c6: A Chaotic Rebirth

“Knock, knock, knock.” The office door was knocked. Gordon rubbed the sore bridge of his nose to relieve the fatigue from his work and looked up with a hint of resignation. “Come in.”

In the past few days, he had reviewed approximately five hundred former German army officers, all of whom were to be retained in the newly formed German army. It could be said that every single one had been meticulously selected through multiple comparisons and screenings.

This army was arguably the smallest on the entire European continent, but it could also be called the most professional army in all of Europe, and perhaps the world.

Major Gordon had played a part in this. He had been working continuously for ten days, arranging the final assignments and destinations for over forty soldiers each day.

“Major Gordon, Second Lieutenant Akado Rudolph reporting.” A crisp voice sounded from the doorway, but to Gordon’s ears, it was no different from the dozens of others he heard daily. He received scores of such young men every day, each one an elite among elites. He was dutifully trying to preserve Germany’s maximum combat strength, something he believed to be the right thing to do.

Day after day, all sorts of voices echoed in his ears—some full of vigor, others deep and powerful. These soldiers were the best; at least one-tenth of them had received the Iron Cross. There were also traditional aristocratic officers and even a former German army major who had voluntarily enlisted as a common soldier.

“I’ve read your file, Second Lieutenant Akado. I believe you’re still unclear about the reason you were kept on, so I’ll be frank with you now. I have at least twenty thousand soldiers here who are more outstanding than you. The reason I selected you is very simple: you survived a gas attack, and you survived it completely intact. I am in need of a gas attack response training team, and you will be responsible for training approximately two regiments of new army soldiers, ensuring they can survive an enemy gas attack as safely as you did.”

Akado was stunned. He had considered the reasons for his retention and had indeed thought it might be related to the gas attack, but he never imagined he would be so fortunate as to become part of the “logistical troops.”

“Your office will be temporarily located at the 103rd Regiment headquarters, just outside Hamburg. The facilities there are excellent; it used to be a corps command post. The two regiments you’ll be responsible for are the 103rd and the 105th,” Gordon said with an expression that suggested he wasn’t treating him unfairly, quite proud of the superior conditions in the army now. “Leather sofas, an oak desk, even a large globe.”

“Sir, with all due respect, these things have nothing to do with fighting a war,” Akado said, somewhat repulsed by such luxurious and useless items.

“That’s just the old inventory. After the defeat, nearly all the barracks were looted. You’d best not get your hopes up for the things I mentioned,” Gordon said, lowering his head to continue with the documents before him. “On your way out, please do me a favor and call in the next soldier.”

“Who do I submit my reports to? Or rather, who am I accountable to?” Akado stood up and asked his final question.

Gordon paused for a moment before answering, “Reports? Oh, the army’s reorganization has been so chaotic lately that my superiors haven’t told me who your team needs to report to. How about this: you start the work first, and sooner or later, someone from above will remember you.”

Like a dying man at the end of his road, his bodily functions on the verge of shutting down, the German army was in the same state. It was a complete mess, yet to regain the vitality it was supposed to have.

After receiving a pistol, an identity document, and an ID booklet for inspection from Gordon’s assistant, Akado set off to find his office. And this so-called gas defense team, for which Akado was responsible, consisted of only him.

He was already a second lieutenant and should have been assigned a few subordinates, or at least an aide. But he was not so lucky. Due to the sudden shortage of manpower in the German army, a mere second lieutenant like him was not senior enough to be assigned an assistant.

And so, after walking for a whole morning, Akado finally found the headquarters of the 103rd Regiment. It was no wonder it took him so long; the gate of the legendary 103rd Regiment headquarters bore a sign that read: “Imperial Army 11th Corps Headquarters.”

The barracks were in a state of chaos. A guard battalion was supposed to be stationed here, but because the command structure had shrunk and many soldiers had not yet arrived to report for duty, there were only seven solitary guards.

The guard at the gate checked Akado’s documents and then led him to a randomly chosen room to serve as his office. The door of this office still had a label clearly written on it: “11th Corps Secretariat.”

