I: Pax Ferrea
“The syndicalists are gone, but I don’t know if the world is freer – only quieter.”
– María Teresa de Campos, Brazilian diplomat, speech to the Pan-American League, 1950
Catching Back Up: Germany 1936 – 48
In the annals of German statecraft, few figures loom as enigmatically as Kurt von Schleicher, the soldier-statesman who, amid the inferno of the Second Weltkrieg, reshaped the Reich into something unsettlingly new. He was not the first Prussian officer to believe iron discipline alone could rescue Germany, but he was among the rare few to enshrine that creed in constitutional law.
Before Schleicher’s ascent, Chancellor Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, the famed “Lion of Africa”, steered Germany through its worst economic collapse only to confront an even graver test: the assault of the Internationale and Russian ultranationalists. The enemy would storm all the way to the Elbe and Königsberg. Though the lines were stabilised, final victory proved elusive. A ghastly stalemate bled the Reich white and exhausted its people.
(Fig. 1) Highwater of the Syndicalists and Russians
(Fig. 2) Propaganda poster of one of the two puppet syndicalist republics established by the French during the occupation - during the occupation, the Volksgarde Rheinland numbered some 30,000 and the Volksmiliz Nord around 12,000. Both forces were largely ineffective, failing to attract volunteers from the populace. The latter was disbanded in early 1942 given it was a liability rather than an asset. While the Volksgarde Rheinland suffered heavy desertions, its core fought on until ultimate destruction in the Second Battle of Essen.
Into this void stepped von Schleicher, who forged the German National Unity Front (
Deutschnationale Einheitsfront, DNEF), an authoritarian bloc that absorbed or extinguished rivals. Coldly efficient, he insisted that ruthless unity alone could secure victory. Whether Germany might have prevailed under von Lettow-Vorbeck is a counterfactual for fiction to answer. What mattered was that it was Schleicher who led Germany from defeat to triumph, acquiring the aura of a national redeemer.
The DNEF won a postwar landslide, giving the “Steel Chancellor” the mandate to carve his vision into the state’s marrow. To Schleicher, the “March 1920 Constitution” had enabled the chaos of the 1920s and 30s. In its place came an austere, centralised technocracy intolerant of dissent.
The “Schleicher Constitution” remade Germany. Kaiser Wilhelm III remained head of state, but only nominally. The crown’s power hung by a thread, its only function to rubberstamp a new Chancellor. State sovereignty too was dismantled. Prussia, long a rival centre of power, was abolished entirely. Its territory was divided into imperial provinces ruled from Berlin. Bavaria’s defiance was crushed by decree; a State Commissar (
Staatskommissar) replaced its government. Elsewhere, royal families and state governments lingered as pale shadows, gradually eclipsed by DNEF functionaries. For many ordinary Germans, local identities began to fade. A new motto emerged:
Ein Volk, ein Reich, eine Politik. Uniformity became the watchword. Education, policing, the economy would all be standardised.
(Fig. 3) The division of Prussia
With federalism neutered, the old Bundesrat was scrapped in favour of the Chamber of Estates (
Ständekammer), a corporatist organ intended to mirror the Volk, not party politics. Here, representation was occupational, not the frankenstein parties Schleicher loathed. Each estate (Stände) would elect its own representatives via internal vote. The importance and seat distribution of each is set by law, but would be reviewed every 10 years through a State Performance Board and the national census, conducted by Census Survey Council (
Zensus-Umfragerat, ZU).
