Chapter 61
Chapter 61
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 61
Chapter Title: The German Civil War - Iron and Blood, Golden Freedom (1)
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**< The German Civil War - Iron and Blood, Golden Freedom (1) >**
November 15, 1939
Kassel, 9th Military District, Central Germany, and Frankfurt, the New Government's Capital
On the day of the New Government’s Reichswehr send-off ceremony, the weather was picturesque.
Beneath a clear sky where warm sunlight streamed through the clouds, a tremendous crowd filled the streets of Frankfurt.
They were the members of the former Free Corps, who had completed their basic training and were now heading to the front not as a ragtag group of volunteers but as a proper regular army, along with their families and the citizens who had come out to watch.
The sight of countless people creating a sea of black, red, and gold flags, their faces filled with anticipation and tension, was always moving, yet it also felt heavy.
I glanced down from the uniform of the Nazi German Wehrmacht to the Reichswehr uniform I was now wearing. This very moment was a symbol of the history we had changed through our efforts.
“Wow, am I shaking?”
I had done countless radio broadcasts, but giving a speech to a crowd that filled the entirety of Frankfurt? There was no way I couldn't be nervous.
“Hehe, a little?”
Claudia replied with a giggle, then straightened my shoulders from behind and added a word.
“It’s alright. You do this all the time, don’t you?”
“Haha…”
Sure, I’d done plenty of radio broadcasts, but this was hardly the same.
Claudia and I had spent days agonizing over this speech, tearing it apart and rewriting it. I couldn’t afford to make a mistake…
As I was intently scanning the speech, a wave of applause echoed through the square, and my father stepped down from the podium.
My father, Hjalmar Schacht, addressed that massive crowd, yet his expression remained as impassive and stoic as ever.
“Uh, um. Good work, Mr. Chancellor.”
Hearing my words, my father looked at me with indifferent eyes and made a tutting sound.
“What’s with that look on your face? Are you going to give a speech like that? Don’t disgrace the government.”
Wow, wasn’t that a bit sudden…?
A surge of anger welled up inside me.
“Next, we will have a speech from the Vice-Chancellor, Dietrich Schacht.”
The voice of Theodor Heuss, the editor-in-chief—no, the Minister of Propaganda—rang out. Dammit. A moment ago, I was trembling with nervousness; now I was trembling with rage.
Yet my father simply looked at me as if to say, ‘What’s your problem?’ while Claudia, standing beside him, was giggling as if she found the whole thing amusing.
Ha, I’ll nail this speech, if only to spite that damn father of mine.
I smiled at Claudia, who was mouthing ‘good luck,’ and ascended to the podium.
-
“Where are you? Where are you coming from, Manstein…”
Berlin Army High Command. Army Chief of Staff Franz Halder muttered to himself, staring intently at the operational map.
The man who had been demoted for backing the wrong side now hated him for the absurd reason that he had stolen his position. And now, as a final act, he had betrayed him with the worst possible parting gift.
Halder was itching to return the ‘gift’ he had received from Manstein and was suspicious of the intelligence the SD had proudly brought him.
*They will hold a grand send-off ceremony on the 15th and launch an offensive toward Berlin on the 18th.* That Manstein would launch such a basic and conventional offensive? It was more believable that this was disinformation.
Regardless of what Hitler and Himmler thought, Halder was preparing for the worst and taking every precaution.
While observing Halder’s almost obsessive behavior regarding Manstein, the Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht High Command, Alfred Jodl, turned his gaze to the radio.
Their Chancellor, Hjalmar Schacht, had given a perfectly ordinary speech of encouragement, but since they were holding a major ceremony, some information might slip out. So, they too were listening to the New Government’s radio broadcast.
[My esteemed fellow Germans, this is Dietrich Schacht, Vice-Chancellor. First and foremost, I must express the grave responsibility I feel for the situation in which Germany is divided, with its people pointing guns at one another.]
At the same time, the same broadcast was being played through loudspeakers set up on the front lines by the New Government’s forces.
“Damn, some of us are still company commanders while he’s made it big.”
“I should have thought a little more before answering when he was sounding me out.”
“He’s a bastard. He could’ve asked more clearly. He knows I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed…”
Captains Clemens Fleck and Roger Michael stood in a daze, listening to the voice of their friend and academy classmate echoing from the enemy lines.
[At the same time, I wish to express my sincere gratitude to those who have willingly volunteered for the Reichswehr in this tumultuous time, for the sake of Germany's freedom and a better future. I offer my utmost respect for your courage and determination.]
“The SD seems to have been completely fooled. They certainly haven’t been the same since Heydrich was eliminated.”
At the Abwehr’s provisional headquarters in Frankfurt, Director Wilhelm Canaris nodded at Deputy Director Hans Oster’s report and looked out the window at the citizens filling the streets.
He watched the residents listening to the speech with smiling faces, responding not to the Empire he and the monarchists had dreamed of, but to a democratic Germany.
“Well, it’s not as bad as I thought.”
[Even at this very moment, the battle continues in Austria against the Italian invaders summoned by the Nazis. Soon, combat will erupt on the front against the Nazis as well. I do not wish to paint a romantic picture for you. What you will face is a battlefield. A brutal place, where some will die.]
“He says that when even a well-packaged speech might barely help the soldiers' morale.”
As Minister of Defense Ludwig Beck spoke with a slight frown, Colonel Tresckow, standing beside him, leisurely exhaled a puff of tobacco smoke and smirked.
“The fellow lacks a certain finesse.”
