Re: Blood and Iron - Chapter 640: Doctrine Not Deterrence
Chapter 640: Doctrine Not Deterrence
The camera lights flared white against the marble of the Bruno’s Palace.
Dozens of international correspondents had been summoned. Silent. Tense. The German flag hung motionless beside the Imperial Standard of Tyrol.
And then the doors opened.
Bruno emerged, flanked by two officers of the Werwolf Group in ceremonial blacks, their silver skull insignias glinting under the stage lights.
He walked with deliberate calm, clad in his field uniform, gloves off, collar crisp, medals from two wars gleaming against his chest.
He reached the podium.
Waited.
Not for effect, but to let the gravity settle.
The silence stretched long enough to become unnerving. Then, slowly, he leaned into the microphone.
“Two days ago, Monrovia ceased to exist.”
Gasps rippled. Cameras flashed. Bruno’s gaze didn’t waver.
“It was not bombed for oil.
It was not destroyed for minerals.
It was not leveled for land.
It was annihilated because it harbored those who plotted the murder of German citizens.
It gave quarter to the architects of slaughter.
It welcomed American agents and whispered them safe.”
A pause. Not defensive. Declarative.
“Let me be perfectly clear.”
He took a step forward. His voice, calm and cold, now filled the hall.
“We will treat any harbor, any runway, any safe house, any embassy, any capital, that gives refuge to those who wage war upon our people… as a valid military target.”
“We are not obligated to distinguish between the man who plants the bomb… and the hand that shields him from justice.”
“We will not.”
He rested his palms on the podium now. Leaning forward, as if addressing Washington directly.
“This is not an act of conquest.
This is not an escalation.
This is not a warning.”
“This is precedent.”
A long, sharp breath.
“If you strike at the Reich, whether through mercenaries, revolutionaries, or covert sabotage, then you will receive a response so decisive, so complete, that your descendants will curse your name for provoking it.”
He let the words hang. The silence returned, thick and suffocating.
“We mourn the innocent dead. As all civilized nations must. But let there be no confusion, this blood is on the hands of those who thought they could weaponize Africa as a chessboard without consequence. Those who thought that German patience was weakness.”
“No. We have simply learned from the past.”
He looked beyond the cameras now, as if staring straight through the ocean, across the Atlantic.
“And if you make war through shadows and proxies, then do not feign outrage when we burn the shadows down and turn your pawns to ash.”
Bruno stepped back from the podium. The press, frozen. The world, watching. And as he turned and walked out, not another word spoken, the message was clear:
This wasn’t a speech.
It was a declaration of doctrine.
And the world would tremble to see it acted upon.
—
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sat in heavy silence, cigarette smoldering between his fingers.
The cabinet had gone quiet after the speech ended. Not because they didn’t have thoughts.
But because no one wanted to be the first to say what they all knew:
Germany had just crossed a threshold.
“So he’s done hiding it,” murmured Director Donovan of the OSS. “That wasn’t deterrence. That was a message….”
“Monrovia is gone,” said Secretary Hull. “Thousands of civilians, vaporized. The local government, gone. Our assets—” He stopped. Swallowed hard. “We’ve had no communication since the second wave hit. Not a whisper.”
Roosevelt exhaled a plume of smoke and leaned forward, elbows on the table.
“We poked the wolf with a stick,” he said. “And now the wolf has reminded us it’s not a dog.”
“What’s our move?” asked General Marshall.
FDR looked at the map. His jaw tensed.
“We cannot escalate. Not yet. Not unless the public demands war.”
He glanced at the telegraph from London.
“We’ll let the British speak first.”
—
The British Prime Minister rubbed his temples, eyes bloodshot from a long night of bourbon and worry. Across the table, his War Secretary slammed a fist on the polished wood.
“That lunatic just erased a city. A bloody city!”
The Prime Minister’s voice was weary, but precise.
“He’s daring us to flinch.”
“Then let’s not flinch!”
“And do what? March on Berlin? Send bombers over the Alps?” He gestured to the dossier in front of him. “Germany is decades ahead of us in aerospace and air defense. You saw the report, nothing intercepted their bombers. We didn’t even know they were in the air.”
The room fell silent.
