The Great War of the Quartet (The Imperial Timeline Book 1) (51 page)

Chapter 7
4

Fritz still had a bit of time until he would have to get out and catch the tram heading in to the office. His breakfast was a simple affair, and he ate it in his room after his landlady had brought it in for him together with his morning newspaper. Despite what some people clearly assumed, he had to rely on the paper to know what was going on rather than to learn about the general progress of the war from the government. Anybody had to get part of their information in condensed newspaper form rather than go through boxes of detailed reports from every corner of the globe, but many civilians seemed to assume that the army possessed some kind of special, superhuman information network. Obviously nobody knew about the nature of his work except that it was in the part of the crossroads between the civilian and military parts of the government, the parts that had grown progressively intertwined from the war. The parliamentary form of government was not suited to the daily work of war, and the Emperor had put his faith in the military to administrate not just military affairs, but even home affairs.

Looking back now, one could perhaps discern a gradual shift that had led up to a military cabinet with a majority of Prussian officers being charged with civil government, but at the time all those baby steps had been inconsequential to the naked eye. The Social Democrats in the parliaments of not just the central state but also in the constituent states of Germany might not have wished for such a change but apart from some of the leftist papers, the country remained right behind the Prussian army leadership that had effectively become the leadership of not just Prussia but all of Germany. As a soldier, Fritz felt it his duty to stand behind the grand coalition of conservatives, Catholics, and liberals who had joined together in enthusiastic support of the army officers the Emperor had appointed to form a cabinet. The patriotic coalition offered the administration an iron-clad parliamentary majority against the fringe anti-German left and the reluctantly patriotic Socialists, and if the coalition endured beyond the war the hope was that there might be a permanent parliamentary consensus, despite the natural distrust any sane man should have for the substantial Catholic part of such a bloc.

Mrs. Wiedemann had left him with a small kettle of coffee, and he had already had two cupfuls while he went through the paper’s rundown of the state of affairs. It had a ritual of giving the approximate standings of each front with brief noteworthy news coupled with simple maps that gave a rough outline of where the forces in each theater were located and recent historical changes to indicate in what way the frontlines might be shifting. Africa and the overseas campaigns were not reproduced in great detail, but the West, the East, the Balkans, Italy, and even Siberia were given simple daily reports to the readers. The paper was very objective in its treatment of the war, but there was surely no doubt that the journalists understood the importance of victory. Obviously. However, as a rational man, Fritz wanted his information to be untainted by wishful thinking and emotion. He wanted journalists to report events
as they really happened
. Indeed, just as the great historian von Ranke had advised historians to write objectively, so too should journalists, at least when they were writing for intelligent audiences like Fritz who did not need tailored, simple catchphrases and self-flattering images of superhuman achievements. He knew that the enemy were not a bunch of nincompoops—they were clever little rascals. The Russians might be a retarded race, but they had proved themselves quite capable compared to the feeling that they were essentially creatures walking on their hind-legs.

The dark bread sandwiches were not particularly tasty, but the sausage and butter worked all right together with the coffee to make for a passable breakfast. Fritz paid particular attention to the news from the East, since he was certain that Russia was the key enemy. Not since before the post-Napoleonic
Le Grande Règlement
had France been Europe’s undisputedly preeminent power, and if there was one nation that could defeat Germany it had to be Russia. Before Japan had confirmed its vague prewar commitment to Germany it had looked like the war would be very difficult to win, but as soon as the big empire of the distant Orient had entered the war it had provided Germany with at least some small relief against the Russian threat. The French had poured their resources into Italy to strike at Austria, and the great fortresses on either side of the border in the West between France and Germany had remained largely impregnable, a testament to the German plan of focusing on Russia as well as the French emphasis on propping up their allies, most notably the Italians and rely on Russia to win the war for them. From what he could read in the newspapers it was obvious to Fritz that France had become the primary adversary in Italy where they were marshalling their Spanish and Italian allies against the German and Austrian armies while largely abandoning their colonies to their natural fate. The German and Japanese navies were sailing around the world occupying enemy colonies, and apart from the threat of French submarines which had been diminished through attrition rates and perhaps the vocal objections—particularly from America—against the targeting of maritime trade. Germany would surely be fine to have international trade continue since it had apparently been importing grain from Canada to cover both its own and its allies’ needs for the past year.

