Re: Blood and Iron

Busan, May 1932

The city burned. Not in the sharp detonations of precise German bombardment, but in the ragged, clumsy swaths of Russian artillery fire and block-by-block incineration.

Smoke crawled low across twisted rebar skeletons. Chunks of masonry still tumbled from battered high-rises.

Here and there, a wall collapsed inward with a low, groaning sigh; as if the city itself was finally succumbing to exhaustion.

Major General Georgy Zhukov stood atop the shell-ravaged terrace of a commandeered customs building, peering through field glasses at the port below.

Russian soldiers were already raising their tri-color on what was left of the Busan harbor administration building.

Around him, staff officers spoke in low, eager tones. The voices of men who knew victory, who felt it tasted like blood and soot in their lungs.

Zhukov lowered the binoculars and exhaled through his nose. His mustache twitched with irritation.

“These fools,” he muttered. “We’ve won ourselves a graveyard. No more, no less.”

A colonel nearby cleared his throat, gesturing to a courier sprinting across the rooftop. The boy’s coat was torn at the shoulder, his eyes too wide to be calm.

“Message from Vladivostok headquarters, General.”

Zhukov ripped open the packet. His eyes scanned the telegram. His brow furrowed, then smoothed in an unreadable line.

Inside the makeshift headquarters, Tsarevich Alexei Romanov stood over a map table scarred by bayonets and cigarette burns. Around them clustered senior Russian staff, their greatcoats dusted with Korean plaster.

A single bulb swung overhead, casting long, nervous shadows.

When Zhukov entered, boots crunching over broken glass, Alexei looked up with the relief of a man who desperately needed certainty.

“Busan is ours,” Zhukov announced, with none of the triumph such words deserved. “Japanese forces fought to the last. It was a slaughter. What remains of their garrison fled inland or died in their bunkers.”

Alexei’s shoulders fell a fraction. “How many civilians were caught in the encirclement?”

Zhukov’s stare was flat. “Thousands. Perhaps tens of thousands. The city refused evacuation orders. Or they never received them. Hard to know which. Our artillery had no choice.”

Alexei’s knuckles whitened on the table edge.

“And the losses among your own?” he asked.

Zhukov’s jaw tightened. “High. But within expectations. Russian lives are cheaper than time, Your Majesty. We bleed so we do not stall.”

Alexei exhaled slowly. A shadow of old frailty crossed his face, but then he drew himself upright again. “Then prepare them. I want your men rested, reorganized, and reequipped. In three weeks we embark for the Japanese home islands.”

Zhukov inclined his head stiffly. “As you command.”

He turned to leave. Then paused, fishing the crumpled telegram from his pocket.

“There is another matter. From the German lines on Okinawa. It arrived just after we secured the city.”

He handed it to Alexei. The Tsarevich took it with faint surprise. As he read, his face drained of color; not fear, but a gathering storm.

He read it again, slower. The words seemed to etch themselves into the pale skin beneath his eyes.

Finally, he spoke, voice low, cold, almost brittle. “It appears Generalfeldmarschall von Zehntner has authorized strategic missile strikes on Japanese industrial centers.”

Zhukov simply raised an eyebrow, intrigued.

Alexei’s hand clenched into a fist. “Osaka. Kobe. Nagoya. All hit within hours. Thermobaric airbursts; entire districts flattened and turned to glass. Civilians vaporized alongside foundries and munitions plants.”

He looked up, eyes blazing. “Without a single word to his ally. No consultation. No coordination. We are supposed to be brothers-in-arms, yet he treats us like children to be humored.”

Zhukov gave a humorless laugh. “The Germans always did think they carried civilization on their shoulders. Now they carry apocalypse.”

Alexei stepped back from the table. For a moment, it looked as though he might collapse. Instead, he planted both hands on the battered wood, breathing hard.

“Prepare a formal protest. To be sent to Berlin, and directly to my father-in-law. I will not have Russian arms labeled complicit in the slaughter of Japanese civilians. If we are to destroy the Empire of Japan, we will do it by the sword, not by the blind terror of firestorms from the sky.”

Zhukov’s eyes narrowed. “With respect, Your Majesty… this was inevitable. We plan to invade Kyushu ourselves. How many civilians will our artillery kill when they shelter beneath every roof? This way, perhaps, the Germans have spared us the burden.”

Alexei shot him a glare sharp as ice. “They have spared us nothing. They have ensured our children’s children will inherit a world where such monstrous weapons are considered an acceptable prelude to conquest.”

