Kaiserreich - Prelude to the Second Weltkrieg - Part 1: Germany

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NOTE FOR NON KAISERREICH PLAYERS: For those who might be more alt-history fans than Kaiserreich players (or even just stumbled across this by accident), I'm giving a brief bit of high level geopolitical background on the state of each country in this alternate timeline. You can bypass it if you want, but it might explain certain aspects of the world that are referenced.

After winning the World War (or Weltkrieg), Germany became the dominant European power. By the mid 1920s it had taken over control of most of Central Africa, Vietnam, Malaysia, and key port cities in China, achieving its long-desired "place in the sun". It also established puppet kingdoms in eastern Europe and Belgium, and had built an EU style economic alliance with these countries, but one heavily tilted to favour Germany. It's economy boomed, but politically it became quite stagnant. The political system heavily favoured wealthy elites (like the Prussian Junkers), with their votes counting more than poorer people, and the government often kept strict checks on civil liberties. Essentially it was the same German Empire formed by Prussia in 1871, almost unchanged 70 years later. For the most part though, this was a Germany that is the opposite of that from our timeline - a Germany at the top of the world, master of Europe and global superpower. All that started to change on February 3, 1936, with the biggest stockmarket crash in history: Black Monday. Think the start of the Great Depression, but even bigger.

Just like in our timeline, Germany sees threats to its west and east, but in this world, it's the French, British, and Russians who are looking for revenge against the victor of the Weltkrieg. This includes the feared "syndicalists" who overthrew France, Britain, and Northern Italy, a global socialist movement that promises hope for those still suffering from the effects of Black Monday.

February 3, 1937 – Weimar, Germany

Karl Schreiber stepped onto the near empty train platform to find that everything familiar to him had shrunk just a little. It had only been a year and a half since he'd last set eyes on the lockers and public telephones, the bicycle racks and the tiny stall selling sauerkraut and sausages, the loudspeakers and the large clock on the wall, but they all seemed a bit smaller than he remembered. His father had always told him, before he set off for school in Munich, that Schreiber men were known for their late growth spurts, but Karl had passed it off as apocryphal – something his father said to reassure his somewhat height-conscious son that there were better days ahead. Perhaps, Karl thought as he examined the signage that seemed to hang just a bit lower than he remembered, father was right after all.

One thing that was definitely smaller than before was the crowd. When he'd left for the Ludwig Maximilian University this station had been a chaotic swarm of travelers, commuters, well-wishers, and taxi drivers looking for fares. Now the platform was almost bare, just a long sweep of tiles with only a few beleaguered looking souls on it. No one looked Karl in the eye as he walked towards the entrance, all their faces were down into newspapers or empty hands. A year earlier it had been a warm summer day during rush hour. This day was a cold, overcast morning, and Karl had taken the earliest train possible. He knew the weather and time alone had not thinned and dampened the crowd though. A year earlier the world had been a very different place.

"You need to come home."

His father's voice had been so tired. Even over the phone – his father's words coming from hundreds of miles away in Berlin – and the din of the other young men in the house filling Karl's other ear, the exhaustion in the voice was unmistakable.

"I will meet you at home."

Except this didn't feel like home. This was a ghost of the home he remembered, a smaller, exhausted ghost that didn't dare look him in the eye.

He exited onto Schopenhauerstrasse and found a line of taxis waiting. He walked into the first one and gave his address. The driver was an older man, maybe in his early sixties, who wrestled with the wheel of the Opel as if it were a familiar adversary he both loved and detested. The man made small hints of conversation until Karl mentioned he was a student. Some nerve touched, the driver quieted. Karl then asked him to take a longer detour through the city, so he could see his old school, and the streets he and his friends used to patrol with their bikes in their younger years. Plus, it would delay his actual return to the house.

The whole city seemed affected by this newfound diminution. The ceaseless grey nature of the sky didn't help, but again, it wasn't the only thing that seemed to dull and shrink the city. The streets were empty and lifeless – even the dogs didn't bark as he drove by, just stared at him then returned to smelling the wet grass or bits of trash. He thought seeing his old haunts would inspire some sort of nostalgia, but all they generated was a strange dysmorphia instead, as if either he or the streets were broken in some way. They rolled by the school and it too was strangled in discomfort. Half of it, he recalled his mother telling him during one phone conversation, had been converted to a homeless shelter. There were no children outside it, just a few bedraggled looking men in threadbare clothes milling about, restless for a day to start when they would be able to start their lives again.

The old house came upon him before he was really ready for it. The taxi driver came to a stop, turned to face him, and simply stated the price. It took Karl a second to realize what the driver was doing – ending their brief connection, so he could return to the lineup at the station and take another fare. Karl looked him in the eye, and saw the same exhaustion he'd heard in his father's voice.

Karl paid the man, gathered his lone suitcase, and headed up the walkway to his front door. The house was big, he now realized, bigger than anything most of his friends had grown up – the ones in Munich or here in Weimar. To him it had always just been home, neither too big nor too little, but a year and a half had evidently shrunk some things, while bringing others into a larger perspective.

The door was, abnormally, locked. He knocked twice then stepped back to peer into the front room window. The curtains were closed. Another two steps back and he looked up towards his sister's bedroom window. "Julia!" He shouted out, his voice sounding abnormal after so much silence all the way from Munich to here.

To home, he thought. This is home.

The front door opened then and his mother appeared, a coat wrapped over her nightwear.

"Mother," he whispered, the sight of her almost breaking him. She looked as exhausted as the taxi driver. "I'm home."