This morning’s paper had no big news, and the West remained nearly entirely quiet according to the brief couple of sentences summarizing the situation there. “
Throughout the day there was no significant military action along the frontline
.” That was all well and good, but the constant news from Russia and the Balkans, and even the Far East, seemed to indicate that the war was not solely a matter of big fortresses where soldiers were looking down across deep defense systems with mines, barbed wire, gun emplacements, and heavy artillery. If it would be considered as a single unit, the Gneisenau Line was said to be the world’s greatest military fortress, running all the way from the Canton of Vaud in Switzerland in the south and up to Namur in the Netherlands in the north.

Once he had finished his breakfast he put the china back on the tray for Mrs. Wiedemann and with his briefcase in hand he went down and outside into early morning traffic. The boardinghouse was on a small street coming down from the train station from where trains connected the suburb with downtown Berlin. The city had been growing immensely for the past century, and the last couple of decades in particular. Fritz had been a part of the migration to the city when he became an officer and had been stationed there, but obviously most of the migrants were people from the east of Berlin, including East Germans and even Israelites, who came pouring to Berlin for work unrelated to the military or civil administration. You could hardly walk out the door without risking to trip on some Israelite’s gargantuan nose, and most of the newsboys and street vendors seemed to be Yids or Eastern Catholics from the far east of Prussia.

After about half an hour of traveling he came up the stairs to the Fourth Floor where the staff was slowly trickling into work. Colonel Kretschke was not in yet, perhaps he was still celebrating the renewed confidence the Emperor had given the Hesse Metallurgical Works after the somewhat troubling technical difficulties they had been struggling to overcome lately. The production facility in Lichtenberg in Saxony had needed a lot more material, silver in particular, and Lieutenant General König had been forced to lean on not just the Emperor, but also the chancellor and the Ministry of Armaments to get the necessary backing to covertly move 8,000 tons of silver off to be turned into magnetic coils. The overarching project of the Wiesbaden Group, the Hesse Metallurgical Works, and the Kongo Project was so immense that it was not difficult to understand that many of the tens of thousands of workers within those projects could not maintain a strong faith in their own work. Only a handful of people had the faintest idea of the ambitious nature of Götterdämmerung, let alone even know about the project’s pet name apparently coined by one of the scientists who had advised the Emperor to sponsor the program as a catchy, attention-grabbing name.

The planned new “pile” in Swabia was still under construction, and the Hesse Metallurgical Works team would be producing a seemingly viable fuel for a design Working Group Holstein-Winkel had come up with for a useful weapon. Fritz did not know the details, and frankly he doubted that he would understand them if he would be given the exact technical detail the physicists had worked out. The first experimental “pile” had been successfully tested back in 1933 even before the integration of Project Götterdämmerung at the outset of the war when the Fourth Floor placed the semi-covert Hesse Metallurgical Works under the curtain of complete secrecy. If the research was as revolutionary as the Secret Panel of Researchers had suggested it could be, then it was vital that no other country, not even Austria, should be made aware of the findings of the prewar Hesse Metallurgical Works in particular or the subsequent Project Götterdämmerung.

“Good morning, sir,” the young secretary said when Fritz passed by her desk outside Colonel Kretschke’s private office.

Like virtually everyone else working on the Floor, the secretary didn’t know the exact object of research. A word here, a term there, it would be difficult to put it together into a reasonably coherent plan. It was not impossible for a somewhat intelligent person to discover that the Hesse Metallurgical Works had been doing research into producing fissile material, and the theoretical use of such material was obviously known to plenty of foreign scholars, but the breakthrough achieved by both the Hesse Metallurgical Works and the Kongo Project into making substantial amounts of such materials available was a very recent, very secret piece of information. Before the first “pile” had been constructed it had all been an essentially theoretical project, but the longer the project lasted, the more concerned Fritz became about foreign efforts. What if the French had made some great breakthrough and were ahead of them? The Russians were bound to be too primitive, but the French could surely understand these things.

