In den Märkten

The tumble began almost immediately after the news had reached Singapur. By the end of the first week the entirety of Germany's East Asian market teeters on the brink of total collapse: investors have begun to pull out en masse from the Deutsche-Asiatische Bank, triggering a ripple effect that has seen the prices for rubber and oil (Deutsch-Ostasien's primary exports) tank as European motor factories shut down and demand for export goods collapses. On the opposite end, the prices for domestic essential goods, such as rice, skyrocket. Thousands of domestic laborers have been laid off as German businesses and plantations attempt to avoid bankruptcy. Further issues have been caused by AOG investors pulling out money as the situation in the League of Eight Provinces erupts into full civil unrest-best evidenced by the secession of the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi.

Die Antwort

With unemployment skyrocketing and the situation only appearing to grow worse, the Admiralty of East Asia issued a three day bank holiday (February 11th-14th) along with an assurance of private deposits to be backed by the Office of the Admiralty in Singapur. Alongside this the Admiralty has issued price controls on rice and other essential goods to ensure affordability for recently laid off workers. Those who cannot afford the food are to be assisted by the opening of bread and soup kitchens organized by German military detachments working in concert with local authorities-this particular program has been designed as way to help develop friendship between disenfranchised natives and colonials with the aim of preventing too great a divide between the two.

These initial measures have been designed to offset the initial crash. Meanwhile, the Admiralty is working with a group of colonial economists (led primarily by Norddeusctcher Lloyd representative Rudolph Firle) and local leaders (nominally led by Malaysian Sultan of Johor) to help devise a long term response. At the core of the conference is the development of a stronger local economy to help wean Ostasien off of unstable European markets and ensure a more controllable domestic market. By February's end the conference was able to present a plan to Admiral von Mucke:

• Move the domestic markets fully to the Deutsch-Ostmark, detach it from the Reichsmark and float it to ensure currency flexibility.
• Have the Admiralty invest in and encourage local businesses and thereby encourage domestic market growth and stability.
• Continue to ensure holdings for German investors.
• Devolve powers from the former French and British colonial administrative structures into the local administrations: the client kings in Malaysia, Indochina, and Sarawak.
• Open up more opportunities for natives to enlist in the Ostasien Armee and offer improved pensions for new enlistees as well as current enlistees with further raises for those who wish to extend their service by one or more years.
• Assist native rulers in assembling and/or bolstering native police forces and bureaucracies.
• Open up programs for language tutoring to educate natives in German.
• Mandate language education for colonials serving the Ostasien government (language dependent on main region of service).

Further reforms are to be discussed in the coming months. The initial outcome of the February Conference is to see the progressive implementation of the agreed upon reforms March through May, with August 1st slated to be an assessment date.

Das Grollen

February 20th, 1936

Hanoi, Vietnam, German Indochina

The officer had found the flier posted up on a wall in the Hai Ba Trung district, on the banks of the Red River. It read, in bold Tieng Viet, "Rise. You have nothing to lose but your chains!" and a face beside a yellow star. The officer recognized the face. It was a man who had died in Guangzhou, buried beneath the rubble of a shelled building.

Ho Chi Minh.

When the police commissioner saw the poster, he gasped. The VNQDD had been quiet for nearly a decade. In the aftermath of the Intervention in China and the death of Ho Chi Minh, the radical independence group had gone underground. They'd been completely silent. The commissioner, as had his fellows in the German administration, hoped that '27 was the end of the nationalists.

Yet here was the poster. Freshly printed.

The telegram was dispatched to Singapur within an hour of the poster's discovery.

von Mucke had been at lunch with the Sultan of Johor, discussing administrative reforms when his assistant barged into the room.

"My fiercest apologies for the interruption, Sir, but we have an urgent message from the office in Hanoi."

von Mucke apologized to the Sultan and followed the assistant back to the Istana's telegram office. When he read the message, he dropped it.

"No," he whispered, "No."

"Should we contact the Zivilkommisar?" the assistant asked.

"Yes. Send a message to Feldmarschall von Preussen as well.

By day's end Feldmarschall Oskar von Preussen-Fifth Prince of the German Empire-and Zivilkommisar Paul Koenig had arrived in von Mucke's office.

Koenig was the first to speak up, "Well then we must prepare. We should send an alert to Hue. The King might not yet be returned, but it would be smart to alert his administration of the situation beforehand."

"I can have von Kessinger activate the Marinearmee in Saigon," Feldmarschall von Preussen added, "And Ruscheweyh can ramp up patrols in Tonkin and Annam."

von Mucke leaned back in his chair and looked up to the ceiling. For a moment he wondered why the original builders had painted the interior of the building such a garish white, but he quickly tossed that line of thought aside.

"We will not alert Hue until the King returns. He is due back on the 1st, we will route his ship here and I will have a discussion with him myself. As for the garrisons: have them prepare but do not make any overt moves. Things are going to only grow more tense for the next few months. We must focus on aiding the people-frankly if we do that we may very well sap the rebels of their main attraction. If the men and women of Vietnam find themselves assisted by us, they are less likely to join in any insurgency."

"Yes sir," both men said.

"Oskar," von Mucke spoke to von Pruessen, "Dust off the old plans and reassess them. We ought to be prepared for a worst case scenario."

von Pruessen nodded. He would speak with von Mucke later about a mere Governor addressing an Imperial Prince by his first name.

von Mucke went silent for a moment, brow furrowed. Then he sighed, "We will prepare as is necessary. Dismissed."

The two men rose from their seats and left the office.

Hellmuth, alone, rubbed his nose and rested his head on his desk. Sometimes he found himself yearning for his childhood home in Zwickau. Two stories of brick along Arndstrasse. As a boy he would wake up and run to the riverside and watch the waters flow. When his father returned from service, the two would go down to a bench near a bridge over the Zwickaer Mulde and eat lunch.

In December while at a dinner with some of the local kings, one of them-the Sultan of Sarawak, if Hellmuth remembered correctly, had asked if the Admiral was married. Hellmuth had smiled and said no.

The Sultan persisted, asking why a man well into his fifties had not yet had a wife, and to this Hellmuth could only say, "I have spent more years in the arms of the sea than those of a woman. I have thought of it, and even tried to find someone. Yet I could not. Why, I do not know."

And now, alone, he wondered once again. von Preussen was married, as was necessary for any Prince Imperial. Koening was married, albeit somewhat unhappily (both he and his wife carried on a number of affairs and dalliances). Even Rommel, that solitary, stoic sentinel of German military innovation, was married. von Falkenhausen, Pluschow, and von Luckner all had wives.

In his last visit to the Vaterland, Hellmuth had visited his mother in Zwickau-his father had died in '22. She smiled and was as she had always been: a sweet and doting Bavarian possessed of the sort of kindness reserved only for a saint. At the day's end, nearing the time of Hellmuth's departure (he had a late train back to Berlin) his mother had asked him the same question the Sultan had.

And to her he gave a brief and more honest answer.

"I do not know."