The Prime Minister lit another cigar. Then spoke, slower.
“This is not 1914. And that is not Wilhelm.”
“This… is Caesar with a teleprompter and a space program.”
He paused.
“We’ll issue a condemnation, strong, unified. We’ll show the Reich that the free world stands against them. ”
—
Several of the surviving African leaders, some with Reich-backed titles and others from neutral or U.S.-friendly territories, gathered in stunned silence.
The President of the Gold Coast was the first to speak.
“This is not just an attack on Liberia. This is a message to all of us.”
“That the age of proxy games is over,” added the German-aligned High Marshal of the Congo.
“And that no one is safe,” said the Prime Minister of Nigeria. “Not even with American backing.”
The chair of the session, an aging Senegalese warlord turned statesman, stared at the photograph taken by German reconnaissance, Monrovia, cratered and ablaze, its skyline reduced to embers.
“We must choose,” he said at last. “Either remain pawns in a foreign game… or survive as subjects in a rising empire.”
No one disagreed.
—
The Pope stood before a stained-glass window, hands clasped.
“We have entered a new age,” he whispered to his secretary. “Not one of reason… but of retaliation.”
He looked out at the sunrise.
“And the children of this century will grow up not fearing hell… but fearing the Reich.”
“This… is Caesar with a teleprompter and a space program.”
He paused.
“We’ll issue condemnation. Strong. Unified. And we’ll remind Roosevelt of the costs of poking lions with bayonets.”
—
The village of Kpakamai had once been a quiet dot on the map, red clay roads, palm thatch rooftops, and corrugated tin shacks nestled in jungle groves.
Now it echoed with the clatter of rusted bolt-action rifles, the bark of orders in foreign tongues, and the roar of planes overhead.
A column of local fighters trudged through the mud, sweat pouring from their brows beneath ill-fitting helmets.
Some wore stolen rebel fatigues. Others had nothing but tattered shirts and rubber sandals.
All carried weapons from another era, Gewehr 88s, Madsens, even a few dusty Mausers. Cast-offs. Museum pieces.
But beside them strode Werwolf.
Ghostlike in appearance, uniforms stripped of insignia, faces veiled under patterned scarves, Germany’s infamous mercenaries said little, but their intent needed no translation.
The rules were simple: house to house, room by room. Root out the rebels. Burn the safehouses. No mercy. No questions.
“Go left. That compound there. You, kick the door. Don’t hesitate.”
The local commander nodded, barked the command in Kru.
A boy barely seventeen stepped forward and drove his foot against the warped wood of the hut.
Inside, screams erupted, two women and a child, before a third figure rose from a cot with a pistol.
Three shots rang out. One from the pistol, missing wide.
Two from Werwolf DMRs. Both hit center mass. The man crumpled, blood soaking into the matting. The women wailed.
The Werwolf team didn’t stop moving.
The boy just stared. Muzzle trembling.
A Werwolf operative placed a hand on his shoulder, firm.
“You did well,” he said in broken French. “Now the rest is simple. You survive. Or they return.”
They moved on.
An reconnaissance plane buzzed overhead, live radio chatter alerted a nearby commander to the reality of the ground.
“Confirm target. Burn it.”
The locals hesitated. One of them had family nearby. The Werwolf operator didn’t wait.
He lifted a tube from his back, shouldered the single-shot incendiary launcher, and sent a jet of phosphor straight through the tin roof.
The detonation was not large. But it was loud.
And it burned hot.
Screams again. Another “rebel safehouse” erased. No one came out.
“Let them see what harboring terrorists brings,” the Werwolf commander said coldly. “And soon, they’ll bring us heads before we knock.”
—
By the third village, the pattern had become ritual.
Kick the door. Search the hut. Ask no questions. Leave nothing that might rise again.
And to the world, the Reich would say: We did not do this. They did it themselves.
We simply offered guidance… and justice.
The warning Bruno had given was clear.
The German Reich would not be tolerating endless proxy wars across the world. They would strike swiftly, fiercely, and ruthlessly.
At those who directly attacked the Reich, at those who granted them safe haven, and in time at those who dared to give them the means to the sons and daughters of the fatherland.
Because that was how one truly detterred against transgression.
