Re: Blood and Iron

The halls of the Imperial Ministry smelled of sweat and scorched lacquer, heavy with the dread of men who knew they were witnessing the final pages of their empire’s long chronicle.

Maps of the home islands lay scattered across broad polished tables, some edges charred where frantic officers had stubbed out cigarettes too close. Pin flags marked depots that no longer existed, divisions that no longer lived.

And on a raised dais under the silent portraits of emperors past, the War Cabinet gathered.

General Kuroda sat with his head bowed, the veins in his temples pulsing. Across from him, Admiral Yamamuro held a handkerchief over his mouth as if to block out the stench of ruin carried on every breath.

“Osaka,” Kuroda rasped finally. “Kobe. Nagoya. Three of our industrial lungs collapsed in a single hour. The arsenals are gone. The munitions warehouse; erased. Civilian districts… ash.”

An undersecretary, no older than twenty-five, blurted out, “The Ministry of Civil Affairs says the fires will take days to put out. Entire neighborhoods are vaporized. They can’t even count the bodies. They’re gone—”

Yamamuro slammed his fist down on the table, rattling ink pots. “Silence!”

The young man flinched back, swallowing whatever terror had clawed up his throat.

A thin voice came from the back of the chamber. Prince Kanin, skeletal now in his ceremonial uniform, eyes clouded with both age and dread.

“If we do not sue for peace… there will be nothing left to rule. Not even rubble. Only graves.”

Kuroda glared at him. “And let the Germans dictate the terms of our extinction? No. If they want to take the sacred soil of Yamato, they will have to bleed for every stone.”

“General,” Yamamuro cut in, voice leaden, “we have no factories to resupply the army. No drydock to service the fleet. No fuel stockpiles left to shuffle from one prefecture to another. Even the rail lines to Tokyo are threatened by local partisans starving for rice. Tell me; if they land, what shall we fight with? Bamboo pikes? Boys with slings?”

Silence.

A single clerk scurried forward, a telegram trembling in his hands. “Another dispatch from Hiroshima, sir. A surge of civilians fleeing from Osaka has overrun the townships. Food riots are spreading. Officials are hanging themselves to avoid mob justice.”

Yamamuro slumped back in his seat, eyes hollow. “So that is the choice, then. We starve, or we burn.”

Prince Kanin bowed his head. “Perhaps it is better to live without pride than die with it.”

Kuroda’s lips peeled back in a humorless snarl. “You would spit on the graves of those already dead? Of Kyoto, of Seoul, of Busan? What did they die for then, if we yield now? What of the Emperor Taisho? What of his memory!?! Will you condemn him to history as the man who lost the Empire!?!”

The room fractured; some shouting, some weeping, some simply turning away, unable to meet each other’s eyes. The pride of Japan had always been its curse as much as its sword.

At last Yamamuro stood, his voice a whisper that somehow carried like a gunshot. “Begin discreet contacts through neutral channels. The Swiss or the Swedes. Prepare the ground. If the Germans and Russians will grant terms, we must at least hear them.”

Kuroda’s head fell. The fight was not yet officially over. But in that dim, suffocating room in Tokyo, everyone could taste the bitter residue of defeat.

—

Vladivostok, Field Headquarters; Phone lines humming.

Night had fallen over Vladivostok. The harbor lights glittered off dark water heavy with the silhouettes of Russian troop transports being provisioned for the coming assault.

Inside a commandeered governor’s residence turned staff headquarters, Tsarevich Alexei Romanov paced alone, telegrams and casualty lists strewn across a massive oak desk.

A direct secure line to Bruno’s suite within the German Carrier crackled to life. A signal operator poked his head through the door. “Your Majesty; Generalfeldmarschall Bruno von Zehntner is on the line.”

Alexei swallowed, his throat raw. “Put him through.”

There was a click, then a hollow hum. Then Bruno’s voice, deep and iron-sure, rolled through the receiver.

“Alexei.”

A single word. Heavy with old authority.

Alexei closed his eyes. Then found his spine. “Generalfeldmarschall. I trust you have time for an explanation.”

A pause on the other end. Then: “For what, precisely?”

“The missile strikes. Osaka. Kobe. Nagoya. Hundreds of thousands dead or dying; civilians. And no warning. No coordination. You treated Russia not as an ally, but as a subordinate to be informed after the fact.”

Bruno’s exhale was neither contrite nor impatient; simply inevitable. “I treated you like a young monarch who has never borne the final burden of decision. Who does not yet understand the calculus of thousands versus millions.”

Alexei bristled. “Do not patronize me. Russia has bled for this war. Busan alone—”

“Yes,” Bruno cut in, voice abruptly hard. “And if we had done it your way; if we had marched step by step from Kyushu to Honshu, fighting street by street, field by field, how many Russian mothers would weep for sons they buried far from their snows? How many widows would wander Saint Petersburg’s streets?”

