Re: Blood and Iron

Chapter 610: The Echoes of Revelation

The Oval Office was dim, its curtains half drawn against the midday glare.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sat motionless behind the Resolute Desk, his fingertips pressed together beneath his chin.

The recording had finished playing only moments ago.

Silence lingered like smoke.

“Jesus Christ,” murmured Secretary of War Henry Stimson, breaking it. “He said it outright. Called us out by name.”

Roosevelt didn’t reply. His eyes, glassy with fatigue, stayed locked on the darkened radio receiver that had just finished airing Bruno’s speech, translated in real time by the State Department’s German desk.

The words were still ringing in his ears.

We shall resist to the last breath of man and horse… Even against a world of enemies…

The President inhaled slowly, as if the very air had become heavier.

He had just barely been able to drag his name out of the mud after the fiasco in Spain, and the negotiations that ended the Second Philippine Insurrection.

The newspapers had been more praise than criticism. And the European allies had seemed steady.

But this?

This was a stone cast into a pond whose ripples would reach every shore.

The documents Bruno had declassified were damning, not just to Germany’s domestic opposition, but to the West itself.

Detailed lists of foreign agitators, correspondence from socialist cells with contacts in the French parliament, bank transfers traced back to labor organizations in London, and coded communiqués implicating American student unions in anti-Reich propaganda campaigns during the final year of the Great War.

Redacted though they were, the message was clear: the liberal order had not only opposed Germany after the war, but had sought to sabotage it during its final, bloody ascent.

Roosevelt finally spoke. “He’s playing this brilliantly.”

“Sir?” said Stimson.

“He paints himself as the victim, even as he prepares his nation for war. He gives the people a villain, a rallying cry, a scapegoat with foreign flags.”

“And what do we do?”

Roosevelt’s fingers tapped the desk.

“We tread carefully.”

Stimson looked surprised. “You don’t want to issue a statement?”

“I want the press to talk about his aggression. Not ours. But we can’t do that if the public starts asking why we’re still meddling in Europe.”

He paused.

“There’s already unrest about Spain. Too many bodies. Too few answers. And the Philippines… God help us. If Manila erupts again, this country won’t stomach another fight across an ocean.”

The President rubbed his eyes.

“We’ll let France take the lead on this one.”

—

The British prime minister stood near the window of his office with a cup of tea in his hand that had long since gone cold.

The wireless played softly behind him, rebroadcasting the highlights of the German Marshal’s speech.

He hadn’t slept well in days.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Dalton shifted uneasily beside the radio, arms crossed.

“He’s daring us to retaliate.”

Attlee gave a short nod. “And counting on it.”

“And what shall we do?”

The Prime Minister turned to face the room. The War Office, the Foreign Office, and Intelligence were all represented, their faces grim and drawn.

“For now,” Attlee said, “we do nothing.”

“Nothing?” Dalton repeated. “He just accused His Majesty’s Government of subversion!”

“And the man on the street does not care,” Attlee replied quietly. “We’re barely a decade out from rationing. Our boys only recently came home from Spain. The British public wants peace. They want jobs. They want their sons alive.”

He gestured to the pile of newspapers on the table, many already reacting to Bruno’s words.

’THE GRAND PRINCE OF TYROL UNLEASHES: GERMANY STANDS ALONE’’OLD WAR, NEW MASKS?’’MARSHAL OR MADMAN?’

The Daily Mail, ever more belligerent, had gone with: ’GERMANY RATTLES SABRE ONCE MORE’

“The hawks want war,” Attlee said. “But I suspect the lion’s appetite is waning. We must speak firmly, yes. But not rashly.”

Dalton frowned. “And what of His Mjaesty?”

Attlee’s brow furrowed. “Let him bark.”

—

The Palais Bourbon was in uproar.

General Charles de Gaulle stood at the center of it, not in uniform, but in the well-tailored dark suit of a statesman, though his bearing still radiated the rigidity of command.

“He dares to accuse France -France! Of treachery?” he thundered, pounding the marble lectern.

