Black Friday (1)
Because the closing ceremony of the Olympics happened to coincide with Professor Freud's passing, an immense crowd attended his funeral.
Of course, those lunatics in France had committed the horrific act of literally dividing Professor Freud into "Freu/d." According to one of his disciples who had narrowly escaped to Austria, they had impaled his head on a pike and fed his torso to wild dogs.
"...Is that really true?"
"Y-Yes, Vice Chairman... H-Here is the photograph..."
I let out a heavy sigh. This wasn't the Joseon Dynasty; why did every single enemy I faced have this bizarre obsession with decapitating people and sticking their heads on pikes?!
France, a nation notorious for plundering countless artifacts from Egypt for the Louvre, had apparently even embalmed his head with the intention of putting it on display.
Honestly, this wasn't even surprising. These uncultured Western fiends were the same breed of people who took pleasure in climbing the pyramids—which were, lest we forget, actual human tombs. Weren't they the ones who dug up mummified corpses just to display them in museums?
"...I have a first edition of Professor Freud's work. We should bury that instead."
Naturally, our Cooperative Leader Hitler and Audit Team Chief Stalin also attended the professor's funeral. When I had seen Ferdinand a while ago, I couldn't help but think how much the man had aged... but Hitler and Stalin were exceptions.
"To think Professor Freud has passed away... It is truly a tragedy."
"No, that's not the issue right now... Cooperative Leader Hitler. What on earth is wrong with you? Why did you style your mustache like that?"
"I was told that trimming it this way ensures a perfect fit for a gas mask. Besides, this style is quite popular among German youths these days..."
Hitler was such a famous figure that almost everyone knew what his face looked like from this period until his death. Furthermore, as if the concept of historical resilience had taken some bizarre turn, even though everything about the man had changed from head to toe, his toothbrush mustache had somehow restored itself!
Originally, Hitler had been clean-shaven. Seeing that toothbrush mustache gave me a strange, nostalgic sensation, as if I had suddenly been transported back to the twenty-first century.
Historical resilience had also left its mark on Stalin without fail.
"Chief Stalin. You've... put on quite a bit of weight."
"Being in the Audit Team involves far more paperwork than I anticipated."
Even in the original history, as Stalin transitioned from a 'revolutionary fighter' to a 'purger,' he had developed a double chin and a prominent belly—what people jokingly called his 'purge pouches.' This time, as he transitioned from a Bosnian fighter to an Austrian purger after completing the land reforms, he had once again grown a massive potbelly.
"I suppose your days as the Northern Grand Duke are over."
"...Do not speak of that. It is precisely because of those ridiculous 'Northern Grand Duke' photos that I refuse to return to Poland!"
Seeing my old friends did cheer me up a bit. Still, it felt incredibly bizarre to watch them morph into the iconic figures of historical conspiracy theories due to this strange resilience of history.
"Mr. Hitler, the painter. Please, shave that mustache off."
"What?! But this is the trendiest style right now..."
"No excuses, shave it. It's giving me the creeps. And you, Audit Chief Stalin, lose that weight immediately before I banish you to some backwater corner of Sicily."
"...Are you planning to turn me into the Northern Grand Duke again?"
"I promise I won't, so just lose the weight already."
Looking at the chubby Stalin and the toothbrush-mustached Hitler, just like in the original history, I comforted myself with the thought that my efforts hadn't been entirely in vain.
Franz Ferdinand was destined to die in 1914 by a pistol shot from the Bosnian secret society, the Black Hand. Hitler and Stalin, needless to say, would have gone down as the most notorious butchers of the twentieth century.
I had met Hitler when he was seventeen and successfully guided him to grow up as the innocent boy who dreamed of being a painter. As for Stalin, unfortunately, I couldn't entirely purge his psychopathic tendencies. But hey, at least I had turned him into the dashing Northern Grand Duke of Poland, the empire of romance fantasy, right?
There were plenty of villains who dominated the twentieth century, like bin Laden or Kim Il-sung. But the top three mass murderers in history were undoubtedly Mao Zedong, Stalin, and Hitler. Having somehow dragged two of the greatest monsters in human history away from the precipice of hell, I felt my life wasn't entirely devoid of meaning.
I had personally reformed the two worst offenders. As for the lesser fiends like Ungern-Sternberg and Führer Apis of Serbia... I had sliced through them with my own hands, so things weren't all bad.
"Your Majesty."
"Hmm?"
"After all, life is just being born, living, dying, and then being born, living, and dying again... Surely, there must be more to it than just that."
"If life could be defined in a mere three words, writers would have a terribly difficult time. They would have to stretch those three words into five hundred thousand characters."
"Haha, I suppose that's true."
Utopia does not exist. Struggle repeats eternally. A life without pain and struggle is nothing but emptiness. Did I really think the struggle would end just because I had dealt with a few pseudo-Nazis in Serbia and Russia? Unless the Second Coming of Christ occurs, the history of human struggle will never halt.
"They certainly misinterpreted Nietzsche."
"Indeed. How could a country like that last ten years, let alone a hundred?"
If Nietzsche had witnessed the sheer absurdity unfolding in France, he might have burned all his books on the spot. They spouted grand concepts like the 'will to power' and the 'Übermensch,' but upon closer inspection, didn't they embody everything Nietzsche despised? First of all, Nietzsche loathed mobs. He would have called them the 'last men.' Furthermore, he would have labeled those lunatics babbling about 'purity' and 'purification' as décadents, treating them as his greatest enemies. The crowd gathered there was drunk on the very morality, politics, and spectacles of violence that Nietzsche had spent his entire life mocking.
"So, Stahl. How do we cure these lunatics?"
