Jörg’s corpus eventually changed clothes, drank some water, slung a faded bag over one shoulder, and left the room. Milos followed, remaining invisible.
Jörg felt the cold air hit him as his corpus left the apartment. Nil had attacked him at the start of winter, so he must have slept for pretty much exactly two years. Since he’d woken up in the same season, the attack felt more like yesterday than two years ago. In the Berlin of today, a raw stench rose from every surface and permeated the air. It didn’t come from any one specific place, but from the roads and inside every house. To Jörg, it smelled like wounded souls, corrupted ideals, and a dying country.
When had Germany become like this? The moment the war began? Or had it already been like this before any fighting started? Perhaps he and everyone else had pretended not to notice the rot surfacing so long ago. He felt as if he could turn over any of the cobblestones at his feet and expose a ground packed tight with the flesh and blood of a decaying country.
“Between when you lost consciousness in the winter of 1916 and now, over six hundred thousand people have died of starvation in Germany alone,” Milos told him. “If you add up all the deaths since the start of the war, it’s got to be over seven hundred thousand.”
“Nil said the same thing. This war really did create all those victims.”
“There were strikes throughout Germany this past January. They happened all at once, across roughly twenty cities. More than half a million workers took part in Berlin alone.”
“And what happened?”
“They failed. The government came down hard on them. The leaders were all arrested, tried, and jailed. Do you have any idea how many strikes and protests there have been in Germany alone since the war began? Yet none of them have succeeded. The German government has no intention of changing. And what do you think will happen if it keeps on like this? The people will demand that the government itself change. By that, I mean revolution.”
Jörg’s corpus had been walking for twenty minutes. He’d only had some water to drink, so he must be exhausted and hungry. Water was probably the only thing in that room, so he must have gone outside to try to find some food, hoping there would be something around town. The army should have set up some portable kitchens.
“Where’s my corpus going?” Jörg asked.
“To an acquaintance’s house. They’re going to share some food with him.”
“Will they have anything there?”
“A thin slice of bread and weak soup. Maybe a potato if he’s lucky.”
“What about meat?”
“Things like that are all gone. But at least there’s still something.”
“What about the rations?”
“Practically nonexistent.”
“Do you think I’ll get hungry, too? I can’t take sustenance from the people of Berlin. I’d feel awful.”
“You have your medicine, so you’ll be all right.”
His corpus walked on heavy legs to a run-down general store. Acting like a customer, he chatted with the clerk before being shown into the basement. There Jörg saw food in bags and boxes, though he had no clue how it had gotten there. The earthy smell of vegetables and the sour scent of rye bread hung faintly in the cool air.
The clerk who’d brought Jörg’s corpus here removed a thin slice of bread from a wooden box and placed it on plate. He filled a copper stein with water and slid it over. Jörg’s corpus thanked him and sipped the water while nibbling at the rye bread. It was much staler and tougher than what Jörg knew; no one could swallow this poor substitute for bread without water. Soup probably would make it easier to consume, but there was nothing like that around, and he didn’t see any cheese or sausage to eat with it. That wasn’t surprising, though, considering there wasn’t even enough fuel to warm up the room or the bread. Jörg was grateful just to have drinking water. His corpus licked a finger and carefully mopped up every last crumb on the plate. Words failed Jörg. His corpus was as desperate as a stray dog rummaging through garbage, and Jörg couldn’t help but commiserate with him.
“I mentioned this earlier, but Lila has been handling the food supply for you. Do you know a woman named Diana?” asked Milos.
“Yes.”
“Lila sends the shipments to Diana, and this is one of the places Diana supplies. She’s a socialist.”
“Oh!” Jörg cried out. It all made sense. Diana had asked about the French socialists at the Eiffel Tower because she was part of the socialist movement. That was also why she’d framed her question like she had to the French people there.
Milos’s face contorted into a frown. “What is it?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking of how oblivious I can be sometimes.”
“Germany is in a very precarious position right now. People are still fighting on the front lines, but soldiers continue to surrender, and their line keeps getting pushed backward. America finally declared that it would join the war, too. And it wasn’t just empty words; they actually sent weapons and troops.”
“That’s a huge relief to the Allies.”
“These four years have worn Europe down, but America is still fresh. The German Army made it as far as the Marne but were pushed back and suffered heavy losses at Amiens. Great Britain and France are now using tanks and infantry much more effectively than they did at the Somme.”
“What have the Germans been doing? Their work on the tanks must have progressed.”
“They finished a tank called the A7V and deployed it, but it didn’t do much. The technologies behind it were still incomplete, and infantry tactics have advanced further.”
“But hand grenades don’t work on them.”
“The German Army’s using anti-tank rifles and bundled grenades now.”
“Bundled grenades?!”
“The grenades you used had a handle, right?”
“Right.”
“These have just one handle, but six grenades are bundled together at the top. The idea is that one throw provides the explosive power of six grenades. But even with ideas like that, Germany is still being pushed back. And it doesn’t have anything anyway, because all imports have been stopped. All while the Allies tap the inexhaustible manufacturing of the USA and the Far East.”
Wars are fought with resources. You can’t win without a supply of goods, but Germany still steadfastly refused to see reason.
“Lieutenant Colonel Kreutzer from the intelligence bureau should have been involved in the development of the A7V.”
“I heard about him. The Count says they dismissed him over a dispute with his superiors. Apparently, he was really upset over how long development was taking. He was the one who delivered the information on British tanks directly to the War Ministry, so he was probably frustrated that his work wasn’t being utilized more efficiently. After he was relieved of his post, they sent him to the front, where I heard he died in the fighting at Amiens.”
So the lieutenant colonel, who had so arrogantly mocked the death of enemy soldiers at that banquet, had been tossed onto the front lines to die a pointless death? It was a fittingly ironic end for the man.
“I feel bad for him,” Jörg mumbled. “Not out of sympathy, but because he must have wanted to see a German tank crush enemy soldiers.”
“The Count also acted quite cruelly,” Milos said. “He probably expected something like that might happen but still sold the information to Kreutzer anyway. They’d known each other for a long time, but in the end, the colonel was just someone to manipulate and deceive.”
Just hearing about it exasperated Jörg.
“A major revolution happened in Russia, where the czar was ousted and eventually executed,” Milos continued. “The monarchy fell, making way for a republic aimed at founding a socialist nation. Russia then entered into an armistice with Germany and other nations in December of last year, and while there has been some fighting since then, they finally signed a peace treaty in March. Germany can now focus everything on the Western Front, but like I said earlier, it’s all too little, too late. Bulgaria surrendered at the end of September and signed the Salonika Agreement, and we retook Belgrade on November 1. The Ottomans and the Allies signed an armistice at the end of October. And since the start of November, Germans around the country have continued to rebel.”
“What?!”
“It all started with a mutiny at the port of Wilhelmshaven, which spread to the Port of Kiel and struck a chord in the hearts of regular people across the country. I’m sure you already know this, but Germany wanted to get rid of all the socialists, so they arrested protesters whenever people took to the streets and sent them to the front lines as punishment. But the people they arrested continued to spread socialist ideas on the front.”
“And that was enough to convert the soldiers?”
“Most people only half listened to their ideas, of course. But with outspoken and active socialists in their group, people could rebel and blame it on the socialists.