Noble Looters, Part 3
Where did Hitler's talent for demagoguery stem from? Perhaps it was born of his rich artistic sensibility. Hitler possessed the uncanny ability to project his empathy onto anything and anyone. With this overwhelming capacity for emotional resonance, he could manipulate his listeners' feelings at will. He was particularly adept at immersing himself in negative emotions, such as inferiority complexes.
Upon arriving in Budapest, Hitler quickly grasped the sentiments of the Hungarian populace through beer halls and newspaper articles. Like Christ delivering a sermon on the mount, he took to the streets, voicing his opinions on roadsides, in taverns, and at assembly halls.
"Though I am a German, I hold a deep awe and respect for the Magyars, who once galloped across the steppes under the starlight beneath the Ural Mountains. I truly respect you. But look at the behavior of your aristocrats! Do they actually treat you as fellow Magyars? No! They treat you as mere spoils of war, to be discarded at their whim!"
Hitler primarily used his eloquent speech to stimulate ethnic sensibilities, driving a wedge between the nobility and the common people. And on the other hand, he spread well-crafted fake news.
"Some Hungarian aristocrats are preparing to abandon unprofitable agriculture altogether and flee to Britain! After all, once they escape to Britain, they won't have to pay you a single cent of your wages, will they?"
"Whether the Hungarian nobles pay you or not, the Hungarian Independence Party will shield them. They are an absolute power that reigns above the law!"
"Do not, under any circumstances, protest or go on strike over unpaid wages. According to a reliable source, they plan to deploy the Magyar light cavalry to trample striking agricultural workers, just like they do in Russia."
He spread just the right amount of fake news. At first, the people didn't believe a word of it, dismissing him as a red from Austria. But no matter how unbelievable a rumor is, if repeated constantly, people will eventually believe it. Even a single individual can spread fake news with a proper public relations campaign, and Hitler was a born orator. No matter how absurd his words might have seemed, his gaze, his tone, his raw emotion—how could the peasants not fall under his spell?
The peasants were corrupted by Hitler as if they had fallen to the devil's temptation. See that? If you eat crops grown with synthetic ammonia fertilizer, you get mind-controlled by Hitler! Naturally, the agricultural laborers, whose wages were withheld due to the bankruptcies, went wild.
"You bastards! Give us our money!"
"My entire estate has been seized by the bank! I couldn't pay you even if I wanted to! This is all Austria's fault! Don't come to me, go complain to Vienna!"
"What? You're trying to flee to Britain right now, aren't you?"
"I tolerated you out of pity, but you've got a lot of nerve talking back to me. Know your place, peasant."
"Noble or peasant, we all die the same from a single stab wound. Want to see if your blood runs blue?"
Infuriated by the rumors, the Hungarian peasants rushed the aristocrats, demanding their back pay. However, the majority of the nobles couldn't pay even if they wanted to due to bankruptcy. What little money they had left was barely enough to maintain their noble dignity. The cost of maintaining that dignity was an astronomical sum unimaginable to an ordinary tenant farmer, which only added fuel to the fire.
And that wasn't all. The class system here was far more rigid than in Austria, almost on par with Russia or the Ottoman Empire. The nobles maintained a shameless, overbearing attitude, acting as if withholding wages was their natural right. The peasants had no choice but to rage.
For those who would starve to death without their wages, dying in a rebellion was no different from starving. Since they were going to die anyway, they chose to riot and revolt.
The aristocrats, not wanting to die, had no choice but to mobilize their private militias and the police to brutally suppress the uprisings. Naturally, horrific massacres reminiscent of Bloody Sunday began to unfold in Budapest and other regions.
"...Hitler was right!"
"The Hungarian nobles are actually shooting down fellow Magyars like dogs!"
"Kill them all! Kill everyone who owns land!"
Hitler's demagoguery, which had invoked Bloody Sunday, became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Day after day, aristocratic manors burned in the Hungarian countryside. Elsewhere, unspeakable tragedies occurred as peasants, regardless of age or gender, were lined up and shot. Enraged peasants, armed with farming tools and hunting shotguns, stormed the noble estates.