Of course, the regiment’s commander had already arrived, but he was currently in the suburbs overseeing the formation of the Second Battalion. The First Battalion had just been assembled and had not yet begun basic training. Therefore, the regiment was, in fact, not yet fully formed, let alone ready for anti-gas training. (Although these men had all undergone military training, regulations required them to be trained again.) Consequently, Akado now held a sinecure with nothing to do.

When Akado pushed open the door to his office, he was stunned by what he saw. A sofa was overturned on the floor, the globe had vanished, and the large oak desk was cluttered with various documents that would have been considered top secret before.

In the center of the room was a brazier filled with ashes. It seemed that anything truly important had already been destroyed, leaving behind only trivial things that would sooner or later become known to others.

Akado walked to the desk and looked up to see a portrait of the German Emperor hanging on the wall directly behind the chair. He went to the desk and gently wiped his finger across its surface, finding it already slightly dusty. The place hadn’t been cleaned for about a week.

He took off his military greatcoat, hung it on the coat rack beside the desk, and casually hung his cap on it as well. Bending down, he picked up a torn white glove from the floor. Ignoring the stains, he slapped it against the chair, raising a cloud of dust.

Then he sat down casually in the chair, picked up a few documents from the desk, and began to flip through them absently.

The telegram of the Empire’s surrender, the order from Army High Command to demobilize the soldiers, a report on health and epidemic prevention, and a copy of the surrender order. “Heh,” Akado snorted, tossing the waste paper back onto the desk.

An army of over twenty thousand men had been eliminated by the enemy with a single contract, without a single shot being fired. And it was a so-called “complete elimination.”

Akado thought of the Qing government, of the humiliating Jiawu Year, and of those treaties that forfeited sovereignty and brought disgrace. Forces resisting unequal treaties existed everywhere, but in this era, at this particular historical moment, the German people’s desire to resist oppression and pursue strength was exploited and hijacked by the Nazi party.

Thinking of this, he couldn’t help but think of the good friend he had made since arriving in this era, Mr. Hitler. He wondered if this retired German Army corporal would still stir the tides of history as in the familiar historical narrative.

Looking at the white clouds floating in the blue sky outside the window, Akado squinted and fell asleep. He dreamed that he was standing on the lecture platform of a university, continuing to teach his students about the familiar Second World War.

The leisure in the office did not extend to the rest of Germany. On the contrary, in every corner of the country, there was a flurry of busyness.

In the Krupp factory, a group of British officers and Frenchmen in formal attire were supervising German workers as they dismantled the milling machines. Giant gears were piled everywhere, and discarded precision parts were thrown like rubbish along the sides of the aisles.

Several journalists were documenting this pitiful moment. Workers wept as they moved the machinery they once depended on for their livelihood, only to destroy it. Beside them, the French and British were documenting every part with cameras and notebooks, painting numbers on each component and destroying the crucial ones.

High-quality steel cannon barrels were piled haphazardly, like countless toppled chimneys, in staggering numbers. There were thousands of cannons here, once eagerly awaited military supplies for various army corps, but now they were just junk, worthless trash.

The cannons produced here had once pushed Germany to the pinnacle of the world, just one step away from winning the First World War. But now, it was all over. The factory was ordered to halt production, and ninety percent of its entire capacity was dismantled.

In the midst of this chaos, the German army was cut in half. Approximately two million German soldiers became unemployed, and at the same time, about one million German workers lost their jobs.

The German government was helpless against the Allied Control Commission. Society was in turmoil, the German economy was in severe recession, and people were incredibly disappointed with the current government that had signed the Treaty of Versailles. As a result, public support for the government plummeted, pushing the entire German administrative apparatus to the brink of collapse.

Riots broke out everywhere. People took to the streets, marching in groups with rifles, toppling statues of the German Emperor in the streets and alleys. Some even engaged in firefights with the army. In short, this month in Germany was a scene of desperate chaos.

The chaotic environment forged a new political party. This weak, nascent party rose step by step. It was vibrant, aggressive, and preached an extreme nationalist spirit, gaining a large following. The party had a rather contradictory name: the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

And within this party, there was a figure whose name gradually became familiar to some capitalists and who was becoming increasingly influential in the region. This man had a resounding name: Adolf Hitler.