Chapter 401: An Uncertain Future
The first few months of 1946 would prove to be quite busy for the Kaiser and his newly reorganized Diet. Both Otto and Adenauer agreed that the current state of the economy and Roman industry required immediate attention. Economics minister Ludwig Erhard, after consulting with the Reichstag and the Reichsrat, presented a budget to the Chancellor for review. This budget would slash funding for the military by half and slightly raise taxes on all citizens. Tariffs on all foreign goods were ended and replaced with subsidies to help factories get on their feet again. The Treasury would also provide funds for small and large businesses to go back to work and for capitalists to invest in repairing infrastructure. Erhard also presented his trade policy to Adenauer, proposing that the Reich focus on exporting goods and services to other countries, as it was plentiful in those things. Otto approved of the policy.
The next thing that Otto did was to begin a sweeping currency reform. The Reichsmark's value had plummeted during the war, and only the intervention of the state prevented hyperinflation like the kind that caused the rise of the Rasa Party from happening in the Reich. The Reich's allies--the Nordics, Mayapan, and the UPM mainly--and China, Tawantinsuyu, and Nepal had previously expressed a willingness to establish an international system of monetary management. In July of 1945, representatives from the nine countries met at Bretton Hall in Yorkshire, Britannia, to discuss what form this monetary management system would take. The representatives collectively favored a regulated system of fixed exchange rates, indirectly managed by the Reichsmark tied to gold, which relied on a regulated market economy. Roman planners developed a concept of economic security--that a liberal (but not necessarily democratic) international economic system would help protect the postwar peace. Adenauer believed that the fundamental causes of the two world wars lay in economic discrimination and trade warfare that caused great power tensions in 1914 to escalate into war and allowed the rise of fascism in the 1930s. Adenauer specifically had in mind the trade and exchange controls of Rasa India and the imperial preference systems of both the Reich and China, which accorded their colonies and allies special trade status.
To ensure economic stability and political peace, participating states agreed to copperate to closely regulate currency production to maintain fixed exchange rates between countries to faciliate free trade. Kaiser Otto, having lived through decades of trade warfare and protectionism, envisioned a global system of free trade where all countries and their peoples could benefit equally. This involved lowering tariffs and maintaining a balance of trade through fixed exchange rates.
More developed market economies agreed with this system of postwar international economic management, which was designed to create and maintain an effective international monetary system and reduce barriers to trade and capital flows. In a sense, the new international monetary system was in fact a return to a system much like the prewar gold standard, only the Reichsmark would be the world's reserve currency until the world's gold supply could be reallocated through international trade.
This new system would be initially devoid of governments meddling with their currency supply as they had done before the war. Instead, governments would closely monitor their currency production and ensure they would not engage in currency manipulation.
On 27 December 1945, the nine participating countries signed the Articles of Agreement, bringing the Bretton Woods system into effect. An International Monetary Fund would also be established and come into force several months later to help countries manage changes in their currency rates.
With the first step in economic reform done, Adenauer turned to foreign policy. The first issue to deal with was the trial of former Angeloi officiers. While most of the politicians and generals who had participated in the brutalities of the Angeloi and Rasa regimes had already been tried, convicted, and sentenced in the Vijayanagara Trials several weeks ago, a few, mostly lower-ranking officers, politicians, and concentration camp guards, hadn't been tried yet. Their trial commenced in late December in the city of Nuremburg, one of Markos Angelos's former strongholds. By New Year's Day, it was clear what verdict the jury would give for all of them: guilty. Many of the Angeloi and Rasas on trial pleaded not guilty, claiming they were just following orders and didn't know what was going on. Their claims were quickly refuted by the mounds of evidence gathered from seized Angeloi assets and Rasa concentration camps, as well as testimonies by survivors. All were convicted of their charges. The most serious offenders would be sentenced to death, while others were given either life in prison, several years of hard labor, a ban from military and public service, or a partial revoking of their citizenship. The Kaiser ensured that the most just punishment was dealt out to these criminals.
