Re: Blood and Iron - Chapter 840: The Beginning of Normalization

Chapter 840: The Beginning of Normalization

Bruno walked forward and found the Chancellor still very much alive, and in good health. In fact, if the look on the man’s face was anything to go by, Bruno believed in that moment he had seen a man who had just relived his glory years if only for a few minutes.

Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher approached Bruno who was still flanked by a number of his armed guards, handing his revolver over to the policeman he had taken it from as he stood before the Reichsmarschall, tall, and unencumbered by the ravages of age that had stripped him of his youth in years past.

He took one good look at Bruno and smirked with grim satisfaction.

“Took you long enough… I thought for a while there that you were actually planning to wait until I was dead before choosing to intervene. Just cause and all…”

Bruno simply buttoned his overcoat as he stepped past the Chancellor, his face stoic until he had already passed and taken his first step towards the Swiss Federal Palace and its doors that awaited him.

He stopped midway however and smirked.

“They have given us just cause enough… Still, I must admit, I had not anticipated you surviving this. I thought for sure you would have been their first target.”

It was only when Bruno noticed the police officer to whom Kurt had handed the borrowed service revolver that he finally understood what had happened.

Kurt didn’t know it, but it was the same police officer who had shoved him to the ground right before the sniper shot was fired.

And when Bruno saw the man’s face he simply nodded his head at him before moving on. Something Kurt didn’t notice as he followed after Bruno and his armed guards. Entering the meeting on a far more antagonistic note than he had been before.

—

When Bruno and Kurt finally entered the meeting room, the other delegates had sat nearly quaking in their boots, worried about the gunshots that had gone off just beyond the palace’s doors. It was as if a tactical nuke had gone off.

Bruno entered the room like a conqueror, sitting in the empty seat as his armed guards took up tactical positions surrounding the entire meeting with their loaded rifles.

He immediately leaned back in his fine leather seat, crossing one leg over his knee, as he rested his chin on his knuckles, gazing over the flock of ambassadors, presidents, prime ministers, and ambassadors with a look of utter frost in his sky blue eyes.

His words fired off like a howitzer, stunning everyone into dead silence.

“I will accept nothing short of your unconditional surrender. You will lay down your arms, strike your banners, and retreat back into your own domains. After which, you will sever all ties to the remaining allied powers, and agree to a one-sided non-aggression pact with the German Reich and its allies for the next one hundred years.”

The Latin American delegates looked around at one another with somber reflection. Unconditional surrender meant that Germany could ask for anything. And their first stipulation was to immediately agree to ending all hostilities and a one-sided non-aggression pact with the Central Powers.

What this meant is that under no reason could they act with aggression against the victors for the next one hundred years. But if Germany, or Russia, or Spain found reason to find fault with them, they were perfectly free to do so.

It was an absolutely humiliating treaty. But the reality was that Latin America approached Germany declaring its willingness to surrender because they were all too aware they had no chance of victory against the Reich or the Central Powers.

And that any attempt at further resistance would cost them far more severely than it would their enemies.

Having just suffered through bearing witness to a brutal ambush by French forces that still resulted in Bruno and the Chancellor walking into the meeting like foreign conquerors, and not rival statesmen.

Nobody had the mind to even think of voicing disagreement with Bruno’s words. They were all ready to sign on the dotted line. Whatever happened to them and their nations, it was now in the hands of God.

Luckily for them, Bruno didn’t actually want anything from the Latin American countries. Crossing the Atlantic or the Pacific to maintain order in the region, especially if they demanded land or resources, was too much of a hassle and expense to bother with.

Especially when Germany already had all the raw materials it could ever ask for through its debt-trap diplomacy over its former African colonies, and dynastic ties to Russia.

Bruno simply wanted the Latin American countries out of the war, and no longer interfering with his plans for the postwar world.

While Spain, Portugal, and a few other nations of the Central Powers had a few demands, as long as they didn’t step on Germany’s bottom line, Bruno had no intention of getting in the way.

In the end, the treaty was signed, and the only belligerents that remained officially in the war, was Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and whatever remained of the United States of America.

Bruno was quite certain that once the Latin American bloc fell, the last of the Anglosphere would follow suit before long.

It was only a matter of time. But more importantly, with the attack on the German delegation on Swiss soil, by Swiss terrorists.

Along with the abysmal security that the Swiss National Police provided, and their deliberate refusal to allow more than a single platoon of German security forces. Bruno now had the leverage he desperately needed to begin the process of normalization that followed destabilization.

In the following days, newspapers in Switzerland would print about the catastrophe, blaming the incompetence and failure of the Swiss government, as well as the French-speaking minority for the role they played in the attacks on what was effectively a peace summit.

Switzerland and its German majority would soon begin seeing the Reich not as a threat, but a needed stabilizing influence to their ever-spiraling state of sovereignty.

And the Swiss had handed Bruno the opportunity to exploit that sentiment on a silver platter.