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POV of Crown Prince Wilhelm
20-28-November-1920
''Once again, he refused to do anything. What the hell is happening to Karl? Ever since that damned marriage, he seems to have convinced himself that he is untouchable, and he has not stopped hindering Germany's recovery for a single moment'' my father said, looking quite annoyed while observing Karl's typical response whenever we asked him to do something about his book.
A very long response, full of explanations and evasions, only to end by saying that he would see what he could do.
The problem was that this matter had already been setting the streets on fire for several months, and there seemed to be no way to calm it no matter how much we tried. The group Karl directly attacked in his book continued to form an integral part of our government and, even more importantly, of the Army.
Father had preferred to keep all of that behind closed doors. Many officers were being punished for what had happened during the war and, especially, for that practically hostile seizure of power that the High Command had carried out during the final years of the conflict.
Although calling those punishments was being rather generous.
They did not come remotely close to what should have been done to that group of traitors. Some of them should have ended up hanging or standing before a firing squad. However, it had been preferred simply to remove them from their posts, impose some financial penalties for the damage caused and little more.
And all for one reason that, unpleasant as it was, we could not ignore: we could not afford to turn the Army against us.
Whether we liked it or not, too many officers had been completely influenced by the doctrines of Hindenburg and Ludendorff. For many of them, those two men still remained models to follow, commanders who had embodied the Army during the war.
If we acted too harshly against them, we ran the risk that the Army, one of the greatest symbols and pillars of the Kaiserreich, would begin to see the Imperial House as an enemy.
And if we reached that point, we could say farewell to the monarchy in Germany.
Then there was the problem of Karl.
He did have more than enough reasons to want to see Hindenburg hanging from a rope, and he probably would not be satisfied with only that. Knowing him, who knew what else he would want to do with his corpse in order to deny that miserable man even the last trace of pride he might still preserve.
Karl had mentioned him personally several times in his book. He had dedicated entire pages to explaining how Hindenburg had actively sabotaged different efforts during the war when those efforts could diminish his own importance, while doing everything possible to remain before the cameras and present himself to Germany as the great hero saving the Empire.
And the worst part was that Karl seemed to have far too much information to support his accusations.
That probably had something to do with the last great information leak we had suffered, when that middle-ranking officer from Abteilung IIIb deserted and ended up handing Karl an absurd quantity of confidential documents.
Among them were even records of conversations held with the French.
So it was not strange either to imagine that Karl had in his hands the orders issued by Hindenburg during the war.
In fact, he had dedicated practically an entire chapter of his book to breaking them down one by one.
Karl did not limit himself to saying that Hindenburg had made mistakes. He compared his orders with their consequences, showed those that had ended in disaster and pointed out other decisions that, even before being taken, already contradicted previous experiences which proved that such ideas did not work.
That was precisely what made the book so dangerous.
It was not merely Karl insulting an old marshal.
There were documents. Dates. Orders. Results. And that made it much harder to simply accuse him of lying.
For that reason, it was not too surprising either that, in barely a few months, there had already been two attempts to assassinate Hindenburg.
Ultranationalist sectors had begun searching for those responsible for the defeat, and some of them had decided that the former commander was one of the men who had to pay for it.
As expected, several Army generals had reacted immediately and placed a permanent military escort around the old marshal.
Thanks to that, both attempts had ended as little more than a few men arrested before they could get too close.
But that did not truly solve the problem.
Karl's book was everywhere.
And, by that point, it was quite evident that Hindenburg would have to spend the rest of his life hidden away in his villa, surrounded by soldiers, waiting for no other German to decide that the time had come to make him personally pay for the defeat.
''It is not as if we can do much either. Karl, in Riga, is practically untouchable. He is protected by soldiers trained by him personally and, if his men resemble even a little the man who trained them, you will understand why he feels so secure. Especially now, with the British protecting him and, in a certain sense, Russia doing exactly the same. They also want to be the ones who end up keeping those territories'' I said while looking at my father.
''Karl is sitting in the middle of an almost perfect situation. He knows that, if any of us tries to move directly against him, the others will react. Some to protect him and others simply to prevent someone else from keeping what they consider theirs. And none of those possibilities benefits us'' I continued.
