Altered States

Chapter 6

The world was indeed not the same. Kamenski’s instinct had been correct. It had spun off its axis long ago, when Japan had decided to punish Russia for the losses they sustained in 1908 and invaded to seize all of Sakhalin Island and occupy Vladivostok. Karpov’s dream was dashed, and instead of inhibiting Imperial Japan, Kirov’s intervention only catalyzed the rise of that empire. Soon all of Manchukuo was re-occupied by Japanese troops, and all of Primorskiy and Amur province as well. Fedorov and Nikolin would now hear things on their radio that were quite shocking, and they all spent some time trying to determine what could have gone wrong.

Yet they knew in their hearts what the real reason was. Too many things had changed; too many transgressions and sins, repented or not. The fatal stroke, however, was not the work of the man named Karpov. It was not the heedless abandon with which he flung the might at his disposal against the world, shattering fate and time even as he broke and burned the armored hulls of so many ships he faced in combat. His bold appraisal, that he was the man Fate must bow to, was mere braggery, the boastful ambition of a broken soul.

Nor was it the work of Gennadi Orlov, who’s self-centered vendetta had ended the life of Commissar Molla, and in so doing gave life to thousands who might have died under Molla’s cruel regime, and tens of thousands more that would be born from those who escaped his malicious influence.

Men had died that might have lived, and other men stood alive who should be in their graves. Yet none among them, the living or the dead, had the power to really work the change either. They lived their humdrum lives, ate, played, married, worked and died, yet none had the power to shift the lever beneath the ponderous weight of history.

No, it was a quiet whisper on the upper landing of the back stairway at the railway inn of Ilanskiy. That was the final stroke, and it had been delivered by the a man who had set his mind and heart to the preservation of the past he had studied and so loved. There, in that wild, unexpected moment as he looked into Mironov’s eyes, Anton Fedorov succumbed to the folly of an inner desire for justice and good.

He had tried to set things right in the long journey west along the Trans-Siberian rail, though he knew his intervention there had been useless. He sparred with the NKVD, standing up to relieve the harsh conditions imposed on innocent men and women who had been rounded up for the work camps. They had done nothing to deserve the fate that had befallen them, or so Fedorov believed, and he did his part that day to ease their suffering and chastise Lieutenant Surinov in the process.

He could not make an evil man good, he realized. All he could do was stand against him, though the futility of what he accomplished that day had been made plain to him when Sergeant Troyak reminded him they could not place clean straw and fresh water in every train heading east to the camps. The war would go on-Stalin’s war-and there was little they could do to prevent that…until that quiet, desperate whisper that was powerful enough to change everything.

It came like thunder, heralding the storm, that fateful rumble in the night, an echo of the titanic explosion of a vagrant from the deeps of space. Then came that strange walk down those stairs and the encounter with Mironov. That interaction, and the curiosity of the man he knew to be Sergei Kirov, was the decisive moment of change.

It has been said that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men to do nothing. In this case it was a good man who did something, for every good reason, and then the history he had so jealously thought to guard came tumbling down, brick by brick, hour by hour, day by day. When Anton Fedorov whispered his warning in Mironov’s ear, he did so in an impulsive moment of hope-the hope to save the life of one good man who might stand against Stalin even as Fedorov had stood against Lieutenant Surinov, and it worked.

It would not be Stalin’s war this time around. The world that Time built after that was altogether new, altered, a changeling doppelganger, a twisted image of the old history in the shattered image of time.

There, trapped in the reflection of that broken mirror, like a stone embedded in the glass, sat a ship, alone on a still and quiet sea. There sat Kirov, named for the man who listened to that whisper of fate, and took it upon himself to take the life of Josef Stalin on a cold dark night in the stony cell of Bayil prison in 1908. That one single act, the flexing of a finger in the night, would change the lives and fates of millions, redraw the borders of nations, and recast the entire political landscape of the world in decades to come. Was it born in Fedorov’s plaintive and desperate whisper, or given life by Mironov’s insatiable curiosity that day?

It did not matter. It was done. And by 1936 when another demon came to power in Germany, things were about to change yet again.

* * *

The Fuehrer looked at Admiral Raeder, his eyes dark and vacant, as if seeing visions of some apocalyptic future, compelling yet dreadful, an inner specter of chaos, war, and the triumph of his dream of Nazi supremacy.

“Yes, yes, yes, I know all about the cruisers, and the U-boats, and destroyers. The battleships, Raeder,” he said. “What about the battleships?”

