"Gaulliste!" was the word that the crowd paid the most attention to in that afternoon in Paris, a word which meant betrayal, a word which meant treason. Yet it was not Charles de Gaulle, Pauline thought, who came to Paris with the Swastika by his side, it was not Charles de Gaulle who was sending soldiers of the Waffen-SS down the Arc of Triumph. But she kept to her thoughts as she watched three men being dragged up the platform as if this was some sort of revolutionary idea, to cut off a man's head with a blade. The analogy seemed lost to the Fascists, she thought, because the Guilloutine was a symbol of the old Revolution, the one they were doing all to erase. Killing the person would not kill the idea, because as long as the German set his foot on France's neck, France would fight back, she knew that it was never the natural behavior of the French men and women to stay idle while injustice and oppression reigned.
And yet she did not look around, she did not want to see the face of the crowd, who all became bloodthirsty savages seemingly overnight. She still remembered when the people of Paris used that instrument on the greatest of traitors, Laval, when they stormed into the Palace, dragged him and his sellout bureaucrats out, and exacted their justice on him for all the crimes of the last decade. Now that same crowd seemed content in watching the Milice do the same to those few "ring-leaders" they found, condemning them with the same intensity that was once used to enact real justice. Pauline did look around now, there were differences, she thought, this crowd was younger.
"Avant-Garde" they were called at first, now divided between two organizations within, one for boys and one for girls. "Charlemagnes" was how the boy's section was called, with their deep blue and black uniforms, armed with a holstered pistol in the case of older teenagers who finished the weapons training. "Jeannes", named after Joan d'arc, was the name the girl's section was known for, all of them with their deep blue and white uniforms, their leaders also having guns of their own as Darnand considered that every Frenchman should be ready to go at the first signal of attack, and even the women should be thrown in as a last resort. This is what Pauline did not want to see, they were little more than toddlers when France fell, raised by the Marshal Petain and now by Darnand to be their great leader, led to believe that Germany freed them and the Pakt was all a great European family with the Reich as their Big Brother. She did not want to see them because there were so many of them, and all of them seemed to believe what they were told, all of them were now cheering, all of them came into the city with Darnand and the Wehrmacht to crush their Liberation.
She recognized one of the men going to the chopping block, it was Armand, and nobody can blame her for not cheering because he was her boyfriend once. It did not work out, his activities with the resistance always kept him away and the few moments they had together were spent talking about politics, sure they agreed with most things, but a relationship is not built only on that. The resistance government, as de Gaulle's Africa was known by some, was truly desperate if Armand's talks of him being one of the best was true, because she had never seen a "spy" with such a loud mouth before. That is why the Milice took him, because the crowd did not have any true ring-leaders that day, they just seized the most loud, attention-seeking idiots that they could find to be publicly chopped off.
She did not look when the blade fell and left when she heard the uproar of the crowd, still gave a glance back for sake of giving her mind some peace in a way, to tell herself that he was gone. Pauline walked away before the other two executions of two nobodies she did not know, she was pretty sure most of the crowd did not know them either, they just knew those three were "Gaullistes", that they were supporters of de Gaulle, the man she hoped would save France. But hope was hard to keep when you see the children, the future of your nation, grow up to despise everything that is French, and to think if she was a few years younger she probably would be in that crowd, cheering for the death of "Gaullistes". It was sickening and it was hard to go around and not see one execution in the days after the Wehrmacht came down upon them, in the days after the rise of Darnand, and while they would wind down in the coming months, never truly went away. In fact, unknowingly to Pauline at the time, far worse was happening across the Mediterranean as the new Overlords of France learned much from their Masters.
Joseph Darnand became the new leader of the Third most powerful member of the Linz Pakt, although it was a country which suffered greatly over the past decade. He took on the new title of "Grand Marshal of the State" (Grand Maréchal d'Etat) and his first decisions once the Dakar crisis ended was to consolidate power over what was left of France, a country which had spent years being ravaged by the Germans and the West alike. Initially, he opposed the German invasion, an opinion which quickly changed with Operation Barbarossa, where he saw as France's duty to stand by the Reich against Bolshevism, and then became an enthusiastic collaborator by joining the SS, rising to the rank of SS-Standartenführer, the equivalent of Colonel, within the SS-Charlemagne division, a force compromised by French adherents of the German ideals. Hitler and Hess both saw France as an old enemy which needed to be humbled, brutally if necessary to never rise again, and then restored as an ally and part of their plans for a New Order in Europe. Darnand was the one responsible to see the rise of France into this new order after Laval's failure, being entrusted that duty by Germania and backed by Rommel's forces in crushing the Paris Commune uprising in 1951.
France was not completely irrelevant to the German plans, they still held a strategic location and possessed the control of Algeria, Morocco, French Guiana, as well as a few scattered islands in the Caribbean which the United States and the United Kingdom did not seize yet such as Saint Martin. The control of North Africa was also crucial to ensure the Mediterranean would remain a "Lake" controlled by the Pakt from Gibraltar to the Suez, which was practically ensured after the Suez War in 1952 and the fall of Cyprus. Israel alone was a sore thumb sticking out in the map as an obviously anti-German State. Besides, Hess was generous in lifting several military restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles (Purposefully made in the same halls as the infamous treaty which started Hitler's rise to power) and scaling back the deployment of German forces in the French coast enormously due to his belief in a Detente with the British Empire.
The first priority of Darnand's regime was to deal with none other than the French Fascist groups led by Jacques Doirot and his French People's Party, which was part of the overthrow of Laval during the chaos of the Paris Commune. The backing of the German army overwhelmed the PPF's paramilitary force which had exhausted itself fighting an open war against communists and other revolutionaries. Doirot and Darnand were different in their goals, the former approved of a more "French" version of Fascism that would hold a more traditionalist approach while the latter prioritized cooperation with Germania. Obviously the Wehrmacht under Rommel was under orders to support the latter, Darnand would not accept two leaders in France but he did know that Doirot's ideas were not as fringe as his', in fact he possessed a strong base of support in the French Right which the French Leader wished to co-opt for his regime. An agreement was reached and while Joseph would retain the sole leadership of France and the PPF would be dissolved as a political Party, Doirot was named into the Council of State for a permanent chair and given the role of Minister of Propaganda.