Of course, it wasn't enough to just sentence the Angeloi and Rasas. Even two years after the war, both organizations still had thousands of followers within the Reich and occupied India. In Provincia Germania, neo-Angeloi groups roamed the cities in such large numbers that its Landers had to be run by a military administration, the Imperial Control Council. The situation wasn't that much better in occupied India due to the large number of Indians compared to Romans. Adenauer suggested in 1945 a policy of "deangelification and derasafication" in both the Reich and India. This policy was an initiative to purge Roman and Indian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of anything remotely related to the Angeloi or Rasas. The program was launched in late 1945 and solidified by the Uttar Pradesh Agreement between the Reich and China.
Deangelification in the Reich was attempted through a series of directives issued by Adenauer to the Imperial Control Council beginning in 1946. Derasafication was carried out simultaneously in India through directives issued by Roman and Chinese military authorities based in Delhi. These directives identified specific people and groups and outlined legal procedures and guidelines for dealing with them. Though the two occupying forces had agreed on the initiative, the methods used and the intensity with which they were applied differed between the two occupation zones. The Chinese were much more ruthless in eradicating fascism, while the Reich took a more hands-off approach and allowed Indians to carry out the directives themselves.
Physical symbols of both the Angeloi and Rasa regimes were removed. Statues and monuments to fascist leaders were torn down and names erased from plaques. Indian medals were reissued without the Rasa spinning loom insignia in the center.
About 8.5 million Romans and 20 million Indians had been members of the Angeloi and Rasa Parties. Angeloi and Rasa-related organizations also had huge memberships, like the Roman Labor Front (25 million), the Indian National Socialist People's Welfare organization (17 million), the League of Indian Women, the Kaiserjugend, the Doctors' League, and others. It was through the parties and these organizations that the Angeloi and Rasa states were run, involving as many as forty percent of the Roman and Indian populations in total. Angelism and Rasism found significant support among industrialists, landowners, and even some nobility. As a result, deangelification and derasafication were enormous undertakings, fraught with many difficulties.
The first difficulty was the enormous number of Romans and Indians who might have to be first investigated and then penalized if found to have supported the Angeloi and Rasa regimes to an unacceptable degree. In the early months there was a great desire to be utterly thorough and investigate every suspect and hold every supporter of fascism accountable for their crimes. However, the sheer number of possible Angeloi and Rasa supporters, especially in India, made this impractical. It soon became evident that pursuing derasafication too thoroughly would make it impossible to restore a functioning, economically independent meritocratic society in India and rehabilitate the formerly Angeloi territories of the Reich.
After a few months, though, tensions in eastern Europe were on the rise again, and the Reich began to worry more about a Soviet invasion from the Occupied Territories than repressed Angeloi sentiment. The program in India fell apart over the years due to a lack of sufficient funding and the sheer number of Indians. Roman critics denounced it as a counterproductive witch hunt which was inefficient and only caused public anger in the Reich and India. In 1951, the government simply granted amnesties to lesser offenders and ended the program altogether.
It was ironic that anti-fascist directives were mainly implemented in India and not Persia, which had a long history of radical movements. The Persian Revolution of 1806 started the wave of liberalism that led to revolutions forty years later, while more recently the first fascist regime was established in Persia in the 1920s by the dictator Reza Khan. The Roman and Chinese occupation authorities were much more lenient on the Persians. Reza Khan, who was still highly popular in Persia, was given a life sentence and kept under house arrest in the Reich. Otto authorized a measure allowing for Persian self-rule in January of 1946. A Persian government, based in Isfahan, was organized in southern Persia as a Roman protectorate after the original Sino-Roman plan to govern Persia (and India) as a single unit broke down. General sovereignty (but not full sovereignty) was granted to the new Persian government, along with the power to build a small army under Roman supervision. Roman troops were to be stationed in Persia at the discretion of the Kaiser. Northern Persia remained under Chinese military occupation for now. The new Shahdom of Persia was to be a meritocratic monarchy headed by the Shah, although Shah Cyrus II remained in the Reich.
