The soldiers blinked at Wilhelm, confused. They’d heard on the radio that the Second Reich had already fallen — even the Emperor himself had skipped town. Was there really gonna be another Emperor?
"Listen up! This war wasn’t lost because of you. It was lost because of the generals, the field marshals — even the Emperor himself."
"You’re heroes. Warriors. The men who bled and died for the German Empire."
"Your blood wasn’t spilled for nothing. Your sacrifices won’t be forgotten."
"The whole German nation will remember what you did."
"And even if everyone else forgets — I won’t. I, Crown Prince Wilhelm, the one true heir to the Kingdom of Prussia and the German Empire — I will never forget."
With the loudspeaker amplifying his voice, the Crown Prince’s speech rolled across the entire camp.
Soldiers everywhere stopped what they were doing, instinctively snapping to attention and staring up at their Emperor.
Sitting high on his white horse, bathed in sunlight breaking through the clouds, Wilhelm looked like he was wrapped in some kind of holy glow. That "sacred light" beaming down on him stung the soldiers’ eyes so bad they couldn’t look straight at him.
The visual impact hit the men like a truck. In their minds, the Crown Prince instantly became something sacred, towering — an image they’d carry for the rest of their lives.
Seeing his point had landed, Wilhelm rode his white horse back down the hill.
Quit while you’re ahead. Don’t get greedy.
Worst case? The sun ducks behind a cloud and his whole dramatic moment falls flat.
But of course, words alone weren’t gonna win hearts and build his reputation. He had to back it up with something real.
Back at his own camp, he jumped into the system space and dropped another 50,000 merit points on a bunch of grain, clothing, tents, and other supplies the army was desperately short on. He personally hauled those supplies to the neighboring camp, grabbing another wave of loyalty from the troops.
With food, uniforms, and medical gear flowing in, German morale shot up visibly.
In just a few days, that ragged, beaten-down German unit transformed back into the clean-cut, high-spirited, disciplined iron army they used to be.
Word spread like wildfire — camp to camp, unit to unit — until the whole Western Front had heard about it.
The war was lost. There was chaos back home. These guys — the heroes of the Empire — felt like the world had just tossed them aside. And then the Crown Prince showed up with hope and a way forward.
Hitching your wagon to that nameless government in Berlin? Three days hungry, nine days starving.
Hitching your wagon to the Crown Prince? You get your dignity back, you get bread — sometimes even a hot meal with ham and spam.
Side by side, the soldiers could figure out pretty damn quick which side was worth following.
Germany was a mess right then. The left and the right were locked in a battle for power.
Nobody gave a damn about the defeated soldiers waiting to be demobilized. They were stuck in limbo.
But Crown Prince Wilhelm knew damn well that in times of chaos, military force matters more than anything.
As long as the army backed him, all those left-wing groups, the Social Democrats, the Spartacus League, even the German Communist Party — they were nothing but paper tigers.
In peacetime, buying the army’s loyalty would cost a fortune and still might not work.
But right now? He’d spent just 50,000 merit points on 200,000 tons of supplies and locked in their loyalty.
Best damn deal of his life. Hesitate for one second, and he’d be disrespecting the greatest land army in Europe.
In just a few days, Wilhelm had won over more than half the German troops on the Western Front. His reputation was climbing higher every day — pretty much catching up to Hindenburg, the "God of War" of the German Empire.
Some hotheads in the royalist faction were even screaming to march on Berlin, sweep out every piece of trash in their way, and put Wilhelm back on the throne.
Before Wilhelm could even respond, the top brass got nervous.
On December 12, Field Marshal Hindenburg personally showed up at Army Group B’s base to talk the Crown Prince down.
"If we march now, we risk tearing the Empire apart in a full-blown civil war. And if that happens, foreign powers are gonna step in and carve Germany up like a Christmas turkey."
Hindenburg honestly hadn’t seen this coming. The Crown Prince had some serious moves when it came to winning people over.
In just two weeks, his power had grown to this level.
Makes sense, though. The House of Hohenzollern had been around for over a thousand years. That kind of family legacy runs deep.
Hindenburg didn’t know about the system. He just figured the Crown Prince was pulling strings through royal connections and family wealth — flexing in a way that made everyone else look like amateurs.
Which forced him to re-evaluate how much power the royals actually had. Enough that he had to decide: back the republicans, or back the monarchists?
One or two hundred thousand tons of supplies? That’s no small change even in peacetime. In wartime? Forget about it.
Hindenburg knew for a fact he couldn’t pull that off himself. There were maybe a handful of families in all of Europe with that kind of reach.
Even the provisional government in Berlin probably couldn’t swing it.
But Wilhelm did it quietly. No fuss, no drama. Just... done.
What does that tell you?
It tells you the House of Hohenzollern and the royalists behind the Crown Prince have way more muscle than anyone realized.
Sure, the republican cause had its supporters. But the republicans didn’t have an army.
The Spartacus League and the German Communists had their worker militias — and the Soviets backing them, sure.
But those militias only had small arms. No heavy weapons. No combat experience. There’s no way they could hold up against the battle-hardened regulars who just crawled out of the meat grinder on the Western Front.
And the Soviets?
Honestly, Hindenburg didn’t think much of the new regime the Russians had cooked up.
Back on the Eastern Front, he’d smashed the Russian army with inferior numbers — made them lose twice.
Those Russians couldn’t even handle their own White Army resistance. No way they’d pull off a major deployment into Central Europe to back up German workers.
So the left? Nothing to fear there.
Adding it all up, Hindenburg realized something surprising: Wilhelm — who’d started with a deck stacked against him — had quietly become the most powerful force in Germany.
Seeing that, Hindenburg dropped any idea of cozying up to the republicans for a shot at president. Time to plan his next move.
President wasn’t in the cards. But Chancellor under a new Emperor? That could work.
Judging by how the Crown Prince handled things so far, he might not be another Frederick the Great, but he was a hell of a lot more level-headed than his impulsive, twitchy, unreliable old man.
Wilhelm glanced at Hindenburg. Maybe he was imagining it, but the old man seemed way more respectful today than before.
"I get your concerns. But you can’t deal with outside threats until you clean house. If that mess at home keeps festering, the left and right are gonna keep tearing apart the very foundation of the Empire."
The right wing he could deal with. They were holed up in political hubs like Berlin — the damage they could do was limited.
But the left? That was the real problem. The Ruhr industrial region, where they’d gathered, was the jewel of the Empire.
If they were allowed to keep destroying it, the Empire’s entire industrial base would take a hit it might never recover from.