Chapter 83
Chapter 83
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Translator: crow
Chapter Title: The Champion's Return (3)
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Dictator Adolf Hitler spent the entire night screaming.
Why had Britain, a fellow Germanic nation that he believed could coexist with Greater Germany, betrayed them?
Why had the Anglo-Saxons sided with the Reds and the inferior yellow races instead of standing with Greater Germany!
Hitler hadn't even considered how Britain would react to the threats of war he had issued.
The Führer, who was relying on ever-increasing amounts of medication, led the nation through impulsive flashes of inspiration and had drifted far from the perspective of an ordinary person.
"This is betrayal. Do you understand, Hess? The Anglo-Saxons have betrayed the Germanic cause!"
The Führer's unique logic was difficult for an ordinary person to grasp immediately.
"I never imagined that the British would betray the goodwill you demonstrated through Mein Kampf, my Führer."
But Hess, the party secretary who faithfully served the Führer, understood his words perfectly.
"I intended to preserve the dignity of the British Empire. And yet, how could they!"
Of course, if the British had heard this, they would have scoffed.
Was the British Empire so feeble that it needed to rely on someone's goodwill to survive?
"My Führer. In the unlikely event that negotiations are possible."
"How could that even happen? It's already ruined. These shit-stirring bastards have wrecked all my plans!"
Hitler vented his irritation in a sharp voice and swept all the papers off his desk.
Even in the eyes of Hess, Hitler's faithful devotee, the situation looked grim.
Hadn't Mein Kampf ultimately positioned Britain, another Germanic nation, as the partner with whom Germany would join hands to divide up the world?
"This won't do. Before the Führer's grand design is shaken further, the best course is to salvage the situation."
Hess made a momentous decision.
On August 25, 1942, Hess took a car to a Luftwaffe airfield near the Dover Strait.
"Th-the party secretary?"
"How shall we receive you?"
"With honors befitting someone on par with Marshal Göring, naturally."
The Luftwaffe, faced with a visit from such a high-ranking official, prepared elaborate ceremonial procedures, but Hess refused them.
"I'd like to take a plane for a spin."
It was an eccentric behavior often seen from high-ranking German officers visiting airfields.
"Th-there's no reason you couldn't, but do you know how to fly?"
"I do."
Since Hess actually knew how to fly, there was nothing particularly strange about it.
"Very well, then. Please proceed."
Unaware of what Hess intended, the German officers handed over a Messerschmitt fighter.
"My Führer, please wait just a little longer. I will negotiate with the Anglo-Saxons myself."
Hess immediately boarded the plane and crossed the Dover Strait.
He landed straightaway in a field in southern England.
"???"
A Home Guard soldier on patrol happened to spot the German plane marked with the Iron Cross landing and rushed over, aiming his rifle.
"Drop your weapon and hands up!"
As soon as Hess stepped out of the plane, he spoke in a calm tone.
"I have come as the Führer's special envoy bearing his will, to negotiate peace with the British Empire."
"Sp-special envoy of the Führer?"
The British soldier judged this to be beyond his pay grade.
Upon receiving his report, the British government immediately dispatched personnel to ascertain what was going on.
"A guy claiming to be the Nazis' number three has shown up. Figure out if he's using asylum as an excuse or if he's actually someone who can negotiate."
The conclusion they reached was,
"That guy's nuts?"
Once the British decided there was no need to take Hess seriously, they promptly imprisoned him.
Hess's flight was a laughable farce to the British, but to the Nazis, it was a shocking incident: their party hierarchy's number three had "defected" to Britain.
"Find out how that bastard got to Britain! Without traitorous maggots crawling everywhere, how could this happen!"
"M-my Führer. Please calm down."
"Does this look like a situation where I can calm down!"
Hitler, already engulfed in rage, began foaming at the mouth.
Hitler imagined all sorts of scenarios in his head, like Hess surrendering to the Allies and handing over classified information.
If even his closest aides betrayed him like this, whom could he trust?
"Everything around me is untrustworthy scum. They're all just waiting for a chance to stab me in the back."
The Führer's hysterics grew far worse than before.
Amid this chaos, the Allies held the Moscow Conference of the Three and resolved on the Axis's destruction, sending Hitler into extreme agitation.
"They dare demand unconditional surrender from Greater Germany? Do you think the word 'surrender' exists in the vocabulary of the great Germanic race?"
Hitler unleashed his full fury.
"Foreign Minister. Rally the allies immediately."
