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"You are free to leave this cell with this."
"Then what is the price? To forever lose the right to use a shovel and a hoe?" Mrs. Zeppelin took the document with a skeptical look.
“Perhaps we had some misunderstandings before,” Grafria said with a wry smile. “Back then, we heard that in the face of attacks from multiple countries, many German soldiers heeded the Führer’s call to defend the capital to the death. As a result, Her Highness Elizabeth mistakenly believed that in the public’s mind, your Führer was still an inviolable and supreme being, so…”
"So you want to see people try to curry favor with us?" The lady coldly looked at the words on it—the land around the Führer's bunker would be planted with ordinary flowers, trees and shrubs, and no more memorial statues or anything like that would be erected. Madam Zeppelin would still have the right to stay in Berlin temporarily with the German civilians. At the same time, the princess wanted to invite her to visit the veterans' cemetery again to identify which of the memorial tablets of high-ranking officials of the Third Reich were not allowed to be repaired.
“When the war is over, you will repair our homeland and live with us day and night. This is not because you have a change of heart, but because you want us to forget the past when we were invaded. Ha…” She gently waved her hand to signal the captain of the guard to leave, and then she packed up to prepare for her release from prison.
“Um, one last thing…” Grafria turned to look at the guard, her tone suddenly softening, “May I ask what your full name is?”
"Hmm?" Mrs. Zeppelin glared at her warily, glancing at the piece of paper with annoyance. "Sullivan von Zeppelin, isn't that written on it?"
"Then you also had an ancestor who was Earl Zeppelin, right?"
"Hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm, the airship company that built the airships has gone out of business. Your princess has already asked about it. What exactly do you want to say?"
Just as Sulian was about to lose her temper, she saw Grafria move her ceremonial pistol aside, open her arms, and suddenly hug her.
"Huh?!" Staring in disbelief at Grafria's girlish whimpering, her right hand repeatedly pinched and gently rubbed the two of them's long white hair together in her palm.
"Let me introduce myself." Grafria took off her hat, a delighted smile on her face. "Grafria Zeppelin, the seventh eldest daughter of the Zeppelin family, and the eldest granddaughter of the second Earl Zeppelin. It's an honor to meet me from another world here."
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I'm recommending this book, "Probably a Monster," which I've also posted on Shuke. It seems to be about gods and monsters. Please be kind to this newbie on Shuke!
Chapter 333, Section 426: Hatred never changes
Compared to their previous equal strength with the Black Knights, the Britannian soldiers have performed exceptionally well—the news that "District 45 is another world within the same framework" has not yet been leaked, and naturally, the existence of the concentration camp has not caused a major uproar in District 11.
Yes, if it leads to the entire Empire treating Germans even worse than they treat Area 11 people, Nunnally and Suzaku will be very busy, so much so that they won't have time to reinstate "Area 11 military and police can carry pistols on duty" so soon.
But not everyone is so fortunate; for example, the US soldiers included in their ranks are excluded. After all, unlike the Russians' natural brute strength, these guys who are quick to kill people from Japan are truly unreliable.
History repeats itself: it's the familiar street again, it's Davis patrolling the street with his young men again, and it's him alone with a pistol tucked into his waistband.
But there were exceptions. After crossing an intersection, he, Garcia, and Philip behind him saw Taylor standing in front of a courtyard gate, with Nazi bastards dressed in black standing guard right next to him.
"If I'm not mistaken, this is where that young lady is staying?" I had heard before that Area 11 was not safe and the Aryan Special Forces were ordered to protect Marybell's residence with all their might—but what is Taylor doing here?
"Hey guys, I'm waiting for my girl." He went up to ask and found out that he had originally planned to go out and have fun with Jane after delivering the letter, but he ended up delivering something here instead.
Before the soldiers could even exchange a few jokes, they turned their heads and saw Schreiber and Gunther peering at them from inside the gate. Following them were German soldiers with guns slung over their shoulders, leaning against lampposts in the courtyard smoking. The twenty-odd men on both sides nearly came to blows during this hostile exchange of glances.
How do we deal with these annoying Yankee bastards? How do we get rid of these damned Nazi dogs?
……
"Cough, you guys, you go first." Seeing that this wasn't a solution, Davis sent Garcia and the others away and stayed behind to talk to Taylor.
"I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, boss. The aliens have found the Nazi concentration camps."