A new Constitution had been made in 1951, it would be finished in June and published quickly as a more simplified document which mostly served to just reaffirm the almost Totalitarian powers of the Grand Marshal (Who could only be removed by an elaborate process). The restrictions of the previous authoritarian French State would only be radicalized with a liberal implementation of the Death Penalty for those accused of treason or espionage to "Enemy States" (which meant that sending State secrets to the German government would not fall under this definition of treason), as well as the usual centralization of powers and measures which would later inspire the German Constitution itself. Truthfully, the law acted more as a guideline than as a rule, Grand Marshal Darnand could do as he wished through decrees, including anuling the Constitutional provisions at his will. It was a level of power that no French ruler ever possessed, at the possible exception of Louis XIV and Napoleon Bonaparte at their most excessive.
Between 1951 and 1961, Darnand would rule over France as it's "Führer", yet much of his power resided in the fear that the French population and it's leadership had of a second German intervention, one which could result in further humiliations and restrictions that were only recently lessened. He wished to have a power base of his own, which led to the expansion of the Milice and it's roles between 1951 and 1961, propelled in part due to the threats of Algerian terrorism. From around 30 thousand members in 1951, the organization would expand to 200 thousand by the end of that decade. Darnand's militia was compared to the SS, in fact many pointed out to France as an example of what Heydrich wanted, the takeover of the Party by it's paramilitary. The Single party adopted by the State as official was the "French National Popular Action" (ANPF), merging the movements of Deát, Doirot, Deloncle and Bucard, as well as several other Fascist groups and even open National Socialists. Darnand would move to consolidate his possessions following the disastrous Dakar debacle where the West African colonies were lost, namely the French mainland, the Caribbean possessions, Algeria and Morocco.
France itself was suffering many difficulties in the aftermath of the 1951 Uprising, there were departments where resistance fighters were still launching attacks, protests were not fully quelled, there was active resistance against the new regime in Southern France. Every port city was a risk, it was a point of entrance where foreign assets could infiltrate the French State, or worse, where de Gaulle could land and rally supporters for himself, the ghost of 1815 was still haunting the Parisian regime: A foreign-imposed government which promised a return to the old status quo before a revolution that ended up with the last leader losing his head? An exiled popular General with the ambition of returning home and who had the popular appeal within many sectors of French society who longed for the days before the war? History could repeat itself in Darnand's mind, which is why he sent the army and the Milice on brutal crackdowns from Brest to Toulon, focusing on securing the port cities before quelling insurrections in the interior. In that he had the backing of the Wehrmacht and the Kriegsmarine, who still held bases in the French coast such as St. Nazaire. Holdouts would last until 1952 when the last rebel guerrillas and resistance groups who were practicing open warfare in the French mainland were crushed at Romandie.
He also had other mechanisms other than fear to crush the population, Darnand would paint Pierre Laval, his predecessor, as a corrupt bureaucrat and crypto-socialist (ignoring the fact much of the French Fascist leadership were ex-socialists themselves) while he would be the savior of France from the corruption of Laval's regime which was perceived as widespread. He did launch a purge on the French bureaucracy, targeting many of the "corrupt", most of them being just apolitical opposition figures to his own takeover and in most cases he only replaced Laval's schemes with his own to strengthen the Milice and it's funds. But the press would paint it as a positive move and to many people, in the short term, Justice had been achieved. As for the German "domination", it would become less apparently with Hess in command as the new Führer pushed for the Detente with Britain and scaled back enormously on the military deployments in France and in the French coast during the 1950s, a process accelerated following the Suez War.
For the Caribbean, Darnand's main challenge were the Anglo-American forces, and while the timely presence of the French navy on naval exercises in the Caribbean, which was scheduled in preparation of Hitler's resumption of the war, did dissuade Huey Long enough as to not seize the Caribbean possessions of the State, Darnand knew that was an exposed area. Help would take days at best to arrive from across the Atlantic while being harassed by the superior Anglo-American Air Force, and the Dakar Crisis showed him that Hess would not stand with France against the British if it came to blows over a Caribbean territory. That is why, out of the Linz Pakt members, Darnand's France was perhaps the least anti-American in rhetoric and action. Using the old French "Special Relationship", he wanted to paint himself as the legitimate French leader over de Gaulle, as Huey was skeptical of the French general like most American leaders at the time, he promised not to militarize the Caribbean or establish new naval bases through informal channels established in Lisbon. While he did not have much power in practice to stop the Germans from doing so, thankfully that coincided with Hess' rule, possibly the most inept leader who ever held authority in matters of foreign relations in Germany since Wilhelm II.
What happened to Algeria and Morocco, however, was far more brutal and revealed the most vile aspects of the French regime, comparable only to the German conquest of Eastern Europe.
For Karim, there was little difference between the French. From the south came tradesmen across the desert who gave news about a new "General de Gaulle" who claimed to be fighting for freedom against traitors. From the north came other visitors who came in the name of some "Marshal Darnand" who claimed to be fighting for freedom against traitors. What difference could you expect a boy to make, while he always thought himself more clever than his peers, he still did not understand what this hassle was about. Just that sometimes came men claiming to be fighting for Algeria and for freedom against both of those. And while the southerner and the northerner spoke about freedom to the French, they spoke of freedom to Algerians, some saying they were all "Arabs", so one in his town, a man who he always called Uncle Faisal despite never being his uncle, would go with them.
Now his house was burning and the butt of a Rifle hit the back of his head, he fell forwards with his face hitting the gravel hard enough to make a cut, not like he noticed, Karim has been hit everywhere these last minutes. Now he was pulled by the arm and shoved against a rock wall, with other townsfolk, most of them women, including his mother and sisters, were all there. In front of them there were a few men speaking in French, he could tell they were French as they spoke just like the visitors who spoke of de Gaulle and Darnand, but he could not hear well what they were saying over the cries of the others. One of them pulled a pistol and shot upwards, making them all silent while Karim wiped his tears and blood from his face with his wrist.
"You will be a message to those who support the terrorists", was what he could understand, Karim could understand the language but not the meaning. What message? They were supposed to tell others about what happened? But why would they want that? Aren't criminals supposed to keep their crimes hidden? Would the police come for them? Although by what they were wearing on their arms, perhaps they were meant to be the police, then who arrests the police? Those french were all holding weapons, larger than the pistol that man had fired, for a moment he looked them in the eyes, he looked him in the eyes, and Karim looked him back. But he could not tell why he saw that, why did the man look so full of hatred? Who were even those terrorists? The man looked away from him and stepped back, with Karim's mother holding him tight. "Close your eyes, Karim" she had said, and when he saw the guns aimed at them, he understood finally what that was, and he started to cry.
