Chapter 14: Ability
Meanwhile, the army's arrival completely overturned the battle.
Restricted by the Treaty of Versailles, Germany possessed only a few precious armored vehicles, but even those few were enough. They roared down Wilhelmstrasse through the rain, their steel hulls glistening beneath the streetlamps while water washed over the bodies already lying in the road, filling the air with a faint metallic smell like rust and blood mingled together.
Tat-tat-tat-tat!
Without explosives, rifles were little more than toys in front of armored steel.
Bullets struck the vehicles and burst into sparks. Machine guns mounted on the armored cars spat fire into the rainy night, each flash briefly illuminating broken flags, shattered windows, and the terrified faces of men who had thought themselves revolutionaries only hours ago.
"I surrender! I surrender!"
Under such a one-sided slaughter, the desperate cries for mercy rose and fell without pause. Kralev and the other Trotskyists who had crossed all the way from Soviet Russia found their dreams of revolution smashed to pieces by reality.
It was a cruel thing.
But idealism had never been enough to bridge the gulf between dreams and victory, and the armored vehicles grinding through the street were proof enough of that truth.
Only when your fist is large enough do your words carry weight.
No matter how much Kralev shouted, no matter how fiercely he tried to keep the workers from breaking, the difference in strength was simply too vast. One by one, the organized workers threw down their rifles.
In the end, only Kralev remained.
Surrounded inside a small restaurant, with no route of escape left, he chose to put the gun to his own head and end his life there, proving the sincerity of his ideals with death.
A single night passed.
The continuous gunfire did not fully fade until dawn began to arrive with the falling rain.
The citizens of Berlin had been dragged from sleep by the sound of battle. Nervous hands pulled aside curtains all across the city as people tried to catch a glimpse of what had happened. Families that still had some means huddled around radios, turning knobs back and forth in search of news. The bolder ones pulled on coats and boots and followed the scent of a story straight toward Wilhelmstrasse alongside the reporters.
But the moment the first few journalists approached, lines of policemen blocked their way.
The officers said nothing.
They did not need to.
The smell of gunpowder still clinging to them told its own story.
Beyond the cordon, bodies draped in white cloth and toppled left wing banners silently recounted last night's tragedy.
"Officer, could you help us out a little?"
Two reporters from the German Gazette stepped forward with practiced familiarity and slipped a stack of cash into the hands of two policemen at the scene.
The officer in charge took the money, accepted a lit cigarette, inhaled deeply, and let out a tired stream of smoke.
"Uprising. Riot," he said flatly. "Berlin is still Berlin."
…
Meanwhile, at Berlin Charité Hospital, soldiers filled the corridor outside a private ward.
Inside that hastily cleared room, Marshal Hindenburg and President Ebert sat with bandaged wrists, studying the latest telegrams laid out before them.
The gun battle of the previous night, and the attempted seizure of the Ministry of Economics, could perhaps be concealed from ordinary citizens for a short while.
But it could not be hidden from senior officials of the government.
Nor from London and Washington.
Within hours, telegram after telegram had poured into Berlin. On the surface they expressed concern for the safety of the government leadership.
In truth, every one of them was simply confirming that the current German government was still alive.
"Marshal, the materials you requested."
The archive official who delivered the file looked as if he had been dragged straight out of bed by the call of duty. He suppressed a yawn with difficulty, clearly serving Germany against his will at this hour.
"Understood," Hindenburg said. "Go back and prepare a full casualty report. I want the complete number of dead."
He held a cup of coffee in one hand.
His age, combined with the fright of the previous night, had put a rough weariness into his usually forceful voice. He took a sip and used the bitterness to suppress the drowsiness still clawing at him.
Then he opened the file.
With a slight movement of his finger, the pages of Jörg von Roman's information slipped one by one before his eyes.
So he was a child of the Roman family.
No wonder he had possessed the courage to disregard his own life.
Hindenburg's gaze paused at the line under Family Relations.
Old nobility.
That small phrase visibly eased the tension in his brow.
To Hindenburg, a noble was instinctively more trustworthy than an ordinary man.
Had an ordinary citizen saved his life, that man might have received money, position, perhaps some economic privileges.
But if the one who saved him was the descendant of a military noble house, then that was another matter entirely.
In that case, Hindenburg would not hesitate to cultivate him, to shape him into a senior officer and key political figure loyal to his own camp.
Of course, all of that depended on one question.
Did the young man actually have the ability?
Hindenburg did not yet know exactly how the rebellion had been organized. But from what he had already seen, this Berlin Minister of Public Order and Police was no empty fool. A man who could make a correct judgment in the first critical moment, jam a pistol against the guard captain's head, and force obedience out of him was not incompetent.
On a battlefield, such decisiveness was enough to save hundreds, even thousands, of soldiers and earn an Iron Cross.
And this same decisiveness had saved his life.
The fact that he was still able to sit here unharmed proved as much.
Hindenburg closed the file and resumed the conversation from before.
"Mr. President, we cannot allow inflation to continue like this. Yesterday's riot was not merely a disturbance. It was a warning."
His voice was slow but heavy.
"When society falls into chaos, parties from every region, and outside forces as well, will all come to carve away their share of Germany's flesh."
He looked at Ebert directly.
"If we cannot stabilize the situation, the problems in front of us will only multiply."
Ebert took a deep drag from his cigarette.
His pupils were clouded with helpless confusion.
Though he wore the title President of the Weimar Republic, how much power did he truly possess?
The source of social unrest was still the same: France's occupation of the Ruhr and the crushing burden of foreign debt imposed by the Treaty of Versailles.
In plain terms, every problem led back to one thing.
Money.
And the men who had money, the great landowners and entrenched elites, refused to pay.
Was he supposed to command the army and force them to cough it up?
If he did, the presidency itself would likely be taken from him before the month was over.
Caught between enemies abroad and paralysis at home, Ebert even found himself thinking, with exhausted bitterness, that perhaps it would have been better had he died in the rain last night.
"Then what are we supposed to do, Marshal?" he asked quietly.
After those words, silence spread through the room like cigarette smoke.
Hindenburg shook his head.
To tell the truth, he did not know either.
He was only an old marshal from a defeated country, a man who still carried some weight in government but not enough to move mountains. Even the problems within the army itself had no easy answer, neither for him nor for Seeckt. They were merely trying to preserve the final scrap of German dignity.
The Treaty of Versailles was like a mountain pressing on all of them.
As long as that treaty remained, Germany would never truly revive.
This confusion, this helplessness, was not only the buried emotion of the masses.
It was theirs as well.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
A soft sound at the door broke both men from their thoughts.
"Come in."
The secretary stepped in and bowed slightly.
"Mr. President, Jörg is awake."
The two men exchanged a glance, then rose at the same time.
They intended to personally thank the young man who had saved their lives.
When the door opened, they found that Jörg, despite having taken two bullets, did not look like a man who had almost lost half his life.
Perhaps it was the system's reward for changing fate.
Aside from the burning pain of the wounds, his mind was entirely clear.
He was sitting up in bed with a cup of black tea in one hand and a newspaper in the other, reading calmly just after surgery, looking nothing like a patient.
The moment he noticed movement at the doorway, he raised his eyes.
The two highest authorities in Germany were staring at him.
For a brief instant, the strangeness of it all washed over him. These were figures from history itself, standing alive before his bed.
But that fleeting astonishment disappeared as quickly as it came.
Respect replaced it on his face.
Jörg set down the newspaper, straightened his arm, and gave a formal salute.
"Mr. President, Marshal," he said, voice steady, "Jörg von Roman, Minister of Public Order and Police of Berlin, salutes you."
.....
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