Tide of History

(Placed third in the 8th round of "The History Contest" )

TIDE OF HISTORY

"It looks like a restless crowd tonight."

The two well dressed men made their way to their Rolls Royce, as armed policemen kept a crowd of protesters at bay.

The second man sniffed disdainfully. "Jews and degenerates. Nothing to fear from such ilk."

The first man raised an eyebrow. "I must remind you, Herr Brandt, that we are not in the Vaterland and that we currently need the goodwill of the Americans. It would be wise to keep such opinions to yourself. At least for the time being."

The second man made another sniffing sound, but remained silent.

One of the embassy guards opened the door for the two men, giving them a stiff nod as they climbed in. Waiting in the car was a Japanese man wearing a western-style suit.

"Commander Murata." Brandt gave the Japanese man a stiff, barely perceptible nod. "I see you've decided to forgo the pleasure of the company of the miscreants outside and entered our transportation from the embassy's garage."

"Herr Brandt, Fregattenkapitän Krug." Murata gave each man a polite nod. "It seemed the politic thing to do, considering that although the United States and my nation have negotiated a temporary cease fire, we are still in a state of war. The citizens of this country would probably find my presence less palatable than yours. At least your country has an armistice with the Americans."

"As unpalatable as it was to our hosts' last President," Krug replied. Brandt sneered. Krug wondered how Brandt had survived so long in the diplomatic corps, even if he was a senior party member. Murata's presence was understandable to Krug. Murata had been educated in the United States, and was fluent in several languages, including German and English. Since the Japanese had not officially reestablished diplomatic relations with the United States, Murata was the perfect man to represent the "Japanese interest section" of the newly reopened German embassy.

Krug was here because he had been one of the heroes of Paukenschlag, Operation Drumbeat, the naval offensive that most Germans believed had led to this historic moment. Krug had been the the executive officer of a Type IX class U-boat originally stationed in the Mediterranean. There had only been twelve Type IX's in the early part of 1942. Originally, the Naval Staff only wanted to commit six to the operation of attacking shipping off the American's eastern seaboard, leaving the other six Type IX's in the Mediterranean. Fortunately Admiral Karl Dönitz, then the commander of U-boat operations, had been able to get all twelve Type IX's sent against the Americans.

It had been a stroke of genius. The absence of the six Type IX class U-boats had had absolutely no effect in the Mediterranean. But in the Atlantic...

The Americans had no previous experience with naval warfare off their own shores. Krug would later learn that even though a blackout order had been given, the seaboard towns along the Atlantic Coast had refused to abide by it, afraid of the economic consequences to their boardwalks.

In addition, the Americans had not adapted the convoy systems for their freighters, and Rear Admiral Adolphus Andrews, commander of the area that the U-boat forces would be operating in, only had a ragtag force of antiquated ships and training airplanes to counter with.

So the U-boat commanders were presented with lone American freighters, unescorted, and not only brightly silhouetted against coastal city lights but running with full steaming lights as well. To the U-boat commanders, it was like being a child left unattended in a candy store and knowing the owner would not be back for several hours. It wasn't a matter of what you could take; it was a matter of where to start.

Twelve U-boats had originally been slated for Operation Drumbeat; one had been held back because of last-minute mechanical problems. Krug's commanding officer broke his arm in a mishap in his U-boat, leaving Krug in command of a U-boat in the beginning phase of what would become known as The Second Happy Time. More than 350,000 tons of shipping would be lost to the eleven U-boats, even though at times some of the U-boats would operate in waters so shallow they could not have avoided detection, much less a depth charge.

Krug had come home as a member of an emerging class of heroes: the U-boat aces. The attack of the first wave of U-boats gave Dönitz all the political capital he needed to send the original twelve U-boats back (eleven plus the one that was held back the first time), as well as a flood of the shorter range Type VII U-boats. The Type VII U-boats had been able to make it to the U.S. only after being crammed with supplies in every conceivable space and having diesel oil stored in the fresh water tanks.