The last thing Karim heard were the cries of his sisters as they were shot, and then the bullets got to him. That was the message.
The Algerian War, also known as the "Pacification of the Maghreb", was at first considered a war, even if an unconventional one, but by the end of it there was nothing happening in there other than mindless, senseless slaughter. There are different phases for the war, some claim it had started in the 1940s, but the cause for it's final explosion into an Armed conflict were the new policies by the Darnandist regime and the rise of Nasser in 1952, with a wave of Nationalism renewing across North Africa. It was not limited to Algeria either, with Sultan Mohammed V's imprisonment and the end of the protectorate serving as catalyst for an insurgency in Morocco as well. The French forces were inadequate to fully pacify the population of both territories and the guerrilla campaign had started to strike the French hold at it's core, all while terrorist attacks were made by Nationalists in Mainland France to forment unrest against Darnand. It was very well possible that his regime would have ended with Algeria, but Darnand learned much from his time in the SS, and with the support of the Germans, the repression of Algeria would turn into the extermination of the Maghrib, with concentration camps employed in a scale unmatched by any nation other than the Reich itself, the active racial and religious extermination of the Muslim and Arab peoples, the empowerment of Pied-Noir militias as death squadrons, the forced settlement of hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen over the decade as well as radical "natalist" policies which saw the use of mass rapes and forced weddings by French forces similar to the German Lebensborn program. But in the end, what set this apart from other genocidal programs was the liberal use of nuclear devices by the German Reich under the guise of "Tests", used to eliminate from villages to rebellious concentration camps. The Saharan sands would turn red in blood and be littered with the corpses of tens of thousands of refugees who would die in the attempt of reaching De Gaulle's "Free France".
How did the conflict begin? One could trace it back since Charles X conquered Algiers, initially an expedition against the Barbary pirates that soon became a colonizing mission. Of all French Colonies, Algeria held a special place in the hearts of the leaders in Paris, it was their first colonial adventure in large scale after the sale of Louisiana and the loss of Haiti, it symbolized a return of French prestige following the defeat in the Napoleonic Wars, it was also the final conquest of the Bourbons before the July Revolution in 1830 and even the following "Liberals" and "Revolutionaries" always saw Algeria as a part of France as integral as Corsica or Normandy, at least most of them did from Socialists to Reactionaries. From Algeria came the conquest of Morocco, of Tunisia, of West Africa, Equatorial Africa and so many others, and although practically all the others were lost, the French were determined not to lose this one.
The population of Algeria was a mixed bag, numbering just above 9 million by 1952, with between 15 and 20% of those being made up by Ethnic French and their descendants, named as "Pied-Noirs"(Black Feet), as well as a substantial amount of "French" Arabs who followed the Catholic Faith, and a population of Jews who were among the first to flee after the war, by 1948 most Jews in Algeria had migrated to Israel. But the great majority of the population, overwhelmingly so in the countryside, was made up of Muslim Arabs who were heavily discriminated by the French Code de l'indigénat, the code of rights and law for Colonial natives which heavily discriminated against this majority in favor of allowing a dominance of the Pied-Noirs. By 1952 that hardly made a difference as France was essentially a single-party state with voting cells decided by the Grand Marshal in Paris, but the grievances were still the same for the Muslim Algerians who, if anything, were treated even more spitefully by the growing Milice.
Some suspect that Darnand was already planning a genocide of Algerians from the start due to the correspondence exchanged between him and Reinhard Heydrich both before and in the aftermath of his rise to power, but it appears Darnand had his reservations on the plan, considering it a radical solution and instead proposing a harsh assimilation policy to be implemented, a cultural rather than racial genocide. He also believed that co-habitation to a certain level would be possible similar to the Italian Libya, however the proportion of Italians and Libyan natives was never as weighted as the difference between Pied-Noirs and Muslim Algerians. Nevertheless, those plans and intentions came more out of concern both of his own image and on the costs of such program, which was seen as unnecessary due to the relative peace in Algeria during Petain and Laval's regime. All of that would vanish within a couple of years.
The eruption of Arab Nationalism which was brought by the rise of Nasser did not hit only the Middle East or regions such as Jordan, Sudan and Yemen, but it also spread across North Africa and into both Morocco and Algeria. Sultan Muhammad V, differently from his Egyptian, Iraqi and Jordanian counterparts, fully endorsed the movement for National Independence and even made appeals in favor of international support to it, using the official status of the country as a protectorate rather than as a direct French territory as was the case of Algeria, as well as the division between French and Spanish protectorate zones. Laval refused to grant that independence despite the growing nationalist movement and while Muhammad met with Cordell Hull during the founding of the United Nations, promises of American support died with the POTUS in 1946. He scaled down on his public appearances in favor of independence as the grip of the French State grew, but in 1951 he used the chaos following the deaths of Hitler, Franco and Laval to publicly call for Independence and signing a declaration co-authored with the local nationalist movement Istiqlal, hoping that Rabat would be the next stop of De Gaulle's troops after capturing Dakkar. Those hopes were dashed with Darnand's ascension and the Grand Marechal now aimed to punish the rebellious Sultan.
In 1952, events unraveled fast, first in Egypt the Pan-Arab revolution incensed the Algerian Nationalist groups and the Moroccans, then came the coup against Muhammad V and the Civil War in Morocco, then the massacre at Oran which led to the start of the Algerian War itself. While Nasser's rise to power was already been previously discussed, there is the relationship between the Pan-Arab movement and the Maghreb uprisings which happened at the time. Nasser made no secret that he supported Algerian Independence, in fact many volunteers and weapons came to Algeria through Egypt following the Suez War. However, he was quite restricted on what he could and could not due to the fact the main patron of his regime was, ironically, the Italian Empire. Mussolini did not wish for "his Libyans" to gain ideas, it was a vested interest for the Italians to ensure Pan Nationalism in the Arab would would be fully diverted against Britain, rather than backfiring against the Pakt. However, in the interest of ensuring the French State would not usurp their own interests over Tunisia, Nice or Corsica, smuggling routes across the Libyan desert were kept under "watch" and occasionally some weapon deliveries were "lost", it was a part of the Italo-French rivalry within the Pakt which at some times flared over the Treaty of Verdun. Naturally the French had never spoken of the unfairness of the German demands, so the Nationalist rhetoric was directed at Italy. Similar to the Romeno-Hungarian, Croatian-Serbian, Hungaro-Slovak and even Romeno-Bulgarian relationships, Germania did leave vague borders arbitrated under their command between two nationalist states as a form of "divide and conquer" since the days of Hitler.