There was also the matter of Turkestan. Before the war, Turkestan (as the Ghaznavid Khaganate) was under joint Sino-Roman protection which was withdrawn immediately before India invaded. The states of Paksthana and Afghanistan, which China had split off from Turkestan in 1921, were now under Roman military occupation along with India, while Turkestan proper was under Chinese occupation. A plebiscite held in Roman-occupied Afghanistan found that its people favored independence as their own state rather than reintegration into Turkestan, despite the ancestral capital of Turkestan, Ghazni, being in Afghanistan. In January, Otto approved of the organization of a meritocratic Afghan government. A Ghaznavid prince, related to the Ghaznavid sultans of Turkestan, was invited to take the crown of Afghanistan. Like Persia, Afghanistan was granted general but not full sovereignty as it made the transition into an industrialized and modern state. Turkestan proper remained under Chinese occupation while Chiang oversaw the establishment of a new Turkish government, the old one having been purged by the Indians.
With the fascists and Central Asia dealt with for now, Otto turned back to Europe. The Occupied Territories remained under Soviet control, and despite repeated demands from both Otto and Adenauer to hand them over, the Soviets refused, not wanting to work with reactionaries. The Roman Armed Forces, though far better equipped and trained than the Soviet Army, was still heavily outnumbered. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops were stationed in East Germania alone, not to mention the troops in the other satellite states in the Occupied Territories. And that didn't even take into account the Soviet nuclear arsenal. While it was initially made up by material (and nukes) seized from the Angeloi-Rasa nuclear weapons program, the Athanatoi reported that the Soviets had likely built their own nukes and were ready to deploy them should even one Roman soldier cross the "border." At this point, it simply wasn't worth it to attempt a liberation of the Occupied Territories. Chancellor Franz von Papen, Adenauer's predecessor, was strongly in favor of executing Operation Unthinkable, the contingency plans that Field Marshal and Megas Domestikos Erich Ludendorff had drawn up in the event of war with the CSSR, but the Soviets brought down his government by handing over West Berlin and Vienna to the Reich in exchange for "recognition of Soviet gains." Papen could not accept the deal without provoking outrage over the loss of the Occupied Territories, and neither could he reject the deal without provoking outrage over the loss of Berlin and Vienna, which caused his entire government to resign, bringing down the Metternich system. The Soviets had plenty more of blackmail and threats which they could use to cause more government-collapsing scandals. The only thing the Reich had was its "alliance" with the Chinese Empire, but Chiang had his own ambitions besides containing the Soviets.
On 19 October 1945, Britannian writer Erich Blair, also known as Georg Orwell, published an essay in the newspaper Die Zeiten titled "You and the Atomic Bomb." Contemplating a world living int he shadow of the threat of nuclear warfare, Blair wrote the following:
Erich Blair said:
Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery....Joachim Burnham's theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications—that is, the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of "cold war" with its neighbours.
In a subsequent editorial soon after the convening of the United Nations General Assembly, Blair wrote, "the CSSR has begun to make a 'cold war' on the Reich and its allies." The tensions in Asia between the Roman and Chinese spheres of influence were soon considered part of this cold war. It looked like the postwar peace would not be a calm one.
On 2 January 1946, the next step in Kaiser Otto's economic reform began with the establishment of the International Monetary Fund, headquartered in Vienna and Constantinople. First formed in 1945 at the Bretton Woods Conference, it came into formal existence with nine member countries and the goal of reconstructing the international payment system.
During the Great Depression, countries sharply raised barriers to trade, including tariffs, to improve their failing economies. This led to devaluations of currencies and a decline in world trade. This breakdown in international monetary cooperation created a need for oversight. The representatives of nine governments--the Reich, China, Kanata, Tsarist Russia, Danmark, Mayapan, the UPM, Tawantinsuyu, and Nepal--met at the Bretton Woods Conference in Bretton Hall, Yorkshire, to discuss a framework for postwar international economic cooperation and how to rebuild Eurasia.