It was the sinking of the USS Roper, torpedoed by U-85, that was the turning point of the war. Up until that point, the U.S. propaganda program that utilized the combination of secrecy and patriotism (symbolized by the slogan "Loose Lips Sink Ships") had effectively hid from the American public the devastation being wreaked unchecked on American shipping. But when the survivors of the USS Roper were rescued by Carolinian fishermen, the wave of negative news finally flooded the American people.

Even with the transfer of 34 Royal Navy anti-submarine vessels, along with a squadron of anti-submarine aircraft, the damage had been done. It was estimated that five million tons of tonnage had been lost by the end of 1942, including a number of troop transports destined for England.

A loud thump on the side of the car interrupted Krug's revelry. Brandt harrumphed, taking the object thrown against the car as a personal insult. Murata merely smiled.

"It's a good thing that the American's outside don't know that these curtains are hiding my presence", Murata quipped with a half-smile. "Otherwise, the laminated glass of your vehicle's windows might be put to the test."

Brandt sniffed again, which Krug learned was Brandt's way of showing his disdain for everything that didn't meet his aristocratic requirements. Krug was afraid that Brandt was about to launch into another one of his tirades against the great unwashed that was the American population. Thankfully, Brandt remained quiet.

Krug reflected on the events that had led him to this point. Even the great American manufacturing machine couldn't nonchalantly take the loss inflicted against it by the Second Happy Time. The British war effort, hanging on by just a thread, had just had that thread cut. It would have been ruinous to the German war machine to actually try to invade and conquer England. But the Germans had a better example to work with: the Soviet failed invasion of Finland. It wasn't necessary to conquer the English; it was merely necessary to take them out of the war.

By the summer of 1943, a temporary truce between the Germans and the English had became a peace treaty. The English kept their sovereignty, but at the cost of maintaining neutrality.

In the United States, President Roosevelt found himself fighting an increasingly unpopular war in Europe and Africa. The Republican isolationists argued that the Germans, who were pressing for peace with the Americans, actually represented the West's first line of defense against the Soviets, while the real threat to the United States was the Empire of Japan in the Pacific.

In October 1944, in what was to become known to future generations as "The October Surprise", the Americans negotiated an armistice with the Germans, while negotiators on both side hammered out a permanent peace. It wasn't enough, though. The political capital that Roosevelt had built up since 1932 had been squandered. In 1944, Thomas E. Dewey, Governor of New York and leader of the isolationist faction of the Republican party, did what was once considered unthinkable: he defeated Franklin D. Roosevelt.

By February, 1945, the United States was ready to sign a peace treaty with the Germans. The Germans, though, were in a quandary. They had learned what Napoleon had discovered before them. Invading Russia, whatever it called itself, was easy. Holding it was another matter entirely. The personal animosity that existed between Hitler and Stalin preempted the possibility of a negotiated peace between the two. So the Germans needed the Japanese to open a second front.

The Japanese had their own problems. They were finding themselves hard pressed. The Americans, released from their need to deal with the Germans, were attacking the Japanese with a vengeance. Unlike the Germans, the American people were more than willing to make sacrifices on the Pacific front. And unlike the Germans, the Japanese hadn't declared war before launching their attack. And finally, the Japanese weren't Europeans.

Still, the Americans were becoming disillusioned with the role of internationalist, just as they had at the end of World War I. If there was a way to exit the war in the Pacific with their honor intact, the Americans would take it.

So Krug, Brandt and Murata were headed to a meeting with their counterparts from the Americans and their Pacific Allies. It was hoped at this meeting that a permanent cease fire might be hammered out between the Japanese and the Pacific Allies. A peace treaty might even be negotiated (or at least it was hoped) that would allow the Japanese to hold on to the territory that had been taken from the Chinese, while making some type of eventual reparations to the Pacific Allies. China and Russia would be the sacrificial lambs, but an anti-Communist sentiment had been growing in the United States since the successful conclusion of the Second Happy Time. And the Chinese---well, the Germans knew that they weren't the only ones who held to the idea of Untermensch. The Americans would have no problem sacrificing the Chinese for their own benefit.

As their car pulled up to the Main State Building, Krug reflected wryly that it was amazing, the way things had turned out. He started the war as an officer on an Unterseeboot, a man bound to the tide of the sea. And now here he was, an actor on the tide of history.