In Morocco, Thami El Glaoui, Pasha of Marrakesh, offered himself as a French loyalist alternative to the outspoken separatist Mohammed V and the Alawi dynasty, which was a very convenient ploy for Darnand to get his own loyalist in charge of Morocco, strengthening the French authority to repress the growing insurrectionist tendencies in the population. Thami, a powerful aristocrat who became alienated by the Sultan's support of the modernist and unruly Independentist leadership and their breaches in the traditional protocols, was willing to act in the name of French interests and offered to Empower the Council of State around the Sultan, led by the head of the French Administration, the recently appointed Marshal Alphonse Juín. It all began in April, even before the Suez War, when Thami made a public declaration to swear his eternal loyalty to the French Administration and condemned the Independentists, with an uprising being used as an excuse by Juin to seize Mohammed. But while many spoke of replacing him with a relative, including Alphonse himself, Darnand disagreed with any "compromise" and claimed the Alawi dynasty had condemned their right to rule by themselves. Thami El Glaoui, now known as Thami el Mezouari, became the Sultan of Morocco and declared illegal the Istiqlal movement.
But on the 18th, a few days later, there was a break in the prison of Casablanca where the Sultan awaited transport to France, Mohammed V would be smuggled out by loyalists denouncing Thami's coup. Thus began the Moroccan Civil War between supporters of Mohammed and the Independentists, against Thami el Mezouari and his loyalist Berbers, openly supported by the French garrison. Primo Rivera ordered the divide between the French and Spanish protectorates to be closed and strengthened the garrison, fearing a repeat of the Rif War from 3 decades earlier. Internationally, there was ample support for Mohammed in Britain and Free France, with de Gaulle supporting him as the "legitimate representative in the eyes of the French government and the World", it was an important declaration which saw some men in the French garrison support Mohammed, meanwhile the British under Butler would give credence to the Moroccan struggle and supplied armaments by sea. Huey Long would make a declaration in support of Moroccan Independence, reminding of how they were once the first nation to recognize American Independence, but it was a mostly symbolic gesture.
With Morocco and Egypt rising up, it was only a matter of time before the same issue came to Algeria, in that case there was already a strong movement for Independence established in exile, the Algerian People's Party, which had been politically active in Pre-War France. Of course, that was one party which was not acceptable in Petain's framework, even less so now under Darnand who refused any compromise with Separatists or even with autonomy. A clandestine force, the Party would move to De Gaulle's Africa, who agreed with their plan of giving autonomy to the Algerians in return for a united front against Paris' regime. There were those who disagreed, those who would form the National Liberation Front (FLN), refusing compromise with any of the French factions, and with the growing repression from Paris, their appeals were heard more than those of the Algerian People's Party which remained in Dakar. Led by Ahmed Ben Bella, a Nationalist living in Cairo under the protection of Nasser, the movement began to establish a network of resistance cells within Algeria, connected with others in Morocco and soon receiving a flux of weapons and funds from the Nasserite government.
The Catalyst for the uprising was the Massacre of Oran on the 21st of August of 1952, a strike which was called by local nationalists to block the transfer of a weapons shipment to Morocco in the local railroad station would quickly grow into a large protest with the erection of barricades on the streets. Following years of increasingly repressive policies and the alienation of the Muslim Algerians by the Code of Indigenat would lead to an uprising in the city, calling for a repeal of the Code and full equality before the law, with others already shouting for independence. The local police was deployed to contain the uprising and soon enough the Milice took matters in their own hands, under the command of the local Department Commander, Raoul Dagostini, would unleash the military-grade arsenal given to them over the last year by firing live rounds and mortar shells at the crowd, considering them as separatist rebels in open conflict against the State. Dagostini's Milice would not stop at dispersal, but he ordered his men to chase and shoot down the panicking crowd after a shot was fired from it, likely from one of the nationalists, which turned the massacre into the deathliest "retaliation" in Algerian territory up to that moment, over 400 would be dead and many more wounded, with over a thousand prisoners, of which less than a hundred would survive the next three years.
In retaliation, the FLN would declare on the 29th the formation of the Algerian Provisional Government in Cairo, leading to the start of the Algerian War. With several coordinated attacks being launched by the Front from the shore to the Atlas mountains and even raids in the desert, the war had officially begun with Darnand declaring a State of Emergency (Which is why the Algerian War is also called the Maghreb Emergency in France) and placing General Marcel Peyrouton in charge, a former Minister of the Interior and ambassador who advocated for a harsh repression of the Rebel groups. And yet, Peyrouton's time as Governor-General was still considered relatively peaceful and contained compared to his successor's and it avoided some of the worst of the brutality which came afterwards.
"They made a desert and called it peace!"
As the war began in Northern Africa, the mainland in France would see the beginning of a shift in power, with the different collaborationist forces centralized under Darnand's command, he set to rid himself of his main rivals in the party, Doirot and Déat. Not only did he believe himself as a French version of Adolf Hitler, who was meant to introduce France into this New Order as a strong partner of it's own, but many of these other collaborators had ideas misaligned with his own. Between 1951 and 1956, The Grand Marshall would work to consolidate his power in the French State while using the Maghreb Emergency as a way to rally the people against a common "foreign" foe. The Bureau of Anti-National Activities, now headed by Henri Devillers, a former soldier who was recruited in the Abwehr and was instrumental in the dismantlement of the "Combat" Resistance Group, after controversies with Laval he would stay in Germany and later returned as Chief of the Internal Security Services, which was quite telling of how much the strings of the Reich showed at Darnand's government despite him attempting to keep up appearances more than Laval did.
The war would also lead to an upsurge in Terror attacks until the declaration of a Quarantine in 1955 following the Lyon bombings, if simply because Algeria was considered a part of France proper and therefore Algerians were able to quite easily reach the French mainland in order to launch terrorist attacks, and sometimes even cooperating with De Gaulle's resistance cells against high level military targets and depots. The idea was to provoke the French people against the Darnand regime and showing his incapacity of keeping order in France, forcing him to enter legitimate negotiations which could be mediated by the Italians. One thing the FLN did not consider was that Darnand completely disregarded civilian losses and in time he would call support from the Germans to fully "Pacify" the Maghreb, which would lead to the genocide of millions of Algerians and Moroccans until the death of Darnand.