To begin with, 370 seats would be allocated to the primary economic and social estates. A further 80 would go to national and cultural groups, with the final 50 being administrative seats to be divided at the Chancellor's discretion.
| Estate | Description | Seats |
|---|
| Industrial Employers Federation | Major firms, heavy industry, cartels (IG Farben, Krupp, Siemens, etc.) | 68 |
| Trade Unions | Official national unions, closely monitored by the state - must be affiliated with the Trade Union Confederation to partake | 52 |
| Agricultural Chambers | Farmers' associations, landowners | 43 |
| Mittelstand & Small Business | Artisans, shopkeepers, family firms | 27 |
| Financial Institutions | Banks, insurance companies, stock exchanges | 22 |
| Technocracy & Engineering Bodies | Engineers, planners, architects | 28 |
| Clergy | Protestant & Catholic Churches, small Orthodox and Jewish representation | 25 |
| Legal & Judiciary | Judges, lawyers, legal scholars | 21 |
| Civil Servants | Bureaucrats, postal officials, administrators | 19 |
| Scientific & Academic Community | Professors, institutes, research bodies | 27 |
| Press & Publishing | Newspaper syndicates, editors, major publishing houses | 18 |
| Military Veterans & Officers Corps | Army associations, retired high officers | 20 |
| Länder Delegates | 1 per German state, includes Reichsland subdivisions | 20 |
| Cultural Institutions | Museums, historical societies, theaters | 9 |
| Ethnic Minorities | Sorbs, Danes, Poles, French Alsatians, etc. | 11 |
| War Widows & Orphans Association | Honorary estate reflecting loss and sacrifice | 10 |
| Youth & Student Councils | National student and youth organizations (e.g. Reichsjugendrat) | 10 |
| Professional Athletes & Guilds | Sports associations and Olympics committees | 4 |
| Disabled & Invalid Associations | War-disabled, industrially injured | 6 |
| Philosophical & Ethical Boards | Think tanks, state philosophical societies | 10 |
| Chancellor-appointed Technical Experts | Non-voting unless needed, e.g. for tie breaks, emergencies, etc. | 20 |
| Neutral Oversight and Procedural Committee | Manage the standing committees, perform audits, oversee electoral irregularities within estates, and run internal elections | 30 |
(Fig. 4) Representative breakdown of the 1st Ständekammer (1947–51)
The military’s role was also redefined. The new constitution made the armed forces guardians of the state, empowered to veto cabinet picks and oversee all levels of administration. Schleicher’s wartime practice of appointing loyal generals to ministries became permanent. Backed by its wartime prestige, the military stood as arbiter of civilian life, Germany had become now a Wehrstaat in all but name.
Though authoritarian, Schleicher’s regime preserved the Reichstag and held regular elections for it and the Ständekammer. The DNEF planned to dominate through subtlety: taming the media, stage-managing votes, and neutralising dissent. Outwardly, it trumpeted an “enlightened” new order of unity, security, and civilisation. Beneath the high-minded rhetoric, the true aim was control.
Schleicher would not live to see his system in action. Worn down by pernicious anaemia and wartime strain, he resigned on November 7th 1947, barely six months after his election victory, handing power to his State Secretary for the Economy, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler. A month later, he was dead.
Extract from “The Velvet Gauntlet: Reichskanzeler Goerdeler”, by Max Weber
While both Goerdeler and Schleicher were political chameleons, the former’s philosophy on the use of power was far more muted and patient. Where Schleicher had governed in haste, knowing death stalked him, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler proceeded with caution, believing time, if not history, was on his side. After the tectonic changes his predecessor had introduced, the new Chancellor knew consolidation was needed. If ever there was a sign of this, it would be the aftermath of the murder of Kurt von Schumacher, the liberal statesman, wartime dissenter and spiritual heir to the old social democratic tradition.
By early 1948, the DNEF, still insisting it was no party but a ‘people’s movement’ (
Volksbewegung), pressed ahead with plans to outlaw all political parties. Quoting Schleicher’s dictum that partisanship “
must die, for the benefit of the Reich,” DNEF ministers introduced a bill in the Reichstag. The intent was unmistakable: to eliminate the last vestige of political resistance.
In a final act of defiance, the Social Democrats (
Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD) and remnants of the conservative right, the Black-White-Red Coalition (
Schwarz-Weiß-Rot, SWR), joined forces to oppose the DNEF. They knew what was coming. Banned from party affiliation, their candidates would be forced to stand as independents. They would be left without the funding, outreach, the whipping necessary to tame maverick votes, branding and the institutional knowledge of the party machinery, to say nothing of protection from state pressure. It was political euthanasia.
