Dear Fatherland, No Fear be Thine: A Look at the Reich

Inspired by one of my old TLs and varyar's 'Ghost Cities of the Reich'.


Dear Fatherland, No Fear be Thine: A Look at the Reich


REPORTER: Thaddeus Jones


The German Reich. For 80 years since the end of WW2 in 1947, a byword for tyranny, but now a word for decay. This report by Thaddeus Jones, takes a look at the decay of one of the world’s most feared states.


----


I’m on a train from Strassburg to K
önigsberg right now, and one thing I’ve often noted is the total silence that is everywhere, almost uncanny. This is the silence of absolute terror. People talk in quick, furtive sentences, whispering just at the edge of hearing. They’re afraid to meet one another’s eyes, looking at the tables, at the dull newspapers and government-approved books. It’s as if they’re living a nightmare.

I’ll talk to one in my best German.


REPORTER:
Who are you?

FRITZ:
Fritz Steiner. And you?

REPORTER:
Thaddeus Jones, American reporter.

FRITZ:
Ah, Amerikaner. Do you have anything to do with the Treuepolizei?

REPORTER:
Not at all.

FRITZ:
Good. You can’t trust them, not at all. Don’t tell them I said that.

REPORTER:
I won’t.

The train arrives at K
önigsberg Station, a vast neo-classical edifice, completed on January 1 1989, the 100th anniversary of Ludwig Karl Sternberg, first Fuhrer’s, birth in this selfsame city. Fuhrer Stauffenberg, of course, used it as a major propaganda coup. Not that the West cared that much.

Leaving the station, I note the decay of the general architecture. The general mood here is grim, under a grey Baltic sky. More silence, the unease is terrifying. Then, two soldiers march up to me.


SOLDIER:
Papers.

I show him my passport. He looks over it.


SOLDIER:
Hmm. Amerikaner. You’re free to go.

Nobody around me looks surprised; apparently such random stops are common around here. There are soldiers, or people in military uniforms, practically everywhere. This is a key part of the
Ostfestung, a defence against the Russians created after the Soviet Union, one of the Reich’s key allies, transmuted into the Velikorussian Federation. This shattered the Pact of Steel, one of the key accords of the Axis.

The shift between ‘heroic Soviets’ and the current propagandistic depiction of the Russians as cowardly ‘running-dogs’ can be dated back to this breach in relations between Germany and Russia.


Anyway, enough about history, I’m here to talk about the economic climate. I walk into a newspaper shop, the usual barometer of the local economy. The newspapers, their headlines talking about the latest bizarre theory about President Germanotta, are untouched. People seem to be buying sweets though, and a stall of copies of
Deutschlands Krieg (Sternberg’s 1930 book) has been emptied, presumably by zealous soldiers and Party officials.

I ask the storekeeper, Karl Schneider, how business is doing.


REPORTER:
How’s business in newspapers?

SCHNEIDER:
Not good. People these days, they get their news off the internet. The BBC site, for instance.

REPORTER:
Isn’t that blocked?

SCHNEIDER:
They use proxy servers and other tricks, so they can see foreign news.

REPORTER:
Do you do that?

SCHNEIDER:
I wouldn’t say if I did, besides I’m old.

The difference between this and New York is striking.


----


I arrive at Tempelhof Airport, and am driven to the heart of Berlin, passing row after row of identikit concrete apartment blocks built to house those driven out by the grandiose building efforts of the 50s-60s under Fuhrer Skorzeny. I am quickly surrounded by grotesquely large building efforts, the very least of which is the Erzengel Concourse. From Brandenburg Gate to the ruins of the Volkshalle, it stretches 5 kilometres long, 500 metres wide. The very best word to describe it is ‘immense’. The effect is somewhat spoiled by the Volkshalle itself. It took a decade to build, and the great dome collapsed on the day before it was due to be dedicated.


The building is now slowly sinking into the soil which was unable to support its weight. Nobody has got the necessary money or will to rebuild it. The parades of the Concourse remain somewhat hollow despite the marching legions of Sturmwache and Blitzwehr bearing eagle banners decorated with the Reich’s horizontal tricolour of black-white-red, or the Valkyrie ICBMs which remain to threaten America and the free states of Europe.


I look at the nearest cinema, the Official Reich Theatre – there’s the new
Lohengrin film (a remake of the original 1949 epic) and various other tributes to Wagner advertised. Few American films, and nothing of any real quality – they have to receive a National Certificate to be shown, sold, or imported. Not that anybody really cares – everybody buys bootlegs if they want to watch American movies. And practically everybody does.

----


I’m talking to Professor Erich Wagner, at the University of Vienna,
Österreich District. He’s a sociologist who has recently published some papers on the troubles afflicting Germany. Not that the Reich is about to arrest him, he’s too influential to silence and he hasn’t expressed dissident political views. At least not that they know of.

REPORTER:
What’s the problem?

WAGNER:
The problem is the same as the Soviet Union. Too much focus on the military. We have ICBMs, we have tanks, we have thermonuclear weapons, but people have a lower standard of living even than during the War years. How is this even possible?

REPORTER:
What would you suggest?