Grossadmiral Erich Raeder never forgot those eyes. Every time he thought on this meeting they seemed to brand his soul again, haunting him. There was a darkness and a void in them, as if the Fuhrer was some satanic Golem, animated only by the hidden inner energy of his vision. The admiral cleared his throat, expecting this question, ready for it, yet still finding these waters turbulent and fraught with an element of danger. How could he satisfy the seemingly insatiable desires of this man’s blackened heart? He would offer him the moon, but the Fuhrer would reach for the stars.

“We have made considerable progress in our thinking on this issue, my Fuhrer.”

“Progress in your thinking? It is actions I want, Raeder. Not more thinking and planning. Not more talk. Where are the plans? Are the keels being laid? Show me.”

Raeder nodded, maintaining his professional composure in spite of the constant jabbing and almost adolescent urgency in the man before him. His perfect uniform gleamed with honors and decorations earned over a long and distinguished naval career-the Iron Cross, The Order of the Red Eagle, The Cross of Honor, the Order of the Rising Sun, and now the Knight’s Cross. He had worked and sailed his way through every rank in the service, from lowly SeeKadett in 1895, through Oberleutnent, Kapitanleutnant, Kapitan zur See in 1919, and on through every rank of Admiral until he assumed his current post as the Grand Admiral of the entire German fleet this very year. He was the first man to hold that rank since the great von Tirpitz himself. He had fought at Dogger Bank, and at Jutland. He had stood face to face with the best that the Royal Navy could sail, his ship’s guns blackened with the anger of their fire in the heat of battle.

A tall, handsome man with intelligent eyes, he commanded respect effortlessly, his deportment and carriage the perfect image of the command officer. He had labored for years to restore the tarnished honor of the Reichsmarine, slowly rebuilding the fleet within the confining restraints of the Treaty of Versailles, but Hitler wanted more. He repudiated that treaty with an incisive and even belligerent speech.

This conference today was the end result of that repudiation, and the humiliation Germany had been forced to endure at the end of the Great War. The German Navy was to undergo a new rebirth, becoming a force capable of regaining the honor at sea that had been lost in the clash of arms in Europe. It was the Army that had lost the war, or so Raeder believed. It was lost amid the gas ridden trenches and barbed wire of France, under the thunder of artillery, not on the high seas. The result had been depression, hyperinflation and crushing unemployment.

Raeder had little doubt that Hitler would soon be putting all those millions of unemployed to some nefarious use. But how could he impose economic reason on this man? How could he tell him that Germany was still struggling to rebuild herself as a nation, and that all dreams must have limits, see careful and well timed planning, build slowly and surely over the years, and be backed by well governed policy and sustainable economics? Germany needed steel. She needed oil. She had only a few working shipyards worth the name, all land locked in the Baltic Sea or accessed via the narrow and shallow Kiel Canal. Yet the Fuhrer seemed to envision the Reichsmarine as a vast global force, plying seas the world over, insurmountable. He wanted nothing less than absolute supremacy.

Raeder cleared his throat, quietly opening the folio he had carried to this meeting, and seeing Hitler’s eyes immediately gleam with renewed interest.

“Your battleships, my Fuhrer,” the Admiral said in a low, measured voice. “You are already familiar with our Scharnhorst Class battlecruisers.” He gestured at the line drawings briefly, and flipped the page. “Here we have the next evolution of that design, and both ships will soon be ready for commissioning, the Bismarck and Tirpitz.”

The sleek lines of the ship diagrams had just the effect Raeder had hoped for, quieting Hitler for a moment as he stared at the documents. Yet a moment later the Fuehrer spoke again, with that same restless urgency in his voice.

“The guns?” Hitler pointed at the turrets in the carefully drawn schematics.

“Eight 38 centimeter guns, fifteen inches in diameter, arranged two each on the four heavy turrets. These ships will displace over 50,000 tons, nearly 20,000 tons beyond what we have now in Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and they will be almost as fast at 30 knots, with a range of over 10,000 miles. These are true battleships, fast, well armored, and very powerful. They will stand with anything the Royal Navy has. In fact, they will make the entire British fleet obsolete the very day they sail.”

As if he had heard nothing that was said, the Fuhrer looked blankly at Raeder and said: “Only two?”

“We have plans to improve upon this class with further designs,” said Raeder quickly. “This next design will interest you even more… Schlachtschiff H.”

He turned another page, rotating the folio so Hitler could take in the full sweep of the diagrams before him. In design and form it was much like the Bismarck, only bigger, with a second smokestack and more powerfully drawn turrets.

“These ships will displace 55,500 long tons or more, and we have improved the main batteries to 40.6 centimeters-a full sixteen inches.”

“The British have such guns. Why not twenty inches?”