Schumacher led the opposition inside the Reichstag. But before a vote could be taken, a general of the Berlin garrison, emboldened by his new constitutional remit, intervened. With military discipline and bureaucratic zeal, he ordered delegates restrained and the vote forced through. In the chaos, Schumacher was killed (whether this was an accident or not has never been fully confirmed).
His death sent shockwaves through a brittle society still nursing the wounds of total war. Berlin erupted. Tens of thousands flooded the streets in what became the largest protest since the war began. These were not syndicalists or radicals, but veterans, students, widows, clerks, ordinary citizens who no longer recognised their country. They marched not for revolution, but for dignity, for a future not dictated by commissars and colonels.
For a regime that had convinced itself of inevitability, the eruption was a rude awakening. Germany, the whole world, waited with bated breath. For a night, the words ‘civil war’ hung in the air.
But Goerdeler, unlike what another successor to Schleicher might have chosen, decided on restraint. Though the party ban passed, he shelved a raft of further repressive measures. Neither tanks nor secret police were called in. There were no military tribunals, no midnight purges. Instead, he offered rhetoric; “dialogue,” “unity,” “morality”, “sensibility”, and quietly allowed space for civil life to breathe. Private forums were tolerated. Newspapers survived, albeit under government-directed “Soft Editing” (
Bearbeitung). It was limited liberty but liberty nonetheless. Reichstag delegates remained so, free to associate and network with one another, but under no greater affiliation than their constituencies. Not even the word “amnesty” was proffered. No wrong had been done. Schumacher’s death was a terrible accident.
Goerdeler understood what hardliners in the DNEF and military did not; that even autocracy requires oxygen. Germans, weary from war and scarcity, wanted order, not suffocation. Despite internal pressure from the likes of DNEF political philosophers like Carl Schmitt or military extremists like Field Marshal Walther Model, the Chancellor responded with a velvet gauntlet: firm, legalistic, sheathed in tradition. The Reichstag would meet. Votes would occur. The courts would still ruled on cases, except in matters of sedition. To foreign observers, the Reich of 1948 could plausibly be mistaken for a constitutional monarchy, slowly recovering from national trauma.
Beneath that façade, however, power was being quietly restructured. Goerdeler shifted the DNEF’s strategy from total domination to long-term entrenchment. The goal was not to extinguish society but to absorb it, outlasting resistance by blanketing every civic space the old parties had vacated. Where the SPD and SWR lacked deep civic institutions, the DNEF possessed them in abundance. The Trade Union Confederation (
Gewerkschaftsbund, GsB), the National Mother’s Council (
Reichsmütterrat, RMR e.V.), the Directorate for Spiritual Unity (
Direktion für Geistige Einheit, DGE). These were not mere adjuncts but instruments of governance, their leaderships been carefully vetted for DNEF loyalty and ideology. Many of them were created by the DNEF and had now permeated society for years. The aim would be to cultivate a citizenry of obedience and managerial efficiency: change from the roots, not from the canopy.
Goerdeler had chosen not to rule by terror or charisma, but through structure, slow attrition, and the silent suffocation of alternatives. It was a subtler tyranny, no less determined, but far more sustainable.
Year End Editorial – “Die Mittagszeitung”, Berlin Edition, December 31, 1949
As 1949 draws to a close, the German people and their brethren stand at the pinnacle of a new world. Four years ago, we fought and won the Second Weltkrieg, not merely a military struggle, but a civilizational reckoning. The rewards of that victory are now unmistakable. While lesser powers drift into uncertainty or decay, the German Reich and our proud allies have forged a continent of stability, prosperity, and dignity.