The IMF formally came into existence the same day that the Bretton Woods system was signed by the nine country on 27 December 1945. On 1 March 1946, the IMF began financial operations, and Persia and Afghanistan became the first two countries to borrow from it.
Good news arrived on Otto's desk later that day when demographers reported that a population boom was in progress. With the war firmly over now, Romans had settled down and started families in large numbers, optimistic that despite the sorry state of the Roman economy things would get better for their children. Otto directed his Minister of Education to adjust school funding accordingly.
Speaking of the economy, Otto issued an edict that same day ordering several major companies to hand over their assets to the state. The nationalization of major companies was intended to last ten years and was supposed to give Kaiser Otto and his cabinet a hand in guiding the recovery of the Roman economy. Most of the companies affected were those which were either already struggling or had worked with the Angeloi in the war. Loyal and successful companies such as Tesla Dynamic were kept privatized.
The Soviet Commune also began developing its own economy, with General Secretary Molotov announcing the country's fourth Five Year Plan. A year ago, Molotov had promised that the CSSR would be the leading industrial power by 1960.
The CSSR at this stage had been devastated by the war. Officially, 98,000 collective farms had been ransacked and ruined, with the loss of 137,000 tractors, 49,000 combine harvesters, 7 million horses, 17 million cattle, 20 million pigs, 27 million sheep; 25% of all capital equipment had been destroyed in 35,000 plants and factories; 6 million buildings, including 40,000 hospitals, in 70,666 villages and 4,710 towns (40% urban housing) were destroyed, leaving 25 million homeless; about 40% of railway tracks had been destroyed; officially 7.5 million servicemen died, plus 6 million civilians, but perhaps 20 million in all died. In 1945, mining and metallurgy were at 40% of the 1940 levels, electric power was down to 52%, pig-iron 26% and steel 45%; food production was 60% of the 1940 level. After the Reich and India, the CSSR had been the hardest hit by the war. Reconstruction was impeded by a chronic labor shortage due to the enormous number of Soviet casualties in the war. Moreover, 1946 was the driest year since 1891, and the harvest was poor.
The CSSR imposed reparations on the Occupied Territories, especially East Germania, and made Eastern European countries make payments in return for the Soviets having "liberated" them from the Angeloi and the Hohenzollerns. The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) was set up a few weeks later, linking the Eastern bloc countries economically (and forcing them to become dependent on Soviet economic aid). One-third of the fourth plan's capital expenditure was spent on occupied Taurica and Ruthenia, which was important agriculturally and industrially, and which had been one of the areas most devastated by war. Molotov wanted the majority German and Greek inhabitants of Taurica to be assimilated into the CSSR as productive workers.
The devastation that the Reich suffered didn't stop its scientists from innovating. The Angeloi threat, followed by the Soviet threat, had driven them to innovate faster, hoping to develop a way to match the Soviets' nuclear advantage. The Imperial Army Signal Corps began an experimental project in 1946, codenamed Project Diana, to bounc radar signals off the moon and receive the reflected signals. At a laboratory in Rouen, Normandy, a large trasmitter, receiver, and antenna array were constructed for this purpose. The transmitter, a highly modified radar set from the war, provided a sufficiently strong signal to reach the moon which was reflected back about 2.5 seconds later. Project Diana marked the birth of radar astronomy, and some considered it the beginning of the Space Age. It also established the practice of naming space projects after Greek gods (the leading scientists on Project Diana wanted to call it Project Artemis).
The denazification process was often completely disregarded by both the Reich and China for formerly Axis rocket scientists and other technical experts, who were taken out of India to work on projects in the victor's own country or simply seized in order to prevent the other side from taking them. The Reich sent 785 scientists and engineers from India to the Reich.
