TOC: Prologue
Long Live Sacred Germany: The Oster Conspiracy
"He who would live must fight. He who doesn't wish to fight in this world has not the right to exist." - Adolf Hitler
— Denis Henning-Schmidt, Leader of the "German Revivalist Movement", 2018
He had never felt so tired.
Even the familiar patter-patter of rain, which usually calmed him, did not help his mood. In fact, even as he stared at the raindrops racing down the glass window of his office, his mind had yet to return to London.
He was still in Munich, in that awful room with the suffocating air of threats and schemes, and the soulless glare of those clear blue eyes burned in his mind. It felt as if it had taken his entire strength and spirit to stare back, to stare back at that demon of a man and to say, no.
Hitler had almost appeared shocked when Chamberlain concluded the conference. The confident air of the triumphant left him then, but he was not deflated; instead immediately his expression had set into a new mask of cold hatred. Chamberlain remembered clearly now how he felt when Hitler shook his hand, when he smiled and waved for the cameras; he had felt nothing but hatred. In every look there was the undertone of threats, in every word the bitter taste of vengefulness.
Neville Chamberlain shook his head, trying to clear his mind of the nasty memories and worries plaguing him, but he could not shake himself fully free. Upon his return, "peace for our time," he had declared; yet his certainty had been as fake as Hitler's handshakes. Everywhere he found enemies. Back at Munich, it was not just the Germans and Italians who tussled with him, but Britain's supposed premier ally had attacked him from the rear. The French had been ready to sign the Sudetenland Compromise, and had not taken his initial indecisiveness or his finalistic refusal of the agreement well. At home, he had immediately been lambasted by his own allies for his sudden shift of heart, for his abandonment of appeasement which made him doubt what his heart refused to; while the agitator Churchill had the gall to still call him weak and escalate his commentary to demands of a reversal of Germany's militarisation of the Rhineland and the Anschluss. Even within himself, a fire raged.
That was the source of his fatigue. The endless struggle without, and within.
Suddenly starting, he noticed that the rain was beginning to subside. A glance at the clock told him nearly an hour had passed since his musings began, an hour wasted.
Yet even as he steeled himself and forced his body to get back to the reports on his desk, back to his job as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, even as he pushed the blue eyes of death as far back in his mind as he could, one question continued to scream at him above all else.
Had he done the right thing?