What did come to bring the first attrition between the French Regime and the German Reich was the start of the persecution of Catholicism by Wegener's Party Chancellorship. Despite a history with anti-clericalism and the close ties with the Hess regime, the Council of State, responsible for advising Darnand, cautioned him against such policies in France as potentially bringing the wrath of the French people, mere 5 years after Laval's execution and with the ongoing Maghreb insurgency causing a sink in resources and in the already low popularity of the collaborators. While Darnand distanced his rule from the Catholic Church compared to Petain, it was still a very sensitive topic to tackle, and the risk of instability more likely would cause the Panzer divisions to move on Paris once again and replace him with a more flexible puppet.
There was no large-scale persecution of the Catholic Church in France during the German Kirchenkampf of the late 1950s, yet the same cautiousness Darnand had would later be used against him by Goebbels to paint him as an unreliable leader to "pacify" the French Race. Ironically, it was the suggestion of the German government itself that he should not pursue to imitate their own "internal struggle" for pragmatic reasons, although the Grand Marshall was quite willing to turn over fleeing priests across the border. Reinhard Heydrich, his superior in the SS (now SSK after Heydrich's agreement with Wegener), conversed with him over the matter in a meeting at Verdun, both of them speaking also on the matter of Algiers and the worrying results of the rebel resistance, which included even a recent terrorist attack in Paris which killed 14 Frenchmen in a Cafe. Angered at Darnand's incompetence, Heydrich opted to send an "Advisor to the Governor-General", a man who represented the German government and it's interests, ensuring he had a final say in the "Pacification of the Desert" as Heydrich called.
Klaus Barbie, nicknamed as the "Butcher of Stockholm", an SD operative who was responsible for the Gestapo activities in Sweden between 1946 and 1951, credited with the destruction of the Swedish resistance and the capture of thousands of German emigrees and escaped Jews during the occupation, including personally being part of the torture of prisoners at times. Shortly before Hitler's death, he was meant to become an overseer in the occupation of Manchester during the planned occupation of Great Britain. Thankfully to the citizens of Manchester, that did not happen, rather he was now being sent to Algiers as the main responsible to oversee the "Expulsion of dangerous elements", an euphemism to what came to be nicknamed as the "Algerian Holocaust", although calling it the "Maghrebi Genocide" would be more accurate as it's operations were extended to Morocco as well.
The war in Morocco had lost any pretense of a Civil war with the death of Tamil el Mouzari in 1955, after 3 years of protracted conflict which mainly had devolved into a sectarian war between different tribes and with the French forces struggling to keep control of the countryside. Tamil, already an elderly man, came to deeply regret his actions, being made a puppet by the Council of the Sultan and the Governor-General while having much of the country destroyed by the years of war. Detailing the campaigns of the Moroccan Civil War is a challenge for historians as there were few open battles between both forces after 1952 when the Nationalists attempted to seize the Capital of Rabat, administrative center of the French protectorate, only for the city to be later retaken by a French marine force. Mohammed V did control much of the countryside and used the harsh terrain to his fullest advantage, appealing to the proud tradition of Independence his people possessed since the defeat of the Ottoman attempts to conquer them.
He would die on the 4th of April of 1955 of a heart failure, but instead of passing the throne to his heir, the French Resident Alphonse Juin would announce the end of the protectorate, using a previously made agreement with the Spanish which allowed Primo Rivera to seize Tangier in return of consenting to the French annexation of Morocco as part of France proper as much as Algeria was. It was a bold move which alienated many Moroccan allies who served under Tamil, that led to the most successful year in the Moroccan rebellion, with Governor Juin's forces being pushed back to the costal areas after the fall of Marrakesh. It appeared by 1956 that the Moroccan insurgency was on it's way to an eventual victory.
In Algeria, the French presence was stronger, but they still would suffer pushbacks with the Atlas Mountains Insurgency, the Algerian "Front of National Liberation" would make great gains between 1952 and 1956, especially thanks to several factors such as the favorable geography, the alienation of the Muslim Algerians under French control, and the supply of weapons from Egypt coming through smuggling routes in the desert. Governor Peyrouton would be assassinated in February of 1953, from there on at least three other governors would come and go after successive failures. Peyrouton had prepared a system similar to the British suppression of the Malay insurgency by forcing the population of rural areas into concentrated "Hamlets" to contain the insurgents and keep vigilance on sympathizers. One problem was that the brutality of the French soldiers in such areas led to them becoming the perfect ground for recruitment by FLN agents, another was that the French forces would suffer with the chronic lack of manpower. One commander did openly question his superior in a report as to how he was expected to keep control of 900 Algerians with 15 men in 1954, and most of times Algeria was deemed as an exile by French officers who were sidelined in the political games of Paris.
The meeting with Heydrich, the fall of Marrakesh, and the FLN's offensive towards Algiers would finally provoke the change in policy seen in April of 1956, Governor-General Raoul Salan and Governor-General Alphonse Juin were both replaced by the end of the month and a new strategy was adopted. Instead of treating the insurgency in military terms, the Emergency became an "Ideological struggle" for the French State. For that, the Emergency greatly empowered the Ministry of the Colonies, now under the recalled Charles Planton, former minister under Petain who was removed due to a rivalry with Laval, an ideologue and fanatical anti-semite who desired to export the ideals of the French State to the colonies and enact a plan of industrialization to compensate the losses from the French mainland and deconcentrate industry. Algiers now also became the seat of the "Commissariat for Pacification of the Maghreb" under Louis Darquier, former Commissioner-General for Jewish affairs and the main responsible for the deportation of French and Algerian Jews to Germany in the 1940s.
Klaus Barbie went with Darquier's team which arrived in Algiers in May, immediately working with the Bureau of Anti-National activities and using intelligence collected by the RSHA/SSK with their deep infiltration in the French State affairs. Not only was a large degree of corruption found to be hampering efforts, there was also the issues of low morale and lack of manpower in the combat of the insurgency. The Germans would then become more directly involved in the region, interested in the mineral deposits of the Atlas mountains, the potential of the Moroccan possessions for naval bases, and of course the growing number of oil fields in the region was of vital interest of the German State. The French Foreign Legion, an instrument created by Louis-Philippe over a century earlier, was one of the methods the Germans found to covertly support the French efforts, as an influx of thousands of German veterans would oin the legion to combat in the Maghreb between 1956 and 1958. During these two years, the tactics would have a drastic change as Heydrich believed the "demographic imbalance" and the "savagery of the Algerians" were the main responsible for the situation.
