Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne, Und die trägt er im Gesicht.

The DVLP has gone too far. This was the common creed whispered in the pews at Catholic churches and Cathedrals across Germany. For over a century, relations between the dominant Protestants and the Catholics within the state have been tense, though it has been just as long since they’ve come to a head as radically as they have recently. Reports are coming in from all over Germany as foreign correspondents flock to the scene to interview Catholic clergy and parishes that are discontent with the DVLP’s actions. While recently the DVLP’s popularity has been far reaching, with Germans clamouring to join and proud of their status as victors of the Weltkrieg, things have begun to shift dramatically in Catholic populations.

Karl Joseph Schulte, His Eminence the Archbishop of Cologne, issued a proclamation to the bishoprics beneath him, to instruct their parishioners that joining the DVLP was tantamount to taking communion in a heretic church. The Blessed Clemens August Graf von Galen, Bishop of Munster, echoed these recommendations and lodged a formal letter to the Vatican requesting that the Pope himself contact the German state to negotiate on behalf of the oppressed and targeted Catholic communities.

The discontent didn’t restrain itself to the church halls and vestibules. Catholic politicians began speaking out against the DVLP, consolidating opposition parties behind them in vocal condemnation from the right, and even acknowledging grievances of the left. Erich Klausener, a devout Catholic from Dusseldorf, delivered an impassioned speech in that city that called on the DVLP to disband its hold on power and for Ernst Rohm to, well, hang himself.

The King of Bavaria, Rupprecht Maria Luitpold Ferdinand, made a formal request to the Kaiser and to the German government, demanding that the rights of Catholics be enshrined in law. Remembering the kulturkampf, King Rupprecht, claiming to speak for the entire Catholic population of Bavaria, Swabia and the Rhine, ordered the restoration of “church privileges.” He demanded that the mitigation laws of the kulturkampf be repealed, specifically the following:

Any cleric or other minister of religion shall be punished with imprisonment or incarceration of up to two years if he, while exercising his occupation or having his occupation exercised, makes state affairs the subject of announcements or discussion either in public before a crowd, in a church, or before any number of people in some other place designated for religious gatherings in such a way that it endangers the public peace.

This, the so-called, Pulpit Law was wide reaching and allowed for the state to indiscriminately prosecute clergy for “endangering the public peace” - a vague at best phrasing. Rupprecht demanded that the law not only be repealed but that legal protections be given to the Catholic clergy that priests and bishops can only be charged of the most serious offenses - murder, rape, etc.

The King demanded the repeal of the Jesuit ban, the repeal on the state’s involvement in schools, the repeal of laws requiring the secularization of schools, and the cessation of the state’s supervision of church assets. On the latter point, the King of Bavaria has demanded, as the “representative of the Catholic citizens of the Empire” that he should take responsibility for church assets, effectively rendering all Catholic churches in Germany property of the King of Bavaria.

Violence began to pop up across Germany’s Catholic communities. The mayor of Wurzburg and the protestant police chief of Mainz were both lynched by angry mobs of Catholics, while the bishops and priests did not intervene. Paradoxically, labor unions began to be associated with the DVLP and one local union hall in Munich was firebombed by a Catholic extremist. The campaign of terrorism took a more organized form.

On 14 February, Ernst Rohm was scheduled to make a speech before the improvised Reichstag now being held at the Kroll Opera House. Claus von Stauffenberg a minor noble of Catholic descent from the house of Stauffenberg in Swabia, was enraged at the anti-Catholic actions of the DVLP. He was worried that, should the DVLP’s reign of terror continue, not only would Germany be irreparably damaged, they would come for the possessions of him and his family, and other Catholic nobility in the country, perhaps to turn it over to the Junkers or to the DVLP Party elite themselves. He and his family had been ardently pro-DVLP as it rose to power, supporting the nationalism and anti-semitism that charactizered the consolidation of the fatherland. When the ire turned against the catholics, the Steuffenberg house changed its opinion practically overnight… This was too far. It was no secret that tensions between Germany and Austria were rapidly increasing and though von Stauffenberg, and many German Catholics, saw themselves as Germans, the government seemed to see them as a fifth column, agents of Hapsburg infiltration… von Stauffenberg would send a message to the German government that would echo through time and stop the disastrous course that the country was taking. Evidence found after von Stauffenberg’s “message” revealed a scrawl on the corner of a paper in his estates: first they came for the jews and I did not speak out because I was not a jew. Now they come for the catholics and who speaks out for me?

