Still, the deployment of the entire brigade to the border three days ago, coupled with the announcement from the Chancellor's office in Berlin that the reserve battalions of Seydlitz's brigade, as well as other brigades, were liable for immediate recall, seemed unnecessarily provocative on Germany's part. Diplomatic, not military, action was what his government should have been using to resolve the issue. Yet nothing, at least nothing that he knew of or had heard on the radio, even suggested that Chancellor Ruff or the Americans were interested in pursuing active talks. Instead, as the brigade watched and waited for the Americans to test the resolve of the German government, a test every officer and soldier in the brigade knew would come, Berlin continued to issue new pronouncements, new directives, and new deployment orders that could only serve to increase rather than decrease the tension. So, as for many of his fellow officers, the news that a parachute brigade had seized the American air base where the nuclear weapons in question had been only brought dread and foreboding. For the Army better than anyone else knew that the Americans could not ignore the German challenge. Unless cool heads and common sense were allowed to prevail, it would, Seydlitz knew, have to come to a fight.
With his mind cluttered by such weighty concerns, Seydlitz did not notice the driver of his tank as he carefully climbed on board, taking great pains not to spill the contents of his commander's breakfast. Only after he offered the steaming plate of food did Seydlitz acknowledge him. Forcing a smile across a face still clouded by deep worries and personal doubts, Seydlitz thanked his crewman and took the plate. Looking down at the plate, Seydlitz made a face, then asked his driver what, exactly, he'd been handed.
The loader smiled. "Well, Herr Captain, when I was training at Minister, my cadre sergeant told us never bother asking where we were going, since we had no choice in the matter anyway, never ask what we were going to do when we got there, because chances are the officers taking us there probably didn't know either, and never, never, never ask an army cook what he is serving, because even they didn't know what it used to be."
Seydlitz looked at his loader and laughed. The German Army didn't need to spend millions and millions of marks on training its officer corps, Seydlitz thought, in military theory and tactics. His loader, with just a few weeks of training, understood things far better than he did. All that was necessary, it seemed, was for officers to act more like their crewmen; shut up, go where you were told, don't worry about what's going to happen, and eat what you are given. For a lowly panzer captain such as himself to worry about anything else was, Seydlitz realized, a waste of time.
After two days of nonstop lectures and one-way speeches, Ed Lewis was ready to give up. Actually, he thought, as he listened to Chancellor Ruff, there was nothing really to give up, since that phrase implied that there had been a two-way struggle. If anything, there had been no room, as far as the Germans were concerned, for any kind of open dialogue. From the beginning of his round of official and unofficial meetings, Ed Lewis had been stonewalled by a solid party line that none of the German players were deviating from. From Thomas Fellner, Minister of the Interior, and to the left of the political spectrum, to Rudolf Lammers, the Minister of Defense and a staunch conservative, the only difference in their presentations had been the intensity of the speaker's emotions.
Not that even that point made a difference. Even now, as he listened to Chancellor Ruff go over the same ground covered by the members of his cabinet, Lewis was reminded how much he disliked listening to German. It was to him a very harsh language. The sharp, crisp manner in which the northern Germans spat out their words almost seemed to assault his ears. Though he imagined that he was just being a little hypersensitive because of the content, Lewis found his mind wandering as he tuned out Chancellor Ruff, just as President Wilson had when it had become obvious to her that direct talks between her and Ruff were fruitless. So, instead of paying attention to what was being said, he found himself wishing that it had been the French and not the Germans who had precipitated this crisis. The French language at least was more pleasing to the ear.
The American congressman's lack of interest in what he was saying was not lost on Ruff, and it angered him. It angered him more than the fact that a mere congressman, and not a member of the President's own council, was picked to come to Germany to hear them out. Well, Ruff thought, if the Amis are going to hold us in such low regard, then perhaps I can do something to make them see this whole affair in a new light.
Standing up, Ruff caught both Lewis and the German translator by surprise. "I see, Herr Congressman, that you are tiring of hearing the same thing over and over again. Perhaps you do not believe our resolve."
Caught off guard and regretting that his disinterest had been so obvious, Lewis sat up and began to apologize. He was, however, cut short as Ruff began to speak without pause, making it difficult for the translator to keep up. "The realities of world politics and diplomacy in the modern world are both harsh and obvious. For years the great struggle was, as many have pointed out, between the haves and the have nots. But what few people have understood, or cared to understand, was that when the terms 'have' and 'have not' were used by the United States and the former Soviet Union, the speaker was not talking about monetary or mineral resources. No, Herr Congressman, have and have not, when it came to determining who would be listened to and who could be ignored, meant having the bomb or not having the bomb." Ruff paused, allowing this statement to take root as he limped from behind his desk over to a wall where a map of Germany, with its 1938 borders lightly highlighted and extending from its current borders, was displayed. Stopping next to a German flag, Ruff turned back and looked at Lewis, ready to continue where he had left off.
"During the eighties, a great famine swept through much of Africa. Though the United States was concerned, officially it did little. The result, Herr Congressman, was millions of deaths, deaths of innocent women and children that were recorded on film and shown almost nightly in every home in America. In the early nineties, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the new republics of the Commonwealth faced the same fate, the nations of the world, led by the United States, tripped over themselves in an effort to rush aid to the poor Russians. And why, Herr Congressman, such a difference? The reason is obvious. Ethiopia had no nuclear-tipped missiles that could reach the United States."
Lewis, shifting in his chair, finally found a chance to speak as Ruff paused. "That, Herr Chancellor, is a rather cynical view. Surely you must realize that"
With a clearly discernible edge in his voice, Ruff cut Lewis off. "This, Herr Congressman, is a very cynical world. Only those who are willing to accept that and deal with the reality of things as they are and not as they would like them to be will survive. Fifty years ago, Germany was a broken country. Mentally and physically we had reached the zero point. There was nothing. Nothing. Even worse, Herr Congressman, if such a thing can be imagined, was the contempt with which your countrymen, cloaked in self-righteousness, came into our country and judged our people according to a morality that even your own government could not live up to.' We sat helpless, broken, and exhausted, while you systematically created the theory of collective guilt and then proceeded to drag the German people, their culture, and their history, through the filth as if we were nothing but animals. And then, to add hypocrisy to hypocrisy, when it suited your needs, when the communists suddenly turned from friend to enemy and your businessmen needed new markets to exploit, we became acceptable again. But in your eyes, and in the eyes of the American politicians bought and paid for by the Jews, we never were, and never could be, your equal, worthy to sit down with you and share as equals. Well, Herr Congressman, we have paid for the sins of our fathers. For fifty years we have sat quietly while your countrymen pointed to us and told us that we should be ashamed of ourselves on one hand while using our people and our nation to achieve your political ends. It is time now that we turn our backs on the past and look to the future, to the new order in Central Europe, an order that has no room for the hypocrisy of American politics and meddling."