Chapter 37: Friends

“Attention!” The lead officer, seeing a beautiful small car drive into the barracks gate, immediately held his head high and chest out and shouted, “Salute!”

Swoosh! The slight friction of countless raised arms converged into a momentum that made the blood boil. The car slowly came to a stop amidst this overwhelming display of authority. The car door was pulled open, and from the back seat, a brightly polished leather boot was the first thing to emerge.

The commander of the 22nd Division, Wagner, walked over and nodded respectfully to the person in the car. “Thank you for the intelligence you provided. All the officers and men of the 22nd Division welcome you to Munich, Colonel Akado Rudolph.”

Akado stepped out of the car, straightened his unwrinkled military uniform, and one by one, pinched the fingers of the leather gloves on his hands. He then patted the non-existent dust from his trouser leg with his gloved hand.

A soldier standing directly opposite Akado watched him with shining eyes. Damn, that’s cool! he thought with envy. One day, I’m going to be this awesome too!

“Long live Greater Germany!” General Wagner leaned in close to Akado and said softly, “I am the person in charge of the Party in the Munich region. Welcome, Chairman.”

Akado nodded and said with great satisfaction, “Assemble the troops immediately and deploy them in the various city blocks according to this plan! I want to ensure stability within the city of Munich!”

“Yes, sir!” Wagner said with a salute. “I will carry out the order at once.”

“You’ve worked hard,” Akado said, patting Wagner on the shoulder. “You’ve done very well.”

Major General Wagner was an old acquaintance of Gustav Krupp. He was originally a colonel and was only promoted to major general because of Akado’s recommendation to Hindenburg. Grateful for the favor, he was now a core member of the Greater Germany Party and an unwavering supporter of Akado.

Being praised by his de facto leader gave Wagner a small thrill of excitement. He knew the power Akado wielded in the Reichswehr, so he didn’t feel the slightest contempt just because Akado’s rank was one level lower than his. On the contrary, he had great respect for the man before him, who was widely recognized in the Reichswehr as a proponent of new tactics and an expert in armored warfare.

“Mount up!” Wagner waved his hand, and the officer following behind him shouted the order, “Load all weapons! Level one alert!”

Subsequently, a dense series of clicks from rifle bolts being pulled back sounded across the wide parade ground, followed by the sound of leather boots stamping on the ground. Akado stood by the car as row after row of soldiers jumped onto trucks. Then, these trucks started up. The round emblem on the front of the trucks was divided into four quadrants, alternating blue and white. At the top were three artistic letters: BMW.

More than forty soldiers straddled their motorcycles, started them up, and waited around Akado. Akado nodded to Wagner, got back into his car, and Gehr immediately started the engine, slowly driving forward.

The soldiers on motorcycles immediately followed, then overtook Akado’s car, forming a protective circle as they moved slowly forward. Following closely behind were four of the newest wheeled armored cars produced by the Krupp factory, and then truck after truck, seemingly without end.

In the car, Akado closed his eyes. Just a few hours ago, not long after his trusted subordinate Gascoigne had delivered the intelligence to General von Seeckt, Seeckt had summoned Akado to his office.

…

“I know you know Adolf Hitler. And you two were in frequent correspondence a year ago. I want to know what his recent activities in Munich have to do with you—Colonel Akado.” Seeckt was very pleased. He had finally caught Akado by the tail. Hindenburg trusted Akado implicitly because of the White Dove plan, and Akado’s status in the army was beginning to eclipse Seeckt’s. This time, Seeckt was preparing to strike back.

“He and I are not on the same path, General, sir,” Akado said with a cold laugh. “If necessary, I can personally arrest him.”

“What a heroic Reichswehr colonel! I am very gratified,” Seeckt also laughed. “It just so happens that two units you are quite familiar with are stationed in Munich, the capital of Bavaria: the transport battalion of the Inspectorate of Motorized Troops, and your newly formed 22nd Division.”

“I can depart immediately,” Akado said, standing at attention and putting on his military cap.

“You can board the plane directly at the airfield in the suburbs of Berlin. The plane is already on standby! Also, deal with those 50 Fokker fighter jets,” Seeckt said, then waved his hand, as if unwilling to waste another word on Akado.

“Yes, sir!” Akado saluted, turned, and walked out.

…

With the rocking of the car, Akado opened his eyes. The roar of motorcycles and cars was still all around him. In the surrounding area, he could vaguely see towering buildings. It seemed they had arrived in the Munich city center.