At Home: Prosperity with Purpose
Under the steady hand of Chancellor Goerdeler and the guidance of the National Unity Front, Germany has not only recovered, but advanced. The once-crippled cities of Dresden, Leipzig, Hamburg, Erfurt, Munich, and beyond have been rebuilt into proud urban centres, connected through the Autobahn Restoration Plan. The latest extensions have led to state-of-the-art paved links to Zürich, Budapest, and Kraków. Slowly, Berlin is replacing Rome as the destination all roads lead to.
To ply these roads our nation’s reindustrialization has been crowned by the success of Rheinauto GmbH, the People’s Automotive Trust. Today, hundreds of thousands of loyal citizens drive exquisitely engineered German vehicles designed not only for utility, but imperial pride. For the first time in decades, it is once again said that to be German is to be modern.
The Imperial Mother’s Council has continued its vital work to secure the future of the German Volk. Its latest campaign,
“Three Children for the Kaiser, One for the Future”, has boosted birthrates across the Reich. Imperial schools, hospitals, and homes are being directed with one voice toward a healthier, stronger generation.
In the courts, the Prussian ‘Junkers League’, lobbying the Imperial Supreme Court, has lost its case for the restoration of special protectionist rights for their estates in East Prussia. Since the revocation of these in 1946-7, many Junker aristocrats have filed for bankruptcy. Together, in June of ’48, 39 prominent Junker families filed a common lawsuit. Losing every single case despite employing some of the most expensive lawyers in Europe, one can only wonder at the indebtedness of these parochials at this stage.
And now, a new frontier has opened: the Imperial Broadcasting Network (
Kaiserliches Rundfunknetz, KRS) has launched regular television programming in Berlin and Vienna. With historical dramas, educational programs, and dignified news bulletins, the KRS reminds the citizenry not only where we came from but where we are going. As the Chancellor said earlier this year at the reopening of the Berlin Academy of Statecraft: “
Germany must never again be merely a country. It must remain a principle.”
(Fig. 5) The Palace of Europe (Palast Europas), headquarters of the Mitteleuropan Conference in Berlin, completed in 1948
The German Century is no longer a prediction: it is a lived reality. From Norwegian fjords to Caspian shores, proud states long fractured by ideology or petty nationalism now move in synchrony with the Reich. French artisans, Dutch seamen, Polish railway unions, and Baltic educational boards now operate under shared standards and integrated development plans. Here stands a single civilization of many lands, all shepherded from Berlin.
This year, the Mitteleuropan Commission has ratified the Common Civil Obedience Accord, harmonizing the legal systems of eight member states to mirror the Imperial Code. Never has the idea of Europe as a spiritual and political union found such realization.
Further positive news from the near abroad met the ears of Mitteleuropan citizens in 1949. Taking cues from our Reich, similar movements to the “
Three Children for the Kaiser, One for the Future” have yielded positive results across Mitteleuropa except in the French Metropole, where birthrates first stagnated at 0.1% in 1947, then slumped to -0.1% and -0.2% the subsequent years. Most of the reduction is expected to be from out-migration to Algeria and now, given the Francophone Movement Treaty agreed with Ottawa last December, to Quebec. Despite these demographic woes, the French Fourth Republic has stabilized under President de la Rocque’s supervision. French youth increasingly learn German as a second language, a trend confirmed by the KRS’s broadcast data. Bordeaux’s new “Haus Europa” film centre, jointly funded by Copenhagen, Stockholm and Naples, has attracted thousands and finally introduces a competitor to Studio Babelsburg on the continental scene.
In Poland, the royal house continues its revitalization. Princess Adelajda, second daughter of King Aleksander II, has emerged as a symbol of the renewed Polish-German bond. Hopes are high for the royal couple to bear a son and heir next. Should a male not be forthcoming, dynastic questions may arise given nebulous nature of the kingdom’s inheritance laws.
To the west, Rotterdam now hosts a branch of the European Regeneration Committee, while German engineers work alongside Dutch planners to expand the Rhine-Meuse Canal Network. Though their past was turbulent, these nations now serve as the mercantile heart of the continent: loyal, efficient, and best, mutually profitable.