“And yet he declassifies only what benefits his narrative! What of the atrocities committed in the name of Reich stability? What of the innocents purged by his assassins in the shadows?”

He turned to the assembled deputies, the cameras, the waiting journalists.

“Marshal von Zehntner is not a statesman. He is not a diplomat. He is a relic… a dangerous, myth-making warlord hiding behind medals and memory!”

His voice rose with conviction.

“And we must not allow the world to be seduced by this illusion of German victimhood! This is not a man preserving peace. This is a man preparing for conquest!”

The chamber erupted in both applause and jeers.

But De Gaulle pressed on.

“I will be traveling to London, and Washington in the coming days to meet with our partners. A united front must be formed. If we let Germany define the terms of the past, they will shape the future in their image, and that image is one of blood and iron.”

In private, however, he was livid.

Not because he thought Bruno wrong.

But because Bruno had gotten ahead of him. Again.

The propaganda departments were already scrambling. Speeches, newspaper pieces, radio broadcasts; rebuttals, smears, redirection.

“We’ll call him a butcher’s heir,” one aide said.

“Accuse his grandfather of being a Prussian peasant drunk on blood,” said another.

“Remind the world of the real Germany. Of the trenches. The tanks. The gas!”

De Gaulle’s lip curled. “Yes,” he said. “Remind them. Remind them all. Because if we do not control the past, we will lose the future.”

—

The Situation Room was dim and cold.

Roosevelt sat alone for a long time after the advisors left.

He lit a cigarette, despite the doctor’s orders, and stared at the map on the wall.

Germany was too strong now to ignore.

Economically revived. Militarily proud. Culturally defiant. And no longer apologizing.

They had buried the past, buried it in ash, blood, and silence.

But now they were owning it.

Weaponizing it.

Even against a world of enemies…

The line echoed again in his mind.

He looked over to the confidential dispatches from Manila. From Seville. From Port-au-Prince.

Too many fires already.

He wasn’t afraid of war.

But he was afraid of timing.

Of winning too late.

Of fighting the wrong enemy first.

And of waking the American people too soon from their illusion of postwar peace.

—

At midnight, within the office that sat within the spire of his Grand Palace.

Bruno sat alone now.

The crowds had gone. The cameras were dark. The file was locked again—not in secrecy, but in public record.

He drank the rest of the beer he’d started that afternoon. The last dregs were warm, but he didn’t care. The silence of his study was thick, but not uncomfortable. It was earned.

The fire in the hearth had died to embers.

On the corner of his desk lay a single envelope, sealed with wax and stamped with an old family crest.

He had noticed it earlier, delivered quietly while he was speaking. No courier name. No signature on the outside.

But he knew the handwriting instantly.

With steady fingers, he broke the seal and unfolded the parchment.

The ink was dark. Elegant. Cold.

Bruno,

I watched your speech.

I did not cry. I’ve done enough of that.

You kept your word in the end. Perhaps too late, but I have no doubt that Erich would have smiled to see you keep it. He always did believe in you. He trusted you with the truth. And with his death.

I do not forgive you. That much, I think you already know. You sent him into the dark. You asked him to become something no man should. And when it was over, you asked him to vanish so the Reich could endure.

He agreed. I hated him for it. I hated you more.

But I am… relieved.

Relieved that his name will no longer be spat upon. That my daughter will no longer have to carry the shame of a lie. That my grandson may speak the name ’von Humboldt’ without flinching.

You took everything from me, Bruno.

But you gave him back.

I suppose that makes us even.

— Louise

Bruno let the letter fall gently to the desk. His hand lingered on it for a long moment.

Even.

What a cruel, honest word.

He looked toward the window. The imperial lawn lay silent beneath moonlight and memory.

He did not smile.

But he did breathe.

And for the first time in decades, the air no longer tasted of ash.

He could only sigh and shake his head as he poured himself another drink. Picking up the photo on his desk.

Ancient by now, black and white. An image of him, Heinrich, and Erich. Standing together at graduation as cadets from the Prussian Academy.

He sat there and stared at that photo longer than any man reasonably should that night.