< World War II - Lend-Lease (3) >
December 21, 1940
The capital of Arica, Washington D.C.
The White House
Loud voices were being exchanged in the White House.
“We must completely withdraw the profligate hand that the New Deal has extended into every corner of Arica!”
“But that’s different from our campaign promises, Senator Taft.”
“Campaign promises can always change during a term depending on the situation, President. The Republican Party’s core supporters are wealthy businessn, and they despise that damn FDR’s socialist policies.
Even more so now that workers are getting a taste for the commie movent.”
Robert A.
Taft, a hardline conservative within the Republican Party, only pushed his own argunts, even against President Wendell Willkie.
“Right now, Arica is no different from a socialist state.
What’s left after launching all sorts of projects under the excuse of overcoming the Great Depression with our already scarce national finances and interfering with everything down to the color of businessn’s underwear? The New Deal has failed.”
Finally, unable to watch any longer, Vice President Charles L.
McNary spoke up.
“But Senator, we only achieved a partial victory in this presidential election.
We only had a 6% advantage against a divided Democratic Party.”
The Republican Party had certainly won the presidential election.
But the approval ratings were 53% for the Republicans and 47% for the Democrats.
The fact that they had won by a hair’s breadth against a virtually self-destructed Democratic Party served as a wake-up call for the Republicans, and progressives within the party like Wendell Willkie and Thomas E.
Dewey argued that this was evidence that the Republican Party also needed to work for the common people.
“You haven’t forgotten the reason you won the party primary, have you, Mr.
President? This isn’t a situation where we can do everything to the Republican Party’s liking.”
Taft let out a hollow laugh.
“At this rate, I can’t tell if we’re the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. Well, I suppose you were quite close with FDR, weren’t you, Mr.
President? I understand, seeing as you were once comrades.”
President Wendell Willkie, fed up with Taft's sarcasm, ordered him to leave.
“That’s enough. I’ve heard what you have to say, so if you have nothing more to add, would you please leave alone?”
“President, we are the Republican Party.
You may have been elected on promises of interventionism and maintaining social policies to win the election, but rember that in the end, our party line is the minimization of governnt intervention and isolationism.”
“I am well aware of that.”
“Then I’m relieved. As it happens, Germany is doing well in Europe, so instead of needlessly getting involved and creating another Bonus Army incident, we should just abolish all regulations and make money through exports.”
After Taft left, Wendell Willkie slumped back into his chair, exhausted.
“It hasn’t been that long since I was elected, and I already want to run away.”
“You were elected in a difficult ti.”
The Vice President’s words were of little comfort.
With a gloomy face, Wendell Willkie saw that Ti Magazine’s December issue of ‘Person of the Year’ featured not himself, the man who beca the President of Arica, but the young Vice-Chancellor of a Germany far away in Europe.
His position was so weak that even after being elected President, he couldn't even complain about the humiliation of not being chosen as Person of the Year.
Even he had to admit, this was an election he won, but it wasn’t a victory.
Willkie shifted his gaze again and saw an interview with FDR in his favorite newspaper, the New York Tis.
The giant who had once moved Arica had a relaxed, smiling face, having set down his heavy burden.
“I’m envious.”
Wendell Willkie shook his head and turned his attention to a cable sent from the Japanese Embassy in the US.
“Let’s resolve the misunderstandings we had with the previous governnt, revive our old friendly relations, and build peace in the Pacific, it says.”
Willkie was dumbfounded by Japan’s cable.
“The shalessness of these island monkeys is beyond words.”
Never mind the annexation of the Korean peninsula, which Arica had promised in the Taft-Katsura Agreent, but Manchuria, China, British Malaya, and now more than half of the Dutch East Indies had fallen into their hands.
Britain couldn’t even properly manage the European Front, and as Italy’s colonies fell to Britain, the French army in Algérie began to advance into British Africa through Libya.
“If we leave them be, even India, Australia, and New Zealand might fall into Japan’s hands.”
At Vice President McNary's statent, Wendell Willkie shook his head and replied.
“The Republican Party's stance is to put out the fire in our own house before worrying about our neighbor’s.”
After saying that, Willkie quickly added.
“But I will absolutely shatter Japan’s arrogant attitude and their absurd delusions. If not now, then soday, for sure.”