"I initially predicted the depression would hit around 1929... but honestly, I think it will happen much sooner."
"What is your reasoning?"
"The bubble is... far larger than I anticipated."
The US stock market, which was already rising rapidly, had already caught up to the stock prices of the Great Depression era. In the original history, the US was the sole creator and destroyer of the bubble. Europe was ruined, and Germany, which was supposed to drive the European economy, was still struggling with hyperinflation. Amidst all this, the US alone was going wild over new technologies.
But in this depression, there are two players. The newly added player is none other than our Prague Treaty Organization.
"Normally, this would be the time for investors to take a breather. But... honestly, isn't the US making an astronomical amount of money by exporting to us?"
"Indeed."
"The boom in America's oil, chemical, heavy industry, steel, and construction sectors hasn't ended yet, all thanks to us. And that money... is flowing entirely into emerging technologies like electricity, telecommunications, and aviation."
The Prague Treaty Organization was systematically rebuilding Europe and Asia with massive amounts of gold, credit, and a colossal planned economic system. It had assumed a position similar to the post-revolutionary Soviet Union. However, unlike the Soviet Union, the Prague Treaty Organization was far less isolationist. The US was taking the profits gained from investing in us and pouring them all into absurd new technologies: airplanes, radio, television, electricity, and cinema... On paper, these technologies seemed like excellent investments. But in their portfolios, the companies I actually recognized could be counted on one hand. The vast majority of them were destined to fail, whether due to inferior technology or a lack of economies of scale. They were just like Yahoo! or Lycos during the dot-com bubble.
"Just two years! In two years, the bubble will burst, and a depression unlike anything in history will arrive. For now, we wait."
"Indeed. How could the mad regime of France possibly cope with a depression?"
"We must begin our preparations. The world is about to be reshaped once more. Come to think of it, we won't even have time to worry about historical losers like France."
Stahl's predictions, honed through his secluded study alongside Keynes, were spot on. Keynes himself had already sensed something amiss and was crying out to the world in isolation.
There were quite a few prophets who, like Keynes, foresaw this crisis. Stahl's habitual, ominous prediction that 'a depression is coming' had prompted countless powerful figures to keep a close eye on the runaway US stock market. But even if they knew a depression was coming, what could they actually do?
"According to the invisible hand, the market will recover 'on its own' after a minor recession."
The majority of people arrived at such completely incorrect answers. Those who were slightly smarter took it a step further.
"Tax hikes? Raising interest rates? Are you insane?"
"But... how else are we supposed to curb this mad investment frenzy?"
"Let's say we do raise rates. Investors will naturally sell their stocks and hoard cash in savings accounts. And then? Seeing the stock prices drop, panicked investors who think a real depression has started will dump their shares. Won't that trigger the very depression we're trying to avoid?"
Think of the collapse of the Japanese asset price bubble. Though it was a bubble destined to burst eventually, the ones who actually popped it were the bureaucrats who feared it most. Worried about the bubble growing too large, they raised interest rates to rein it in. That rate hike served as the trigger, and the bubble collapsed instantly. No matter what measures are taken... a bubble destined to burst will burst. The disaster was already foretold.
The first catalyst was the fall of France. No matter how disastrous French politics had become, France was still France. Even ruined by war, it remained a great power ranked within the top five of global GDP.
"France has... fallen?"
"What on earth is this newly emerged Purification State?"
"What? Violence? Power?"
"S-Shit! Withdraw all our capital from France immediately! Something is seriously wrong with these guys...!"
In truth, from France's perspective, the flight of a few investors wasn't a devastating blow. Due to the political chaos, they still hadn't managed to deal with the counterfeit bills originating from Sicily. In fact, those Sicilian counterfeits were actually boosting the economy! Compared to the official French currency, which was of lower quality than toilet paper, the counterfeit bills meticulously crafted with Italian craftsmanship were far superior. With the economy already in such ruins, how much further could it fall? Only one group was truly ruined.
"W-Why did France end up like this?!"
"Whyyyyy! There are plenty of countries ruined by war, so why did it have to be you, France?!"
It was the investors who had poured their surplus capital into Europe. Seeing those who had bet everything on France throwing themselves into the Hudson River, other investors who had been mindlessly dumping money across various European nations suddenly snapped to their senses.
"Wait a minute... is this actually safe?"
"Look closely. None of the European leaders are sane!"
"We're supposed to trust Ludendorff and keep investing?"
"How much money did I put into Poland, where Trotsky—an outright commie—is in charge?!"
Why, oh why, had they failed to see it?! To think they had poured their money into a Europe populated by such lunatics! Thus, around September 1924, a massive stock market crash occurred, with approximately four million shares dumped in the span of a single week. Of course...
"Ha, what idiots. Panicking and dumping their stocks already."
"This is the perfect opportunity to buy the dip! Buy up European stocks immediately!"
The true depression was still far off. Sure, France had fallen, but with the Prague Treaty Organization alive and kicking, why dump stocks now? In particular, the production of steel, construction materials, and fertilizers—the backbones of industry—continued to climb steadily under the influence of the Prague Treaty Organization. Investors eagerly bought up shares during this timely 'sale.' Even the Prague Treaty Organization itself joined the fray.
"This works out perfectly. Let us also purchase stocks and bonds, focusing on blue-chip European enterprises."
"Pardon? But you said a depression is guaranteed to hit, Vice Chairman..."
"That is precisely why we must buy. At the very least, we cannot allow the major corporations sustaining the Treaty Organization to collapse. We must secure shares in advance to manage them ourselves."
The Prague Treaty Organization also released funds to purchase stocks, focusing primarily on domestic enterprises. The stock market crash triggered by France was temporarily contained. Temporarily, that is.