“Twenty inches? My Fuehrer, the extra weight would require a ship of some 90,000 tons minimum, and we have no harbor that could accommodate a vessel of that size, nor could they transit the Kiel Canal. The draft would exceed the maximum depth there. If ever built, they would have to be kept at off shore anchorages, making supply, maintenance, and repair work very difficult and slow. Nor could they dock safely at most foreign ports likely to come under our control.”

“And yet they would outclass everything in the Royal Navy by a wide measure,” said Hitler waving his hand. “They would not dare to challenge such a ship, with even two of their existing battleships, eh?”

“That may be said this very moment of Bismarck and Tirpitz,” said Raeder, convinced of the power of his latest additions to the fleet. “And it will be even more applicable to Schlachtschiff H. Their keels have been constructed from transverse, longitudinal steel frames, and she will have twenty one interior watertight compartments.” He ran his finger along the hull schematic as he spoke. “The design will be immune to torpedo attacks, if a destroyer ever dared to try as much, and this hull design will make Hindenburg virtually unsinkable.”

Hitler loved the technical details of steel weight, tensile strength, yet all he heard was the name. “Hindenburg?” he said. “Not Hitler?” He smiled.

“We thought to name this class after the Helgoland series from the last war. One of the ships in that class was the Oldenburg, but as this was to be our H series design, we thought Hindenburg might be appropriate, followed by Brandenburg, Oldenburg, and so forth.”

Hitler thought for a moment. He had reservations about allowing a ship to have a name too closely associated with the Reich. What if it should be sunk? For the moment however, he was focused on the guns. “Yes, yes, leave it at that. But the guns. Can they be bigger? I want guns that will break the back of a British battleship in one blow.”

“We have designs for seventeen and nineteen inch guns as well, but the key concept here, my Fuhrer is to mount a gun best fitting the size of the ship. It’s a consideration of weight versus speed. What we want to achieve here is both speed and power. She will have a top speed of 30 knots. Anything that can catch us will surely be outclassed, given the protection we are building into this ship-strong horizontal protection with face hardened Krupp steel belt armor to 320 millimeters, 350 on the command tower, and 385 on the main guns. She will also get better deck armor, 200 millimeters thick, and we’ve added this new feature, six submerged torpedo tubes. They may be useful against convoys as well.”

“Do not speak to me of armor. I assume as much. It is the guns that interest me. These ships should have guns in the range of twenty inches.”

Raeder had anticipated this from the Fuehrer, but was unwilling to become bogged down now in a argument over gun size. “My Fuehrer, I have appointed Admiral Fuchs to make a detailed study of this very issue, and he will meet with you to report on his findings in short order.” Raeder had press ganged Fuchs into the battle, wanting him to try and convince Hitler that 16 inch guns would be more than adequate.

“Very well,” said Hitler flipping the page. “And these?”

Raeder had detailed out six ships, designs H through M, each with modified armament, armor, engine plants, and other minor details. “Let us consider all these as elements of the H class we are proposing,” he explained. “Six ships in all. These will form the heart of our main battle fleet. The fast Panzerschiff cruisers I mentioned earlier will be excellent as escorts on the initial breakout, and fine commerce raiders in their own rite. We envision a concept of one or two powerful ships operating in conjunction with the Panzerschiff and squadrons of U-boats. The entire task force will be refueled from tankers at sea and remain capable of extended operations in the Atlantic-up to two months if necessary.”

“It will most certainly be necessary,” said Hitler. “And the British know as much. They will guard their convoys with battleships, and they will outnumber us in that category and every other category as well. But think bigger, Raeder. This navy must be strong enough to stand against anything the British have. How soon can these ships be built?”

“Two keels have already been laid-”

“Build them all,” the Fuehrer said briskly. “Have them at sea in three years-four at the most. We will have to start with what we have now, but these ships will make fine additions.”

Raeder heard something dark and ominous in that. Start what? He knew the answer to that question even before he asked it. Another war was coming, of that much he was certain. It was January of 1936, and he wondered if they would reach the end of this decade without conflict erupting again. The only question now was time. How long did he have to get the fleet in shape for battle at sea? He decided to ask for a realistic interval, knowing full well what it would take to build the ships Hitler wanted.

“Give me at least six years, my Fuehrer, and I will deliver a fleet that the nation will be proud of and one that every other nation on earth will learn to fear and respect.”

“Six years? I built the entire Third Reich in six years, Raeder. You will have to do better than that. Surely you can build me these ships in far less time.”

Raeder smiled, wondering if even one of the new battleships would ever be commissioned, but he could not say this to the Fuehrer.

“I will do my utmost,” he said firmly.

Hitler looked at him, the well of those dark eyes opening, as if to devour his very soul in their inky blackness. “See that you do,” he said in a low voice. “See that you do.”