He glared at the map, his eyes seeking out what had once been Japan. It was a hellish nightmare now, a territory where the races mixed freely and the once-proud martial culture had been almost completely eradicated. There were few pureblood Japanese left, he’d been told, and fewer still who cleaved to the old ways. The new generation of Japanese children were more American than the Americans. They treated democracy as though it were a god.
And that will happen to us, if the Americans win, he thought. And they will win, if the traitors give them the chance.
He could see the nightmare unfolding in his imagination. The steady collapse of authority, mirrored by the steady collapse of the family. Young girls breeding with Untermenschen, young men leaving their wives and families to support themselves; women working to earn money rather than taking care of their children, men treated as monsters by a depraved legal system. And young men running around without discipline, taking drugs and drinking heavily instead of serving their country and raising families of their own. Everything the Reich had built was in jeopardy.
The Americans don’t know what’s good for them, he thought, nastily. And yet they may import their failures here.
The thought tormented him. He’d once been reassured by the growing demographic crisis in America, although the Americans were alarmingly good at converting immigrants and Gastarbeiters – not that they used that word – into good Americans. Given time, he’d calculated, the American population would drop while the Reich’s kept rising. But now… the civil war would tear the Reich apart before it could win the cold war by default. It had been a mistake, he knew now, to allow even a single American idea to enter the Reich. They should have closed their borders and waited, patiently, for the United States to collapse.
And now we are fighting each other instead of the Americans, he told himself. They can just walk in afterwards and take over!
He glared at Wermter. “What have they actually agreed?”
“The Americans are already sending them intelligence materials,” Wermter said. He didn’t look any more pleased than Karl felt. “They’ll start shipments of MANPADS in the next few days…”
Karl swore. He hated to admit it, but the Americans had practically invented modern-day military logistics. They’d drowned the Japanese under a tidal wave of production that even the Reich had been unable to match. And yet, producing so many MANPADS and slipping them to the traitors in Berlin would be tricky, even for them. They’d have to draw down the stocks in Britain, unless…
He cursed under his breath. He’d suspected American involvement in the protests from the start. The Americans liked the idea of convincing people to change, rather than imposing change by force; they never seemed to see the downside, that the people might change in ways the United States neither expected nor wanted. If the Americans had planned to send MADPADS to the Reich from the start, could it be they’d planned the uprising and civil war all along?
Cold logic told him it wasn’t likely. He’d had plenty of experience with intelligence work over the years. The more complex an operation, the greater the chance of failure. Surely, the Americans couldn’t have planned the entire situation out from the beginning. And yet, they were moving to take advantage of the chaos. They had to be very sure the civil war wouldn’t turn into a complete disaster.
“MANPADS,” he said, out loud.
He snorted, rudely. American MANPADS were good. Stinger missiles alone had turned what should have been a relatively easy operation – to support the South Africans as they retook control of their country – into a bloodbath. CAS aircraft were uniquely vulnerable to American Stingers, which stripped the troops of their air cover when they needed it desperately. The blacks had used them, ruthlessly, to push the envelope and start attacking German troops, rather than the other way around. Introducing American-designed MANPADS into the German Civil War would only prolong the bloodshed.
Which is probably what the Americans want, he thought, darkly. If we keep fighting each other, we will be in no position to resist when the Americans take advantage of the chaos.
“Yes, Mein Führer,” Wermter said. “They have promised over two thousand single-use missiles to the traitors.”
Karl thought fast. The Americans had pretended that they hadn’t been supplying the South Africans, but no one believed them. There was literally no other country on Earth, even Britain, capable of producing Stingers. Stripping all US markings off the missiles and their launchers was just pointless. And yet, the troops defending the traitors wouldn’t know that, would they? They’d think the Stingers came from a German factory. The traitors wouldn’t be keen to acknowledge that they’d received help from the archenemy.
“We have to find a way to use this against them,” he thought. “Is our spy undetected?”
“I believe they do not suspect his presence,” Wermter said. “However, they would be foolish to trust him completely.”
“They’d be foolish to trust anyone completely,” Karl mused. It was the old problem with revolutionary movements. The different factions tended to have different ideas about which way the movement should go. Even Hitler had needed to move against his former comrades, once the Nazi Party was in power. “But as long as he remains undetected…”
He frowned. He’d hoped the traitors would fragment into multiple factions, each one weakening the whole, but the growing pressure from the east probably ensured that any disputes would be put aside until the end of the war. The traitors knew they had to hang together or they would all be hanging together. He smirked at the pun, then turned his attention back to his subordinate. Wermter was looking distinctly uncomfortable.
“The Americans will not be giving them anything for free,” he said. “What do they get in exchange?”
“A withdrawal from South Africa and free trade,” Wermter said.
Karl swore, savagely. The withdrawal wasn’t a problem – no doubt the traitors were already congratulating themselves on convincing the Americans to pay for something they’d been planning to do already – but free trade? It would be disastrous! He had no illusions about just how easily the United States could flood the Reich with civilian products, products that would be both cheaper and better than anything the Reich could produce for itself. And who knew what would come with it? Germans who should be doing their duty for the Reich would be asking questions, instead. They’d be demanding to know why Germany couldn’t produce blue jeans and cheap televisions. And none of the answers they’d get would satisfy them.
And it would destroy our economy completely, he thought. Who would buy one of our products when they could have an American product?
“We have to stop this,” he said. He glared at Wermter. “Get back to your other sources; find out what else they’re planning to do. And then tell the advance teams I want them ready to move in on the Reichstag at a moment’s notice.”
“Jawohl, Mein Fuhrer,” Wermter said.