Growing Ambitions
Growing ambitions.
With the turn of the year, Waldemar turned nine.
By 1877 his fortune had swollen at a staggering rate.
A 12.5 percent stake in Standard Oil—the trust that controlled over 99 percent of American oil (95 percent in the original history). Unofficial market estimates put its value at more than a million dollars, or over 4.2 million marks.
The 1877 aspirin dividends paid by Bayer came to 300,000 marks.
Standard Oil’s 1876 dividend alone had delivered a handsome 54,800 dollars—230,000 marks.
Thanks to that inexhaustible fountain of Standard Oil and aspirin, the sum Waldemar could freely deploy now stood at a full 530,000 marks.
He decided it was time to put the money to work.
Any ventures I plan later can simply be covered by the 1877 Standard Oil dividend.
His chosen target was the Klondike goldfields of Canada.
Discovered in August 1896, the diggings would eventually yield some 340 tons of gold—a fact that made them legendary.
Waldemar, of course, had no intention of swinging a pick himself.
The real professionals are the ones who leak word that gold is there and then sell blue jeans and tools to the stampede that follows.
Given how jealously the British government regarded gold, that approach was also the safest.
He immediately wired John Connor, instructing him to begin buying land centered on the stretch between the Klondike and Yukon Rivers in Canada’s Yukon Territory.
“That wasteland, Your Highness? Is there oil under it?”
Having once tasted the sweetness of petroleum, Connor assumed oil again.
“Not oil, Mr. Connor. Gold.”
“Gold, sir?”
John Connor was thunderstruck, then promptly promised to buy every acre he could.
“And not a word of this to Edward.”
“I shall keep the secret absolutely.”
Acting on Connor’s request, Edward set about acquiring the land.
In those days the future Klondike diggings were a region where land itself had almost no price; Edward swept it up at the absurd rate of one cent per acre.
By the time he finished, the holdings totaled a full 100,000 acres—roughly 405 square kilometers, the size of a modern metropolis.
Over that newly gathered expanse Waldemar planned restaurants and tool shops, and he prepared a private force of day-wage patrolmen to police the district.
Their roles were simple: the restaurants sold food, the tool shops sold picks, and the private force collected land-use fees from the miners.
Because the men who would be collecting money had to be trustworthy, Waldemar hired German army veterans and shipped them to Canada.
Their pay, naturally, was set at the top of the market.
“Salary, including hardship allowance: one hundred marks a month.”
Converted, that was about thirty-six dollars—roughly 151 marks—pocket change to Waldemar.
To Germans who struggled to earn even eighty marks a month, it was a dream wage.
“A hundred marks… just put up with a bit of hardship and you’ll earn more than you’d ever see anywhere else.”
Waldemar engaged one hundred veterans.
Simple arithmetic put the monthly payroll at 15,000 marks; Atlantic passage alone cost another 12,600.
With that much capital committed, he threw himself into the venture body and soul.
“Every newspaper must carry the story of the Klondike goldfields. Understood?”
“Of course, Your Highness.”
He authorized eight thousand marks for advertising.
A brutal outlay—yet Waldemar’s eyes glittered with the profits he expected to rake in.
Even a conservative valuation of the gold buried in the Klondike is 247.92 million dollars—1,039.2 million marks.
He could never swallow the whole lode, but if he siphoned every possible copper through land-use fees, tool sales, and food sales, he figured he could still pocket a solid 20 percent.
Twenty percent meant 49.58 million dollars—208 million marks.
After every expense he would still clear a comfortable 40 million dollars, or 167 million marks.
How vast was that sum? He put it this way:
Enough to build four Dreadnought-class battleships and still have change left over.
The prospect of such colossal gain set his heart racing, yet he never neglected the ordinary duties of a prince.
As always he kept his mother company, made sure his father noticed him, and played the loving older brother and younger brother to perfection.
It was not always easy.
“Brother, finish the Hitler story you started earlier.”
Princesses Victoria, Sophie, and Margarete sat in a row, clamoring for more.
“All right.”
Waldemar still wondered how he had ever wandered into the subject of that mustache, but he never refused a story.