Operation Paperclip was a secret Athanatoi program in which more than 1,600 Indian and Angeloi scientists, engineers, and technicians (many of whom were formerly registered members of the Rasa Party and Angeloi hierarchy and some of whom had leadership roles in the two organizations), including Werner von Braun's rocket team, were recruited and brought to the Reich for government employment in exchange for amnesty.
The primary purpose for Operation Paperclip was for the Reich to gain a military advantage in the burgeoning Cold War and restart the Roman nuclear weapons program, which had been sabotaged by both Angeloi and Soviet agents. By comparison, the Soviets and Chinese were even more aggressive in recruiting former Angeloi and Rasas.
The General Staff established the first secret recruitment program, called Operation Overcast, on July 20, 1945, to aid postwar military research. The term “Overcast” was the name first given by the Angeloi scientists’ family members for the housing camp where they were held in Bavaria.
In November 1945, Operation Overcast was renamed Operation Paperclip by Ordnance Corps (Imperial Army) officers, who would attach a paperclip to the folders of those rocket experts whom they wished to employ in the Reich. Kaiser Otto formally approved Operation Paperclip and expanded it to include one thousand Angeloi scientists in a secret directive, circulated on September 3, 1946.
In mid-January, unexpected news arrived from Gallia, where Karl von Gallia, the war hero, had announced his sudden retirement from the Imperial Control Council. The popular general had presided over the liberation of Gallia from the Angeloi and had personally commanded troops in the Battle of Paris. After the implementation of the Ottonian System devolved most of the Gallic provincial government's power to the Lander, Karl von Gallia announced his resignation from the ICC, though he retained his military commission. There were rumors that von Gallia was considering a career in politics.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council held its first regular meeting on the 17th of January in the Great Palace, Constantinople. There, they discussed matters such as keeping the peace in Eurasia and rebuilding the world economy, though talks nearly broke down when the Roman representative demanded that the Soviets hand over the Occupied Territories.
Over in Southeast Asia, the Imperial Chinese Army suffered mounting losses against insurgents in the hills and jungles, among them the infamous Seri Thai. Realizing that a prolonged conflict in the region could cause unrest in mainland China, Chiang entered into negotiations with Thai, Laotian, and Cambodian nationalists, promising them independence. In the case of the Laotians and Cambodians, they would be granted dominion status, with the power to independently handle internal affairs but not foreign policy. The Seri Thai, though, demanded nothing less than full independence, which Chiang agreed with. In late January, Chiang issued a proclamation declaring the creation of the dominions of Laos and Cambodia and the withdrawal of troops from Siam. The Seri Thai immediately moved into the city of Sukhothai, where they raised the Thai flag and declared the independence of the Kingdom of Thailand. The new Kingdom was headed by a Regency Council, as the rightful King of Siam, Bhumibol Adulyadej of the house of Li, currently lived in Roman Indochina. The three new countries were all officially constitutional monarchies modeled after the Chinese government, but Chiang made sure that the military wielded significant power over each government so that his own people couldn't use them as examples to demand his resignation. The Seri Thai controlled most of the new Thai government and began establishing a new nationalist regime, emphasizing traditional Thai and Buddhist values. However, the Seri Thai continued giving the Chinese preferable trading status in exchange for military and industrial aid, which they used to help turn themselves into a proper army. The independence of Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia helped fuel nationalism in Vietnam and Burma, both of which also demanded more autonomy from Nanjing. Even Korea, which had been a part of China since the late 1700s, was now coordinating its independence movements with the Japanese.
Back in the Reich, peace had finally begun. The horror of the war was over. While new conflicts might arise in the future, Roman society was glad that at least there was no fighting going on right now. The war had reached every single part of the mainland Reich, from Hibernia in the west to Mesopotamia in the east. Everybody was glad that was all over. The war economy was therefore dismantled and transitioned back to a civilian one. Industrial production would be diverted to civilian use again. Otto hoped that this time of peace would last a long time.