-
December 21, 1940
Königsberg, East Prussia, Northeast Germany
The battlefield is the worst.
The act of firing a bullet before you even think about what the opponent in front of you is, and then naturally pulling the bolt, is closer to an animal than a human.
After training a dog to sit using food as bait, is it any different from how the dog automatically sits when you say “sit” even without giving it food anymore?
The soldiers charging toward the machine gun, which emits a searing heat, don’t look like people either.
The way they collapse in an orderly line without even screaming, isn’t it more like toy soldiers?
The smoke that rises after a shell explodes in the city always brings with it the acrid sll of gunpowder and the screams of people.
That sa sound from Spain, from Germany, from Poland, from everywhere, is so cliché it’s as if it were a rule of war.
The cry to be loyal to the nation and fight for the motherland as a soldier is also empty.
What good is any of that to a soldier lying dead?
And most decisively.
When you’re rolling around on the battlefield, you can’t date.
“This is unreasonable.”
“…”
At the muttering of Battalion Commander Major Clens Fleck, his adjutant, Vinrich Behr, had a glazed look in his eyes, as if he had given up on everything, now used to it.
“Even that eunuch of a guy married a beauty, but I’m stuck rolling around on the battlefield and can’t even date!”
Co to think of it, that guy Dietrich wasn't a eunuch from the start.
He was a guy who enjoyed hanging out with him during officer training and early in his dispatch to Spain, but after one battle, he was sick and frail, and as soon as he got up, he turned into an ascetic.
No, wait, seeing how he successfully wooed a beauty and got married, maybe that's not it either?
“Aah~ I want to date! I want to get a pretty wife and have a sweet life too!”
Clens had been quite serious about Rafaela Diaz, whom he dated in Spain, and before the Condor Legion returned ho, he had proposed to her at a banquet in front of all the legionnaires, giving her a ring and asking her to co to Germany with him.
…And in front of all the legionnaires, Rafaela’s answer was this.
‘You’re a pretty decent guy, but I like this country. I can’t follow you all the way to Germany.
Farewell, Clens. It was fun while it lasted.
’
It was one of the most embarrassing pasts of Clens’s life. He thought she would obviously accept, but to be rejected in front of all the legionnaires…
“Sob! Rafaela! I loved you!!”
Of course, whatever Clens was thinking, it was not a healthy sight for the ntal well-being of Vinrich Behr, who was watching his superior’s seizure in real ti.
What could he do? He was his direct superior.
Clens, letting out his resentnt, quickened his unwilling steps and finally set foot in the Army Group North Headquarters located in Königsberg.
In the command room he entered alone, leaving Behr behind, were the higher-ups Clens never wanted to et or get close to.
Putting aside his division commander, Lieutenant General Hans-Valentin Hube.
The sight of Army Group Commander Colonel General Günther von Kluge and Army Group North Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Friedrich Paulus waiting for him sent a shiver down Clens's spine.
When he saw the dignified-looking but sohow subtly cunning Army Chief of Staff, Erich von Manstein, next to them, Clens wanted to faint on the spot.
“Welco, Major Clens Fleck.”
Of course, the higher-up who spoke with a stern face, Army Group Commander General Günther von Kluge, couldn’t care less about Clens’s feelings.
“Major Clens Fleck, reporting as ordered!”
Clens ca to his senses at the call of his far-removed superior and saluted with a sharp posture.
Co to think of it, he had been so happy to be assigned to the rear that he had lost his mind and acted up even in front of Lieutenant General Hube.
He was lucky that Lieutenant General Hube looked favorably on him as a forr subordinate of his friend, Model. Clens swallowed hard, tense with the need not to make a mistake in front of these impossibly high-ranking n.
The stiff atmosphere broke at that mont.
“Haha, hahaha.
I’m glad to et a promising young officer in person.”
As Manstein approached with a surprisingly friendly smile, Clens…
almost had a fit.
According to a phone call from his friend, Roger, the one who sent him here after he had been coasting since thwarting the coup attempt was this damn Chief of the General Staff.
In fact, Clens had a degree of faith that Dietrich wouldn't deliberately stick him in a hellish front line, but to see the very person who pushed him into hell right before his eyes!
“It is an honor to et the esteed Chief of the General Staff, Your Excellency!”
Of course, whatever his head was thinking, his mouth was polite.