"H-How dare you filthy peasants step foot in here! Get out this instant!"
"Beat this bastard first!"
The exteriors of the noble manors were undeniably beautiful and grand, but once inside, the luxury and extravagance defied imagination. What? Bankruptcy? Austria caused agricultural prices to crash? Of course, to the aristocrats who had enjoyed wealth and glory all their lives, this was them living as frugally as possible. But to the peasants who had starved for three consecutive days, selling just one of those chandeliers or candlesticks would have easily paid their wages ten times over.
"Kill the nobles! Take everything of value!"
"This is our rightful wage!"
Peasants who managed to steal even a single piece of gold left for the big cities in small groups, either to liquidate their loot or to find work outside of agriculture. Was this what Das Kapital referred to as the "primitive accumulation of capital"? As the Hungarian peasants stabbed their lords to death, Hungarian capitalism was beginning to sprout.
Hitler... is doing a far better job than I ever imagined. Sometimes, doing a job too well can become a problem. This is exactly one of those times.
What I had asked of Hitler was to drive a wedge between the Hungarian peasants and the nobility, and to induce them to rebel against the aristocrats if possible. Hitler had accomplished that mission successfully. Far beyond my expectations.
We had, of course, anticipated a rebellion in Hungary. However, it was not the kind of rebellion we had envisioned. We had predicted that the aristocrats would lead their private armies in a noble revolt. Therefore, I had spoken with Archduke Otto to prepare for any contingencies in Hungary.
Before Hitler stepped in, there were already mountains of nobles resisting with rifles on their farmlands against bank employees sent to seize their lands in lieu of debt. But the scale of the peasant uprising grew so massive that the rebellion intensified to the point where we had to consider suppressing the peasants instead.
"Send a telegram to Hitler immediately... Tell him this is enough. Tell him to please stop!"
Sigh. It was a bit of a headache, but at least we had prevented a full-blown civil war sparked by a noble uprising.
"Your Highness. The foreign investors must be quite alarmed. Please explain to them that this is simply Hungary undergoing a process of becoming healthier."
"I'm already going crazy because of that. At this rate, aren't they going to stab the capitalists to death too?"
"...The cleanup is mostly done anyway. I think we should deploy the army to save at least the surviving nobles. The lesson should be more than sufficient by now."
However, no matter how much Hungary burned, and no matter how many aristocrats were slaughtered in droves by the peasants, it didn't revive the Austrian economy. Far from recovering, the devastation of the farmlands due to the Hungarian rebellion caused the debt recovery rate to plummet even further.
"It's time to move on to the next chapter. We need to save the banks."
As much as I wanted to overhaul Hungary's backward economic structure, which was heavily reliant on agriculture, what could I do? Industrialization doesn't happen overnight, and factories don't just spring up with a single word. For now, we had to put out the fire in the financial sector while simultaneously rebuilding Hungarian agriculture.
Rummaging through my memories of 20th-century Korea, I recalled the most effective method for rural reconstruction and fostering self-employed farmers.
This time, it was Lenin's turn.
"Comrade Lenin. Please publish the paper you have prepared. We need a theoretical foundation."
To launch a massive project that would reshape the structure of a nation, one needed theoretical justification, regardless of the nature of the project. The actual execution of the project had to be built upon that theory. The paper I had previously asked Lenin to prepare was about this.
Lenin, who had been grumbling daily about how "this is counter-revolutionary," was satisfied for the first time.
"As you must know from reading Das Kapital, Comrade..."
"I haven't read Das Kapital."
"In any case. Fundamentally, peasants rely on feudal relations of production and are obsessed with land. They are inherently counter-revolutionary. But with this agricultural cooperative, we might actually be able to enlist the peasants into the revolution."
"Didn't you originally dislike cooperatives?"
"Should we not treat the proletarian workers and the peasants, who are closer to the petty bourgeoisie, differently?"