The Pied-Noirs, who by and large supported the French forces, were radicalized by propaganda, painting the terror of what were to happen if the Algerian "terrorists" were to win. Meanwhile, the French armed forces were expanded and the Milice would be actively involved in "pacifying" the territory by sheer brutality. The Ministry of Propaganda painted the Algerian terrorist strikes as an "Attack on Europe", with the German assistance being praised and the effort being painted as a defense of the "Mare Nostrum", the Mediterranean, from the Judeo-Bolshevik Algerian terrorists, as well as the savage Sultan of Morocco and painting the rebellion as a covert effort by the United States and the "Perfidious Albion", playing on the anglophobia which returned in France following the events of 1940.
The "Hamlet" Strategy was the perfect situation for the Germans, as with a terrifying level of experience, Barbie and his advisors began to build up infrastructure through forced labor, connecting the small villages into larger camps, Concentration camps closer to the coast. The Luftwaffe began to use incendiary ammunition against rebel holdouts and the targets became more and more indiscriminate even compared to the already very thin restrictions on the French Air Force. As the German involvement grew, the Italians, fearful of the possibility that their "faults" were found to be more than incompetence, shut down the smuggling routes between Egypt and Algeria, and with Nasser building up his forces to strike Israel and with the arming of insurgents in Sudan, little could be spared to the FLN that had to resort more and more to raiding French military depots, which left them more exposed to the enemy.
But Concentration was not what the French intended, while the previous governors desired to restore a semblance of control and the previous status quo, that was not the intent of Darquier or the RSHA. The infrastructure of three camps, "El Harrouch" and "Zahana" in Algeria, and "Moulay" in Morocco, was made specifically in the design of camps such as Treblinka, Auschwitz, Chelmno and Belzec. With at least 13 "Concentration" camps which worked with the "Extermination through Labor" system. It is morbid that the largest logistical infrastructure buildup in Algeria happened during the period when Paris was most focused on exterminating the local inhabitants. The populations of urban areas would be separated in ghettos, which was helped by the existing infrastructure that de-facto segregated natives and French citizens and their descendants from the Muslim Arab majority. In the countryside, the plans moved in first with the forced relocation through forced marches by the German and French units, which arrived in growing numbers by the day. Many Algerians and Moroccans believed, wrongfully, that extermination was not the goal of the arriving forces, merely they would be going through another relocation process, as several happened in the years prior during the war.
The German concessions were not only economical, but biological, the French authorities did give the Germans permission to do the "necessary actions" to end the Emergency in collaboration with the French forces. That meant the arrival of many doctors, with German geneticists, full of fresh ideas for experimentation following the discovery of the DNA, now had fresh subjects to be used. One novel field in exploration, for instance, was the effect of radiation on the human body, and while the Germans already began to conduct such tests in the Arctic circle, near their traditional test sites, the Sahara presented an new environment for the experiments, with members of a different race, which for the eugenicists in the Reich was a fascinating prospect. As many Sephardic Jews shared traits with the Algerians and Moroccans, the three living under the Almohad Dynasty centuries earlier and with a substantial Jewish population having previously lived in North Africa, this also served for many as an opportunity to test the effect of radiation on the "closest-kin" of the Jewish people of Israel, as many of the post-war generation of "doctors" never had the opportunity to make tests on Jewish subjects before.
The Wehrmacht would also use the Sahara as a test for nuclear weapons, ranging from the "Artillery" type of shells to Thermonuclear devices such as the "Ludendorff" device, dropped near the village of El Bayadh in October 1957, measuring 28 Megatons. The village was caught within range of the radiation fallout and the survivors were taken by the Germans to a nearby concentration camp at Marhoum, being observed and suffering with forceful tests and experiments that included the peeling off the burnt skin, the tests with iodine pills which were considered by many as a "cure" for radiation, and proximity to other prisoners to see if the radiation would spread as an infection would. The results were that all of the subjects died, even those who did not get killed by the effects of the radiation. There was also the use of portable, small nuclear devices which were used similarly to the Panzerfaust, although the device was still in a prototype phase by the time the Ural War started and did not see action during the conflict, one of these was the "Atomfaust" (Atomic Fist), a small device mounted into a Rocket Launcher-type gun that fired a device with the explosive yield of 25 tons of TNT, although it was considered largely inaccurate, more to be used as a morale weapon or used in mass against a fortified position.
The Franco-German collaboration, as the leading role of the French authorities must not be minimized, would lead to the end of the FLN's campaign. As commented by Mao Zedong, fighting an insurgency could be efficient if you did not care about killing civilians, "drain the pond to catch the fish" was taken as a guideline by the "Pacification" forces. Muhammad V of Morocco would be murdered in a German commando raid on the 27th of December of 1957, fragmenting the Moroccan resistance after years of pushbacks from the Franco-German forces. The Algerians found themselves lacking in manpower and ammunition, many of them opting to fight to the death, others fled across the Sahara to West Africa or back to Egypt. Tens of Thousands of Algerians would make the daring trip across the largest sand desert in the world under scorching heat and cold nights to arrive at places such as Timbuktu, using old caravan routes, from there they would be received by the French Republic of Charles de Gaulle, who used the event to attack the French State and denounce it's genocidal policies. But many did not even believe that such a scale of attrocities was being perpetrated in the region. Many more Moroccans would flee to the Spanish territory or reach De Gaulle's Free France, with others using Spain as a springboard to reach Portugal and cross the Atlantic, daring trips in the straits of Gibraltar leading to tens of thousands of deaths or disappearances as the desperate Moroccans and Algerians made the crossing, knowing the alternative was death. By 1960, 2 in every 3 Moroccans in Rabat were killed for example, as well as the great majority of the local intelligentsia with them, out of 10 million Moroccans in 1953, only 3 million natives were left by the end of the decade. In Algeria, the population of Algerian Muslims dropped from 9 million in 1952, to closer to a million by 1960.
