Trilogy I: The Iron Ledger (The First World War and its Poisoned Peace)
The Lion and the Eagle: July 1914. Julian Vane, a young attache in Sarajevo, witnesses the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. He watches as the "Triple Entente" and "Triple Alliance" turn a local spark into a continental blaze.
The Field of Honor: Karl Von Stetten marches toward the Marne. The romanticism of war vanishes under the first artillery barrage.
The Scarred Earth: 1916. Julian is reassigned to the Somme as a liaison officer. He meets Karl for the first time—not as enemies, but as two men sharing a cigarette during a brief, unauthorized truce in no-man's-land.
The Whispering Galleries: Julian returns to London, wounded and disillusioned. He enters the secretive world of wartime diplomacy, seeing how the war is being won with pens as much as bayonets.
The Storm of Steel: Karl survives the horrors of Verdun. He sees his battalion decimated and begins to question the high command’s cold calculus.
The Collapse: 1918. The German front lines crumble. Karl experiences the sting of defeat and the chaos of the German Revolution as the Kaiser abdicates.
The Hall of Mirrors: June 1919. Julian attends the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. He watches the German delegates sign the "War Guilt Clause" and feels a cold dread; the peace feels like a temporary ceasefire.
The Diktat: Karl returns to a Germany he doesn't recognize. The treaty has stripped his country of its territory and pride, branding every soldier a criminal for a war they were ordered to fight.
The Debt of Blood: Julian argues with his superiors about the impossible reparations demanded of Germany. He warns that a bankrupted nation is a breeding ground for monsters.
The First Shadow: As the decade ends, Julian and Karl both stand at the edge of a new era. The treaty is signed, but the bitterness is just beginning to ferment.
Trilogy II: The Hollow Years (The Great Depression and the Rise of Extremism)
The Wheelbarrow of Paper: 1923. Karl stands in a Berlin bakery. Hyperinflation has made his pension worthless; he pays for a loaf of bread with a suitcase of Marks.
The Jazz Age Ghost: Julian visits Berlin on a diplomatic mission. He finds a city of glittering decadence and crushing poverty, where the scars of Versailles are hidden behind cabaret smoke.
The Stabilizer: American loans briefly revive Germany. Karl finds work in an engineering firm, and for a moment, he dares to hope for a quiet life.
The Black Tuesday: October 1929. News of the Wall Street Crash hits Europe. Julian watches as the economic scaffolding of the world collapses overnight.
The Breadline: The Great Depression hollows out Germany. Karl loses his job and watches his neighbors turn to radical political fringes—the Communists and the National Socialists—out of pure hunger.
The Orator’s Voice: Karl attends a rally where a man with a frantic voice promises to tear up the Versailles Treaty. Desperate for bread and dignity, Karl finds the rhetoric seductive.
The Diplomacy of Fear: Julian, now a senior official, tries to maintain the "League of Nations." He sees the old alliances fraying as every nation turns inward to survive the economic storm.
The Night of Fire: 1933. The Reichstag burns. Julian realizes that the democratic Germany he tried to help has died, replaced by a regime born of the Depression's despair.
The Rearmament: Karl is recruited back into the military. He is no longer a starving veteran; he is a commander in a new, modernized army designed to avenge 1919.
The Final Warning: 1938. Julian meets Karl at the Munich Conference. They stand in the same room once more, but the "strong characters" of their youth have been hardened into roles they cannot escape.
Trilogy III: The Echo of Vengeance (The Second World War and the Final Reckoning)
The Polish Corridor: September 1939. Karl’s tank division crosses the border into Poland—territory lost at Versailles. Julian, in London, hears the declaration of war and knows his life's work has failed.
The Phony War: A winter of waiting. Julian tries to forge a new alliance with a hesitant America, while Karl prepares his men for the invasion of France.
The Fall of Paris: 1940. Karl marches through the Arc de Triomphe. He feels a grim satisfaction, believing the humiliation of 1919 has finally been erased.
The Blitz: Julian survives the bombing of London. He becomes a key architect of the "Special Relationship," realizing that only a global alliance can stop the machine Versailles created.
The Frozen Front: 1941. Karl is sent to Russia. The "invincibility" of the new German army begins to crack in the sub-zero temperatures of the Eastern Front.
The Turning Tide: Julian travels to Casablanca and Tehran. He sees the "Big Three" (Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill) carve up the future, desperately trying not to repeat the mistakes of 1919.
The Cost of Conviction: Karl’s son is drafted. Karl realizes that the "glory" he sought is actually a cycle of death that will consume his own blood.
The Liberation: 1944. Julian lands in Normandy with the diplomatic corps, tasked with rebuilding the civil structures of a shattered Europe.
The Ruins of Berlin: 1945. Karl defends the rubble of his home. He realizes that the man who promised bread gave them only ashes.
The New Mirror: Julian and Karl meet one last time in the ruins. They reflect on the thirty-year war that began in Sarajevo and ended in Berlin. They realize that while the alliances saved the world, it was the hunger of the Depression and the bitterness of Versailles that nearly destroyed it.
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