Lenin seemed deeply impressed by the agricultural cooperative. Historically, communism always struggled with how to handle peasants, who were neither bourgeoisie nor proletariat. Thus, their solution was often to just eliminate them! In the original history, Lenin despised peasants as enemies of the revolution and implemented absurd collective farming policies. As a result, Soviet agriculture was ruined, and they imported food from the United States until the very moment of their collapse.
The Agricultural Cooperative provides low-interest loans to farmers, sells various agricultural materials, and oversees the distribution of agricultural products. While supporting farmers, its significance lies in managing agriculture—which naturally tends to fragment—under a massive organization. It was an organization designed from its very inception to keep self-employed farmers alive.
Of course, in addition to the original role of the modern Korean Agricultural Cooperative, I added an extra function: "farmland management." Historically, tenancy through large landowners always leads to exploitation. Therefore, we would regulate farmland leasing through a bureaucratic institution like the Agricultural Cooperative, and farmland sales would also be coordinated through it.
"This is where we need the assistance of Your Highness and Chairman Wittgenstein. Your Highness, please persuade the imperial family to purchase the farmlands put up for sale at dirt-cheap prices. Help ensure the rental income goes toward repaying the debts of the ruined nobility. And Chairman Wittgenstein, I ask for your investment as well."
"Of course."
Two months into the Hungarian economic crisis, the first "Hungarian Agricultural Cooperative" was established. With this, the banks that had lost their debts could at least breathe a sigh of relief.
No matter how cheaply the banks offered the farmlands they had seized in lieu of debt, no one was buying. Naturally, cold sweat trickled down the backs of the bankers.
"If the land doesn't sell this time... our bank is bankrupt."
"...Chairman. I am sorry to say this, but you should prepare for bankruptcy proceedings. Ownerless land keeps piling up, and land prices show no sign of rising."
The bank owners let out deep sighs. Was this how it would end?
But at that very moment, a mysterious entity called the "Hungarian Agricultural Cooperative" was launched, backed by capital from the imperial family, Stahl, and Wittgenstein. They began buying up the dirt-cheap farmlands in massive quantities. As a result, although the banks suffered immense losses, enough capital flowed in to keep them from collapsing.
"Pant, pant... Just as Comrade Hitler said, we've killed all the nobles who oppressed us."
"Look at this chandelier! Selling this is more than enough to cover all our unpaid wages!"
"...But what do we do now?"
Having slaughtered the nobles and marched on Budapest, the peasants were initially jubilant, clutching their stolen gold. But as their blood cooled after the violence, reality set in once more. They had secured some quick cash, but Hungary lacked any industrial base, meaning there were no factories to employ them. An illiterate Hungarian peasant who didn't know a word of German couldn't exactly pack up and leave for Austria. To make matters worse, because so many other peasant rioters in similar situations were dumping gold and luxury furniture at dirt-cheap prices, the value of their "spoils of war" was plummeting by the hour. They were on the verge of falling right back into poverty.
That was when Hitler stepped forward.
"I am Hitler, the interim Chairman of the Cooperative and a friend to the Hungarian peasants. It is a pleasure to meet you."
"Comrade Hitler! We have slaughtered every single noble who oppressed us. But even with our oppressors gone, our lives show no sign of improving. What must we do now?"
From the moment they had rioted and slaughtered the nobility, Hitler was already their "comrade." Even for the peasants who hadn't been "corrupted" by Hitler, they were already accomplices. What else could they do?
"Join our Agricultural Cooperative! All you need to do is invest a small portion of your spoils or cash with us. In return, our Cooperative will lease the farmlands we purchased to you at an extremely low price."
"U-Um, but I don't have any spoils..."
"We will lease it to you for free for the time being. You can pay the rent back slowly over time."
"I know how to farm, but I've never sold my own crops before. I don't have any cash."
"Our Cooperative will handle that for you as well!"
About thirty percent of the displaced peasants found work in the factories of Budapest, but the remaining seventy percent returned to the countryside.
Their Comrade Hitler was undoubtedly a good man. He had crushed the wicked and ensured they could eat their fill—how could anyone call him a bad man?