"Your Majesty," Kiderlen-Waechter said carefully, "we all agree Germany must respond. But how we respond matters. If we send warships in strength, France may feel compelled to answer in strength. And Britain—already irritated by our naval development—will look for an excuse to retaliate."
Wilhelm II waved a hand as if brushing away smoke.
"Let it escalate," he said, almost bored by the warning. "Do you truly believe France will dare go to war with us over Morocco?"
His tone was dismissive, but the belief beneath it was real. France was dangerous only because it was supported—because Britain and Russia gave it spine. Alone, Wilhelm thought, France would never have the courage to stand.
Bülow's expression tightened.
"Your Majesty, France alone is not the problem," the Chancellor replied. "It is the chain. If we push too hard, we do not merely provoke Paris—we provoke London and St. Petersburg. Britain in particular is already nervous. If this becomes a contest of pride, the situation could slip beyond anyone's control."
Wilhelm's eyes narrowed.
"So we do nothing?" he snapped. "We let France march where it pleases and call it 'policing'? We let them steal our interests and expect Germans to swallow it with a smile?"
"No," Tirpitz said before the Chancellor could answer. His voice was measured, professional. "We must show our stance clearly."
He paused, choosing his words like a man handling powder.
"But we should do it with discipline. We can signal strength without lighting a war we are not yet finished preparing for."
Moltke's impatience broke through the discussion like a blade.
"Then tell me this," he said, turning toward Tirpitz. "If Britain answers us now—if they choose to escalate—can the navy defeat them?"
Tirpitz did not flinch. He thought for a moment, then answered with the calm honesty of a man who understood that pride did not stop shells.
"Our newest heavy ships are not yet in service," he said. "Some of our planned advantage is still in the yards. If we fought now, we would still have a good chance—especially in home waters. But naval war is never certain. Too many variables. One storm, one mine, one mistake, and an entire plan collapses."
Wilhelm's mouth tightened, not in anger now, but in calculation. He liked hearing "good chance." He liked hearing that his years of naval investment had produced results.
But even he heard the warning beneath Tirpitz's tone.
Wait, and the odds improve.
Moltke, however, heard only hesitation.
"Why do we hesitate?" he demanded, voice sharp with a man's hunger for clean solutions. "By every estimate I've seen, our odds are already favorable. Britain is not prepared either. If we seize the moment—strike before our enemies settle—we can win."
The room went colder.
Not because Moltke had spoken nonsense.
Because he had spoken it too plainly.
This meeting was supposed to be about Morocco—about pressure, posture, and showing France that Germany could not be ignored.
Not about lighting the fuse to a continental war.
Even Wilhelm II—who loved pride, steel, and destiny—hesitated when the word strike stopped being theory and became air.
Bülow's face tightened. Kiderlen-Waechter looked as if he'd swallowed something bitter. Tirpitz remained steady, but Oskar saw the flicker behind his eyes: ships unfinished, programs incomplete, the risk still unacceptable.
War was not a duel.
Once begun, it did not stop when men wished it to stop.
And Morocco was not worth gambling the Empire.
Oskar finally spoke—not loudly, not dramatically, but with the calm of a man forcing the room back onto rails.
"We are not here to start a war," he said. "We are here to prevent one."
Moltke's eyes snapped toward him.
Oskar met them without flinching.
"We send ships," Oskar continued. "Enough to make the message unmistakable. But not so much that we corner ourselves into a confrontation we don't control."
His voice remained even.
"This is a test," Oskar said. "A test of whether the world will respect German strength—or treat it as bluff. We can be firm without being foolish."
Wilhelm's fingers tapped once on the armrest—then stopped.
"Enough," the Kaiser said at last. His voice was firm, and the restraint in it was obvious. "I understand all positions."
He looked around the room, eyes hard.
"We will respond," Wilhelm II declared. "We will not be humiliated."
A pause.
"But we will not throw Germany into a war over Morocco."
Wilhelm II swept his gaze across the room—Moltke, Tirpitz, Bülow, Kiderlen-Waechter—then spoke the sentence that ended the fantasy.
"It is too early to start a great war," he said flatly. "We will observe how the situation develops before making any irreversible decisions."
"Yes, Your Majesty," Moltke replied at once.
But Oskar caught it.
Just a flicker—gone almost as soon as it appeared—of resentment in Moltke's eyes. Not anger at France. Not fear of Britain.
Resentment that the moment had passed.
Oskar understood him perfectly.
As Oskar's influence inside the Army grew, Moltke's room to maneuver shrank. Peace complicated chains of command. Peace allowed parallel power to exist. War simplified everything. War flattened politics into necessity.
War would have settled the question of who mattered.
And Moltke hated that peace kept postponing the answer.
Oskar chose his words with care.
"Father," he said calmly, "we should still make our stance visible. But we do it in steps."
He leaned forward slightly, meeting Wilhelm's eyes.
"Send a light warship first. Something small enough not to be a declaration of war—but unmistakably German. We observe. We measure their reaction. Then we decide what comes next."
Wilhelm studied him for a long moment.
Not suspicious.
Calculating.
The suggestion appealed to him. Action without commitment. Pride without catastrophe.
Slowly, he nodded.
The ministers exhaled—one by one—as if the room had been returned its air.
"So be it," Wilhelm II said. "Proceed."
---
The order went out within hours.
Tirpitz did not select a battleship. He did not send a battlecruiser. That would have been a declaration in everything but ink.
Instead, he chose a gunboat for overseas service—small, modern enough, and deliberately unspectacular. Not a ship of the line. Not a threat that screamed war.
But a presence.
The hull selected was SMS Panther.
A colonial gunboat, built for precisely this kind of work: showing the flag where Germany's interests were "supposed" to be negotiable, and making them feel less negotiable. Panther belonged to the Iltis-class—a type designed to patrol the overseas empire, steam long distances, and appear suddenly in places where diplomats needed steel behind their words.
She was not fast. She was not glamorous. She was not meant to duel dreadnoughts.
She was meant to arrive, anchor, and force other men to calculate.
And she had a reputation already: the kind of ship that seemed too small to matter until it did. In real history, Panther would become infamous as the gunboat whose appearance at Agadir detonated a European war scare.
That was why, when Oskar heard the name, he allowed himself a brief, humorless smile.
In another life, he remembered exactly what sort of crisis a single "minor" ship could carry on its back. A small hull, sent to a distant harbor—carrying far more consequence than its displacement justified.
Here, the purpose was identical.
A vessel light enough to be dismissed.
And dangerous enough to matter.
Oskar watched the decision sink into the machinery of the state and felt the familiar tension settle into his chest.
Germany was not ready—not fully. Neither were his own projects. Too many systems still incomplete, too many levers not yet installed.
But Morocco was never about readiness.
It was about reaction.
Not of guns—of nerves.
Paris answered quickly.
Statements hardened. Diplomatic language sharpened. France threatened escalation—more troops to Morocco, firmer control, less patience. Newspapers fanned the rhetoric. The air filled with that brittle tension Europe had been learning to breathe without realizing how poisonous it was.
Oskar thought of Jules Cambon—his one steady line into French reason, the one man across the border who still spoke like someone managing consequences rather than chasing applause.
He could meet the ambassador.
He could argue.
He could attempt to slow the spiral.
But Oskar knew the truth as well as any man in that room:
Cambon did not decide France's course.
He only explained it.
And whether France wanted to be calmed…
That was a question no ambassador could answer.
The gunboat steamed south.
And Europe held its breath.