Fritz still wasn’t entirely convinced that the researchers would come up with a practical weapon since they only had theoretical designs, and there was plenty of different ideas being bandied around the different working groups of the Wiesbaden Group. It was the Wiesbaden Group’s responsibility to provide for actual weapon designs while the Hesse Metallurgical Works and the Kongo Project were supposed to develop the fuel. However, the long duration of the project without a testable weapon was not only bad for morale, it was bad for the future of the project. Lieutenant General König was apparently beginning to simply argue to the Emperor and the government that the project had to be seen through to the end simply because it had taken so much resources up to now, and abandoning it would mean that all previous investments had been a waste. Yet with the aircraft, armor, rifle, artillery, and other research and development projects as well as just simple ongoing production and maintenance calling for the resources, manpower, money, and raw materials going into Project Götterdämmerung it was easy to understand that without the personal patronage of the Emperor, the project would likely have been axed already. The Ministry of War was almost totally against the project, and only the occasional assurances from the wizards coming down from their ivory tower to dazzle the Emperor with physics magic and how this was really a scientific endeavor to unlock a new form of technology could erase the doubt the claims from the Ministry of War of the project’s futility. When it came to the quality and charisma of the wizards, Project Götterdämmerung was far superior to the Ministry of War, and a couple of the physicists Kretschke had at his disposal were not only capable of mathematical sorcery but also of couching it in pithy, bite-sized phrases and vague promises of creating a revolutionary new form of military power. The Emperor was quite the disciple of scientific progress, and Lieutenant General König’s wondrous crew of science wizards were clearly quite popular with the man on the throne whose backing was essential to continuing the project.

Since Colonel Kretschke hadn’t come in yet, Fritz settled down at his own desk and took a cigarette from the small box. He hadn’t expected to have any mail waiting for him yet, and while he waited for more staff to turn up and the office to properly awaken to the day, he unfolded his newspaper and resumed reading where he had left off on the way to work.

Chapter 7
5

“Your Majesty, esteemed gentlemen of the Council,” the deputy general said as he bowed deeply after standing up, paying particular attention to the Emperor sitting just a little higher up than the men on either side of him.

Sugahito would have liked to be in his shoes right now, but
Deputy General Hoshi had the honor of delivering the full report to the senior commanders of the General Staff and the Admiralty as well as the civilian Council members and His Majesty all meeting in the ordinary hall in the palace where the Supreme War Council convened for oral reports.

“For these past ten days the Altay Army Group has engaged Russian forces outside the city of Akmolinsk in a series of
several separate engagements. The illustrious units involved on our side have been the 17th Army and the 45th Army, as well as other smaller units from other commands. Operational Command was successful in its goals to rupture the defensive ring…”

He continued to briefly detail the progression of the battle as he read aloud the report his staff had compiled from reports from Combined Command
. While Hoshi spoke dispassionately, Sugahito could almost smell the relish the man must feel to speak to the Supreme War Council on behalf of the General Staff’s Operational Department and its chief subordinate Combined Command. As much as Hoshi liked to be a member of a collective, there was no doubt that he enjoyed speaking on behalf of that collective in front of this eminent audience.

“Early yesterday morning, troops from the 45
th Army entered Akmolinsk after Russian forces launched several ground and air attacks in a futile attempt to block access to the city. As of 1500 hours local time yesterday the city of Akmolinsk can be considered secure. The Russian forces suffered a complete defeat, and the 17th Army has swung most of its forces south to engage the Russian forces 320 kilometers north of Verniy at a minor town…”

Overall, the results of the recent days
and weeks of fighting were extremely positive. Casualties were at replaceable rates, and more importantly, the Russians were still only acting reactively in localized counterattacks and withdrawals rather than launching coordinated operations on a large scale. It was the Japanese armored columns that maintained the overarching initiative, and the Russians had been reduced to simply trying to counter them and grind them down as best they could with small units while pulling troops back to prevent them from being encircled and destroyed. Unfortunately for them, they did not have the same ample reserves right behind them which Combined Command had, and where the two sides fought, it was the Japanese who could quickly make up for losses with their reserves while the Russians were spread out without deep reserves to draw manpower from.