The Baltic Federation, once a patchwork of provisional councils and aristocratic principalities, now thrives under a tri-chamber model of regional estates. Riga, emerging from its ruins, has become a hub for education. The reborn city hosted this year’s Mitteleuropan Youth Moot where high-achieving students from across the empire debated
“Virtue and State Towards the 21st Century.” The Federation has poured copious amounts of its share of Regeneration funds into styling Riga as an attractive venue for students across Europe. Though the University of Riga still lags behind competitors in accomplishments and esteemed alumni, at this rate, that may not always be the case.
Ruthenian Democratic Republic’s president, Radosław Ostrowski has by executive decree recently renamed his nation to Belarus in unison with the opening of a special exhibit focusing on the folklore of his people (monitored, of course, by the European Directorate for Spiritual Unity, which will ensure no ideological corruption mars the Institute). Belarusians have generally lauded the move, as it helps establish more cultural identity, something many see as necessary given the large number of Russians now living in their expanded domains. The exhibit replaces that of ‘Ruthenian Remembrance’, which focused for the last two years on the suffering of the (now) Belarusian peoples at the hands of the Russians during the war. To this day, almost half a million Belarusians are still believed to reside in some state of outlawry or slavery beyond the Urals.
In the south, the death of Emperor Ferdinando III of Italy marks the end of a generation. Another great ruler born in the 19th Century passes on, leaving that age’s living stamp upon this world ever thinner. His son,
Emperor Ruggiero I, was crowned in Naples in June in a sober ceremony attended by Field Marshal von Manstein and the Crown Prince Robert of the Habsburg Empire. Ruggiero, aged 48, is said to be poetic and familial, albeit shy. The Reich expects close coordination from the Neapolitan Court.
Russia: A Climax to War?
Continuation of our long support for Marshal Denikin and President Ustralyov of the Russian State, thought to have finally borne fruit after the Black Baron’s forces were turned back at Rzhev last autumn, now seems in doubt. Chancellor Goerdeler is said to be in favour of continued weapons shipments to the Russian government, so long as those shipments buy the victory of the horse backed by Germany.
Pyotr Wrangle launched a surprise attack on the southern warlord, Mikhail Drozdovsky, crushing his garrison at Voronezh. The city has fallen, and with it, perhaps half of the clique’s industrial capacity. The Wrangleites used an armoured thrust of 20-30 tanks to the city's east as a ruse. While the tanks threatened the garrison's supply lines along its railroad, a large cavalry force to sweep across the western hills into the city proper. Heavy fighting occurred after the enemy's infantry recovered from the initial surprise, but when heavy artillery was brought to bear across the recently captured hills the garrison surrendered rather than be pulverised. A separate cavalry regiment was used to capture the enemy's own artillery, which was largely positioned around the town of Podpol'noye. Just how the Black Baron managed to gather the force (especially the tanks, which were of unfamiliar design) used in the attack less than a month after his bloody defeat at Rzhev is still unknown but raises the possibility of covert external support. If Drozdovsky’s clique is absorbed by Wrangle, he may well prove unstoppable in uniting the rest of war-torn western Russia.
Wrangle and the Patriarch of former Moscow rode together on a black and white horse respectively through the battle-scarred Voronezh after the battle. On November 30th, Wrangle took to the airwaves promising “
Momentous and epochal change in Russia,” and “
a restoration of its divine path.” What this means is yet to be seen, but many speculate that Wrangle will seek the restoration of the monarchy in Russia. In his last public appearance, Wrangle wore the ceremonial dalmatika and temple ring of a regent. One might also note that his daughter, Nathalie Petrovna, is widowed these last three years. Might the Black Baron seek a dynastic union with a new Russian royal house?
Japan: The Engine of the East
While Germany steers the European order with measured strength, Japan has become the world's great accelerant: a power that wins peace not by doctrine, but by compounding interest.