The Führer summoned Foreign Minister Ribbentrop right away and ordered him to tour the Axis allies and shore up the alliance's solidarity.
Ribbentrop promptly visited Rome, Madrid, Budapest, Bucharest, and elsewhere, speaking with various allied leaders.
Most of the allied leaders responded favorably.
Even with Britain entering the war, Germany still dominated the continent.
If things turned disadvantageous, well, they could think about that later.
The shameless Mussolini even expressed gratitude and asked in turn if he could get additional aid.
At least Italy didn't seem likely to betray them.
But Greece, the last country to join the Axis alliance, thought differently.
"We joined the Germans to avoid war, but if Britain becomes our enemy, won't we become the battlefield?"
Greece's stance had shifted somewhat after dictator Metaxas, who had been pro-German, died on the operating table during throat cancer surgery.
Prime Minister Alexandros Koryzis, who succeeded Metaxas and came from a banking background, harbored considerable fear of the British Empire's financial power.
Right after Britain's entry into the war, he weighed both sides and calculated that quietly withdrawing from the Axis camp would be best.
No matter how he looked at it, a country surrounded by sea on three sides turning the world's second- and third-ranked navies against it was suicidal.
When Ribbentrop arrived in Athens, Koryzis received him quite courteously.
Yet when asked to contribute to the Axis alliance, he immediately reacted negatively.
"Greece is a small nation. With our long coastline, we're already stretched thin defending the homeland. Dividing our forces would only burden everyone else."
It was an excuse, but not entirely untrue.
Ribbentrop left Greece with a lingering sense of unease over Koryzis's refusal.
In any case, Germany's diplomatic tour was a success.
It reconfirmed the alliance's cohesion and that Germany's position hadn't crumbled.
Goebbels, seeing on the surface that there were no issues with the alliance, turned the propaganda speakers toward Europe.
"The alliance of yellow races, Jews-Bolsheviks, and greedy Anglo-Saxons perfectly illustrates how far the West has fallen into depravity. Pure whites must unite against these degenerates to create a righteous world. Europeans, rise up!"
Germany's "appeal" was a stirring cry to them, but the response was less enthusiastic than expected.
Beyond die-hard racists and anti-communists, volunteers didn't surge.
Everyone who was going to join the grand crusade against Bolshevism already had, so Germany gained fewer than 100,000 volunteers from this appeal.
Germany had no choice but to resort to measures they hadn't wanted to use.
"Massively deploy women into factory labor."
Mobilizing women was essential to build up an army to face Britain.
Goebbels gave a total war speech to justify the mobilization of women.
"I ask you: Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more radical and total than anything we can imagine today?"
German civilians, who hadn't yet tasted bitterness, reacted with wild enthusiasm to the speech.
"If the German state demands it!"
The Third Reich began its first proper shift to a wartime economy since the war started.
Consumer goods production plummeted dramatically, and women were mobilized en masse into munitions production.
Not only that,
"We're short on labor. Can't we bring in more foreigners?"
"Don't we already have foreigners overflowing?"
Germany was already using POWs from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and elsewhere in factories, farms, and mines.
Their numbers approached 4 million.
On top of that, German industry demanded civilians from occupied territories be brought to Germany for labor.
"Hmm. Managing that would be a headache."
"You have to provide manpower first to meet production targets."
"It's not as easy as just saying we'll provide the numbers."
"Oh, then how are we supposed to meet our goals? Forget about deadlines?"
The German Wehrmacht, consuming nearly 10 million personnel, left fewer than 4 million young German men available for munitions industries and such.
Even adding more women couldn't produce all the tanks, planes, artillery, and other war materiel needed.
They needed more people.
"Fine, understood."
The German government began imposing quotas on occupied territories in earnest.
"Extract 500,000 from there and send them to Germany. No exceptions. If there are no adults, send children, that's what I'm saying."
Especially harsh demands were placed on the eastern occupied territories.
"Hand over food and money. Hand over women. Hand over men to work in factories."
Soviet citizens, already harboring resentment toward Germany from the extermination units and the crushing of separatists, seized this as an opportunity to join anti-German resistance in droves.
"Germany is not our liberator. They are even more vicious overlords than the Soviets."
As waves of anti-German sentiment boiled over everywhere, even Jews hunted by the extermination units took up arms in resistance.
The Third Reich's hegemony suffered a massive blow the moment Britain entered the war.
Yet outwardly, the Empire still appeared solid.
For now.