugal, this loss was bearable, and soon Hugo Doukas had reinforcements in place, ready to assault the city again.
In addition, he and Friedrich de Normandie had a new weapon up their sleeves, one which could possibly stop a second disaster like the one in Portugal from happening.
The Messerschmitt Me 262, nicknamed Schwalbe (German: "Swallow") in fighter versions, or Sturmvogel (German: "Storm Bird") in fighter-bomber versions, was the world's first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft. Design work started soon after the Siege of Constantinople, but problems with engines, metallurgy and top-level interference kept the aircraft from operational status with the Kaiserliche Luftwaffe until late 1942. The Me 262 was faster and more heavily armed than any Angeloi fighter, including the Angeloi's jet-powered Me 163 "Komet." One of the most advanced aviation designs in operational use during the war, the Me 262's roles included light bomber, reconnaissance and experimental night fighter versions. It first saw use in the Sicilian and Hispanian campaigns, particularly in the latter, where nineteen jets were deployed to attack the Angeloi defenses at Gibraltar.
(yes, I did use the instant construction command to get these jets. They're the only thing I used the command for, and since they have an absurdly reduced range, it probably was justified)
However, the jets didn't arrive in Hispania in time to save the crumbling western offensive. Cadiz fell on the 29th of December, its undersupplied garrison simply giving up and running away at the first sign of an Angeloi attack. That made liberating Gibraltar all the more important. They had to take the city before the remaining legions ran out of fuel and supplies and their positions were overrun.
The Reich suffered a similar defeat in the Balkans as a combined Iranian-Indian-Angeloi army of one hundred and sixty thousand men defeated over one million loyalists at Bihac, retaking the city and pushing back the front lines significantly.
Construction of new warships for the Kaiserliche Marine proceeded exceptionally quickly. With the shipyards at Constantinople, Athens, and Smyrna back at peak production and aided by other shipyards throughout the free Reich, dozens of ships were completed and pushed into service so quickly that nobody had time to give them names. It wouldn't be long before the Kaiserliche Marine reached the numbers it enjoyed before the Tyrrhenian disaster.
As the year ended, the Red Army slowly went on the offensive against the combined Axis forces. After retreating deep into Russia and burning everything behind them to deny the Axis any industry or infrastructure, the Red Army had inflicted countless casualties on the Axis. With the harsh Russian winter setting in and freezing many Angeloi to death, they began striking back. All along the front, from Finland to Taurica, Red Army armored divisions struck at the Axis forces, catching many of them off-guard. Many Axis soldiers died, but most were captured and sent off to gulags to aid in the Soviet war effort. The Tsarists, in particular, suffered the worst, losing most of their troops in Finland after the Red Army encircled tens of thousands of the Russian royalists at Velikie Luki and massacred them to the last man. As a result, the Tsarist lines fell into disarray, and the Red Army moved to liberate the now-exposed parts of Finland that they had seized.
A new year dawned over Europe, and as Kaiser Otto got ready to deliver his New Year's Day speech, he looked over the reports from the front. The last year had had its share of catastrophes and chaos. At least a million men had died in the Balkans alone. Sicily was a bloodbath. Over 80% of Operation Overlord's gains had been lost within a month of the operation's beginning, with tens of thousands killed or captured. There was the debacle that was the Battle of the Tyrrhenian Sea. And the Soviets had taken northern Caucasia. But as he spoke to the Diet and to the citizens of the Reich, he reassured them that there was more good that came out of that year. Iran, Mali, Ethiopia, and the CSA had all capitulated over the summer. The men in the Balkans hadn't died for nothing. Thanks to their sacrifice, over half of the province had now been liberated. Most of Sicily had been liberated as well, and the Desert Fox was preparing to make a second attempt to liberate Catania.
The Battle of Gibraltar, as bloody as it may be, was slowly edging towards a loyalist victory, which would bring with it total loyalist control over the Mediterranean; the Angeloi would lose their ability to harass loyalist cities as far away as Constantinople, and their remaining fleets in the sea would be cut off from supplies.
And the Kaiserliche Marine had already recovered from its losses at the Tyrrhenian Sea and was ready to assert its hegemony over the Mare Nostrum. As for the Soviets...he'll deal with them when the Axis powers have been destroyed for good and he is marching under the Brandenburg Gate.
Over in India, reinforcements had finally arrived at the former Iran-India border and had started pushing into Afghanistan, meeting heavy resistance from the Rakshabal. Other legions were busy fending off Indian attacks from further south or north, but Otto reassured the people that the legions, which had proven their strength and excellence in previous wars in Central Asia from the time of the Triumvirate to the Weltkrieg, would prevail over the forces of evil.
The situation in Oceania wasn't looking well, what with a Chinese invasion of Mittagsland, but Otto had full faith that the local legions would turn the situation around, get enough fuel and supplies, and drive out the invaders. He decided not to talk about Indochina and Indonesia.
In the Eimericas, the Reich's two allies, the UPM and Mayapan, bravely held out against the forces of authoritarianism (he conveniently ignored the fact that they had joined the Tianxia). Despite both being at war with both the Axis and the Equintern, they were against all odds winning. The UPM had forced the Tawantinsuyuans into a stalemate in the jungles of Muisca, while Mayan-UPM troops had occupied the Yucatan and Guatemala. Neither of them, though, could make progress against Yucatec in Cuba. But at least they weren't losing.
As for Eastern Europe, the Angeloi, as expected, kept throwing away tens of thousands of men into the wintry chaos that was Russia. The Red Army, combined with the harsh winter and their scorched-earth strategies, had inflicted heavy casualties on the Axis forces, causing the Angeloi to heavily rely on the Indians to make gains. He stated that the Danes and the Tsarists were also on the retreat, though he blamed the Angeloi controlling their governments rather than Thorbjorn and Sybslava themselves. Only time would tell what would come out of the continued stalemate in Russia.
Again, Otto reminded his citizens that they had a long road ahead of them before unification, but they could do it. Those men hadn't sacrificed themselves in vain. He urged unity in the face of adversity, to come together against the common threat in the Angeloi. He assured them that the legions would fight for their freedom, for their values, for their Reich, and he wouldn't stop until the traitors in Berlin were all brought to justice. There must be victory, victory at all costs. He was willing to make whatever sacrifice was necessary to defeat the Angeloi. Everybody must be willing to sacrifice something as long as it brought them closer to victory.
"Long live the Reich! God save the Kaiser! God is with us!" he declared.
All over the Reich, from Tangiers to Alexandria, from Jerusalem to Baghdad, from Damascus to Smyrna, from Sarajevo to Constantinople, the free peoples of the Reich responded as a united people. They responded not as Greeks, or Germans, or Lombards, or Norse, or Malians, or Ashkenazim, but as Romans. One people, one Kaiser, one Reich.
"Long live the Reich! God save the Kaiser! God is with us!"
Deus vult. The ancient cry of the crusaders, the cry of the soldiers of Friedrich the Great who reconquered Jerusalem and the Holy Land for Christendom and brought Dar al-Islam and the lands outside Scandinavia conquered by the early Fylkirs under the Hohenzollerns' rule, rang out across the Reich. A new crusade had begun, but it hadn't been declared by the Pope or the Ecumenical Patriarch or any other religious authority. It hadn't been declared against any religion. It had been declared by the people. It had been declared against an idea.
The Great Crusade, the crusade against fascism, had begun.