Chapter 168: Sudeten
Karlovy Vary was Czechoslovakia's fourth largest industrial city and the second largest industrial center in the Sudetenland.
It was also, in every practical sense, a German city.
Germans made up more than eighty-five percent of the entire Sudetenland's population, and in Karlovy Vary itself, that number reached a staggering ninety-two percent. German language, German customs, German trade guilds, German schools, German newspapers, and German churches formed the living skeleton of the city. Even the Czechs and Slovaks who lived there could not avoid the pull of German culture. They worked in German factories, traded with German merchants, and sent their children into streets where German songs were heard more often than Czech.
According to the new German Cultural Sphere Theory issued by Jörg, these Czechs and Slovaks who lived within German culture, accepted German habits, and aligned themselves with German civilization all belonged among Germany's potential citizens.
The economic crisis only deepened that pull.
This year's industrial orders were less than one-third of previous years. Factories that had once worked day and night now stood silent for half the week. Chimneys stopped smoking. Warehouses filled with unsold goods. Workers gathered outside factory gates, waiting for wages that were delayed again and again.
Across the border, however, Germany's economy was recovering with terrifying speed.
Factories were hiring. Roads were being built. Pharmaceutical plants were expanding. Military contracts were flowing like spring rivers after thaw. To the people of the Sudetenland, Germany was no longer merely a nation of shared blood and language. It was food, wages, dignity, and a future.
The demand to return to Germany grew louder by the day.
To preserve the stability of the Sudetenland, the industrial cornerstone of the republic, the Czechoslovak government increased its investment in public security year after year. Police stations were expanded. Informants were planted. Patrols became more frequent. At the same time, Poland and Hungary continued to cast hungry eyes toward Czechoslovak territory, forcing Prague to increase military spending along the Slovak border.
The economy and the regime had become two disconnected halves of the same dying body.
If Prague focused its strength on reviving the domestic economy, there was no guarantee the economy would recover, while the border crisis could immediately threaten national survival.
But if it poured money into the army, the economic downturn would make the government increasingly unstable from within.
Every road seemed wrong.
It was this impossible dilemma that pushed the Czechoslovak government to consider finding a diplomatic breakthrough through unconventional means.
Unfortunately, before Prague could make its move, a spark was lit in Karlovy Vary.
And that spark would burn away the paper-thin stability of the Sudetenland, leaving only smoke, blood, and ash.
Inside the city, Sikkenral, the field chief of the Internal and External Intelligence Department who had only just arrived in Karlovy Vary, was already issuing orders with ruthless efficiency.
"Organize the strikes and demonstrations. Make sure the disturbance is large enough. I want noise, banners, crowds, and photographs. As many photographs as possible."
Several intelligence officers nodded.
"Understood, team leader. When does it begin?"
"This afternoon."
The industrial district.
The cannery was one of the few factories in the city that still had work.
The final batch of canned goods had just been packaged. The workers, their hands stiff from exhaustion and cold, looked at the clock on the wall and began whispering among themselves.
"This week's wages have been suspended again. What kind of situation is this? The pay was already low enough."
"Sigh, who told us we weren't born in Berlin? Have you heard about that new medicine on the market? They say it's more expensive than gold. God knows how good the treatment must be for the workers in those pharmaceutical factories."
"I don't dream of becoming a pharmaceutical worker. I would be satisfied with any proper factory job. At least you still have work. After today, I'm completely unemployed. All because of that damned manager."
Ding!
The long bell rang.
The workers had just finished their discussion and were preparing to leave when the factory's plump manager walked in. Two security guards followed beside him, dragging a woman whose face was bruised and swollen.
Her hair was disheveled. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. Her legs could barely support her.
The manager looked around coldly.
"I will say this one more time. Do not even think about stealing factory supplies. Otherwise, dismissal will be the only outcome."
He glanced down at the woman as if she were a dirty sack tossed on the floor.
"Because of your theft and resistance, Ms. Jelena, you are dismissed as of today."
Even after being beaten, Jelena's face turned deathly pale only when she heard the word dismissed.
She threw herself forward and clung to the manager's leg.
"Sir! Please, sir! I have two children at home. I truly have no money. I only wanted some canned food so we could fill our stomachs. This week's wages, no, this whole month's wages, I don't want any of it. Please don't dismiss me!"
Her pleading voice pierced the workers' hearts.
The manager's arrogance made their fists tighten.