[And the enemy you will face is of our own people, our countrymen, our neighbors. They are people you should have no reason to point a gun at. What I want to ask of you is simple. Do not kill simply because it is an order. Do not take pride in risking your life for the state.]
“If we had made that man Chancellor, I doubt I would have lived long from the sheer frustration.”
As the Kaiser, Wilhelm III, listened to the radio, Crown Prince Louis Ferdinand replied with a smirk.
“He’s a bit too progressive for Your Majesty to understand. Haha.”
[Instead, I ask you to think. Think about why you must risk your lives, why you must stain your hands with blood and fight on the battlefield. If you cannot find any reason, then do not hesitate to disobey. That is not an abandonment of your duty as a soldier. If the government that leads you is wrong, if it forces upon you orders with no reason to follow them,]
Luftwaffe ace Adolf Galland smoked his cigar, puffing out smoke while concentrating on the radio.
His close friend Werner Mölders watched him quietly before turning his gaze out the window, looking down at the airfield where their fighters were hangared.
[then blind obedience is not loyalty to the fatherland. It is becoming an accomplice to a criminal regime. All of us, myself included, share the responsibility. It was none other than the entire German people who turned a blind eye to those suffering under the persecution of the Nazi regime, who became enthralled by the illusions they presented, and who handed them power.]
Wolfram von Richthofen sat alone in his room, quietly sipping a drink as he listened to the radio.
He had told Dietrich Schacht multiple times that soldiers didn’t need to think complex thoughts, yet here Schacht was, shouting at them to think.
“Damn it, that bastard is saying this for us to hear, isn’t he?”
The drink he usually enjoyed tasted bitter today.
[But it is not too late. We have risen to set things right. Even if the Nazi regime denounces us as traitors and claims we are not Germany, they cannot cover the sky with their hands! Frankfurt, Kassel, Dresden, Stuttgart, Münster, Munich, Hanover, Wiesbaden, Nuremberg, Tyrol! These people who stand with us, these many German citizens! What arrogant man! Who would dare say they are not Germany!]
“Schacht, that bastard… Aaaargh!”
Hitler, in his office, slammed his desk and screamed, clutching the back of his neck.
“Do-Doctor! Th-that!”
“Here you are, my Führer.”
Dr. Goebbels shot an anxious glance at Theodor Morell, who was administering medicine to Hitler, while Erwin Rommel listened to the continuing broadcast with somber eyes.
[What the German people are waving here today is not their Hakenkreuz, stained with iron and blood! Look at the golden banners symbolizing freedom that fill the streets! The era of inciting hatred, of crying for war and obedience against the enemy, must now end! It must be ended not by some great Aryan hero, nor by a powerful state, but by your own hands!]
Lutz Habenstein, the Berlin bureau chief of the Frankfurter Zeitung, watched his nephew, who couldn't take his eyes off Dietrich Schacht speaking passionately from the podium.
“You were lucky to have met him.”
His nephew, Julius Habenstein, who had overcome the scars of his time in the Condor Legion to become a journalist, smiled faintly.
[If, in the future, someone asks me what I fought for, I will answer with pride! Not for the glory of the state, not because I was ordered to, but that I fought for our freedom! My esteemed fellow Germans! Soldiers of the Wehrmacht! What will you answer! If you cannot say what you fought for, with what conviction, for what reason, are you pointing your guns at your own countrymen!]
Walter Model was drawing a line on his operational map to close the gap between Berlin and Dresden when he heard the cry of his cherished former subordinate and froze.
*What did he fight for?* Could he answer that? For what reason was he drawing operational maps against the German people?
[Are you saying you fear breaking an oath of loyalty, but do not fear betraying yourselves and your countrymen! Do not hate the enemies they tell you to hate; hate yourselves for abandoning thought! Hate yourselves for choosing obedience out of fear of making a decision! I pray that when all this is over, you will have made a choice not steeped in regret. May God bless us all, and our fatherland, Germany.]
Walter Model looked at the operational map he had been drawing, his hands trembling, and then tore it to shreds.
-
November 15, 1939
Hanover, 11th Military District, Northern Germany, HQ of the New Government’s Reichswehr Northern Army Group
In the command room, thick with cigarette smoke, the sound of clapping—*clap, clap, clap*—rang out.
“Not bad. Quite impressive, for a kid. If I’d known he had this in him, I would’ve tried to get on his good side sooner.”
After Dietrich Schacht’s speech ended, Erich von Manstein, who had been applauding, took a flavorful drag from his cigar and added another peak to the mountain of stubs in the ashtray.
“A report from General von Witzleben, sir. The enemy was focused on the broadcast and has shown no unusual movements.”
Manstein grinned with satisfaction upon hearing his staff officer's report.
“Hahaha, yes. This is the feeling. This is what I wanted.”
To move the chess pieces called armies, arranged according to his own strategy on the chessboard of the battlefield, and seize victory.
This was the very situation he had dreamed of while diligently assisting Ludwig Beck, a dream that had seemed distant after his demotion.
“Report from General von Hammerstein! He has successfully bypassed the enemy defense lines! He states he will advance from Hamburg toward Stettin!”
Feeling a shiver run down his spine, Manstein took out a new cigar, lit it, and placed it in his mouth.
The command room was already so thick with smoke that it stung the eyes, but he couldn't care less.
His debut as the Army Chief of Staff, with his adversary being the insufferable Franz Halder. Could there be a more perfect stage?
“Haha, hahaha. Let's see just how much that Halder can handle. Let the game begin.”
**< The German Civil War - Iron and Blood, Golden Freedom (1) > End**