In 1949, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Japan’s vast economic and security bloc, reported a combined Gross Domestic Product of 600 billion Reichsmarks, a 9.4% increase over the previous year. Japan alone accounts for an estimated 25% of that output, and by several measures, now surpasses the Reich in gross economic output. The Ministry for Economic Affairs in Berlin has ruefully acknowledged that four of the world’s six most profitable firms are now headquartered in Tokyo or Nagoya.
| Rank | Company Name | Annual Profit (Billion RM) | Industry |
|---|
1 | Mitsubishi | 8.6 | Heavy Industry & Finance |
2 | IG Farben | 7.2 | Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals |
3 | Toyota-Mitsui Industrial | 6.1 | Automotive & Machinery |
4 | Hitachi-NEC | 5.3 | Electronics & Computing |
5 | Krupp Vereinigte Werke | 5 | Steel & Armaments |
6 | Sumitomo Heavy Industries | 4.9 | Shipbuilding & Mining |
7 | General Motors | 4.6 | Automotive & Logistics |
8 | Mitsui Mining & Metals | 4.5 | Mining & Refining |
9 | Siemens-Stahlgruppe | 4.2 | Electrical & Industrial |
10 | NEC Aeronautics | 4.1 | Aerospace & Defence |
11 | Volksstahl GmbH | 4 | Steelworks |
12 | Great Mukden Arsenal | 3.7 | General Machinery |
13 | General Electric | 3.7 | Electrical & Industrial Systems |
14 | Berlin Communications Syndicate | 3.4 | Telecom & Media |
15 | Osaka Maritime Company | 3.2 | Shipping & Trade |
16 | Royal Dutch Petroleum | 3 | Oil & Energy |
17 | Dominion Steel & Consolidated | 3 | Steel & Energy |
18 | Voestalpine A.G. | 2.9 | Steel, Engineering, Automotive |
19 | Companhia Nacional de Recursos Tropicais | 2.8 | Raw Materials & Export |
20 | Bharatiya Radio-Electric Works | 1.9 | Electronics & Radios |
(Fig. 6) Top 20 companies ranked by earnings, December 1949
At the heart of this success lies the keiretsu model, a uniquely Japanese form of horizontal industrial cooperation. The four economic titans of the Japanese bloc, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Hitachi-NEC, and Toyota-Mitsui Industrial, operate as semi-sovereign economic ecosystems. Bound by interlocking board memberships, internal finance banks, and coordinated R&D councils. Collectively they outpace many of their Reichsmark-denominated competitors not only in scale but cohesion.
This year, Mitsubishi Zaibatsu posted an annual profit of 8.47 billion Reichsmarks equivalent, boosted by explosive growth in shipbuilding and fuel refining from Insulindian wells (most especially from PT Pertamina). Hitachi-NEC, once an electrical supplier, now manufactures guidance systems for the IJN’s newest submarines while Toyota-Mitsui Industrial, the world’s largest producer of diesel-electric locomotives, has recently opened assembly yards in both Siam and Ceylon. Supervised by Japanese engineers but staffed by trained locals, these factories are now reportedly churning out over 6,000 units annually.
Tokyo’s stock exchange, now the largest outside Mitteleuropa, registered an 18% annual increase in the Nikkei-200 Industrial Index. Capital investment inflows from within the Co-Prosperity Sphere rose to 31.2 billion Reichsmarks equivalent, led by sovereign development banks in Vietnam, the Second Philippine Republic, and the Republic of Insulindia. State-driven incentives have encouraged not only expansion, but alignment. Wage policies, pricing structures, and research grants are increasingly set through regional summits hosted by company executives in Osaka and Taihoku rather than by individual ministries. One can claim to see an illuminating parallel here as with Japan’s all-too-proactive military officers, who often undertake action without the remit to do so.
