Her decision was met mainly by silence.

Zettour and Rerugen both nodded. Tanya noticed that the expression on Zettour's face was one or serene agreement. While there was obvious surprise on the chancellor's face. Schact let out a relieved sigh and sank back into his seat. Viktoriya stared at her wide eyed for a moment with mouth open like a fish. She recovered quickly though and nodded along with the Army Chief of Staff and Chancellor. Surprisingly, it was Goebbels who spoke out.

"We're abandoning the Rhineland?" He sounded utterly shocked.

"Who said anything about abandoning them?" Tanya rounded on him. "The Rhinelanders are Imperials every bit as much as Prussians, Austrians, or Bavarians! Nothing Darbonne or the Republic does will change that!"

"O… Of course, my Leader," Goebbels replied with a meek lowering of his eyes.

"But even if I want to protect them, I'm not leading Prussia and the rest of the Confederation into a lost war. In the Great War we ended up stumbling into fighting with half the world. I am not going to blithely repeat that mistake. If we're attacked, we'll defend ourselves with everything we've got. But otherwise, we are not starting a major war unless all the odds are in our favor."

"I understand, my Leader," Goebbels replied in a small voice. "It is just that…"

"Yes?"

The Propaganda Minister squirmed in his seat. "Well… many people may see this as a sign of… weakness."

She shrugged. "I'm not surprised, since it is a sign of weakness. If our military were strong enough to smash the Republic and take Parissee in a few weeks that's exactly what I'd do. But that's not the reality of our situation. If we go to war we might lose. Even if we were successful it would still mean a long and bloody conflict where we'd be isolated, cut off, and in danger of having other great powers drawn in on the opposing side. Given our circumstances the only reasonable course of action is to avoid escalation."

"I understand, my Leader."

"That said, we aren't going to just do nothing," Tanya turned to Zettour. "Concentrate all three of our armored divisions and both our mobile infantry divisions on the border with Rhineland. Also transport our five best equipped and trained standard infantry divisions. I also want ten squadrons with our best fighters and four battalions of aerial mages. I specifically do not want any of the Sturmvogles and I don't want any planes armed with rockets. There's no point tipping the enemy off to our new toys unless we're actually at war. I seriously doubt Darbonne is stupid enough to push his luck any further, but let's draw a nice clear line in the sand for him anyway."

"That will be a major deployment," Zettour said. "I expect it will take at least seventy-two hours to complete, possibly up to a hundred and twenty."

"Good thing logistics are your specialty then. Get them there as fast as you can. The aerial mages and the fighters can be rushed in within the next twelve hours. As soon as they're deployed, I want them patrolling the skies where the Republic can see them. Make sure to give strict orders to stay inside Westphalian airspace, but I want their presence known. I don't want any incidents, but I do want the Republican army to understand they can only go so far and no further."

"Are we to close the border?" Zettour asked.

Tanya stopped and considered. "Stop everything flowing into Rhineland, that's including trains and civilian air flights. Traffic coming out of Rhineland is fine," Tanya sighed. "We may need to set up refugee camps. No matter what pretty words Darbonne is spewing about making Rhineland part of the Republic I don't expect the people living there are going to be treated much better than Afrikanners. Viktoriya."

"Yes?"

"Send a diplomatic message to Parissee that we consider their actions to be an illegal occupation of a sovereign state under international law. We do not recognize its legitimacy and we consider the welfare of the citizens of the Rhinish Free State and their property to be a matter or vital interest to Prussia and the European Confederation."

"Will that make things any better?"

"No, of course not, but it establishes that we consider their actions to be illegitimate, and it gives us a casus belli for the future."

"Very well."

"We'll also be declaring a full embargo against the Republic until they evacuate the Rhineland and agree to proper compensation to the citizens there."

"That won't have much effect," Schact noted. "Trade between us is already near nonexistent."

"Good, then it shouldn't hurt our economy much."

"The much greater issue will be the loss of trade with Rhineland. There is a lot of industrial production and it also produces large quantities of coal."

Tanya shrugged. "All that was lost the moment the Francois invaded." Tanya turned again to Zettour. "As soon as all the ground troops are stationed along the border, I want them to begin digging trenches and laying out barbed wire."

"You want us to begin building fortifications?" Zettour sounded confused. "I thought you said you didn't expect the Francois to advance any further."

"I don't," Tanya conformed. "This will be for the cameras. The best propaganda needs more than words. We'll show trailers in the movie theaters of our soldiers digging to protect Westphalia from further Republican aggression. We can even give the lines an impressive name, we'll call it the Westwall. It'll remind the public that Darbonne is a threat and show foreign governments that we care not trying to solve things with violence."

"But," Rerugen spoke. "Won't building a fortress line on the new border be an admission of weakness? It'll also be a sign we're accepting the new status quo."

"The Allies forced the Treaty of Orleans on us, we'll just extend the logic of that to show the Republic forcing this on us as well. We'll also make it clear that while we have no intention of interfering with this military occupation at the present time, we reserve the right to intervene at some future date. In the meantime, we'll send arms, equipment, and special operatives to Rhineland and establish a fifth column. We'll be able to create political instability and a major incident at a time of our choosing."