As the Ural War began, further German reinforcements were halted, being supplanted by coming Frenchmen as the government on the mainland, seeking to imitate the German eastern colonization, would begin to settle the costal areas of Morocco, sometimes by forced means, with Frenchmen and Pied-Noirs. Forced sterilization campaigns, as well as forced marriages and conversions to Catholicism were perpetrated by the French in an attempt to cull the numbers of the Arab population and prevent further growth in the future. In 1959, the Emergency was declared over, but that meant little as the French policies that continued as brutal as they were and the continued oversight by the SSK ensured that the administration was "well-guided". Darnand was proud of his achievements, which ensured that rebellion was unheard of in the Maghreb, claiming that the region would be "as French as Corsica and Normandy" through forced assimilation of the remaining inhabitants. He had hoped to have solidified his name in French History as their own version of Adolf Hitler, propagandizing the success as a return of France into a role of prominence, painting a future of a French North Africa, with it's enormous potential used for industry and propelling forwards the French economy to make it a vital member of the Pakt, of the New Order in Europe.
Two years after that, he would be dead.
There was an odd silence in Europe following the Ural War, a silence which was broken by a thousand screams, by the shouts of a marching song and furious crowds, of torches and ropes, of burning buildings and monuments. The old Continent, which had it's apogee 50 years earlier, had declined since then, mutilating itself with wars and fanaticism, until the final monstrosity, the cost to be paid for the past opulence, finally came. The rise of Joseph Goebbels was an event that the Grand Marshal of the State had feared, and with the death of his patron Reinhard Heydrich, left him exposed, vulnerable. Everything came down so quickly, there was an odd belief that Goebbels meant well, that his fanaticism was appeased and he would be another Hess, a loud speaker while the Party ran the show, agreements have been made with Albert Speer over German investments on the port city of Casablanca, but it all came to naught. Within weeks all of it came down, the SS was destroyed, the SD subdued, the Volkssturm was now here to take it's place. The investors were gone, Speer was gone, and all the great industries of Germania now belonged to the Führer, a level of control unseen since the Bolsheviks.
And yet, something more sinister was happening, there were people fleeing into France and they were not the usual "untermenschen" who would be easily sent back, those were Germans. They were German civilians fleeing by the hundreds, or at the thousands, into France, enjoying the terms of the Linz Pakt which privileged the movement of German citizens to it's members, only to seek refuge in these countries and never return. Eventually they began to speak the stories, of the fear they went through, some just for wearing a crucifix on their necks, another had a grandfather who was a member of the Social Democratic Party, another had a distant cousin who sheltered Jews during the war. News came that the Jews were back, that some were caught in Hermannstadt and it was revealed that a grand scheme was being run in collaboration between the United States, the United Kingdom, the Russian Empire and the State of Israel to sabotage the Reich, spread false propaganda and arm terrorist groups to launch attacks such as the Rostock bombing in 1958.
And now Goebbels was showing his true colors, and during an entire year, Germany has been bursting in flames. From Party leaders to children, nobody was safe when the song was heard, when the torches were seen, the youth was gripped with a fanaticism like never before, as if they were saving the world by hanging families on lamp posts for all to see, anyone ever suspected of having a Jewish ancestor thousands of years ago was a target, any blood could be tainted, anyone could have been manipulated. It was paranoia, with the racial beliefs and antisemitism taken to it's most illogical extremes, the idea of Ideological purity was the rule, nobody wanted to be seen as lacking in fevor in following the Führer, so obviously they all wanted to show how eager they were, with public lynchings equally moved by hatred and by fear. The Volkssturm roamed the streets, the crowds all raising in salute, and if a child failed to properly doing so, it was seen as their family indoctrinating them in Jewish teachings and led to the child taken to a foster home for ideological education while the parents would never be seen again.
Now Goebbels came down on Darnand, who he always saw as a man devoid of true belief, a man who had refused to properly control the clergy in France as was done in the Reich, one who was suspected to even be in contact with the resistance. All of which was illogical, but truthfully, Goebbels hated Darnand, an SS man to the bone, and had already chosen a replacement. It was very convenient, really, all of the measures made by Darnand, from hiring a former Abwehr officer as head of his intelligence service to freely allowing German officers to reach high levels of information and all the open collaboration, all of that made him extremely vulnerable, especially as he rid himself of other rivals during the 1950s, including less sycophantic men who would otherwise have opposed Goebbels' move. The SD was still functional, and still in a very close position to influence the Council of State and the Ministries, to influence the Party, to influence the French higher levels of politics as they saw fit, as Goebbels saw fit.
It was the 27th of September of 1961, Joseph Darnand was leaving the Élysée and headed to Lyon when his car exploded, killing him in instants. Further investigation revealed that the car was reviewed by a French Pied-Noirs, a man whose brother was rumored to have an affair with an Algerian woman. Immediately the link was made and there was even a convenient Algerian terrorist group, a small remnant cell that nobody even heard off called "Secret Army" (AS), ready to claim the authorship of the attack. This also showed that Darnand's "Pacification" was still incomplete, or at least that is how it was painted, and finally the Party gathered to elect a new leader, a man who was relatively low compared to the larger politics and yet he was also exactly what Goebbels seeked: Jacques Schweizer.
Schweizer, aged 57, was a lawyer but also leader of the militant group "Youth for New Europe", a movement calling for a greater cooperation between France and Germany, a youth organization which grew in numbers to over 80 thousand members after the German victory and thanks to the rising of a generation more sympathetic with their ideas under the Darnand regime. He abolished the title of Grand Marshall, claiming it's overtly militarist title was a relic from Petain and Darnand, the new France would have to be one which understood that this new order was the status quo, that De Gaulle and the exiles were not an equal opponent but rather an old aspect of the old Europe which would die in time, this New Order, which he firmly believed in, required cooperation without giving up independence. By his side was also Marc Augier, his former superior in the movement who passed it's leadership to Schweizer, Augier became Prime Minister, with Schweizer becoming President as the old titles and governance of the Petain government had apparently returned, but the State was no less Authoritarian as before, and no less committed to Germania than Darnand was. Goebbels saw great potential in the "Young Europe Movement" if properly commanded by the Reich, a form to mask the servitude that the Linz Pakt imposed, and France would soon be the role model for all of Europe in his vision.
But the change of power in Paris came with a new demand, Goebbels saw a coming war with the United States as inevitable, as his mentor once did, and for that reason he desired to break the limitations (self-imposed by Hess' insanity and also contained by Darnand's cautiousness) on the Caribbean. A Brazilian patrol vessel would spot a German cargo ship which mistakenly entered Brazilian territorial waters on Amapá, headed to the French Guiana. The ship fired a warning shot from a deck gun on the approaching Brazilian vessel and, after a short standoff and the arrival of the Brazilian airforce, raised the white flag and allowed an inspection. The ship was seized and taken to Brazil, where it was found to have enriched uranium used in Nuclear Weapons. The CIA discovered the incident, which happened on the 12th of November and soon the messages were sent to the Dutch government in Suriname and to other members of the Coalition of Nations, an emergency meeting being called by Hoffa as soon the crisis became apparent: French Guiana was being militarized.