Most staggering of all is Japan’s control of the seas. The Japanese Merchant Marine now commands the Merchant Marine on Earth, operating over 3,100 vessels (29 million gross tons) across the Pacific, Indian Ocean, and Sunda Straits. The port of Dalian, fully modernized in 1948 with assistance from Mitsubishi Maritime, now rivals Hamburg in total tonnage moved per annum. Singapore and Saigon serve as dual naval-commercial nodes for what Japanese economists call the "Sea Ring Doctrine", a strategy of chokepoint monopolization that ensures Japanese goods always arrive faster, and cheaper.
In high technology, Japan surges ahead of all save our Reich. At the first Osaka Techno-Industrial Forum, held in October, the Empire unveiled a prototype vacuum-tube computing mainframe capable of processing 400 calculations per second. Its military applications remain classified, but civilian uses, particularly in resource logistics and radar optimization, are already highly touted.
There are limits, of course. Ceylon’s tea harvest shrank this year following early monsoons. Insulindia’s oil fields, while productive, remain dependent on Japanese engineers. A typhoon caused an oil spillage from the storage tanks of an offshore drilling platform, spreading the sticky substance far and wide. An ecological and public health disaster has been declared by Prime Minister Sukarno. Meanwhile, political disorder and native Russian restiveness in the Far Eastern Republic has delayed timber and copper shipments from the Sakha interior.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs wishes to remind Reich citizens that Japan did not suffer the grievous blows that we and our European neighbours did during the war, and thus have a head start on the second half of this century.
But Berlin does not underestimate Tokyo. Nor should it.
To offset the menacing shadow of Japan comes relief comes from the front in China. After the triple captures of Wuhan, Nanjing and Shanghai in mid-1948, stalemate settled in when Japanese supplies reached the embattled Beiyang troops commanded personally by the Not-So-Young Marshal, Zhang Xueliang. After almost a year of buildup, a new joint offensive has crumbled Xueliang’s lines. Now, Jining and Taian are threatened. Should they fall, the Shandong Peninsula will be endangered. Experts estimate that the Japanese will have to intervene should this occur, lest they lose their most valuable vassal.
Japan’s latest atomic test, likely conducted in occupied Manchuria, reveals anxiety, not confidence. The test, regarded by most German scientists as a failure, nonetheless is rumoured to have produced a .5 kiloton underground explosion.
The Americas: Dissolution and Prosperity
Across the Atlantic, General MacArthur rules the United States with martinetism though perhaps not enough of it. His administration, despite significant constitutional reforms, faces persistent unrest in the South, where a race war continues to blaze hot after the latest black appeals for civil rights and protections were turned down. Also threatening public order is the ongoing syndicalist underground in the industrial Midwest, now commonly being referred to as the ‘Blood Belt’. The ‘Society of John Reed’, the largest syndicalist cell, is said to practically run Detroit, taking protection money from businesses to give to the poor and needy – and to buy weapons. Much of the industry of Detroit and its surrounds have experienced severe 'leakage' of product, much of which has showed up on American and Canadian black markets.
In Pennsylvania, the so-called Petition of Fifty Thousand, signed by veterans and civil war survivors, demanded habeas corpus and free elections. MacArthur dismissed it as “
a document of defeatists and foreign agitators", stating that the nation has just undergone free elections, with him being the legitimate victor. We note with some amusement that while America censors its own press, its youth have increasingly tuned in to the KRS, emitted from our new relay station in Cuba. There, imperial values respect and culture are spreading by airwave to a continent eager for dignity.
This adds to the litany of complaints against our government by American statesmen. The core of their argument is the choice of the free nations of Haiti and Cuba to have joined the Reichspakt military alliance. Who are the cowboys to claim they determine the fates of their free neighbours?
While posturing diplomatically in the Caribbean, the American fleet, largely rebuilt and expanded from its civil war days, is believed to be concentrating on the Pacific seaboard. MacArthur, never one to make friends or acknowledge equals, claims Hawaii as a rightful American territory even as Japan makes repeatedly threatens intervene if the Americans make a move. Tokyo, it seems, is content to leave the territory to languish as a buffer between them and America, whereas the Americans believe it their manifest destiny to retake the islands. Hawaii, it seems, may be the spark that lights the Pacific on fire. Tokyo's position is ironic; defending a syndicalist holdout while holding an openly hostile stance to Hawaii's greatest ally; the Bharatiya People's Republic.
