Re: Blood and Iron

The war was hours old, and the chancelleries of the world already moved like a single, anxious organism: quick, exacting, and utterly pragmatic.

Smoke rose above Ypres on the same feed that looped in the map rooms from Washington to Whitehall; dispatches came and went in a constant pulse.

The question in every capital was no longer whether to act, but how to explain why they had to.

In Whitehall, the Cabinet met in a dim room where the drizzle outside blurred the gas lamps into a single smear.

Men in coats and tired faces bent over telegrams, and when the Foreign Secretary spoke his voice was careful as a surgeon's blade.

"French columns have entered Belgium in force," he read. "Ypres is burning. Brussels has sent us urgent pleas."

The War Minister slammed his fist on the table. "It is 1914 again! The French should be ashamed."

The Foreign Secretary did not rise to the bait.

"Not so fast. Belgium today is bound to Berlin in ways it was not a generation ago: rail accords, intelligence exchanges, transit clauses. We can and should reframe this. Present Belgium as compromised. Not a neutral in the old sense, but a state whose soil has been lent to a power that aims beyond it."

It was an argument of spin and survival.

The Prime Minister listened, face drawn, then tapped the oak.

"Draft the line that holds. An urgent council of nations. Demand answers from Belgium. At the same time, order the fleet to sea and seize German shipping in our ports under public-safety pretexts."

He looked from man to man. "We posture restraint and prepare to act."

So it was decided: the fiction would be set.

Belgium, they would say, was not merely a victim but a participant in a larger danger. France, with all its ardors and sins, would be protected from the harsh name "aggressor."

Across the Atlantic, the Oval Office thrummed with a different cadence, the same urgency tuned to different pressures.

The President stood over a war table lit by a bank of screens showing the columns rolling across flat country.

Advisors clustered like coiled things around him: economic men, diplomats, ex-soldiers who had not yet stopped arguing the value of the American reserve.

"We cannot allow Berlin to remake Europe," the Secretary of State said.

"A Reich given the continent will unmake the balance that keeps oceans safe for our trade. But the people… the people will not accept another crusade without reason."

"Then give them reason," the President said.

"We will speak of sorrow, call for order, demand negotiations. Publicly: regret and restraint. Privately, we move material through third parties, use neutral registries, and let Canadian ports be the cover. We will not be seen to fan the flame, but we will fan it, nonetheless."

His pen scratched the first draft of the state line:

We deplore the violence. We urge negotiation. We recognize the necessity of preserving the democratic order in Europe.

It was language designed to soothe.

The real work would be done beneath it: convoys, covert shipments, advisory teams dispatched under humanitarian banners.

In Paris, De Gaulle's office smelled of coffee and gun oil.

He received the news with the vertigo of a man who knew the shape of things long before their arrival.

"They will howl," he said.

"They will call us invaders. Let them howl. Belgium's neutrality has been hollowed by Berlin's reach. We have acted to prevent a springboard, not to conquer."

He ordered the press office to prepare images: refugees on the road, ruined houses, children with mud on their knees.

"Pair those images with Reich armor, and let the world choose fear of what may come over moral niceties," he told his aide.

"We will call it defensive redress. We will say the Republic moved to prevent a greater evil."

The Republic's spokesmen, the men who spun the rhetoric, began smoothing the phrase. Preemption.

Defense of civilization.

Necessary action in the face of a resurgent hegemony.

Moral language on its polished surface; pragmatic logistics beneath.

In Ottawa and Canberra, the dominions made decisions almost by reflex.

Canada's prime minister addressed Parliament with a steady voice:

"We will not seek glory, but we answer Britain's call. We will raise divisions, retool factories, do our duty." Australia and New Zealand offered similar, brief affirmations:

Empire and free seas, prudence and loyalty.

The words were simpler there, but their meaning no less grave. The Empire called and the Dominions obeyed.

Further south, the capitals of Latin America took a different tack.

Buenos Aires issued bland statements urging negotiation; behind closed doors ministers inked contracts and released credits routed through shell companies.

Grain and steel would flow to French agents under false flags.

It would be explained later as a defense of the democratic order.

For now, it was hedging, the language of merchants who prefer the calm of profit to the turbulence of moral clarity.

By dusk, the public record read a chorus: We regret the violence. We urge restraint. We call for negotiations.

The dictionaries of diplomacy were strained to produce phrases that clothed action in virtue.

No one would call France an aggressor.

Belgium would not be anointed wholly victim; it would be described as entangled, compromised, a buffer that had long since leaned toward Berlin.

The masks fit, and behind them, mobilization orders moved like silent clockwork.

Convoys formed, ports were prepared, factories hummed into wartime rhythms.

And the German Reich had long prepared countermeasures to the masks of diplomacy.

Masks which concealed hostile intent, and murderous action.

Soon war would spread to every corner of the world.

But for now, the fires were contained on the front lines of Belgium and France.

Where reporters embedded with the German Army revealed to the world the horrors of modern warfare.

And the brutal efficiency with which the Germans waged it.

Bruno knew his destiny, and that of men like him should Germany lose the war.

He had seen the conclusion in his past life under different circumstances.

Hence why the German Army fought in a way befitting those who had no other option but victory.