"Which one? If it's Dachau, that would be terrible." Of course, Dachau is only a dozen kilometers from Munich. If the US military suffers such a crushing defeat, we might have to wait for the Stars and Stripes to become history.
“They didn’t show it to me, but take a look.” Taylor said, pointing towards Schreiber and Gunther, who were questioning a German soldier with a bruised face—Genia had bumped into this man earlier, which had escalated into a physical altercation.
“Your girlfriend may have a bit of a temper, but I remember she’s not the kind of person who only solves problems with her fists.” With that, Jania gave Schreiber and the others a cold glance, then ran out without looking back.
"You've been promoted recently, Ms. Genia?" Davis chuckled. "Did you manage to get out alive after shoving the princess's security guards?"
“Let’s go, I don’t want to lower myself to their level.” She pulled the two of them away from the area. “I’ve disliked them for a long time, and besides, it won’t be long before they have no right to stand here.”
"What do you mean?" Davis asked, somewhat curious.
“Taylor told me before that these Germans used to have a name, the SS.” Denya spat out the word with disdain. “I delivered a personal letter from Her Highness Elizabeth. According to Germans who recently returned to Berlin, the SS is getting worse and worse in the mouths of the civilians, including their Führer and the concentration camps he set up.”
"In the letter to Princess Mariebel, she warned her to be cautious in using these SS personnel. Tsk, I told everyone long ago that if these German soldiers had any humanity, I could try to shake hands with them. Now it seems I was right."
“That’s not all.” Genia paused. “His Highness wrote two letters, and another one is supposedly dedicated to Marshal Auchenyi on the EU front. I hope the letter says something like, ‘Get rid of that bastard named Karlstadt who’s with him.’”
"Oh? That's great news." Davis breathed a sigh of relief—not only would the Nazis have a hard time, but it seemed that these extraterrestrials who started the war had no intention of inheriting the mantle of the swastika.
"So, are you and Taylor free tomorrow? We can talk more about the Germans."
"Another day, Captain Davis. I have a mission to Kobe tomorrow."
"That far? Were they transferred to other units for duty?"
"No, it's just an escort mission for the convoy; we'll be returning to the Tokyo Concession."
"Who are you escorting?"
"Well... please don't ask any more questions, okay?"
Jania's refusal was unusually serious. Davis glanced at Taylor's expression; it seemed she hadn't done this in a long time.
Could it be that Britannia is preparing something in Kobe? What secrets are they hiding?
……
"Captain, please respond. This is Garcia!" Just then, the radio crackled to life. "Are you still on that street? A purse snatcher just sped off on a motorcycle in your direction. Two Japanese men, the motorcycle was red, and they were both wearing white jackets and blue pants."
Before they could finish speaking, the three of them saw a motorcycle staggering into their field of vision.
Taylor was about to grab a supermarket shopping cart when Davis unexpectedly pulled out a gun!
"Hey! Hey!" It's just a bag snatching, it's not a capital offense! Jania quickly pressed Davis's hand, which was raising the gun, to the ground, but the bullet had already left the chamber.
But the two robbers didn't die on the spot. The moment the gun went off, the tire snapped, and the two men on the motorcycle immediately fell off and landed on the side of the road.
"What are you standing there for? Cuff him..." Genia glanced up at the captain and saw him calmly put his pistol back in his pocket. The little fear left on his face seemed to be just because she had almost hit her toe with her recoil.
On the other hand, Davis's attention wasn't even on the young lady—Taylor had already gathered the two biker thieves together, and without much further punching or kicking, they just waited for the police car to arrive and push them up.
“He used to at least spit,” he couldn’t help but ask Genia. “How did you manage to raise him to this state?”
“This is the Britannian way of life, you wouldn’t understand now.” Jenia crossed her arms and said in a questioning tone, “It’s understandable that Taylor lost loved ones on the battlefield, but the fact that you American soldiers are so consistent in your treatment of any ‘humanoid creature associated with Japan’ suggests that it’s not just a simple matter of two countries fighting.”
This question struck a chord with Davis—or rather, with every American of this era.
“Actually…” Taylor returned, and it was rare to see Davis with an evasive look in his eyes, “Before I came here, all Asians were pretty much the same as niggers in my eyes.”
“nigger?” Genia vaguely remembered that one day Taylor was drunk and when she was helping him out, they bumped into some black people. Taylor, whose blood pressure was so high, immediately cursed at them with that word.