The next step in economic reform began with the establishment of the World Bank. The World Bank was first created at the Bretton Woods Conference along with the IMF. It was based in the city of Cordoba, Hispania, and its function was to provide loans to countries for capital programs. Its official goal is the reduction of poverty, and all of its decisions must be guided by a commitment to the promotion of foreign investment and free international trade and to the facilitation of capital investment.
Meanwhile, General von Gallia continued to surprise everybody by abruptyly resigning from the military on 22 January 1946. The move was called a "bold and ultimately foolish political ploy," as von Gallia hoped that as a war hero, he would soon be appointed to the Reichsrat or promoted to a higher rank in the General Staff. Neither of that happened. Karl von Gallia dropped out of sight and retired to his home in eastern Gallia to write his war memoirs, expecting to be recalled to military or political service when the Reich needed him again.
The situation in the Occupied Territories got worse. After the war, the Soviets tried to extract huge amounts of supplies and equipment from occupied eastern Germania. According to Soviet Foreign Ministry data, Soviet troops organised in specialised 'trophy' battalions organised removals of 1.28m tons of materials and 3.6m tons of equipment. The Soviet occupation sought to extract roughly 10bn marks from its occupation zone in eastern Germania, in addition to the trophy removals. Their goal was to utterly dismantle the economies of the Occupied Territories as revenge for the Angeloi invasion, rendering the people dependent on Soviet goods.
The effects of the Bretton Woods system started to be felt in February. As more countries joined the system and took out loans from the IMF and World Bank, the world economy started to recovery. The Reichsmark's value went up again, though not as much as Otto hoped. The Nordic economies were the first to recover, and free trade flowed between the signatories. Yet the Roman economy struggled to keep up, weighed down by its destroyed infrastructure and industry. If the Reich was to reap the benefits of the Bretton Woods system, it would have to rebuild its industry first.
In Korea, major nationalist independence movements formed a "Provisional Government of Korea" in mid-February, inspired by the success of the Seri Thai and the movement that Emperor Hirohito built up. During the war, many Korean nationalists had fought on China's side against the Reich and the Rasas, hoping that Chiang would reward them for their service. However, Chiang considered Korea an integral part of China and refused to recognize such a government. He didn't rule out negotiations, though, and promised a plebiscite on the matter soon which could reorganize Korea into another Chinese dominion.
After implementing his industrial reforms, Kaiser Otto turned to rebuilding the Reich's infrastructure. Despite the most heavily damaged regions of the Reich being in the Balkans, particularly Illyria, Otto focused his initial efforts on the west, specifically Frisia, where repeated Angeloi bombing raids against advancing loyalist troops had destroyed dikes and dams, flooding acres of farmland. Otto ordered the construction of the Houtribdijk, a dam (not a dike despite its name) which allowed for the reclaiming of significant amounts of land from the North Sea. This was the first part in repairing and expanding the Sudenmeer Works. The Sudenmeer Works were a man-made system of dams and dikes, land reclamation and water drainage works undertaken to drain the Sudenmeer, a large, shallow inlet of the North Sea, to reclaim the land underneath for farming and to improve flood production.
Newly equipped with Chinese weapons and trained by Chinese advisers, the Seri Thai began launching raids into Roman Indochina. Regent and Chancellor Pridi Panomyong oversaw the establishment of a trail through neighboring Cambodia into eastern Roman Siam. Another trail meandered through Burma. Both trails avoided the heavy fortifications at the Roman border themes of Lopburi and Prachinburi and allowed the Seri Thai to launch highly effective terrorist attacks against Roman settlements, detonating bombs in Bangkok and other major towns and cities. The colonial administration based in Singapura struggled to deal with these terrorist attacks, as every time it deployed troops to apprehend the Seri Thai they vanished back into the jungle. Cambodia's government lodged a formal protest with the Thai government, but it was powerless to shut down the Panomyong Trail, as it became known.
