by John Ringo
Initially Watch on the Rhine was "Die Wacht am Rhein" and was only going to be a long short story or a short novella, 45,000 words tops. But Jim wanted a book. Set in the PosVerse. We decided on doing a companion novella, "Back to Bataan," that would appear with Die Wacht am Rhein and would concern the Japanese defense of the Philippine Islands against the Posleen. (Which, by the way, we may still do. Time will tell.)
But the story of Hans and Dieter and Anna and Gudrun . . . and, yes, even that Nazi bastard Krueger, kept growing. It grew until it ate all the time and space allowed for both stories. As it turned out, Jim liked that better. And it's good to be king. Just ask him. ("My writers love me . . . pull!" "Arrghhhh!")
"But why the bloody damned SS?" the sensitive reader asks. Put simply, because they would be there in John's universe. Deal. "But what about Malmedy?" Go do a Google search: "biscari sicily peiper." Let ye among you. "But the concentration camps? Babi Yar? The holocaust?" To which we would answer, "Horrible things and the men responsible should have all been hanged. But we fail to see why those things would keep desperately needed soldiers out of action, whatever larger organization they belonged to and whatever symbols they wore."
There is another reason, too. Dear reader, we wanted to shock the hell out of you.
Right now, Western Civilization, however much many of its members may refuse to admit it, is involved in a world war. No, it has seen no entire cities destroyed; no trenches have drawn their scars across entire continents. It is a world war all the same. Moreover, it is a world war that is putting to the test every notion of individual liberty, freedom of conscience, and rule of law that the West prizes. And should we lose we will see, or our grandchildren will, the erasure of all that is good in Western Civilization.
We cannot afford to lose.
Yet winning will have its price, too. Just as the invasion John described is ordained to change humanity into something that one of Hitler's Waffen SS would recognize and call home, so too will this war change us. Because side by side with the virtues of Western Civilization are paired vices that may destroy us: a narrow legalistic mindset, an emphasis on form over substance, and an unwillingness to do the ruthless and violent things we must if we are to survive. This list is not exhaustive. Perhaps worse than these things, however, the West has nurtured at its own breast a set of execrable, vile, treacherous and treasonous villains that seem to seek at every opportunity to do all they can to ensure its destruction.
Yet there is hope. "Survival cancels out programming."
END NOTES
1 Let others speak of their shame, I speak of my own . . .O Germany, pale mother! How have your sons ill-served you. That you sit beneath all nations. A mockery or a fright!
2 Federal Chancellor, the chief executive of the Federal Republic of Germany.
3 Germany's World War II armed forces: Army, Navy and Air Force.
4 Guest workers. Think Mexican fruit pickers but in a more regularized system. Many of them are Turks and Kurds. And yes, in 1997 the German legislature voted to ban soldiers from wearing their uniforms in public.
5 Two exemplary former regular officers who entered into, and commanded large formations of the Waffen SS. Steiner is also notable for remaining a staunch and devout Roman Catholic.
6 Hooked Crosses, swastikas.
7 The silver dual lightning bolts of the SS.
8 A contemptuous name for Heinrich Himmler, head of all the branches of the SS, to include the Waffen, or Armed, SS.
9 A Tir is a mid-level Darhel corporate executive.
10 To a large degree German boys get a choice of Army or some form of alternative service.
11 "Killers of elves." The Darhel are the elves.
12 "Highest." Colonel.
13 Economic Miracle; the recovery of Germany after World War II
14 Officer Candidate School for the Waffen, or armed, SS.
15 March with us in spirit, with the same step and tread. This is from the strictly forbidden "Horst Wessel Lied."
16 Raise the banner, hold the ranks steady.
17 Our flag flutters ahead of us. Our flag brings a new time. And our flag leads us forward to eternity. Yes our flag means more than our lives. This is from Baldur von Schirach's "Fahnenlied."
18 Center, face
19 Lieutenant General Mühlenkampf speaks.
20 A Kessentai who has forsaken, or for cowardice been driven from, The Path of Fury.
21 Forward, forward, Blow the bright trumpets
22 Attention, Attention, anti-tank guns in the direction of . . .
23 As you command, Dieter.
24 Dear God in Heaven!
25 Boys.
26 Though it storms or snows or the sun laughs on us. The day glowing hot or icy cold the night . . .
27 Our faces are dirty but our hearts are happy. Our tanks roar into the storm wind. . . .
28 The wife of a German Army friend of one of the authors, who was once Ribbentrop's secretary, describes him as a "weenie."
29 War economy.
30 Execution place.
31 Little dear.
32 I must then go. To the little town. And you, my sweetheart, wait here.
33 Attention, Tank. Roll.
34 Armored Recon Brigade, Florian Geyer.
35 Hunters. Think, U.S. Army Ranger.
36 Shit, shit, shit!
37 Don't shoot.
38 Private Genjiro Shirakami was a bugler with the Imperial Japanese Army during the Russo-Japanese War. Mortally wounded during an assault on Port Arthur's defenses, Private Shirakami continued blowing the charge until he succumbed to his wounds. When his body was later found, the bugle—pointing heavenward—was still pressed to his lips.
39 Certainly not.
40 Hamburg's red-light district.
41 Comradeship.
42 Mine, alone, she'll be, Not for anyone but me. And we'll live together through joy and pain. Until God cuts us apart again. Farewell, my love, farewell.
43 "The Watch on the Rhine." A German patriotic song, almost a second national anthem, as "Stonewall Jackson's Way" was throughout the American South, until quite recently, both.
44 Hard to translate. Gemütlichkeit is a sort of smarmy, comradely, soft and tender good feeling that perhaps only Germans are truly subject to.
45 In English, perhaps only the word "grunts" carries quite the same connotations.
46 Rye meal. For many decades, in war and peace, the Germans made a sort of ersatz, or replacement, coffee out of roasted rye meal. Less popular now than formerly, one could still expect them to fall back upon it in hard times.
47 Private.
48 Battle groups.
49 Combat engineers.
50 Leave it suffice that these were the formations that did most of the really ugly work behind lines on the Eastern Front. The Totenkopfverbaende, Death's Head Bands, ran the camps.
THE END
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