Alexei gripped the edge of the desk until his knuckles burned white. “So we trade their lives for Japanese children? For peasant families who never even saw a German uniform?”

Bruno’s voice dropped to a somber, unyielding timbre. “That is what it means to rule. To choose who dies; because someone will die, no matter what. The only question is whose blood waters the soil.”

Silence stretched long. Outside, a train whistle moaned over the freight yards.

Then Bruno spoke again, quieter. “You were but a boy when we first met all those years ago. Do you remember why I first visited your family while you were hiding out in Siberia?”

Alexei went silent for a long time. And after processing his thoughts he exhaled deeply.

“No, I do not. I was too young, and I’m sure you know that. But my father told me why you were in our homes, why you were given such a prestigious position. You fought the red menace on our family’s behalf. And you won. But what does that have to-“

Bruno cut the man off and proceeded to tell him the full truth he had not ever been told.

“I didn’t come to your lands as a guest or an attaché. I wasn’t even truly invited by the Tsar. I came to Russia with fifty thousand men at my back, armed with rifles, machine guns, and artillery.

When there was merely a brigade of us who first arrived, I lifted the siege of Saint Petersburg after your family had long since fled eastward. I butchered every Red outside its defenses; and tens of thousands of civilians died in the chaos.”

Bruno paused. Alexei could hear the faint shuffle of papers on the other end, as if the German was pushing ghosts aside.

“I shot the leader of their so-called army in the head at point-blank, while he sniveled and pissed himself in fear. Then I marched my forces east, and lit Tsaritsyn ablaze, shelling the city and the rebels who had taken up rifle and sword against your father.”

His voice hardened. “Tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of innocents perished. And I did the same to all of Ingria and the Volga. By the time the blood finished flooding your streets, hundreds of thousands were dead, and millions displaced.”

There was a breath; not regret, but the weighted pause of a man who carried history like a millstone.

“But in doing so, Alexei, I saved millions from certain death, and tens of millions from a far crueler fate. Today, Russians remember me fondly, as the Red Scourge; the man who hunted down and eradicated a regime of thieves, murderers, rapists, and psychopaths.”

His words dropped lower, almost gentle. “Your own father understood what I had done was necessary. Despite the collateral damage, I not only saved your family from certain death… I saved Russia from far greater pain than it endured as a result of my actions.”

There was silence once more. Alexei stood, gripping the receiver, struggling to process Bruno’s words. He had always known the broad strokes of that war, heard the sanitized versions in gilded rooms.

But the gory details, and the scale of suffering his own people had endured, and been spared from in equal measure, had always been kept from him.

Bruno continued. Alexei heard the faint crinkle of maps shifting on the other end.

“Japan has no more industry. No more means to build another fleet, or enough bullets to arm every boy and old man they’d hand a bamboo spear. What I destroyed in a day would have cost us two million Russian and German corpses to achieve on foot.”

His next words came out softer, yet somehow even heavier.

“This was mercy, Alexei. Monstrous, yes… but mercy.”

Alexei leaned back against the wall, the receiver slick in his damp hand. His heart pounded with anger, shame, and relief; all tangled into one poisoned knot.

As much as he longed to be the fair and noble ruler just like he always imagined his father was. The kind of man he once thought Bruno had been. Deep down, he knew the terrible truth.

This wasn’t a tragedy. This was calculus. Japan would have dragged this war out until tens of millions lay dead, rather than hundreds of thousands.

Bruno’s cruelty had spared the world far worse cruelty. And that, in its own twisted way, was a form of mercy; especially when men in power were too mad to be reasoned with.

At last, Alexei exhaled, breath shaking.

“I’m sorry… I… I shouldn’t have lashed out at you like that. I should have known… I should have—”

Bruno stopped him, voice no longer stern, but colored with a subtle, almost paternal gentleness.

“It is not your fault, Alexei. You were raised to be an emperor of peace. But unfortunately… your father, my friend Nicholas, left us before we could usher in that era together.”

There was a pause, the sound of distant reports crackling on Bruno’s end.

“There will be another war after this one, and sooner than you may think. You are still an inexperienced leader. But you have time to grow.”

A sigh, soft and tired.

“If I were you, I’d start by caring more about how your generals treat the men beneath their command than worrying over the lives of your enemies.”

Bruno’s final words carried a raw edge of pain; the confession of a man haunted by decades of needless waste.

“I have seen enough young boys used as fodder for steel to last three lifetimes.”

Bruno did not wait for a further response. Nothing more needed to be said. Rather, the abruptness of the conversation’s end served as a greater reminder of the words spoken, and the lessons learned.

Alexei stood there a long time, the receiver still pressed to his ear, listening to nothing but the quiet drum of his own pulse.

At last, he lowered it. Stared out the window where supply columns rolled through the streets of Vladivostok.

He whispered to himself, voice hollow and resolute: “I will be the Tsar Russia needs me to be.”

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