"Ah!" Goebbels said with an eager grin. "So, we can show the Republicans committing atrocities against the Rhinelanders when the time is right!"

"I'm sure there won't be any atrocities! The Francois are civilized after all! They're not Bolsheviks!" Viktoriya said.

"Have you forgotten the Rhine Front?"

That was all Tanya needed to say to remind Viktoriya just how far 'civilization' really went when the bullets started to fly.

The cabinet meeting lasted another half hour as other details were worked out and plans were further clarified. The important thing was that unless the Darbonne government did something rash there would be no war for Rhineland.

XXX

July 15, Unified Year 1942

Berun, Prussian Republic

Zettour really was a genius when it came to logistics. He'd gotten the entire force of ten divisions along with the fighter squadrons and battalions of aerial mages and all their supplies and transport deployed and stationed in Westphalia along the Rhinish/Francois border. Newspaper headlines were screaming about the outrages being committed by the Republic's soldiers on innocent civilians. Many thousands of those civilians had already fled their homes and into Westphalia. Their numbers hadn't dropped and were continuing to grow, she'd gotten estimates ranging from half a million to one point two. No matter what the lines on the map said, most of the people living there saw themselves as Imperials. They were not eager to live under enemy rule and were getting out as fast as they could.

To Darbonne's credit (blame?) his troops were doing nothing to prevent or even slow down this sudden flood of refugees. Their attitude seemed to be the fewer Rhinelanders living in Rhineland the better. From his point of view, she could understand it. They were losing a lot of potential workers and small businessmen, but all the factories and mines weren't going anywhere. Their was economy was still in the toilet and he likely expected a lot of loyal Apostolic Francois would move in to snap up those vacated jobs. She'd already gotten reports that the new 'administration' there was strongly encouraging all the major business and property owners there to sell to eager Republican companies. So far, no one was being forced to, only encouraged. Tanya was sure that would change in the coming months. Strange how Darbonne was so vehemently anti-socialist yet was eager to control who ran what factory and mine. If government regulation of corporate ownership wasn't socialism what the hell was it?

Unfortunately, there was nothing she could do currently about what was going on in Rhineland. Underground partisan units were going to be established, but that process was barely underway. If she tried to interfere with the occupation now, they would just get slaughtered and the various foreign governments would just blame her. No, those people would just have to keep their heads down for now. They were pieces to be used in the future. She needed to play the long game.

Her main worry now was the growing refugee crisis. Temporary camps were being set up for the Rhinelanders. Pictures of crying women and children sitting outside of tents made for marvelous headline photos in the papers. But the expense was extremely high. The economy of Prussia had pretty much recovered and unemployment was no longer a problem. That didn't mean she could find half a million decent paying new jobs for these people. And the economies of the other EC members weren't anywhere near as healthy.

People with special skills; doctors, engineers, chemists, rail workers, and such could be recruited to new positions through out the European Confederation. Young healthy men and women and those who could use magic, could be enlisted in the military. That would still leave many hundreds of thousands who would need to be provided food and shelter during the Great Depression.

This was actually the second refugee crisis she had to deal with. Refugees from Ukraine were already a major expense. Most of her cabinet besides Viktoriya would have preferred shutting the border to them. Providing humanitarian aid always sounded wonderful until you had tens of thousands of people showing up on your door with literally nothing but the clothes on their backs. And unlike the situation in Rhineland, the Ukrainians were foreigners who didn't speak Deutsche and had never been part of the Empire to begin with.

Tanya still welcomed them though. Obviously not because of any sense of compassion. They too were chips to be played one day. She considered the cost of feeding and caring for those Ukrainians to be an investment in the future.

Not surprisingly, Darbonne had not reacted well to the arrival of military units on the new border. Nor to the sight of soldiers digging trenches and laying out wire. His immediate response had been to rush in an armored division along with an entire air wing and two battalions of aerial mages. He had also announced over the radio plans to construct a massive new line of fortresses along the entire border. A project much bigger than her own Westwall. Tanya didn't plan to build anything more than a token defense line. Her military spending was going into jet fighters, rockets, attack helicopters, new panzers, and Project Prometheus. She wasn't going to waste her reichsmarks on bunkers and pillboxes that wouldn't stop a serious invasion anyway.

Having been conquered and occupied in the Great War though, the Francois were a lot more obsessed with defense and security. It seemed that this new extended fortress line would eat up most of their national budget for years to come. Their papers were even beginning to refer to it as the, 'Darbonne Line.' That was just fine with Tanya. If the Republic wanted to spend all their francs on concrete, steel, and wire she was more than happy to let them. They were planning to refight the last war; she was planning to fight a very different kind of war.

Along with this, the Francois had also stepped-up air patrols using both aircraft and aerial mages. They were also starting to build a brand-new line of radar towers. Both sides had large numbers in the air at all times looking for any sign of a build up or sneak attack. Each though kept to their side of the border. It seemed clear not that there would be no war.

It was peace in our time.