He wasn’t surprised that Germany East had refused to give up its atomic bombs, even though the Americans had put immense pressure on them to do just that. They had no other way to guarantee that the other powers would leave them alone. But it was worrying. If relations between Germany Prime and Germany East collapsed, it might mean another war, one that might destroy the Reich for good. And then…
“Thank you for your assistance,” Forster said, bringing him out of his thoughts. “If you hadn’t helped us…”
“We were helping ourselves,” Volker said. “Holliston had to be stopped.”
He looked across the ballroom, his gaze passing over Admiral Wilhelm Riess. The head of the Abwehr had confessed the moment he was confronted, admitting that he’d sided with Holliston because it was the only way to protect the Reich. Volker had wanted to hang him for his crimes, but the treaty had made it clear that Riess needed to be sent into exile in France instead. Germany East didn’t want him.
And he could tell our enemies too much, Volker thought. Perhaps he should never be allowed to leave Germany.
“Too many people have died,” he added, after a moment. “Let’s put an end to it, shall we?”
But he knew it wouldn’t end. No one knew for sure how many people had died in the fighting, but hundreds of thousands of people had been displaced, their homes destroyed by one side or the other. The economy was a mess, crime was on the rise, and discontent was spreading rapidly. Volker honestly had no idea when they’d be able to hold elections, nor of what would happen when they finally did. How long would it be, he asked himself, before new political parties started to form?
And what will happen, he asked himself, when they start promising the voters everything, in exchange for being voted into power?
He didn’t regret what he’d done. He’d served the state loyally — first as a stormtrooper and then as a factory foreman — but the state had betrayed him. The state had betrayed everyone, from the highest to the lowest. There had been no choice but to rise up and fight. And yet, now the fighting was done, he couldn’t help feeling a little unsure of himself. The war had been bad, but the peace was going to be terrible.
But you have no choice, he told himself sternly. Get to work.
“I heard the French are insistent on recovering their lost territory,” Ambassador Turtledove said, as he leaned over the balcony and peered down at the crowd. “Do you think they have a chance?”
Andrew shrugged. The last few months had exposed more cracks in the Reich’s towering edifice than he’d ever thought possible. Entire swathes of the German system had weakened, or shattered, or simply vanished into nothingness. The Kriegsmarine was largely intact — naval brigades had done excellent work shipping food and supplies through Germany — but both the Heer and the Luftwaffe were badly weakened. It was possible, perhaps, that France would have a chance to recover her territories.
But the Germans still have nukes, he thought. And they’ve proven themselves willing to use them.
He scowled. The Provisional Government hadn’t warned anyone, least of all the United States, before authorising and carrying out a second nuclear strike. Andrew understood the logic — the SS base had needed to be destroyed before it was too late — but it still set a worrying precedent. God alone knew what would happen if Berlin threatened Paris or Rome if either of the two nations tried to assert themselves. Somehow, he doubted Washington would risk nuclear war for the French.
“There’s too much at risk, right now,” he said. “They might be better served building up their economies instead.”
It would be possible too, he knew. His sources in the Provisional Government had slipped him a draft copy of the second Berlin Treaty. The French — and the other subject nations — were forbidden from developing nuclear weapons or signing any form of military treaty with outside powers, but otherwise they had free rein. Given time — and the mess the Reich Council had made of the German economy — Andrew wouldn’t be surprised if the French managed to rapidly outpace the Reich. Of course, the French would have their own problems — they had an empire to support — but they might well overcome them faster than the Germans.
“Let us hope so,” Ambassador Turtledove said.
Andrew felt a flicker of sympathy for the older man. There were too many dissatisfied factions in Washington who blamed the ambassador for their feelings, even though no one would have been able to do a better job. Turtledove would be lucky to see out the rest of the President’s term in office, let alone remain in his job after the 1988 election. Hell, the midterm elections of 1986 would probably serve as a judgement on Turtledove — and President Anderson — for their work.
And neither of them had much power to steer events in the Reich, he thought, grimly. All they could do was try to influence developments.
“We’ll find out,” he said.
If there was one advantage to the war, it was that the Reich wasn’t going to be threatening the North Atlantic Alliance any longer. America and her allies could plough resources into space-based technology and other fields that promised massive returns. There would be no need to maintain a giant standing army, although he hoped that Washington would have the sense not to make any major cuts until they knew the Reich was going to stay peaceful. And then… who knew? Statehood for Japan? A closer union with the rest of the Anglo world?
But he couldn’t imagine America simply turning its back on the world.
Turtledove nodded, grimly. “Time will tell, I suppose,” he said. He nodded towards the people on the dance floor. “Do you think those people know their world is built on a giant mass grave?”
Andrew gave him a sidelong look. Turtledove was of Jewish descent, a fact that the Reich had chosen to ignore — if, indeed, it had known. The Ambassador certainly didn’t fit the horrific depictions of subhuman creatures shown in elementary school textbooks all over the Reich. But he had had family who’d lived in the Reich, before Hitler had taken power. He’d never heard anything from them since the Nazis had clamped down on emigration.
“I suspect some of them know,” he said, finally. “But the others…”
He shook his head. The Reich had always seemed oddly divided on its crimes. There were times when it seemed to glory in the horrors it had committed to safeguard its power and times when it seemed intent on covering them up. Schoolchildren had been arrested and sent east — their parents shipped to the camps — for possessing illicit copies of The Diary of a Young Girl, yet those same schoolchildren had been given textbooks that gloated over the devastation the Reich had wreaked on the pre-war world. And on everyone it considered subhuman.
“They may never come to terms with it,” he said. “And we probably shouldn’t push them either.”
Turtledove cocked an eyebrow. “Like the Indians?”
Andrew sighed. The American Indians — Native Americans, as they wanted to be called these days — had been pushed aside and largely eliminated by the Europeans when they started to settle America. But everyone involved in the whole affair was dead and buried, their descendants innocent of their crimes. The Reich… he wondered, looking down at the men below him, just how many of them had committed horrific crimes to preserve the Reich. It would not be easy to bring them to justice.