WAGNER:
I don’t know. My suggestions have reached the top. They have clearly not listened. We cannot constantly be on a war footing. Yes, the French and Russians are against us. We are not secure on the Continent. But that doesn’t matter when we have the United States breathing down our neck with the most powerful military ever. Autarky also will not work. This obsession with self-sufficiency is becoming damaging. Holding on to Libya and so forth for the oil is fruitless; the natives require a whole army group to keep down. I can’t predict if the Reich can last another five years. Beyond that, I can’t even begin to speculate.
 
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Dear Fatherland, No Fear be Thine: A Look at the Reich

REPORTER: Thaddeus Jones

The German Reich. For 80 years since the end of WW2 in 1947, a byword for tyranny, but now a word for decay. This report by Thaddeus Jones, takes a look at the decay of one of the world’s most feared states.

----

I’m looking at archive footage, specifically that of Stefani Germanotta being sworn in as President of the United States in January 2025, at the tender age of 38 as the youngest President ever. The event drew much protest from religious groups, but it may be contrasted with another such event at around the same time, the accession speech of Klaus Sternberg, descendant of Ludwig and Fuhrer from June 2025 till the present day.

Klaus’ accession speech was long (2 hours), rambling, and consisted mostly of attacks on America, as a counterpoint to Germanotta’s famous ‘Evil Empire’ (“There is evil in this world...the Reich is a clear example of this evil...it is an evil empire that we must oppose with all our might...”) speech. It did not have the intended effect in the West, as many internet users laughed as what they saw as an attempt to sound tough while the Reich’s economy entered another depression.

Germanotta’s hard-line policy on the Reich has brought trouble to it, as the next part of this documentary unveils.

----

I’m in the city of Nuremberg, looking at the infamous mural of America, represented by the Statue of Liberty, broken under the foot of Mother Germania, the personification of the Reich. Lady Liberty’s crown is shattered, her neck under Germania’s foot as Germania prepares to bring her sword down on the broken symbol of America. It is clear what one is intended to feel.

Bread lines are common near the mural, people are waiting in line in an orderly manner, Reichspolizei officers with assault rifles are looking around, presumably to stop disorder. The raw, Brutalist concrete buildings around here, built to provide basic homes for the millions of people the Reich foresaw living here, are in an advanced state of decay, abandoned. Mould is growing through the decaying concrete. The very setting of the mural undercuts its message.

I walk up to the bread line, not to join it but to interview somebody near it.

She is a young woman, her name is Maria Jaeger, her husband is a soldier at the Ostfestung who has been highly decorated for service in Libya, but this does not help her.

REPORTER:
What are your troubles?

MARIA:
Food, food, food. The Sturmwache take it all; America and that Schweinhund Germanotta deny it to us. The Fuhrer says we are strong, we don’t need trade, but this is a lie. We are all starving here.

REPORTER:
Have you found a way to get around this?

MARIA:
I’ve joined the Stauffenbergprogramm (A program that provides money and other essentials for young women that agree to bear the children of Sturmwache). I have three children though, two from the Sturmwache, and they need to be fed as well. I go without food for days to feed them. I work all day and all night just cleaning the house. I wish things were better...

----

At Graz, Österreich District, a demonstration is occurring. The military are standing by with tanks, looking anxious to beat some heads in, but they’re prevented by doing so by official edict – it would be even more bad publicity if news of a massacre like the Prague Slaughter of 2011 (when the people revolted against the German-headed puppet government) hit the international press. Thousands of people are marching, bearing the old Austrian flag – its use officially restricted - of horizontal red-white-red.

A number of international journalists are here, the slogan “Frieden, Freiheit, Österreich!” is particularly loud amongst several others. The demonstration has been prevented from going near the town hall and several historic locations, but that does not blunt the power of it. No matter how hard the Reich may try and suppress local nationalisms, it cannot succeed, as it learnt when its forces were forced to withdraw from the Low Countries last year.

International opinion is against fascism and the Reich’s brand of government. The only problem is – will the Reich take others with it if it falls? That is a question for the next segment of this program.
 
Well this is getting better and alot more interesting.:) What does Sturmwache mean? And what year is this set in sometime after 2025 I thik?
 
As a nitpick I honestly doubt there'd be any credible Austrian nationalism after more than 80 years of being part of Germany. No more than there'd be credible CSA nationalism in the US in the '40s/'50s.
Personally I could see the demonstrants singing the OTL German national anthem, but putting special emphasis on part about Justice and Freedom, as a "take that" directed at their regime.
After all it'd be rather hard to act against demonstrants singing patriotic songs...

- Kelenas
 
As a nitpick I honestly doubt there'd be any credible Austrian nationalism after more than 80 years of being part of Germany. No more than there'd be credible CSA nationalism in the US in the '40s/'50s.
Personally I could see the demonstrants singing the OTL German national anthem, but putting special emphasis on part about Justice and Freedom, as a "take that" directed at their regime.
After all it'd be rather hard to act against demonstrants singing patriotic songs...

- Kelenas

I could see Austrian nationalism being an internet phenomenon. Heck, people on the net are still mourning the Confederacy's loss.

The internet does attract a disproportionate number of extremists of whatever stripe.
 
This timeline is awesome! Keep up the good work!!!:)

I have one small qualm though. President Lady Gaga? Really? I'm sorry if I come across as rude or nit picky, and I understand that it's your TL. It's just that it undermines the seriousness of this amazing TL.

My suggestions for alternate Presidents would be Joe Kennedy III, Rachel Maddow, Julian Castro, or Justin Rockefeller. But again, I understand this is your TL.
 
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