Later, as I spent more time among American soldiers, I noticed that when they saw a Black person, they would sneer and whisper, labeling them as a "ghost"—but this had almost no definition in Britannia's dictionaries.
As for people of Asian descent, the label is even more egregious than "ghost"—it's a scourge...
……
“That was in 1942, just a few months after the declaration of war with Japan.” Davis rubbed his hands together, recalling, “Jonathan and I were still in town waiting for the bus to the recruit camp when President Roosevelt’s call came down: according to U.S. law, for national security, all people born in enemy countries during the war could be considered enemies, and the president could send them all to jail with a single word.”
"So, the Japanese and Germans are just locked up together like this?" Jania sneered.
“Ummmmm…” Taylor scratched his head, “Actually, it was just Japanese residents. We dragged them out of their houses all over the West Coast, and then they were taken away by government personnel. Some Chinese and Koreans were also mistakenly arrested during that time. As for whether they were released from those internment camps, I don’t know…”
Before she could finish speaking, Denya suddenly opened her eyes wide with rage, and with lightning speed pinned Davis and Taylor against the wall. She snatched Davis's pistol with one hand and held it to his throat, while pulling out a dagger with the other and pressing it against the other's neck.
"Concentration camps?!" she demanded angrily of the two terrified men. "You Americans have been pretending to be so righteous for far too long, haven't you? Well, no wonder you went across the ocean to fight the Germans. Are you birds of a feather, destined to become friends through conflict?!"
"No, no, no, no, no!" Davis then realized that a word had gone wrong. "Listen to me, madam, the concentration camps that the Nazis saw were not the same as what we usually talk about!"
"Don't give me that!" Denise pressed even harder against Davis's gun. "What are the Germans' motives for persecuting Jews? Do you think I don't know how the Nazis tried to fool Princess Marybell with their lies?!"
"Darling, it's a misunderstanding, all a misunderstanding!" Taylor was almost speechless with anger. "To be honest, the word 'concentration camp' originally meant something similar to the slums outside your Tokyo concession! Concentration, detention, barracks—if you replace it with apartment buildings here, isn't it all the same?"
"how to prove?"
“One day my buddy received a letter from home: ‘Dear son, this is my first year living in California with your mother, and we’re doing great,’ blah blah blah… During our drive out of Arizona, we saw rows of barracks in the distance, looking like ordinary prisons, which were supposedly where the Japanese were held. Ask Taylor, he knows that too!”
"What the hell, boss?"
"Damn it, the letter! The other day Jonathan received a letter from his parents, and you made me read it aloud?!"
Denia watched as Taylor, seemingly lost in thought, recited the letter verbatim from Davis's account. She then heard him add a movie called The Great Dictator—their first impression of concentration camps was of the daily drills and the unified whistle for waking up and going to bed. He added at the end, "If you don't believe me, ask other soldiers."
She finally lowered her hands with a mixture of disbelief and skepticism, while Taylor and Davis squatted on the ground, nearly dying.
"Then, let me ask you another question: Who is Jonathan?"
“Well, back when I was a captain, he was my subordinate sergeant.” Davis stood up shakily. “We were practically from the same hometown. Later we served in the same unit, and we got along well with both me and Taylor.”
“Wait, the same unit? The insignia are both red Arabic numeral 1?” She gradually looked like she’d swallowed a fly. “So, you two were fighting with us in Berlin back then, right? Hmm?... Ah, now that you mention it, I remember my last sortie in Berlin. There was this bastard who was playing hide-and-seek with me in the building, swearing like a jerk. I saw on the nameplate around his neck that his name started with something like JON…”
Dea, her face a mixture of shame and anger, stomped her feet, gritted her teeth, and slammed the pistol into Davis's face before storming off.
"Sorry, boss, I'll treat you another day." Taylor patted the captain's shoulder, looking aggrieved, and hurried after him.
……
With this departure, Genia naturally missed the stories of two soldiers, and even more.
Davis grew up in Portalis, a young town on the eastern border of New Mexico. After graduating from high school, he planned to go to the police academy while also spending a lot of time in the city's university library—Eastern New Mexico University, a prestigious institution that would later become at least thirty years younger than the city that was born at the turn of the century.
Sufficient education and a police officer's badge did not keep him in his hometown. He drove to Muirshu, a village only 50 kilometers away on the western border of Texas, where he began his years as a police officer.