Alexei’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “Then I will remind him that Russia is no junior partner in this alliance. When this war is over, he will find I am not a boy waiting for his father’s approval.”

Outside, the streets of Busan were eerily quiet for a conquered city. Russian sentries stood at intersections, machine guns resting casually across their chests. Occasional trucks rumbled past, loaded with ammunition, water, and wide-eyed refugees.

Above the skyline, distant on the southern horizon, faint orange smudges still marked the air; the last traces of mushrooming shockwaves rising over Japan’s devastated industrial belt.

Zhukov followed Alexei out onto a balcony that overlooked the harbor. The sea was littered with shattered junks and blackened cargo hulks.

“Will this change our plans?” Zhukov asked finally.

Alexei stared seaward, his profile rigid. “No. The invasion proceeds. But tell your men this: Russia will not stand accused of butchery. We will seize our objectives by rifle and bayonet, not by glassing cities from the sky. If Bruno wants to wear the mantle of the world’s nightmare, let him.”

Zhukov gave a slow nod. “Understood.”

They stood in silence together a moment longer. The wind off the water smelled of salt and scorched timber.

A gull circled overhead, screeching its lonesome cry over a harbor that had once been a living artery of commerce, now reduced to ruin.

Rommel having born witness to the meeting and the young Tsareveich’s outburst found Alexei Alexei standing by the window, staring at a map of the Japanese archipelago pinned to the wall.

“Will you write to Bruno personally?”

His jaw worked. “Yes. As both an ally… and as a sovereign. He must understand there are lines Russia will not cross, even in war.”

Rommel’s eyes hardened with warning. “He will not care.”

“Then he will learn,” Alexei said quietly. “One way or another.”

A slight sigh escaped Rommel’s lips. As the attaché to the Russian Army in Korea, he had two jobs, advising the Russians on how to properly wage warfare. And keeping an eye on the heir to the vacant throne.

Alexei may be in his thirties, but he had grown up far away from the hardships of war. And the gruesome challenges it prevented.

Since Bruno could not personally mentor the man on such a subject, Rommel was tasked with doing so in his place.

And thus his words quickly shifted to a paternal tone that Alexei had not heard since his fathe passed.

“I understand the importance you put on civilian lives your majesty, but your general just said that the blood of your own people is cheap compared to victory. Time and time again I have advised the brute that marching straight into a meatgrinder is not a form of supreme excellence.”

Rommel briefly went quiet, the scenes of Russian disregard for the lives of their own soldiers flooding his mind as he pinched the nose of the bridge. Recomposing himself just in time to continue without interruption.

“Time and again, he dismisses my concerns. That is the difference between him and a man like Bruno. That is also the difference between you and Bruno. You see the death of civilians as an avoidable tragedy, but Bruno understands it is an unfortunate and permanent aspect of warfare.”

Rommel then fumbled through his pockets and retrieved a telegram given to him by the German troops embedded with him among Russian lines. He handed it over to Alexei without formality.

“I have received word from the fleet off the coast of Japan. The Generalfeldmarschall acted thge way he did because the Imperial Japanese High Command issued the mobilization of their entire population.”

A deep breath and a narrowing of his eyes, before continuing.

“Young boys and Elderly men are being equipped with rifles, spears, and sharpened bamboo sticks. Women and girls are preparing to take their own lives to avoid befalling a tragedy that is little more than lies conjured by the ministry of propaganda.”

Rommel began to march forward, standing directly in front of Alexei, gazing directly into the man’s wavering eyes, knowing in that moment he had already won. The man once known as the Desert Fox pressed for total victory.

“How many of our own men will die if we invade Japan under such circumstances? How many Japanese civilians will meet their end? What you call an act of barbarism and cruelty. We see as a necessary cost to prevent the further spread of violence and bloodshed. I’m going to have to formally request you withdraw your written statement of protest, and pick up a phone and ask the Generalfeldmarschall himself if you still doubt my words.”

With this said, Rommel pivoted and left the room without saying another word. He didn’t need to wait for a response, because he knew what it was before Alexei could even muster the thoughts to speak.

Night fell on Busan in flickering patches. Fires still smoldered in the ruins, their glow reflecting off cold bay water.

And beyond that dark horizon, on the battered remains of Japan’s industrial heartland, the fires of Bruno’s choosing still raged; brutal, efficient, and impossibly modern.

The future they had all fought to build was arriving at last. But as Alexei Romanov would soon realize, it was a future no man could fully control.

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