Guadeloupe, Saint Martin, all islands still owned by the French Government would find American ships and planes surrounding them, while French Guiana was put under a Quarantine by the US Navy that shut down all traffic in and out of the Island on the 15th of November, which began the Guiana Crisis. The French government answered in outrage with denial over the claims that nuclear weapons were being stored, instead they claimed the United States interfered with the Free navigation agreements it was signatory of. However, images from American Spy planes soon revealed the extent of the crisis, there were rocked launching bases and possibly even nuclear warheads in French Guiana, as well as a naval base near Cayenne which was being used for German U-Boats to ressupply, as well as possibly new bases being built over in Guadeloupe, or at least the material for them was already set up with a clearing area.
The German government answered in outrage, with Hans Luddin protesting the borderline illegal movements made by the American fleet and announcing boldly that the Kriegsmarine was willing to defend the French possessions, and that an American attack on a Pakt member was an attack against all of them. Goebbels denounced the American movements but he mostly remained quiet, he knew the Reich was not "ideologically" ready for a war, he still believed that a conflict during Der Angriff would risk destabilization, opening the way for Jewish agents to provoke another "Stab-in-the-Back". Yet, he would still show strength, and did so by sending in an armed escort, led by the Aircraft Carrier "Europa" and the propagandized Battleship Bismarck, as well as an assortment of destroyers and U-Boats meant to escort a convoy to bring further equipment into Guiana.
Due to the conflict in the Maghreb, the French forces in Guiana were understaffed, mostly made up of recruits with a few German officers to oversee the construction which included the forced conscription of several tribesmen into forced manual labor. That was a move which would backfire terribly as a factor neither the United States nor the Germans considered would enter in action. It was the 23rd of November when the German fleet came across the American one, with the 72-year old Admiral Günther Lütjens commandeering from the Bismark the incursion into the American naval containment zone. The American fleet, under Admiral Arthur Radford, moved aggressively to show force, keeping up the Blockade of French Guiana while the USAAF flew planes dangerously close to the range of the German fleet, which made Hoffa furiously demand Radford to be removed over his excessively aggressive actions, but Radford was not and Lütjens, firm believer in the supremacy of the German navy in this specific situation and still supporting the old Battleship doctrines, would make his own show of force by having the Bismark lead the escort and force a breach in the Blockade, an even more aggressive move.
Both sides had essentially lost control of their own admirals as each one of them was making one aggressive move after the other, with American destroyers even dropping depth charges near the U-6323, a Nuclear-armed submarine which attempted to breach the blockage. The crew came close to a mutiny when the veteran captain refused to fire the nuclear torpedoes, Captain Walther Schröder was accused of lack of National Socialist zeal by his crew and the Volkssturm commissioner, Adolf Brückner, being less than half Schröder's age, demanded him to fire the torpedo, as the consent of both was necessary, but Schröder refused. The situation escalated and a firefight would break out in the ship, only ending when Schröder made the sacrificial decision of opening up the Torpedo tubes and sinking the submarine, although not before sending a transmission to Lütjens in order to prevent him from believing the submarine was sunk by the Americans. The transcripts would later be salvaged by the American fleet and published, becoming the main plot of several movies over the years, the most famous being "Pressure: The Story of Captain Schröder".
What ended the blockage was a move which none had seen coming, on the night from the 24th to the 25th of November, Cayenne came under assault, overwhelmed not by a sea invasion as the garrison expected, but by a land invasion which struck them from the rearguard. One of the greatest feats in the history of warfare and an example of Infiltration tactics as the Brazilian army, allied with a coalition of native tribes in the region and coordinating with captured natives using signal codes, invaded French Guiana using the jungle trails. The French conscripts deserted while the enslaved broke into a revolt, attacking with an almost suicidal determination the air field and the radio tower. Operation Cabralzinho, nicknamed after the Brazilian general who beat a French invasion into the Brazilian Guiana in 1895, was a phenomenal success aided by the distraction of the German forces, the overwhelming number advantage of the revolting natives, the passive support of the population of Cayenne, intelligence provided by the tribesmen and by Brazilian scouts, as well as the familiar terrain to the Brazilians (which was practically foreign to the German officers in charge of Guiana), led to the success. Heavy casualties were inflicted on the natives by the German guards, but the arrival of a Brazilian paratrooper force which took off from Belém was well-timed in ensuring the success of the revolt. It was also aided by the sheer racial arrogance of the German commanders, who did not believe the natives to be intelligent enough to coordinate an uprising. By the night of the 25th, the resistance holdouts had fallen and the Brazilian government formally announced the annexation of French Guiana. Salgado would also claim that the Germans dismantled their nuclear armaments during the battle for Cayenne, although that would later be seen to have been a lie, for the Brazilian State had acquired crucial pieces for their own nuclear program.
The reaction of the other two involved was nothing less than shock, an enraged Lütjens called back to Germania for permission to launch a nuclear strike on Rio de Janeiro, or at least the nearby city of Belém, but the message arrived in Germania at the same time as news of Free French forces, transported by the British Royal Navy, launching a coordinated assault on the other French possessions in the Caribbean. Paris was willing to go to war as they claimed French Guiana as part of France proper, but Washington quickly shut down the idea by calling back on the Monroe Doctrine, despite their differences with the Integralist regime in Brazil, they claimed them to be under their Nuclear Umbrella. With the last base of the Pakt in the American continent being eliminated, Goebbels was willing to negotiate, as he still believed the Reich to be unprepared. On the 26th, again through the Dublin connection, Hoffa and Goebbels would come to an agreement where the United States would not interfere with the Linz Pakt's affairs in Africa and the United States would remove it's nuclear long-range missiles from Iceland, reducing their coverage over the Northern Sea. This way, the Germans promised to no longer interfere on the Western Hemisphere, a promise that Hoffa was very suspicious of being empty, as any agreement with the Nazis was, but he agreed for sake of ensuring Goebbels would order his nuclear submarines away from the range of the American coast for the moment. Either way, publicly, the Reich had been humiliated, and Goebbels now knew who he would blame, and the consequences would bring in one of the most dramatic events in European History.
