The Aftermath

Chapter 19

Feburary 1947

Papermountain besides papermountain... entire baskets full, covering the desks and even the ground. You could hide an entire family under there...

UK carefully pranced around the flood of papers and letters, who stuffed the offices and only left a small trail in the middle. You could almost not see the people behind the desks, who were responsible of sorting, judging and deciding over estimated around 1,4 million questionnaries. In other buildings people were working on sorting out equal ammounds of paperwork, but this time membership cards of NSDAP-members to compare.

Whose grandiose idea was it?: America of corse!

It was an idea who could only come from America. So optimistic but so unpractical... A month before he came to them and presented the idea of a problem who had left them scratching their heads since the end of the war: How could they find the one responsible for all the terrible crimes comitted? At the first glance, this question was easy to answer: Everyone who was present in the main political partys and institution, like the mentiond NSDAP or the SS for example. Just throw these people out of their position and punish them by the ammount of crimes they were involved in.But soon they came to realize that this was not as easy as it appeared. For example way to many people in important positions were members of something, but never went further than that. Or that was atleast what they said. Or the one who never joined up anything but spurts out every nazi-propaganda under the sun on a daily basic. And throwing out cabeple people in city counsullation, administration and heads of many important departments in times like these was not tenable. Order was desperatly needed. And administration of an entire broken down country could not be done by the allies themself. So compromises had to be made. Unfortunately life was not black and white.

America wanted to change that difficult task and so he invented the denazification program, as he called it. He presented the daunting plan to clean the prople of Germany of their "deep rooted agression resulting out of centuries of militarism and the cartel of elites." and reminded them of their duty to bring justice to the many victems. "Our first goal should be...", as America said, " to drive out the Nazis out of their places of power. War criminals will pay with their freedom, sweat and blood!" UK and France were both sceptical of this plan and Soviet rejected it imidiatly all together (of corse). To put the entire polulation of a country on trial... This was straight up impossible and would take years and many precious recorces, not to mention staff to fully work trough. But America, as always, could not be stopped by any warnings and now actually started out his ambitiones project. By distributing thousands of questionnariesto the german people which asked them about their entirer life and family, but most important which of the 55 NS-Organizationen they joined. And this should aparrently show who was a despiceble criminal from a harmless citizen. UK still doubted the efficency and acurracy of the entire project and wanted to talk some sense into him. But this was not the only reason he wanted to talk to him.

After a long tedious way trough the paper swamp, UK finally arrived infront of the former  main manager office, where America currently spended the last weeks in. He knocked and waited impatiently. "Come in.", he heared almost to quiet for America. Cautiously, he opend the door and stepped into the room. America sat behind a big desk in a big, surprisingly empty room. From the walls and shelfs you could see that the room was once richly decorated but now it was mostly cleaned out, a sudden shift from the paper chaos before. But it was not completly devoided of paper, the table was coverd in them. "Good day, my son.", UK started. "Don't you tell me that you even started in with this paper madness?" America looked up by the sound of his voice and Uk noticed how tension left his body. "Hey dad.", America smiled. "Wanna help out? I would really need it." "Pfah!", UK scoffed. "Leave me alone with your self choosen madness. We have alredy enough to do, no additional work needed." "Pleeeaaase? You dont even want to help and support your own son? How cruel of you, dad.", grinned America with a snippy tone. "I always knew that you liked Canada more. Or even Australia." UK turned his eyes. "Don't put your unruely assumptions in my mouth. I am here to talk about things, mainly your denazification project and your talk you want to do in a few days. And... the whole Soviet-thing..." The silence said enough, just as Americas stare who would problably have been accusing, if he wouldn't have worn sunglasses. "Seriously? Again?" UK sighed. "Jes...again." Despite his and even France's best effords, the relationship between America and Soviet just went more and more sour each meeting they attended. They were at odds with each other over absolutly everything, from big political desicions to where the next meeting should be held. Now that the commen enemy called 3.Reich was defeated, they had no reason to pretend to be friendly to each other. What would be not that big of a problem, if they would still collaborate. But they very much didn't. The constand disagreements, sharp-tounged discussions and the umcomfotable situations, the two put them all in, was not accepteble anymore! "Whatever... Just hurry up with your old-man-rambleing, I am expecting someone else today." "You will have some time for your old men, because I am getting bloody sick of this entire situation!", said UK with a raised, stern voice. "Again, you can't just choose random things to your own accord. This entnazification-thing for example. I understand what you wanted to achieve, but this... is too much. And stop forcing this on to us too." "It would certainly help when I would get data from your occupation zone. Would make finding these bastards way much easier. Could give you a few thousand..." "I have my own methodes, thank you very much! And I am not interested to look over every painstaken detail." "Then don't come crying to me, when some sleeping nazi agents will make your life more difficult in the future.", said America uncaringly. "You always calling me lazy and neglectful, but when I try to do some actual work, it's also not right, huh." "It's a difference between foolishness and actual useful things to do. And this is not pretty useful in my opinion." America just made an dissaproving noise. It was pretty clear that he had no interest at all in UK's words. "Listen son, at your place I would just focus on getting a good ground base in your zone, establish your power and collect a bunch of POW's for work at home..." "Don't tell me what to do,dad!", America said, without looking up from his writing. "I am not a little stupid colony anymore and I know what I'm doing, don't worry." "That surtenly doesn't seem like it, I have to be honest here, my son." "It has its purpose, just let me do my thing." UK sighed again. What else did he expect? To talk sense into America was the same thing as talking against a wall: Utterly pointless. You just have to hope that he will learn the lesson eventually himself, even if that lesson was to be learned in a painful way. Just like old times when he was still small and full with promise... UK could just hope that this would be the case as well.  "It seems like you won't listen to me... as I thought.", UK sighed in defeat. "Will never happe, dad.", America answerd casually. "So... we will talk later about this. Because what I wanted to know... the congress speech of yours..." "Yes, I am working at it right now if you haven't noticed." America sounded now a lot more annoyed. "Are you afraid that I don't do my homework?" "Would not surprise me. But I was interested with what-"