“I will not see us going all the way back to the days when Germany was stabbed in the back by the Jews and Americans and stamped into the ground by the French and British,” Holliston said. “And I will not hand power over to a bunch of anarchists who don’t have the faintest idea of how to form a government, let alone make the hard decisions!”
“So tell me,” Hans said. “What do we do?”
He looked around the table, silently trying to gauge support. So far, most of the other councillors were content to watch and wait for a clear victor to emerge, or to see who would make the best offer for their support. It was frustrating, but in some ways it was almost a relief. At least he’d be able to make his case without being interrupted or shouted down.
“The French were supposed to pay us their tribute on the 1st of the month,” he said, after a moment. “That tribute has been grossly reduced because the French are having their own labour problems. The stockpiles of food and raw materials they were also supposed to be sending to the Reich have also been delayed.”
“Send in the troops,” Holliston offered. “Take the foodstuffs by force, then lay waste to the fields to teach them a lesson.”
Hans chose not to respond directly. “Because of that, we have a cash shortfall,” he added, wondering how many of them would understand. “We’ve been sailing too close to bankruptcy for years; now, without the French cash, we may well cross the line and find ourselves faced with massive painful budget cuts. We simply have too many commitments and not enough cash to meet them. For example, we owe the Americans millions of dollars – dollars, not Reichmarks – for our recent purchases.”
“So we delay paying,” Holliston said.
“And so they delay supply,” Hans said. “The Americans are not the French, Herr Reichsführer. They will not accept a promissory note drawn on a bank they know to be failing. Worse, perhaps, they will not supply us with anything else until they are paid in full.”
“We don’t need anything they can send us,” Holliston insisted.
“That’s not the only problem,” Hans continued. “Where do we make our budget cuts? The military? The war? The support payments we make to mothers with more than two children or the pensions we grant to veterans?”
There was a long pause. “We could cut back on our purchase of war materials,” Holliston mused, finally. “We don’t need more tanks.”
“But we do need vehicles designed for counter-insurgency operations in South Africa,” Field Marshal Gunter Voss snapped. “We spent years building up the largest tank force in the world, which is next to completely useless in South Africa!”
“And we can’t stop making payments to veterans,” Field Marshal Justus Stoffregen added, coldly. “We made them promises.”
Which we haven’t been keeping for a long time, Hans thought. There had been a commitment, a honourable commitment, to look after the dead and wounded. But that commitment had been broken in South Africa. Trust in the government, never high at the best of times, was almost certainly gone. But there will be riots if we start cutting the support payments.
Hans tapped the table. “We can cancel some of our long-term procurement,” he said. “The planned sixth carrier can be placed on hold, if necessary” – he ignored the squawk from Grossadmiral Cajus Bekker – “and we can scrap the planned development and purchase of a replacement main battle tank. We already have more than enough nuclear missiles to give the American ABM system a very hard time indeed, if it comes down to total war, and the Americans are unlikely to launch an invasion of the continent. Our security is unlikely to be put at risk.
“The problem, however, is that this will have dangerous knock-on effects,” he added, wondering just how many of them would understand. “If we stop paying for new tanks…”
“We would have more money,” Holliston snapped.
“Yes, and the corporations we would be paying wouldn’t,” Hans said. “They would wind up with a cash shortfall, so they would either have to cut wages – again – or sack hundreds of trained workers. And that will cause more social unrest at the worst possible time.”
“They could go east,” Holliston offered. “We need more farmers…”
“There’s no shortage of farmers,” Hans snapped. “They’re trained and experienced industrial workers. We cannot afford to lose them.”
He looked down at the table. “But even if we do, it will not fix the hole in our budget,” he warned. “The really big expenses are the ones we don’t dare risk cutting. Keeping the garrisons in position to monitor the French alone is quite costly; keeping Germany South a going concern is staggeringly expensive. And the support payments may be the single worst item on the list. We have got to stop handing out money to every woman who has more a child!”
“But we need to keep our population from decaying,” Holliston insisted. “How will the women have children if they cannot afford to keep them?”
“Our population is not in danger of falling,” Hans said.
It wasn’t entirely true, he knew. Industrial societies – and Germany Prime was an industrial society – had significantly lower birth-rates than farming societies. America had had a baby boom after the war with Japan, then the birth-rate had dropped sharply over the following decades. The Reich had escaped the same fate through passing laws that made it easier to afford more children, both through support payments and public honours for women with many children. But now, simply paying the women their monthly allowance was a major strain on the public purse. Who knew what would happen, apart from massive civil unrest, if the payments were ever cut?
“The Untermenschen breed like rabbits,” Holliston said. “We have to keep up with them.”
“The Untermenschen are unlikely to pose a major danger, at least for the foreseeable future,” Hans countered. “Our current problems lie with the so-called Valkyries.”
“The corporations will not allow any independent trade unions,” Friedrich Leopoldsberger said, coldly. The Industries Minister was their creature, Hans knew; the Ministry of Industry was, perhaps, the most deeply corrupt ministry in the Reich. “There are corporate-sponsored unions to handle the workers and their concerns.”
“Unions which do nothing more than identify and marginalise troublemakers,” Hans pointed out. “Can the corporations afford to lose half of their workforce?”
“They will come crawling back after a couple of weeks of unemployment,” Leopoldsberger said. “Let them experience life without a regular salary. Let them see what it is like to be without money, without hope of employment. Where else can they go?”
“That would work,” Holliston said.
“And how long would it be,” Hans asked, “before the entire workforce goes on strike?”
He scowled at Leopoldsberger, who scowled back. “You’re thinking in terms of a handful of little men,” he said. “And yes, a handful of bad apples can be isolated and kicked out of the bunch. But thousands of workers, all of whom are already feeling the pinch? You might just start a whole series of strikes if you sacked them… and if that happens, you will find it impossible not to surrender. There are no replacements for trained workers.”
“We could train others,” Leopoldsberger pointed out.
“In time?” Hans asked. “God knows our training system has been having problems too. Or are you planning to bring in the military to run the plants?”