He met many new faces, especially Granny Campbell in the village, who was old and frail and spent her days in a wheelchair. Her ancestral wine cellar was barely being run by her young grandson Jonathan with a small helper—his parents had left for Arizona to work and make a living when he was 14.
Almost no one stays at their place anymore, but the wine tastes great, which has attracted many thieves who come to steal it.
The village wasn't big, but it was, after all, wild Texas, and most thieves who sneak into wine cellars were carrying revolvers. However, the Campbell family was well-prepared. The wine cellar wasn't well-lit, and the space wasn't large. By the time Jonathan swung his hammer from the shadows, it was too late for him to draw his gun—yes, that's how he developed his super-strong fighting physique as soon as he entered the army.
In contrast to this boy who had barely received any formal education, Davis not only experienced the simple and honest folk customs firsthand, but also diligently honed his marksmanship. Within a year, in addition to mastering the revolver, he was also given the only lever-action rifle later issued to the police station.
So, "the scariest thing than sneaking into Campbell's wine cellar was running into Officer Davis carrying the Winchester 1892 on patrol." The villagers would often watch with amusement as the two of them led the charge, like ghost hunters, to corner the wine thieves—either Jonathan would smash their heads in with his bare hands, or Davis would take aim from afar and kill them.
……
Life in the village was simple and unpretentious. Davis had even considered helping Jonathan renovate the wine cellar. No one expected that war would knock on the White House door so quickly.
The two encountered many strangers in the First Infantry Division, people like themselves who had left their hometowns.
Taylor might still be able to reunite with his family, including his cousin who died from a Japanese soldier's grenade and his uncle who was seriously wounded in a kamikaze attack; Clark might have become a valuable assistant in his father's factory, instead of living in the shadows of the city with a prosthetic leg.
Garcia might be able to drive himself away from the intersection where the drug-fueled driving took his parents' lives; as for Philip, think about it, his father is a priest, and he can even work as a clown in the circus in his spare time. People back home are probably still waiting for him to sing the Bible to the tune of the Patrol March one day.
Looking at every young person who leaves behind their former life and friends to enter the army camp and naval base, those who have also been exposed to the tyrant in "The Great Dictator" and the newspapers about the attack on Pearl Harbor—they take up arms with hatred for the enemy of the country, yet like rebels who have been oppressed by hatred for a long time, they rush to the battlefield without hesitation.
They hurled insults at their fellow Japanese, and they ruthlessly slaughtered every Japanese person in the Pacific. They secretly executed countless SS soldiers, and they looted one German family after another.
Hatred, hatred, loathing, hated never changes—in any other time and space, it operates silently like a blood-stained gear, driving an endless war.
Chapter 334 Above and Underground (Section 427)
Japan has three major metropolitan areas, named from east to west after their central cities: Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka.
Before the fall of the Britannian Empire, Osaka was the second largest cargo port after Tokyo. Its advantageous geographical location and infrastructure quickly made it an important naval base in Area 11 after the Britannian Empire set foot there. Of course, it did not escape the same fate as Tokyo: a prosperous concession in the center, surrounded by ruins and slums.
Meanwhile, Kobe City remained quietly situated on the northwestern coast of Osaka. Due to the relatively minor damage it suffered, it served as a base for the Imperial Army, and many hardworking residents of Area 11 were busy farming and making a living there, which actually brought some vitality to the area.
Kobe has become the most bustling agricultural area in central Japan by a twist of fate—in another world, it also produces world-renowned beef.
……
That's why, when Genia and Chizuru Nagayama received their mission to come here, they were actually a little happy that they were away from the Tokyo Concession.
Let's do the math. Since ZERO appeared last year, Shinjuku, Saitama, and Naritasan are all in the Tokyo metropolitan area. The reactionary Chinese Federation supporters led by former Japanese official Atsushi Sawazaki were in Fukuoka, the westernmost city. Even Sapporo, which participated in the Black Rebellion, is in Hokkaido. The recent Kofu massacre was only a little over two hours' drive from Tokyo.
Look at the central part of Honshu Island, where Osaka is located; it's incredibly peaceful. But perhaps that's why they sent the guests behind them over there—Soviet Colonel Andreyavich, who had just returned from Berlin and accompanied Elizabeth on a tour of the city.
Kyle, the younger brother, had already arranged the things his sister had asked him to do. From then on, the colonel would be permanently separated from the prisoners of war in Tokyo's 45th ward at the military base in Kobe.