To Clens, who had answered reflexively, Manstein smiled brightly, ca closer, and patted his shoulder.
“Ah, a friend who knows so basic courtesy.
Haha, hahaha…”
Manstein was just smiling, but Clens’s nerves were sounding an alarm that a threat greater than anything he had ever faced on the battlefield was approaching.
“But then there’s a certain lieutenant colonel who, despite catering to his every whim, slapped my hand away…”
At Manstein’s monologue, spoken loud enough to be heard, a cold sweat ran down Clens’s back.
'Hey, this is all fine and good, but why are you doing this to …'
“That’s enough. Why are you picking on an innocent friend? It wasn’t a bad thing for you either, was it?”
It was Kluge who rescued the cornered Clens.
“Ahem, ahem. Not a bad thing, you say! You know very well how much I suffered from the failure of the last offensive! Anyone who hears this would think I’m happy that my authority has grown! It’s a misunderstanding!”
“Hardly.”
At Manstein’s sudden change of attitude and theatrics, Kluge just chuckled and let it pass.
Manstein was quite resentful of Dietrich Schacht, who had drawn a line with the military despite him catering to his every whim, but as a result, the authority of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army beca nominal, and in return, the power of the General Staff grew stronger.
Moreover, although he was only a lieutenant colonel, the governnt's second-in-command had taken responsibility alongside Rundstedt and resigned from the military, so there were no disadvantages imposed on other army personnel.
It was certainly a rational and understandable asure.
As a high-ranking governnt official, he drew a line with the military and helped the governnt check military power, while also restraining the level of punishnt to prevent the military from harboring excessive dissatisfaction. His skill could be seen as politically excellent.
It was certainly so, yet for so reason, Manstein found Dietrich Schacht detestable.
Of course, he didn't know that, coincidentally, the feelings Dietrich Schacht held for Manstein were similar.
Manstein, with a slightly sour expression, took out the dal Clens was to receive, the Pour le Mérite, from its box.
“As you know, that is not a dal just anyone receives.
The fact that the division held out until the attacking force could regroup is thanks to Lieutenant General Hube’s recomndation that your contribution in successfully blocking the most intense attack on the salient was great.”
“Thank you…”
At Army Group Commander General Kluge’s words, Lieutenant General Hube gave a pleased smile, but Clens wanted to cry.
'You don’t have to give sothing like that, can’t you just move to the rear…'
“Major Clens Fleck, in recognition of your military rit for greatly contributing to the success of our army’s defense by maintaining a thorough defensive posture and appropriately operating reserves during the recent Defense of East Prussia, I award you this dal in the na of the Army High Command.”
“It is an honor, Your Excellency, Chief of the General Staff!”
Of course, Clens knew well enough that if he let such words slip out, he wouldn’t even have bones left to bury.
'I’d rather just get this over with quickly and go back.'
But while Clens was lost in such thoughts, Manstein personally took the dal out of the box and hung it around Clens’s neck, startling him.
“I didn't pay close attention until I sent you to the Eastern Front to earn so rit, so I didn't know.”
“Ye-yes?”
“I found out that a while ago, you personally received a letter of recomndation from the Vice-Chancellor to get assigned to the rear, didn't you?”
Clens felt goosebumps crawl all over his body.
To the speechless Clens, Manstein leaned in close and smiled.
“A proud Prussian soldier shouldn't do such things.”
'I'm from Bavaria, though.'
“It-It’s a misunderstanding…”
Clens tried to make an excuse with sothing resembling a stiff smile, but Manstein said with a pointed laugh.
“A capable friend like you should be placed where he is most needed. To be in the rear with such ability is preposterous.
Oh, and just so you know, this is absolutely not for any selfish reason. Isn't that right, Paulus?”
“…The Chief of Staff of the German Army would not use his personnel authority for selfish reasons.”
Although Paulus looked incredibly annoyed, Manstein, having heard the answer, smiled with satisfaction.
“Of course, of course! Would I really do this out of a selfish motive towards a young friend? A capable but lazy friend needs a superior who will work him hard.
Look forward to it, Major Fleck. You won’t have to worry about not being able to earn military rit.”
Clens thought.
This life is ruined.
Maybe I should have just committed ard desertion and put a bullet in that bastard Dietrich’s gut…
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