''I know… I also understand Karl's desire to punish Hindenburg, but, by God, could he not have waited until the situation stabilized?'' Father replied while clenching the fist of his healthy arm. ''Now who knows what the hell will happen with the distribution of the Reichstag. That decree was necessary. I could not allow a Reichstag that refused to cooperate to continue existing while the country tried to recover, but you can be certain that the next representatives will try to take away my power to dissolve it so it cannot happen again.''
Father remained silent for a few seconds before slowly shaking his head.
''Then we will have to invest much more in the next elections. We cannot simply call them and hope that this time things will go well. We need a real campaign, a clear message and candidates capable of defending it. We cannot lose the Reichstag again or we will end up in exactly the same situation'' I said while watching my father, who continued shaking his head.
''Yes, I know, my son. But you must be clear that we cannot think only about the next elections either. There are things we cannot rule out'' Father replied before looking directly into my eyes.
''The Austrians are now carrying out their plebiscites to request the Anschluss, and we cannot say no to them. It would be absurd. We would finally be completing what generations of Germans have desired: an Empire that gathers practically all Germans under one crown.''
Father made a brief pause.
''But one thing is to celebrate the union and quite another to govern what comes afterward. We are not speaking only of the Austrians. There are also all the Czechs who would remain inside the new Empire, in addition to the political consequences that millions of new citizens and representatives would bring with them.''
''And then there are the other self-determination plebiscites that must be held during the next four years. Each one of them can modify our borders, our population and even the future composition of the Reichstag. So before worrying only about winning an election, we have to know exactly what Germany we will be governing when the moment comes to hold them.''
''Besides, we have to consider the British and French reaction to that annexation. Not to mention that the Russians will surely also present some kind of protest, although they may be too focused on that frenzy of theirs to reconquer territories and rebuild the Empire. The new Tsar, from what we know, is trying to use his neighbors' resources to pay Russia's debts, so I would not rule out him trying to extract some concession from all of this'' I said while thinking about the possible repercussions of the Anschluss.
''Exactly. If we refuse the Anschluss, we will most likely end up being thrown from the throne. But who knows what the French and British will demand to accept the annexation. We have neither the strength nor the popular will necessary to withstand another war. Right now even the Army is being disputed by different political groups, so I very much doubt the population would accept new conscriptions or a return to a war economy if the diplomatic pressure from our neighbors ends up turning into military threats'' Father replied, slowly nodding. ''So, whether we like it or not, we will probably have to give up something in the west to gain Austria.''
''France will ask for Alsace-Lorraine. That is obvious. Or they will invent some condition meant to harm our chances of winning the plebiscites in culturally German areas. They could also insist on some concession regarding Denmark. Perhaps economic compensation, patents, military restrictions… there are too many possibilities, and many of them we will have to accept because we simply cannot endure another war'' I said, mentally going over each of the options.
''If Karl had not… destabilized us in that way, we could negotiate from a much stronger position. We would have an Army somewhat more supported by the people and, perhaps, enough national sentiment for the French and British to believe Germany would be willing to fight if they pressed too hard. But now… unfortunately, we have none of that'' Father said while repeatedly tapping the table with one finger and breathing audibly, increasingly annoyed with his own conclusions.
Our conversation ended shortly afterward. There were too many matters to attend to, especially with the beginning of new protests across practically the entire national territory.
The days passed and the Austrian plebiscites gave exactly the result we all expected.
In some regions, up to ninety-five percent of voters had supported integration with Germany and the creation of a great German Empire in which, at last, all Germans would be united under the same flag and the same State.
But, just as we had foreseen, our former enemies did not take long to send their diplomats.
We did not know how much they truly knew about our internal situation. Nor did we know too much about theirs, beyond the fact that France continued rebuilding after the chaos we had left across a good part of its territory and that the British were going through a considerable commercial boom. Much of the naval capacity that had previously been dedicated to war was returning to maritime trade, something that had to be greatly benefiting their economy.
And, just as we feared, the demands began to arrive.
France began directly by demanding the complete cancellation of the Anschluss.
Even the Kingdom of Italy, for some reason I found almost comical considering its own situation, presented a protest demanding that the plebiscites in South Tyrol and Istria be canceled and that those territories be handed over to Italy.
Considering that the Italian Kingdom was still caught up in its political and military conflict with the Republic of Lombardy-Venetia, those demands were almost completely ignored.
The French ones, on the other hand, could not be ignored.