Car after car sped through the intersections, the roaring sound causing people on the streets to stop in their tracks. From the windows around them, men leaned against the glass to look down. They saw the last few cars stop at an intersection, and Reichswehr soldiers in steel helmets leap down from the trucks, skillfully setting up roadblocks and rolling out layers of barbed wire…

In the car, Gehr turned and asked Akado, “Colonel, how should we handle those Fokker fighter jets General von Seeckt mentioned?”

During the Ruhr industrial zone crisis, Germany had secretly ordered 100 new-model high-wing monoplane fighter jets from the Fokker company. These planes were the most advanced fighter jets in the world at the time, with a top speed of over 171 miles per hour.

Unfortunately, before these planes could be delivered, the French army withdrew from the Ruhr, so these planes became a hot potato. However, Akado secretly manipulated the situation, reselling 50 of these planes to the Romanian government, which was in urgent need of fighters, and made a large sum of money. The other 50 planes were kept by Seeckt as a hidden treasure.

Originally, Akado did not agree to keep these fighter jets, which in his view were already obsolete. But when he thought of the more than one hundred old biplane fighters hidden in the Reichswehr’s secret base in the southern mountains, he decided, out of a sense of frugality, to use this batch of slightly newer planes to replace some of the older ones.

“Move those planes to the mountains. Send reliable people to replace the obsolete biplanes in the secret mountain base. Ship all these replaced biplane fighters to the Soviet Union to be used as trainers for the air force school,” Akado said after thinking for a moment.

Just as he finished speaking, the car slowly came to a stop. A soldier on a motorcycle came back from the opposite direction and reported loudly at the car window, “The rioters are about two streets ahead! Our soldiers are setting up obstacles at this intersection!”

“Commence the operation,” Akado said.

Behind his car, a dozen or so soldiers jumped down from a truck. These soldiers were all carrying rifles with scopes. As soon as they got off the truck, they ran towards the buildings on both sides of the convoy. The soldiers who had gotten off earlier began to smash open the main doors with their rifle butts. Amidst screams and curses, these men rushed into the buildings.

Before long, from the windows with relatively open views, from the corners shaded by curtains, the black muzzles of rifles silently emerged, one by one.

Hitler felt that his luck today was extremely good. His column of rioters had been blocked by the police at a street corner, but they had easily broken through the police barrier. When the police officer told them to stop, Hermann Göring jumped out from the crowd and shouted to the other side, “Get out of the way! We have hostages! We detained about 20 government officials last night! If you don’t move, we’ll open fire!”

So the police cleared a path, and they quickly moved on to the next block. But before Hitler could rejoice in his first victory, they encountered a different scene at the second intersection.

Just as the long procession emerged from the narrow street and entered the spacious Munich Odeonsplatz, they saw two armored cars blocking the left and right turns at the crossroads. A line of soldiers with rifles stood behind the armored cars, and the dark muzzles of the heavy machine guns on the armored cars were aimed directly at the crowd of Nazi rioters.

“Don’t shoot!” one of Hitler’s bodyguards shouted in panic.

Behind him, Hitler also looked somewhat flustered. He stood there and shouted loudly, “The esteemed General Ludendorff is here!” while brandishing the revolver in his hand.

Led by him, the Nazi party members also emboldened themselves and shouted incessantly, “Surrender! Surrender!” They were very agitated, some of them shouting until their necks turned red.

On the other side, the Reichswehr soldiers were very quiet. They just silently held their rifles, looking at the shouting crowd through their sights, motionless, their eyes filled with contempt and caution. In their eyes, the crowd opposite them was just a group of slightly more arrogant sheep that could be slaughtered at any time. They were just waiting, waiting for a command.

Akado pushed open the car door, got out, and looked at the slightly hysterical Hitler opposite him. A smile played on his lips as he walked over.

He brushed past the soldiers. The soldiers immediately lowered their rifles, and each one stood at attention and saluted him. The Nazi party members on the other side, seeing this, all fell silent. Hitler also looked on in shock at Akado, who at this moment seemed to be surrounded by a halo of light.

“You’ve come to stop me?” Hitler pointed his pistol at Akado.

“I’ve come to save you one last time,” Akado said, raising an eyebrow.

Hitler lowered his pistol. “To prove that you were right?”

Akado smiled. “No, Mr. Adolf. It’s to ensure that there are no armed forces in Germany other than the Reichswehr.”

“You don’t dare arrest me!” Hitler shouted, flying into a rage out of humiliation.

“You can try me,” Akado said, turning and walking back in the direction he came from.

Time seemed to stand still. No one spoke. When Akado had walked back to the Reichswehr’s lines, he gently gave the order: “Fire!”

“Bang!” A gunshot rang out.