Overthrow the Cabinet #10: The Air Freezes in an Instant
The air froze in an instant.
“...?”
It was a face I had seen only once before, yet the moment I saw it I knew exactly who he was.
Goebbels.
The man who had once tried to have me killed…
“Ah, Representative Heinz! You recognize me!”
Ugh. Of course I do. It would be stranger if I didn’t.
“Oh, of course… ‘Germany’s greatest murderer.’ How could I possibly fail to recognize you?”
I had wanted to answer in the same casual tone I had used when sparring with Hitler last year, but when the other person insisted on formality, I had no choice but to match it.
“What brings you here?”
“I heard that a certain member of parliament has been slandering and framing our National Socialist German Workers’ Party. The rumor is that she is a twenty-five-year-old spinster with neither parents nor husband…”
…So now we’ve moved on to personal attacks? Well, in this era it was factually true that I had no parents or husband.
“I’m honored the rumors have spread so far.”
“Not at all. Isn’t this simply the virtue of the left, who pretend to be humanitarian and virtuous yet spend all their time wagging their tongues in the street instead of actually trying to change anything?”
Wow. This bastard’s talent for getting under people’s skin is world-class.
“Come now, what about us? We’ve spent so many years fighting with our bodies that we still fall short of you people, who merely copied the bald Italian uncle and produced a watered-down version.”
“Copied? We have a genuine history of struggle and—”
“While shamelessly stealing the word ‘socialism’ that Marx developed. Is it because your party is the type that dies without a copy to rip off?”
“You have not learned how to speak to others, have you, Representative Heinz? I can make allowances for the absence of parents, but at over twenty years of age, one ought to know better.”
He was barely thirty himself, yet here he was acting like some venerable elder.
“Let us move on to something more productive. I acknowledge the effort with which you continue to gnaw at the German soul with that frail little voice in order to seize power. However, Representative Heinz, everyone knows that the true aim of progressives and leftists like yourself is not some petty pretext about changing society. It is merely rhetorical trickery meant to purge the right and establish dictatorship.”
The logic of the far right had not changed one bit from now or a hundred years in the future.
“If a ‘frail voice’ brings more comfort to the people, then so be it. If you’re so certain, why not prove it? Our People’s Front holds 192 seats in parliament, and polls make it clear we will secure an outright majority in the next election. You remain an irrelevant extra-parliamentary party. I believe that alone proves whose rhetoric is superior.”
“My, my, of course that must be the case. With money received from the Judeo-Bolshevik followers who feast and debate meaninglessly while the people starve in Moscow, what could you possibly fail to accomplish?”
“And I suppose your funding is pristine? You must be so busy hiding the money you receive from the landlords and capitalists who want to keep their power that your imagination has grown morbidly obese.”
“Don’t they teach this in school? ‘An attack without evidence is mere agitation.’ Ah, but you were a child laborer, weren’t you? Even if you are uneducated, it is still difficult for me to understand such behavior.”
A Nazi lackey who lives by agitation dares to say that?
“Then you must have evidence, yes? Proof that I am receiving money from Moscow?”
The frame Goebbels was trying to impose was painfully obvious. Himself—the educated elite, the savior of the people—versus me, the snake-like woman with neither learning nor parents. Sorry, but I did graduate university, and I am not actually a woman. The body is, though…
“You truly follow the exact footsteps of the Jews. Jews always say the same thing: I am innocent. If you wish to prove that I am guilty, you must first prove your own innocence. As though the one speaking were innocent himself.”
“So you’re calling me a Jew?”
“Whether Representative Heinz is a filthy Jew or not is irrelevant. You have taken Jewish money to destroy Germany on Jewish orders.”
“Very well. Let’s say I am receiving funds from Moscow.” In truth I was, but as Goebbels himself implied, actual facts had ceased to matter.
“Then at minimum you should be able to show evidence that prominent figures in the current Russian Communist Party—Comrade Leon Trotsky, Comrade Joseph Stalin, Comrade Grigory Zinoviev, Comrade Nikolai Bukharin, Comrade Alexandra Kollontai… that all of them are Jews or connected to Jews. If you have it, present it.”