“Dear Herr Adolf Hitler was a penniless painter. He was so poor he could only attend Wagner’s operas now and then, and he had no choice but to fill his belly in cheap restaurants.”
“That’s poor?”
Victoria, listening calmly, looked incredulous.
Being the eldest, she possessed a sharper sense of reality.
“Yes. Later he was so destitute he couldn’t even pay his taxes.”
“Really? Poor Mr. Hitler couldn’t pay his taxes—how sad!”
Little Margarete brimmed with sympathy.
Of course the future Führer’s failure to pay taxes had nothing to do with poverty; it was simply the rational tax refusal of a man who held power.
“Anyway, this penniless Hitler had a woman he loved—and she happened to be his own niece.”
The princesses leaned in deeper.
Among royalty, marriages between cousins were commonplace; an uncle and niece felt almost realistic.
“And then?”
“One day Hitler came home from work and found his beloved niece, Geli Raubal, making love inside a carriage—with someone else.”
The girls’ tension rose of its own accord.
“The man was the coachman! The very fellow Hitler had trusted with his niece!”
“Ah!”
“Hitler flew into a rage, sacked the coachman, and ordered his niece: ‘Not one step outside this room!’”
Sophie clapped a hand over her mouth.
“Geli Raubal was furious too and shot back: ‘What right does an uncle have to lock me up?’”
The princesses nodded.
“Hitler shouted: ‘Because I love you! Haven’t you felt it in my eyes?’”
Waldemar felt not the slightest guilt about turning Hitler’s private life into cheap melodrama.
That cheap Austrian was fair game for the whole world to chew, tear, taste, and enjoy.
“Mr. Hitler is far too rough a man,” Victoria murmured almost to herself.
“Then Raubal cried: ‘I never liked you!’”
At Waldemar’s words the princesses’ anticipation climbed higher.
“Hitler asked: ‘Why? Why?’ Geli Raubal answered coldly: ‘Because you never loved me—you loved my mother!’”
“What?”
The girls stared, thrown by the grotesque turn.
Rivals who were mother and daughter?
Nineteenth-century sensibilities found it hard to swallow.
Waldemar twisted the tale like a morning serial, keeping their interest alive by making every development unpredictable.
“And that is where today’s story ends. I have a guest waiting.”
He gently dismissed the princesses.
“We’ll let you off just this once.”
His sisters knew he had business and withdrew without fuss.
Once they were gone, a waiting footman hurried in and bowed low.
“Your Highness. A telegram has arrived from England addressed to Your Highness.”
“Bring it.”
Waldemar calmly read the wire the servant handed him.
I knew the gold-mad English would prick up their ears at the Klondike. How could a cat simply walk past a fishmonger’s stall?
He folded the telegram that had come under Uncle Edward’s name and pushed it across the desk.
His uncle reported that the British government was keenly interested in the goldfield and wished to purchase every ounce of gold the Klondike produced.
Waldemar had no intention of refusing a deal with the Crown.
The snag was that he himself had no intention of mining the gold.
After turning the contradiction over in his mind he struck upon a clever solution.
Why not simply sell the goldfield to the British government?
It would be easier to manage and the money would arrive far sooner.
He drafted a letter at once and had it dispatched to England with all speed.
A few days later a warm reply from Uncle Edward arrived.
My dearest Baldi,
The British Empire shall never forget the kindness you have shown us on this occasion. I have already spoken to the government so that you will not lose so much as a single penny in this affair. Remain always in the best of health.
Your loving uncle,
Edward
His uncle further guaranteed that Waldemar would receive, in pounds sterling, a sum equal to 20 percent of all the gold the field would ever yield.
Since the pound was as good as gold itself, there was no real loss.
Then all I need do is watch the mine’s accounts. No reason left to run a marketplace there at all.
So should he simply dismiss everyone?
Having lived a commoner’s life in his previous existence, Waldemar found the idea of sacking people thoroughly distasteful.
I’ll just give these men other work.
Once the goldfield passed to the British government he could not leave them there anyway.
After some thought he wired John Connor.
“Close the restaurants and tool shops, and ask the men we’ve hired whether they would care to go to the Congo.”
