It all started with a bit of idle curiosity.
The kind of curiosity that’ll damn well kill you.
***
Mobile games had become one of the few hobbies I still had left after I suddenly turned into an unemployed bum.
They didn’t cost money, and I could play them anywhere, anytime, so for someone broke like me they were just about perfect.
One day, after eating the meal Mom cooked and rolling around in bed scrolling for new games, “it” caught my eye.
“Heart of Steel?”
Something about the name felt both familiar and unusual. When I tapped it, a simple description popped up.
A game where you choose any country, any figure, and rewrite history.
Didn’t sound too bad, so I clicked the menu—and was hit with a massive list of countries.
Not just big names like America, Russia, or China, but also Nepal, Armenia, Ethiopia, all the way down to unheard-of places like Djibouti and Nauru.
There wasn’t a country missing.
“Not bad, huh?”
My first pick was Gambia.
Why? No real reason. Just following my gut.
Unfortunately, when I clicked Gambia, all I got was a message saying “not yet available.” Then why even put it on the list?
So, what else?
The U.S.? Already a superpower, what the hell would I change there?
Britain? France? Didn’t feel any interest.
China? Don’t like it. Russia? Don’t really care either.
Afghanistan? Tibet? Intriguing, sure, but probably hellishly hard mode.
After much hemming and hawing, I settled on Germany.
Germany.
These days it strutted around as a European powerhouse while shirking its duties, but a century ago it had been the world’s biggest problem child.
Difficulty looked about right, so I picked Germany.
And then—an endless scroll of historical figures popped up.
From Frederick I to Martin Luther, Bismarck, even the current Chancellor, Olaf Scholz.
No matter how much I scrolled, the list never seemed to end.
Christ, how many people is this?
Must’ve been at least a thousand. Pick one out of that? I could waste the whole day just deciding.
Annoyed, I hit the random button. Whoever it landed on, I’d just go with that.
Looking back now, I really shouldn’t have.
No—in hindsight, the best move would’ve been not to play the game at all.
But by the time I realized that, the game had already begun.
The roulette stopped spinning, and I couldn’t help but gape.
“Hitler? Are you fucking serious?”
Adolf Hitler.
The most infamous dictator in human history, a name no one didn’t know.
But wait—Hitler was born in Austria, not Germany. Shouldn’t he be on Austria’s list?
Well, since he considered himself German and spent his life in Germany, maybe it wasn’t technically wrong.
I did feel some disgust at the image Hitler carried, but compared to playing as Bismarck—basically a cheat code in real life—or Frederick the Great, who’d had absurd luck, maybe playing Hitler would actually be more fun.
I tapped his picture. The screen shifted, and a “Mission” appeared.
—Hitler, once an aspiring painter, sought to unite Europe under the German flag but failed in the end. Become the Führer, make Germany a great power, and win the war to fulfill his unrealized ambition.
Lighthearted, I pressed the play button—
And immediately blacked out.
***
“How the hell······.”
When I opened my eyes,
I was Hitler.
No joke. Literally.
At first I thought it was a dream.
But the sights before my eyes, the sounds in my ears, the sensations on my skin—
Taken together, this was no dream. This was real.
When I first grasped my situation, I even seriously thought of killing myself.
Sure, dying was scary, but if it meant I could return to my real world, I was willing.
But when it came down to it, doubts crept in.
What if dying didn’t take me back? What if it was just… the end?
Then what?
I wasn’t ready to throw away my life here just yet.
And part of me thought—maybe, if I waited, some clue or method of escaping this world might appear.
For that reason, I gave up on suicide and chose to adapt.
***
Since I was stuck as Hitler anyway, I decided to live a life opposite from the Hitler of history—one that might leave the world a little better.
Instead of entering politics, I stayed in the army and rooted myself there.
Thanks to my Iron Cross, I was able to climb up to Sergeant Major.
I’d never been one for luxuries, so my spending was light, and I ended up saving a fortune—enough to live comfortably without money worries until the day I died of old age.
I was just waiting to retire, living an easy life, when civil war erupted.
Communists backed by the Soviet Union launched uprisings across Germany, and the country was plunged into chaos.
Then, to make matters worse, Poland invaded.
Leading my platoon against Polish forces, I caught a bullet in the chest and died.
“So that’s it, huh······?”
But when I came to, I was back in Hitler’s past.
That was my first regression.
This time I didn’t stay in the army. I returned to Hitler’s homeland, Austria.
I figured Austria would be safe compared to Germany, which I knew would face civil war.
But I was dead wrong.
When the war broke out in Germany, Austrian communists rose in revolt too.
As Austria fell into chaos, Italy and Czechoslovakia intervened under the pretext of suppressing communists and maintaining order.
I died in an Italian air raid.
My second regression.
This time I fled to Switzerland.
Switzerland had to be safe. No civil war, no invasion.
But even if I escaped war, I couldn’t escape traffic accidents.
On my way back from grocery shopping, I got hit by a truck that ran a red light.
They rushed me to the hospital, but I died two days later.
My third regression.
This time I dodged the truck.
But that evening, a burglar broke into my home. In the struggle, he stabbed my carotid artery.
As I bled out, I suddenly remembered the “Mission” from when I started the game.
What was it again? Oh yeah—become Führer, make Germany a great power.
Maybe all those unavoidable deaths happened because I’d been dodging the mission.
Maybe if I fulfilled it, not only would I stop dying, but I could finally escape this endless cycle of regressions.
So I resolved to become Führer.
Just as the Hitler of history had, I rose to that seat. I reoccupied the Rhineland, annexed Austria, claimed the Sudetenland, reclaimed West Prussia and Posen.
I thought my work was done—until another problem cropped up.
Greedy bastards. After I crushed Poland, even my old rivals, the Prussian Junkers, started clamoring for a restoration of the monarchy.
Of course I opposed them. There was no need, no reason for it.
But those pompous Junkers thought differently. Maybe they really believed Germany wasn’t Germany without a Kaiser. Maybe they just wanted my power for themselves.
Or maybe both.
Whatever the case, they launched a coup, threw me in the Abwehr’s basement, and told the people I was on my deathbed. Then they pinned the blame on the SS and carried out a purge.
The SS chose resistance over quietly dissolving. The result was civil war.
Once civil war broke out in Germany, Britain, France, Italy, and the USSR all jumped in.
Just before Soviet troops entered Berlin, I was dragged out of that basement and executed by firing squad.
As consciousness slipped away, I swore an oath.
That in my next regression, I would never repeat my mistakes.
That I would succeed—and put a bullet in the skulls of the bastards who’d screwed me over.