The failure of the Provisional Government of Korea to receive Chinese recognition didn't deter the Japanese nationalists, who were among the most outspoken and best organized of all of the nationalist movements in China. Led by Emperor Hirohito and Shogun Shiba Iesato, the various Japanese independence movements united into one organization, which was referred to as the Interim Government of Japan. Its task was to assist the transition of the Yamato and Shiba domains from Chinese rule to independence. Although the Chinese government did not recognize the Interim Government, it didn't refuse to recognize it either, which was a good sign for the Japanese.
The real reason that the Chinese didn't do anything regarding the Interim Government was that they were busy with Operation Backfire, the plan to seize Rasa assets in eastern India for China. With the consent of the Roman military authorities, the operation was to find and interrogate Rasa rocket specialists and nuclear physicists. For this operation, three or four formerly Indian rockets were launched from near Dhaka in October 1945 to demonstrate their power to the Chinese military authorities. The Reich had already taken away most of the Indian rocket technology at a concentration camp in the Punjab, with the rest being left to the Chinese. The handling and launch procedures were unknown, so Indian personnel were ordered to perform them, which for the most part they did willingly. During and after these launches, the Chinese recruited most of these scientists to help their own missile program, and following that, their nuclear weapons program.
In March, the United Nations selected its first Secretary-General, a Kanatan named Trygvie Lie. Lie had led the Kanatan delegation to the United Nations conference in Vienna in 1945 and was a leader in drafting the provisions of the United Nations Security Council. He was the leader of the Kanatan delegation to the United Nations General Assembly. In March, he was nominated and chosen to be the first Secretary-General as a result of a compromise between the major powers.
In that same month, Otto's economic reforms stalled, and he realized that the one thing holding back the Reich's recovery was the Reichsmark itself. It had become over-circulated and devalued after being made the reserve currency of the Bretton Woods system. Erhard suggested that economic stabilization might be achieved by the replacement and reform of the Reichsmark with a new currency, which would also be called a Reichsmark (but would be simply referred to as a mark). Otto approved of this and passed the required legislation to enact the reform. The currency reform also applied to Roman currency in the Occupied Territories, where the Reichsmark was still used in defiance of the Soviet authorities. Fearing that this may have weakened their control over the Occupied Territories, Molotov lodged a formal complaint in which he stated his opposition to the reform, only to retract it an hour later after realizing he legally had no authority to meddle in Roman internal affairs (despite having brought down Papen's government and occupied Roman territory) and sounded like an idiot.
Operation Paperclip started paying off in March with the recruitment of the high-profile scientist Werner von Braun. Von Braun had been the head of the Angeloi rocket program, helping design the V-2 rockets which rained death and destruction down on many loyalist cities during the war (never mind that the loyalists had reverse engineered the V-2 and launched their own rockets against Angeloi cities). He was offered a choice between the revoking of his academic degrees and a ban from working in aerospace and rocketry and working with the Reich, which would offer him amnesty. Von Braun and his engineering team wisely chose amnesty and became a vital component in the Roman nuclear weapons program and missile program.
By the end of March, demographers reported that despite the population boom occurring, the actual number of children born to each couple had dropped dramatically to an average of two children per couple. Not only that, but advances in medical technology resulted in lower death rates. The lower birth and death rates were referred to as a demographic transition. This demographic transition was attributed to the developing of the Reich from an agrarian to an industrialized economy over the last two centuries. As men and women became better educated, were paid more, and had better medical care, they had less children and lived longer. Many other countries had also undergone a demographic transition, and in a few decades their populations would likely shrink as a result. The Reich's population, though, would keep on growing, due to its welcoming immigration policy. Thousands of immigrants arrived in the Reich each month in search of better job opportunities after the chaos of the war. They would find employment and generous benefits in the Reich while helping to rebuild the Roman economy. In the process, they would pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become loyal Roman citizens. Scholars referred to this as the Roman Dream, the idea that anybody could advance to any position in society (except Kaiser, of course) based on their merit and hard work. This was in contrast to the rigid traditional Chinese social hierarchies promoted by the Chiang's military junta and the mad totalitarianism enforced by Molotov and his NKVD.