The plan was simple. Von Stauffenberg and three associates would send the Kroll Opera House to the heavens - it would be blown sky high with 10 charges of PETN - pentaerythritol tetranitrate. Unfortunately, the conspirators could only acquire enough explosives for four charges. Berlin police flagged a suspicious report about von Stauffenberg’s men and received a description of the man himself, but the terrorists had escaped their safehouse before police could arrest them. They reached the Kroll Opera House early in the morning on the 14th, at roughly 1:05. Expecting to have to sneak in, they were surprised when their uniforms tricked the guards on duty that they were authorized to take over. “You’re late!” one guard snapped at von Stauffenberg when the men arrived five minutes after one. Von Stauffenberg apologized and looked to his companions with wide and excited eyes as the previous nightwatchman handed him a keyring.

That night, the terrorists set four charges in the Opera house. Two were set on load bearing walls of the building on either side, one was underneath the floorboards where the DVLP party members sat, and the final one was hidden inside the podium where the speaker stands. They were wired to be detonated via a wireless radio signal. It would be detonated right when Ernst Rohm would be in the middle of his speech. Later that day, the situation got worrisome. Rohm was running late, his speech wouldn’t begin until later. To make matters worse, the man who was speaking and who would still be speaking when the bombs were to go off was a Catholic member of the Social Democratic party. Von Stauffenberg gave the order to delay the detonation until Rohm showed. If he didn’t? Well they were shit out of luck.

Luckily Ernst Rohm showed up and made his way to the podium. The speech began and beads of sweat formed on von Steuffenberg’s brow. And then, the count left the hall. This was the cue. Behind him, he anticipated an explosion.

But nothing. He waited another moment.

Nothing.

He turned in time to see one of the wall charges detonate, sending plaster and splinters through the air as the opera house creaked and moaned. The wall buckled and collapsed in a cloud of dust and falling glass as a portion of the roof making up roughly 40% of it collapsed into the hall. Caked in dust, Rohm fled from the stage escorted by armed guards just as the bomb inside the podium detonated. Rohm was thrown to the floor and his left arm was severely burned but he was alive. As he struggled to get up, a beam of wood from the catwalks, displaced by the weakening of the building’s structure fell onto his leg. It shattered his knee and tibia entirely, sending shards of bone through the skin. The armed and muscular and lithe and toned bodyguards hoisted the beam off of Rohm’s leg and carried him out of the Hall and to urgent medical aid. The rest of the members of the Reichstag were evacuated, but casualties were suffered… 19 members of the DVLP were killed in the attack, along with 4 members of the Social Democrats, and one member of the DKP.

Outside the hall, chaos was rampant. Police hastily established a cordon around the building while fire brigades and journalists and soldiers all rushed to see what was going on. A cloud of dust and smoke rose from the collapsed portion of the Opera Hall and a stream of coughing and injured parliamentarians and aid workers streamed out to waiting military escorts. Journalists butted heads with the police and were beaten with nightsticks for trying to approach the building and, in the chaos some newspapers began reporting that Ernst Rohm was killed in the attack. The rumor mill was hard at work - the attacker was a syndicalist Bulgarian named Georgi Dimitrov… no it was a Russian nationalist! Actually it was a Serb named Gavrilo Princip!

Unluckily for the conspirators, the police knew who they were. Shocked by the delayed detonation of the first bomb, von Steuffenberg had failed to get far enough away from the building by the time the army rolled in and was subsequently questioned. The police matched his description to that of the man implicated in buying the explosives, and he and all three of his colleagues were arrested. Meanwhile, Ernst Rohm’s leg was amputated at the knee and he is undergoing treatment for severe burns to his arm, while smoke inhalation has left him with what will be a permanent cough. Rohm will, however, recover in roughly two weeks time.

The dead include DVLP founder Anton Drexler and Bavarian DVLP leader Josef Burckel and junior DVLP member from Berlin, Johan von Sünden.

Reactions among the Catholic portions of the Empire were split. In Regensburg, Passau, Freiburg, Speyer, Essen, Paderborn, Limburg, and Osnabruck, the reaction was ardently pro-terrorism, with banners calling to “Free von Steuffenberg” and carrying images of the pope and king of bavaria marching hand in hand. While in Augsburg, Rottenburg, Wurzburg, Trier, Munster, Koln, and Fulda were ambivalent to the attack but generally supportive. In Mainz, Aachen, Eichstatt, and Munchen however, the reaction was of shock and disgust, with many residents fearing retaliation from the openly anti-Catholic German state.

The King of Bavaria, upon hearing the news of the attack, sent another letter to the Kaiser and Rohm.

Do you see what happens? The Catholic people are not playthings. You brought this upon yourselves with your impudence and arrogance. I will pray to God for the swift recovery of Ernst Rohm so that this situation might be resolved before you tear this nation apart.

Germany now stands at a crossroads and while its armies prepare to march to the tune of the Kaiser’s drum, there are deep divides within the nation. Divides that will have to be addressed lest it consume them entirely.