"No money?" the manager said with a sneer. "What does that have to do with me? Drag her out."
Before the guards could move, two workers stepped forward and blocked his path.
The manager stared at them in disbelief. He had never thought these exhausted, half-starved people would dare to stand against him.
"What do you want?" he said coldly. "Take one more step, and all of you are out. If you refuse to work, plenty of others will."
But this time, the workers did not retreat.
The air in the factory changed.
Someone shouted first.
"Return to Germany!"
Then another voice followed.
"We are Germans!"
Then the voices multiplied.
The manager's expression finally changed.
Before he could shout for the guards, a fist smashed into his face. Then another. Then boots, curses, and fury crashed down together. The workers surged forward like a broken dam, their long-suppressed anger finally finding flesh to strike.
The same scene unfolded across the entire city.
A wage dispute became a strike.
A strike became a protest.
A protest became a call for the Sudetenland's return.
By the afternoon, red, white, and black German flags were fluttering in the streets of Karlovy Vary.
By evening, with their overwhelming numbers, the demonstrators seized the police station. Armed citizens poured into the streets with confiscated pistols and rifles, and the crowd began moving toward City Hall.
Inside City Hall, the mayor gripped the telephone so tightly his knuckles turned white.
"I repeat, half the city has fallen. There is no room left for de-escalation. I request army intervention. I request immediate army intervention!"
On the outskirts of the city, the commander of the Second Battalion, Third Infantry Division of the Czechoslovak Army, received the order.
He put down the telephone and immediately picked up another.
"Yes, sir. I will order the troops into the city at once."
After hanging up, he turned sharply.
"Kali! Order the Third and Fourth Companies to secure the city center first. Everyone is to carry rifles and live ammunition. If armed resistance is encountered, clear it with bullets."
Early morning.
At the entrance of City Hall, the police were making their final stand behind barricades formed from linked police cars.
But the crowd filling the streets was immense.
Citizens waved pistols seized from the police. Most did not fire, but the mere sight of so many weapons created enough pressure to force the officers to retreat step by step. The police kept shouting warnings, but their voices were swallowed by the roar of the crowd.
Even after receiving orders to open fire, they still did not dare pull the trigger.
The command had been given verbally by an officer.
Their lives, however, belonged to themselves.
"We are Germans! The Sudetenland is German territory!"
"We demand to return to our country!"
"German territory should not be ruled by Czechs!"
The demonstrators toppled the statue of a Czech hero in City Hall Square. The stone figure crashed to the ground, splitting across the chest. Its head rolled down the steps and disappeared beneath the feet of the crowd.
The shouting rose again in the light of dawn.
Just as the police were about to lose the last of their position, an armored vehicle burst out from behind City Hall.
Several trucks followed closely behind.
Armed Czechoslovak soldiers jumped down from the vehicles in quick succession. They raised their rifles and fired warning shots into the sky.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
"Retreat!"
"Fall back!"
The order echoed across the square.
The crowd did not move.
The Czech officer's face darkened. He raised one hand and signaled the soldiers to draw their entrenching tools.
A soldier stepped forward and swung his shovel hard, striking down a young student carrying a German banner. The student collapsed, blood pouring from his forehead. The soldier snatched the flag from his hands, threw it to the ground, and set it on fire.
The red, white, and black cloth curled in the flames.
The soldier raised his voice and threatened the crowd.
"I will repeat this one last time. This is Karlovy Vary. This is Czech territory. You have violated the law. We have the right to disperse you, even to shoot!"
The answer he received was a thunderous chant.
"This is Germany!"
"This is Germany!"
"This is Germany!"
The officer's jaw tightened.
"Load your weapons!"
He was the first to raise his rifle.
Behind him, the soldiers lifted their muzzles at the same time.
"Fire!"
Tat tat tat!
Gunfire erupted.
Who fired first no longer mattered.
The moment a German fell, blood ignited the savagery buried in human nature.
Retaliation came almost instantly.
Two Czech soldiers were riddled with bullets by enraged citizens. Gunfire crossed through the dawn air, tearing through windows, banners, barricades, and flesh. Karlovy Vary, only hours earlier a city of factories and hunger, became a battlefield thick with smoke and the stench of powder.
Bullets pierced the Czech flag.
Blood stained the German flag.
And from a distance, agents of the Internal and External Intelligence Department recorded everything.
Every gunshot.
Every corpse.
Every burning flag.
All of it would become justification.
.....
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