In South America, Brazil’s development model, supported in part by German investment, has begun to bear fruit. Samba, cinema, and steel: these are the sounds of a constructive, cooperative republic, not a revolutionary one. Rio de Janeiro has become a favourite travel destination for the budding air-tourism industry. Lufthansa registered 127 chartered flights in 1949, proof of Brazil’s rising allure for Mitteleuropa’s trendy. Let the world take note.
In Mexico, however, chaos continues. The syndicalist regime fell under Entente bombardment, but no stable replacement has emerged. Canadian forces are bogged down in the jungles of Chiapas, where narco-insurgents and radical remnants defy Ottawa’s control. Mexico was once a warning to the Americas. It is now a lesson.
The Commonwealth: Moving, But Not Forward
The Imperial Commonwealth, a confederation of states even stranger than that of Austria-Hungary, has relocated its capital in January from Ottawa to Melbourne in accordance with its five-year rotation scheme. To many, this is a sign of decentralization. To us, it is proof of drift.
The decision to separate the sovereign and his heir, with King Albert I remaining in Canada and Princess Elizabeth dispatched to Australasia, has not quelled criticism within their own parliaments. While the Commonwealth talks of shared sovereignty and cultural continuity, it clearly lacks the unity of purpose and structure that Mitteleuropa has achieved. Worse yet are the wagging tongues of Melbourne, who speak of the unusually close rapport between Princess Elizabeth and the dashing Australasian Air Marshal, George Jones. Though officially focused on Commonwealth air force integration, Jones, a much older and married man, has frequent audiences with the heiress, stirring quiet speculation.
For example, in Kenya, the “Mau Mau” problem grows worse. With dozens of European settlers lynched over the last six months, the Commonwealth’s governor-general attempted to assure his white citizens of his power by butchering the population of five villages. By some accounts, this resulted in the deaths of some 500 Mau Mau. This empire talks of democracy but governs with bayonets and royal affairs.
Africa and Asia: Order Carried by Engineers
In East Africa, Ethiopia’s conquest of Somalia marks a welcome resurgence of imperial power of a nation our Chancellor has named ‘The Best Hope for the African Horn’. The Emperor Haile Selassie I has sent warm thanks and gifts to the German government in response. A budding anti-syndcalist alliance may be brewing between our two great empires.
The Bharatiya People’s Republic’s Five-Year Development Plan, announced in 1943, has completed with modest success. While emphasising rural syndicalism, the plan achieved moderate industrial growth (+4%/yr), major literacy gains (+13%), and partial rural electrification. Agricultural success was uneven, with flourishing cooperatives in Bengal and Kerala but failures in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat. Infrastructure and public health advanced modestly. More troublingly, Bharatiya, despite denouncing the old Internationale’s ‘ideological exporting’ tendencies, has never ceased to live up to its own isolationist ideals. Not only has it installed red puppets in Afghanistan, Bhutan, and Nepal, but it is clearly funding and arming the socialist rebels in Iran. Worse, their so-called “Red Safaris”, wherein students and engineers travel to Kamerun, Tanganjika and Buganda to build schools and radios, present the illusion of altruism while subtly undermining local progress.
Germany will counter these efforts with truth and excellence. Wherever red flags appear, so too shall the black eagle to stop them.
Conclusion
In sum, 1949 confirms what 1948 foretold: the world respects Germany once more. Our Reich has emerged not only victorious, but vital. Infrastructure, law, culture, and courage; we have proved that peace is not the absence of war, but the presence of structure.
Let the decadent cling to their slogans, the rebels to their radios, the weak to their congresses. We in Germany have built something stronger: a world where civilization has a centre again.
The world watches. And more importantly: the world listens.