Having tidied away the mine, Waldemar meant to stick his spoon into the Congo—the prize he had coveted ever since his reincarnation.
The Congo, rich in rubber and copper, is a colony of the highest value.
And the rival eyeing it was hardly a formidable one: Belgium, that aspirant to pseudo-imperial status.
Handing a colony of more than two million square kilometers to such a pipsqueak is simply unthinkable.
Waldemar resolved to seize the lead by hiring the very man who, in the original history, had done more than anyone to create the Belgian Congo: the British explorer Henry Morton Stanley.
But how am I to command this Englishman?
Fortunately for him, an all-purpose channel for directing Englishmen already existed inside the palace.
Once again he borrowed the omnipotent skirts of his mother.
He coaxed Princess Victoria with the claim that he merely wished to reconnoiter the Congo’s true condition.
“Whatever decision Father may take later, he will need information if he is to do anything in the Congo, won’t he? I simply want to gather that information for him.”
Even to Victoria the logic sounded entirely plausible.
Baldi is right about that.
The Crown Princess contacted Henry Morton Stanley through the British government.
Reaching Stanley while he was still exploring the unknown Congo River was no simple matter, yet there was nothing the British Empire could not accomplish.
On 6 July 1877, borrowing Britain’s authority, Waldemar summoned Stanley from the Congo to Germany.
Trusting the promise of lavish sponsorship for his future expeditions, Dr. Stanley hurried to Germany and presented himself before his “new patron.”
“Was it not His Royal Highness the Crown Prince who summoned me?”
Stanley could not hide his bewilderment at the small boy standing before him.
“I am the one who invited you, Doctor. And the promise of sponsorship is mine as well. Whatever men or money your explorations require, I shall provide them without limit.”
“Is that true?”
Waldemar produced the ultimate symbol of good faith: a checkbook.
“I have a great deal of money. That ability has nothing to do with my age.”
Only then did Stanley realize how thoroughly serious this patron was.
“Then what, Your Highness, do you hope to gain from this expedition?”
Some men sought glory through exploration; others sought wealth.
Waldemar’s answer was simple.
“I want the Congo. Both the south bank and the north bank of the Congo River.”
From the very outset he intended to take the entire Congo.
If a swindler like Leopold II could manage it, why should he fail?
The prince’s bold reply startled Stanley more than a little.
Boys of this age, he thought, ought to be playing with toy soldiers. This prince was different.
Even a precocious royal child normally learned nothing more than toy-soldier games and court etiquette; yet here was one declaring he meant to seize territory.
So the rumors that Prince Waldemar is the genius of the Hohenzollerns were no idle talk.
Still, he wondered whether the boy truly understood what the Congo was.
“Does Your Highness know what the Congo is like? It is a tropical rain forest crawling with pestilence, wild beasts, and venomous insects.”
Waldemar answered with perfect calm.
“I know. That is precisely why I want it.”
“I do not follow, Your Highness.”
“If everyone had not dismissed the Congo as worthless, I would never even have had the chance to covet it.”
Stanley understood what the prince meant.
“I find the Congo an exceedingly attractive land—its resources, its people, and its strategic position. I want them all. Will you help me fulfill that dream?”
Waldemar wasted no time sounding the man out.
There was only a direct demand and a direct offer.
“I cannot pretend to understand what charm Your Highness sees in that barren waste, but I shall do everything in my power to achieve what you desire.”
Stanley cared nothing for whatever thoughts the prince harbored about the Congo.
What mattered to him was securing the resources to explore it.
If the price was delivering the Congo itself, the price was not steep.
A tropical rain forest stuffed with pathogens and poisonous insects, plus a handful of savage tribes—if the prince wants them, let him have them.
Those savages would gladly sell their land and their freedom for a few bottles of liquor and a few rifles.
His calculations complete, Stanley took the hand Waldemar extended.
Thus Waldemar gained a three-year head start over his rival Leopold II.
At the same time he had also stolen Leopold’s sharpest tool.
Leopold, the winner of this contest will be me.
Waldemar gazed through the window toward the Congo’s tropical rain forest, impossibly far away.
That remote wilderness was destined, before long, to belong to Germany—or rather, to him.