Re: Blood and Iron

The great windows of the Royal Palace in Madrid stood open, letting in the pale winter sunlight that touched the polished marble with a ghostly sheen.

King Alfonso XIII stood in silence, gazing out across the city.

Beyond the palace gardens, beyond the tree-lined boulevards and tiled roofs, a nation was at war with itself.

The scent of roses lingered faintly in the air; planted by the Queen's hand before she fled for sanctuary in San Sebastian. But it could not mask the acrid smoke of burning towns to the east.

The door creaked as it opened behind him.

"Your Majesty," said General Miguel Ponte, his boots clicking against the floor as he approached with two other high-ranking officers in tow.

Alfonso did not turn. "I assume you've seen the reports?"

"Yes, Sire," Ponte said. "The Catalonian ridge is gone. The French-sponsored Republican lines have been annihilated. Our forces, with the International Legion at the front, advanced nearly twenty kilometers overnight."

Alfonso turned now. His expression was unreadable; half triumph, half unease.

"And it was... the Germans?" he asked, more to confirm than question.

General Rojo, older, graver, nodded. "Thermobaric bombardment. Delivered either by missiles or aircraft. The British confirm it. The French are scrambling for answers. Whatever it was; it is not something we have the means to contend against."

Alfonso walked slowly toward the table where a map of Spain had been laid out, pins and waxed-thread markers indicating current front lines.

He stared at the eastern front.

"How many were lost?"

Ponte cleared his throat. "On our side? Fewer than a hundred, including Legion support. Republican casualties… easily over ten thousand. Entire regiments collapsed from the shockwave alone."

"A miracle, then."

"A demonstration," Rojo corrected.

Silence held for a few moments before one of the younger staff officers finally spoke.

"Sire, if we maintain momentum, with Legion support and German logistics, we can secure Valencia by April. Madrid will be isolated by May. And if the Republicans lose their port access... the war could be over by the summer of '33."

"And what if the British intervene?" Alfonso asked coldly. "Or the Americans?"

Ponte hesitated. "Then the war escalates. But it won't change the fact that only one side is fighting in the future here and now. The French still think in terms of trenches and shell weight. The Germans? They fight like gods with thunder in their pockets."

Alfonso said nothing at first. His fingers hovered above the map, then slowly moved to rest on Barcelona; now in Loyalist hands thanks to the breach.

"I made a pact with Berlin to preserve the nation. I feared it would tie Spain to an iron yoke... But now..."

He looked up, eyes thoughtful, calculating.

"...Now I see it is the only lifeline we have left."

Rojo stepped forward. "Then shall I make the preparations, Sire? Formal alignment with the Reich? Perhaps even a state visit, once the situation permits?"

"Not yet," Alfonso said, raising a hand. "We'll wait until after this war is over. If they can replicate what they did in Catalonia... then the answer is clear enough. Spain stands ready to commit fully to the Axis Concord. But not before the world sees what Germany is truly capable of."

Ponte exchanged a glance with Rojo. Both men nodded.

"And what of the French?" asked the younger officer. "They'll retaliate somehow. The Republicans may be broken now, but Paris won't sit idle."

"Let them try," Alfonso said.

His hand closed into a fist atop the map.

"This is our soil. Our war. And our hour. If they dare try to strike here in the heart of Spain, they will come to sorely regret it. They're not the only ones capable of projecting force beyond the Pyrenees."

On the desk sat a folder, labelled as 'Transfer of Aircraft.' Germany was supplying Spain with the means to create an Air Force, selling off old airframes of Ju 52s, Bf-109s, and Do 17s as next generation turboprop powered craft began to replace them by the thousands.

While the Spanish Royal Army learned modern warfare by watching the Germans chew through Republican trenches like a ravenous warhound, they too learned how to fight in the sky via the very same means.

Germany had not just come to preserve King, Church, and Country. They had come to gain access to the whole of Iberia, and flank the French on both sides for the next Great War.

And to do so, the Spanish, like the Italians, and the Russians would need to learn how to fight a proper war. While the French Republic treated this campaign as a proving ground for new weapons.

Germany used it as a means to teach its allies new doctrine. And to test logistic supply chains.

The weapons of the Reich were already proven to work, and their doctrine was polished daily in the foreign conflicts of the post-colonial world.

What mattered now was to teach what they had learned from decades of refinement to those who would be fighting by their side. And nobody but Berlin quite realized this fact just yet.

Already, German instructors had begun embedding themselves within Spanish regiments.

Quiet men in black greatcoats who spoke little but observed much. They corrected drills, rewrote manuals, and ran entire units through exhaustive live-fire exercises.

Some were veterans of the Great War; others, others the battles in the South Pacific against the Empire of Japan.

All bore the quiet, unshakable authority of men who had seen too much and survived.

The Spanish officers grumbled at first; until they saw the results.

And though the uniforms still bore royal insignia, more and more of their men marched to rhythms set in Berlin.

"What happens after the war?" one aide had asked the King earlier that week.

Alfonso had not answered at the time.

But now, gazing down at the map where Barcelona and Zaragoza sat encircled in waxen thread, he found clarity.

After the war came the reckoning. And the alignment.

A new order of Europe was forming;one not bound to old empires or fading republics, but to something sharper, colder, and impossibly modern.

Spain would either ride the storm that followed… or be swept into history's ditch.

Alfonso XIII pressed his palm flat against the map, voice low but certain.

"Then we must prepare; not just to win this war. But to survive the next one."