Paris adopted a much more aggressive position, even going so far as to hint at the possibility of war if Germany attempted to absorb all the territories of the former Austrian monarchy without first accepting some kind of agreement.
The British did not take long to present their own conditions either.
London demanded, among other things, that Bohemia not be incorporated in its entirety into Germany.
That was much more complicated to negotiate because of the enormous number of Germans living within those lands. Simply abandoning all the Germans of Bohemia would have been politically disastrous for us, in addition to completely contradicting the justification we were using to carry out the Anschluss.
Finally, a middle solution was found.
The Sudetenland, where support for integration with Germany was overwhelming and the German population constituted an enormous part of the inhabitants, would be incorporated into the Reich.
The rest of the former Kingdom of Bohemia, where support for the Anschluss had been much lower and in some areas barely reached ten percent, would be turned into an independent and neutral State.
It was not the solution many nationalists desired, but it was infinitely better than risking a war with Great Britain and France over territories whose own population did not even mostly wish to be part of the Reich.
And the British, of course, wanted something in return.
Among the small economic concessions they demanded, there was one rather particular one.
The penicillin patent.
That patent had been in our hands since Karl had been declared a traitor. When that happened, his properties within the Empire had been confiscated and, among them, were several patents registered in his name.
Karl had never tried to reclaim them.
He probably did not even care too much about them.
The British, on the other hand, wanted to obtain the rights to penicillin so they would not have to keep paying to use that patent and could freely produce the medicine within their own Empire.
It was a surprisingly small request considering everything they could have demanded from us.
And if handing them a patent that Karl had not even tried to recover allowed us to avoid problems with London while moving forward with the Anschluss, then, from my point of view, they could keep it.
The French complaints, once they saw that the British had already been appeased, diminished considerably. In the end, Paris reduced its demands to stricter military restrictions, mainly regarding tanks and aviation, as well as limiting the number of shipyards Germany could dedicate to military uses.
They also demanded that a French colonization of Alsace-Lorraine be allowed to begin, along with some deportations of Germans from the region, with the quite obvious intention of improving their chances of winning the plebiscite that was to be held in four years.
That ended up being accepted.
After all, even in the event of a French victory, a good part of the Germans expelled from Alsace-Lorraine would end up being deported to Germany. We would lose the territory, yes, but we would keep that population within the Reich and would simply have to absorb it in other regions.
To our surprise, the Russian request ended up being the most reasonable of all.
The Russians only demanded that, regardless of the result of the Slovenian plebiscite, a certain degree of autonomy be guaranteed for the Slavic population of the region. In addition, they requested a small reduction in the fees for using the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal in the event that Germany won the future plebiscites against Denmark and ended up incorporating the disputed areas.
Compared to everything we had expected from them, that was practically insignificant.
So, after long negotiations, we had finally managed to resolve the Anschluss crisis without provoking a new European war.
But we had barely finished with one crisis when another began to appear before us.
Now we had to administer Austria.
And, even more importantly, we had to find a way to incorporate it into the Empire without making the States that already formed Germany feel that their power within the federation was being destroyed by the arrival of millions of new Austrian citizens.
We knew that my father retained considerable popularity among a good part of the Austrian population. The reunification of the Germans under a single Crown could strengthen that image even further, so there was a very real possibility that many of the new Austrian governments would end up being favorable to imperial authority.
If that happened, Prussia and the Crown could emerge considerably strengthened within the federation.
But the exact opposite possibility also existed.
Austria was not Prussia.
The Austrians could feel much closer politically to Bavaria and the other southern States than to Berlin. They shared religion, traditions and a very different outlook from the one that predominated among the northern Prussians.
So we could not simply assume that the Austrian votes within the Bundesrat would be ours.
We could end up incorporating Austria only to discover that we had created a southern bloc far more powerful than before.
And that was precisely the problem.
We still had to decide how the Bundesrat would be constituted after the annexation. Depending on how the new votes were distributed, the internal balance of the Empire could change completely.
If we played our cards well and the Austrians ended up supporting my father, we could gather enough votes to reform some of the operating rules of the imperial federal State and even strengthen the position of the Crown.
But, if we did things badly, Austria could join politically with Bavaria, Württemberg and the other southern States.
In that case, not only would we lose that opportunity, but we could end up creating a bloc within the Bundesrat capable of directly confronting Prussia.
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