“That would be even more horrifying. Unlike the Jews, who may be vile but at least possess sharp minds, those are Slavs—incapable, brainless Slavs.”
When Goebbels put deliberate weight on the word “Slavs,” several of the Nazi party members guarding him burst into loud laughter.
“Ah, look at this! So many people have gathered around that woman who has been brainwashed by Slavs even more inferior than Jews and now carries out their orders! Noble Aryans! What a tragic spectacle!”
“...”
Honestly, I felt no particular urge to refute him. Only an argument with meaning deserved a rebuttal. This was exactly why one should never get entangled with nationalists.
“Then why didn’t you simply succeed with the assassination? If you had, I wouldn’t be standing here right now.”
“Assassination? Do you truly believe we made a serious attempt on your life, Representative Heinz? It seems you hoped all of Germany would fall for your pathetic self-staged drama, but we National Socialists do not resort to such cowardly methods. Had we genuinely intended to remove you, you would not be wagging your tongue here—you would already be lying in the morgue.”
“You seem desperate to deny any involvement, yet in this Germany the only force that would don police uniforms to try to kill me is yours. An ordinary citizen? Then why did three men coordinate, wearing police uniforms? An internal leftist plot? The Social Democrats are the largest party in parliament and I belong to a minor party with only one seat. There would be no reason to go to such lengths when they could simply crush me. The government has already confirmed the assassins had no connection to official police.”
“Is shifting blame onto groups that have nothing to do with the incident what you call ‘leftist’ behavior? In the end you intend to use the failed assassination to brand our party as murderers—yet it was your communist lawmaker who beat one of our stormtroopers to death!”
“First, I am allied with the Communists but not a Communist myself. When the right kills and suppresses ten leftists, the left barely manages to fell one rightist. That is because the state exists to serve the interests of the propertied class. You lack the courage to fight to the end as we do, so you eagerly cooperate with the conservative German National People’s Party. I’m not sure who exactly is in a position to criticize whom.”
No matter how much of a propaganda genius you are, the far right can never defeat the left in logical debate. If you wanted to win the propaganda war, you should have thoroughly denigrated and dismissed me instead of engaging in conversation.
“Let’s be honest. You’re afraid. Because you know your own logic is riddled with contradictions. You claim everything is connected to the Jews yet offer no evidence, and your ideology is nothing more than a patchwork of every conspiracy theory the world has ever produced.”
“Conspiracy theory, the left always says. ‘The capitalists are stealing the workers’ money.’ If that is so, where is your evidence?”
“That was already proven structurally by Marx decades ago. We are currently carrying out the Worker’s Factory project—purchasing bankrupt factories and handing over ownership, management, and production entirely to the workers. What was the result? Every single one became a booming success, far more efficient than factories run by capitalists. We present concrete evidence. Your party wants nothing but war—by stoking the people’s fears, yes?”
“Fear, you say. Do you desire peace, Representative Heinz?”
“Is that not obvious? What sane person would want a war in which masses of people unrelated to them are slaughtered?”
“No one has taught you that peace and enslavement are not the same thing. That peace is merely a declaration of surrender that would turn Germany into eternal slaves of the victorious powers and Jewish capitalists.”
“When did I ever say I would submit to the West? We must not submit to the West. We must spread the revolution—spread communism—even farther. If those who start wars and those dragged into them can stand on equal ground, war will become impossible.”
“In the process of spreading that communism, the German nation will inevitably fall into the hands of the Reds.”
“Power belongs to the people. The state is not what matters; people are. And yet you act as though power means nothing to you and speak only of national glory.”
“At least we do not display the duplicity of you leftists. You claim to want a society where all are equal and happy, yet in reality you are opportunists waiting for the moment you can monopolize all power! We want power. But not power for power’s sake. Our power is resistance against a world that seeks to subjugate and enslave the German people! A single leader who will raise the glory of the nation once more! And the loyal army, people, and state that follow him!”
“And beneath them will lie the blood of tens of millions dragged into war.”
Goebbels’ voice rang thunderously across the square.