To make the situation still more chaotic, the neat lists of "agitators" and "groups" and "organizations" that Francisco Nasi had provided the CoCs were more a reflection of the needs of efficient record-keeping than the actual reality on the ground. In the eastern and central Germanies, as a matter of self-defense if nothing else, every political movement no matter of what stripe or persuasion had begun adopting the rigorous organizational methods of the CoCs. Which had, in turn, been heavily influenced by the habits and attitudes of the Americans, accustomed as they were to the level of social and political organization common to advanced industrial societies of the late twentieth century.
But the Rhineland, for the most part, was still in the past. Anti-Semitic "organizations" were really more in the way of loose associations that formed and disintegrated in response to specific impulses. As a rule, those impulses were provided by a particularly effective or charismatic individual agitator, who would be the one to actually incite the violence.
These men were usually clerics of one sort of another. Low level clerics, at that. Itinerant mendicant friars, in Catholic areas; junior clergy looking to make a reputation and get a permanent parish assignment in Lutheran regions. Such were the names that appeared in Nasi's lists as "leaders" and "central figures" of anti-Semitic "groups."
The reality was quite a bit more fluid-which made for a very fluid sort of armed struggle. Typically, these anti-Semitic agitators would react to the approach of a CoC column by inciting a mob of locals, who would in turn form themselves into a militia-not infrequently, they were the town's official militia-to sally forth and meet the invaders in a small battle.
A small and quick battle. These hastily formed military bands, even the ones who constituted formal militias, were simply no match for the CoC columns in an open battle. The CoCs were, first, better organized and more disciplined; second, they were far better armed; third, many of their troops and the majority of their commanders were veterans of the recent wars. Almost a third of the column commanders, in fact, had been at the great battle of Ahrensbok.
Soon enough, their opponents realized they couldn't match the CoCs in straight battles, and they fell back on the standard tactic used by town and village militias for centuries when facing more powerful regular troops-which amounted to urban guerrilla warfare.
That would have been savage fighting under any circumstances. It was made still more savage by the harsh attitudes of the CoC soldiers.
By now, in the central and eastern Germanies, the political program of the CoCs had assumed the proportions of a social crusade for its members and supporters. There was more at stake than simply this or that specific issue, this or that specific grievance. What was ultimately involved was the very soul of a new nation coming into birth.
And they were fiercely determined that that nation would be "modern," as they understood the term. A term which was of course heavily influenced by American ideas and attitudes but which stemmed still more from long-gestating German ideas and long-festering German injustices. What the Americans had brought through the Ring of Fire was really not so much their "new ideas." What they mostly brought was the deep and abiding confidence that those ideas worked. That, so far from being airy and impractical, they were vastly more practical than the notions and methods advocated and used by the existing rulers of the Germanies.
So, all that was medieval and barbaric and primitive was to be destroyed. First and foremost, those two prominent and long-standing traditions in the Germanies of anti-Semitic pogroms and witch-hunts. Traditions which, in fact, were very closely related not simply in spirit but in the persons who carried them out.
The fact that many of the CoC soldiers didn't know any Jews or care about Jews-even, in plenty of instances, were themselves prejudiced against Jews-was neither here nor there. Some of them even still, somewhere deep inside, probably believed in "witchcraft." Half-believed, at least.
That didn't matter, anymore than it mattered whether this or that soldier in Sherman's army burning its way across Georgia in the march to the sea liked or disliked black people. The Confederacy was an abomination, a gross act of treason to the republic, and the Confederacy would damn well be destroyed. Period.
So it was, with the attitude of the soldiers in the CoC columns fighting on the Rhine and the Main. The ancient customs of anti-Semitic pogroms and witch-hunting were damn well going to be destroyed. Because so long as they remained they would keep the nation shackled to barbarity and medievalism.
Not compromised with; not alleviated; not diluted; not "reformed."
Destroyed. Razed to the ground. Turned into rubble-and if the bodies of the defenders of medieval barbarism lay bleeding to death beneath the rubble, not a one of those fighters in the CoC columns cared in the least. Good riddance.
It had taken several years to entrench those new attitudes in the central and eastern provinces of the USE. The CoCs planned to finish the job in the western provinces in a few weeks.
And…
For the most part, they succeeded. Mike Stearns had predicted they would.
"It's simply a myth," he told Francisco Nasi, "that social attitudes are so deeply rooted that they'll last for generations under any circumstances. And the reason it's a myth is because attitudes in the abstract require actions in the concrete in order to remain solid and well-entrenched. It's not enough to 'feel' or 'think' this or that bias or prejudice. To keep those biases and prejudices solid-give them meat and blood and bone-you have to be able to act on them. And you've got to be able to do it frequently and regularly and in the public eye. Destroy the ability to act, and you will-very quickly-see the attitudes crumble and fade away. That's because you can't dragoon everybody else into tacitly supporting you, any longer."
He studied the Elbe from the window, for a moment. "I've seen it happen in my own lifetime. Well… most of it actually happened while I was still a kid, or hadn't even been born yet. Americans don't like to talk about it now, but the truth is that there were as many lynchings of black people in America in our not-so-distant past as there are lynchings of Jews and so-called 'witches' in Germany in the here and now. Yet by the time I was an adult, the lynchings were over. In a few short years, a social habit and custom that had lasted for centuries and had seemed as deeply ingrained as any had just vanished."
He swiveled his head and gave Francisco a fierce, hawkish look. "And you want to know how it was done? Forget all that vague twaddle about changes in so-called 'social consciousness.' Yeah, sure-those changes did happen and they were both real and important. But it's what lay beneath them and anchored them solidly that really counted-and that was as crude and simple as it gets."
He transferred the hawk glare to the river. "There was a time in America when you could lynch a black man with impunity. And then the time came when if you did so, you would get your ass handed to you. Often enough, by a black man wearing a badge and carrying a gun."
His smile managed to be wry and savage at the same time. "It's amazing, Francisco, how quickly 'deeply ingrained attitudes' will change-when the consequences of not changing are so immediate and obvious and detrimental to your health and well-being. Oh, yeah. It's really amazing how fast that can happen."
The CoC columns which marched up and down the great rivers of the western provinces for several weeks shooting and hanging anti-Semites and witch-hunters, and burning down their homes and shops if they fled, did not really care whether anyone liked or disliked Jews or believed or did not believe that witches were real. That was a private and individual matter, by itself.