Sugahito assumed that unless the Russians would increase their forces north of
Akmolinsk and around Novonikolayevsk, much of Siberia would be out of their effective control before summer was even over. The reports of Russian defeats in Europe compounded the elation that the whole General Staff felt after the enemy had begun to crumble so very quickly after contact with mass desertions, retreats, and even the capitulation of large units without much of a fight. The Bureau for Public Information Dissemination and the countless newspaper editorials had been correct; the white devils were just paper tigers that could be torn to shreds by a child. Sugahito would never have thought that the editorial page in
The National Daily Voice
would be so accurate in its predictions about the how the white devils would fall apart as soon as combat began. So far, it was easy to fall victim to literal hubris, since the offensive so far seemed to be a struggle between a god and whatever the opposite of that would be.

“The sacrifices necessary for victory have been acceptab
le and sustainable,” Hoshi answered when an officer asked about the casualties, prompting Sugahito to silently scoff.

H
e suspected that his superior did not wish to specify the numbers since they were presumably much higher than he would have expected. They seemed to be at the high end of the spectrum when compared to the approximate enemy losses, and nobody could have expected such high casualties in relation to the passage of time, although since the gains had been so significant, the casualties were perhaps not all that significant. Nevertheless, there had been a worrying trend of high casualties, and the local commanders were obviously doing what they could to put them in a better light in their reports. Sugahito had no real experience of fighting, but he had enough of a sense of mathematics to understand that if a thousand total casualties were necessary to inflict four hundred on the other side, then the war would inevitably see millions of casualties. There was no country with more
white ghosts
than Russia, and he was realistic enough to see that without the Germans absorbing the majority of the Russian forces Combined Command would have to deal with significant combat attrition.

When the floor had been opened for questions after Hoshi had made his report, some of the generals present in the Council did their best to rain on Hoshi’s parade by asking specific questions about strategic goals and the failure by several task forces to prevent substantial enemy forces from withdrawing, but the Emperor was quiet, perhaps listening intently and planning on what He wished to be done. Hoshi fought a battle against particularly one of the deputy commanders of the Logistics Department as well as a man from the Ordnance Department—both of them supposed comrades from the General Staff. Sugahito tried to gauge what the sovereign at the head of the meeting was thinking. He was of two minds about the Emperor, and he could never decide whether He was the Great Genius or a rather ordinary man serving as the national ornament. The Emperor hardly said a single word in Council, and Sugahito had no idea what the Emperor and His aides discussed when they were on their own. Perhaps the Emperor did move pieces behind the scenes, or perhaps He was overall pleased with the progress and simply watched to see that the Imperial Army did not screw up.

Regardless of whether He was the Unsurpassed Statesman or just an ordinary contemporary of Sugahito’s , the Emperor was the sovereign, and all subjects—and particularly soldiers—had a duty to Him that went further than any other kind of loyalty known to man. He was the Empire, and all the success and glory of the past had been achieved through total obedience and reverence for His and Sugahito’s long, unbroken line going back to the divine roots of the Heavenly Dynasty—the
Source of the Sun
. Even if Sugahito was in theory as distinctly related the same Heavenly ancestor as the Emperor, the Chrysanthemum Throne carried with it the particular standing that only the sovereign had and not His countless relations of the Dynasty. There was only one Emperor, and He was only matched by His predecessors on the Throne—never by His contemporaries. Even the Emperor’s little brother, Sugahito’s good old “Cousin Michi” was far surpassed by the sovereign by the simple difference of the Emperor being invested with the Great Symbols of the Celestial Office and sitting—figuratively—on the Chrysanthemum Throne. That alone far surpassed the biological similarities between the Emperor and His brothers and made them different kinds of beings before law and tradition.