The Moroccan crisis was supposed to end the way history always preferred:
France would take Morocco.
Germany would be compensated somewhere else—quietly, "fairly," on paper.
A slice of colonial land in the Congo basin was offered: the kind of territory ministries described with tired contempt—marsh, jungle, fever, distance. Hard to administer. Hard to profit from. Easy to sign away. Paris could keep the prize that mattered, and Berlin would be handed something ugly enough to be called payment without ever tasting like victory.
It was the kind of deal meant to close a crisis and leave a lesson behind.
Germany can be pressured. Germany can be managed.
Most of Europe would have accepted it. Most of Berlin would have accepted it.
Just like in history.
Oskar did not.
Not because he wanted Morocco.
Because he understood the precedent.
And because the pressure had come from everywhere—Karl's blunt warnings, Tanya's furious pride, Anna's quiet disappointment, even the way the older children looked at him now when adults spoke of "restraint," as if they were learning that their father could be pushed.
And, then Priest Arnold had come, his eyes burning with certainty, his voice calm and final as scripture.
"When doubt comes," Arnold said, "hold fast to faith. Your people have given you theirs. Germany has placed its trust in you. Whatever road you choose, they will follow—so show no weakness, and do not forgive those who strike at you."
Oskar had listened.
Not because he enjoyed sermons.
Because the words touched something true.
If Germany swallowed humiliation now, the world would taste it—and come back for more later, when the stakes were higher and the price of refusing would be blood.
He was angry, yes. Angry at France's arrogance, angry at Britain's smug involvement, angry at the way polite diplomacy could be used like a weapon.
But beneath the anger was something colder:
He had not spent years making Germany stronger just to be taught obedience.
So he escalated.
Even with the shadow of war looming.
In Potsdam, Oskar met his father, and the plan took shape—not as a grand declaration, not as a Reichstag speech, not as a threat broadcast to newspapers.
Just movement.
Dreadnoughts left harbor.
Not charging into a battle line. Not racing toward provocation.
Simply sailing—dark hulls sliding into the Atlantic with practiced indifference.
And then, Austria-Hungary followed.
Old pre-dreadnought battleships and cruisers—less modern, less impressive, but flying the same message. The agreement had been reached in private and sealed with handshakes rather than treaties.
A joint naval exercise, the communiqué called it.
Perfectly legal.
Entirely routine.
The course was deliberate.
Past Morocco.
Down the African coast.
A brief, unmistakable presence off German Cameroon.
Then home again.
No shots fired.
No blockade declared.
Just steel, visible to every admiral and every newspaper editor in Europe.
---
London learned first.
Reports arrived in fragments—half-formed, frantic, contradictory. German capital ships. Austro-Hungarian squadrons. Together. Not in the North Sea where Britain expected them, but moving freely toward the Atlantic like men reminding the world that oceans were not private British property.
And Britain's problem was not courage.
It was geometry.
Royal Navy forces were scattered—Mediterranean commitments, imperial policing, refits, stations that could not be abandoned without inviting trouble elsewhere. Concentration would take time. Time Britain did not want to spend while the political temperature rose and the newspapers screamed for answers.
Paris learned next.
Then St. Petersburg.
And it was Russia that blinked first.
Not publicly. Not with humiliating announcements. Russia did what great empires did when they decided not to gamble:
It cooled.
Advisers urged caution. Timetables softened. Words became less absolute. A vast, heavy power decided it would not be dragged into a European war over Morocco—not when the battlefield would not even be in Europe.
Britain hesitated.
France watched.
And Jules Cambon stood in Berlin with the sensation of a floor shifting beneath his feet.
He had seen the factories. The rail schedules. The strange discipline of German modernization. He had heard the whispers and dismissed some of them as exaggeration—until he witnessed enough to stop dismissing.
There were aircraft in German skies now.
Not toys.
Not circus machines.
And infantry units moving with engines, not horses.
Back in Paris, men laughed at such reports.
But laughter did not erase uncertainty.
When Cambon cabled his government, his words were careful—and therefore far more dangerous.
Germany is stronger than assumed.
It has never before seen, unidentified weaponry.
Escalation carries unknown risk.
Unknown risk was worse than known enemies.
Fear, once introduced, spread faster than reason.
And so the negotiations resumed.
Not with applause. Not with triumph.
In rooms heavy with smoke and exhaustion, where men stared at maps with the dull eyes of people trying to end a crisis before it became history's catastrophe.
Germany did not demand Morocco.
That concession alone reduced the temperature. France could have its protectorate. The newspapers could be satisfied. The politicians could claim they had stood firm.
But Africa…
Africa could be adjusted.
What France offered—quietly, reluctantly—was the interior that Oskar demanded.
Vast stretches of land few ministers could describe without a map: places of sand and jungle and disease, administrative burdens with uncertain returns. The coastal arteries, the profitable routes, the deposits already confirmed—those France kept.
But deeper inland—what would one day be called the nation of Chad and the Central African Republic—those were yielded.
Lines were redrawn.
Signatures placed.
No one celebrated.
---
Oskar read the final terms alone.
On paper, it was not everything he wanted. On paper, it looked reasonable—almost modest. The land gained was described as vast, but undeveloped, and of limited immediate value.
He allowed himself a thin smile.
They did not know what slept beneath that soil.
They did not understand the weight of hidden ore, the quiet promise of minerals that belonged to a future they could not yet imagine—resources that would one day reshape energy, industry, and war itself.
Uranium.
Gold.
Stone and metal and the kind of wealth that did not announce itself until the century demanded it.
The dreadnoughts turned for home.
Austria-Hungary did the same, its ships saluted now as true allies rather than accessories.
Oskar made sure Vienna understood the meaning: this loyalty would not be treated as disposable.
More investment would follow. Railways. Factories. And when the time came—colonies, if they wished them.
That promise mattered.
Aboveground, the streets stayed ordinary.
No mobilization.
No declarations.
No war.
Germany "lost" Morocco.
Germany gained land in Africa.
The world called it a settlement.
Oskar stood at a window overlooking Potsdam as evening settled, the city humming beneath him, unaware how close it had come to the abyss.
His threats had worked—just enough.
Perhaps the great war could still be delayed.
Perhaps even avoided.
But if the world insisted on testing Germany again…
Then next time Oskar would answer even harder.
He did not want war.
But he was preparing for it anyway—because readiness itself was the only language that might still prevent it.
However, the important thing was that at least the second Moroccan Crisis had ended, without bloodshed.
The Treaty of Fez had been signed, and on paper all was well. All parties seemed reasonably satisfied.
Although in reality, it left bruises everywhere.
In Germany, the reaction was immediate—and ugly.
In cafés and gyms, factory canteens and railway stations, men argued loudly over black coffee, clanking weights, and cheap meals. Newspapers were slapped onto tables, fingers stabbing at headlines.
Why did we give anything?
Why bargain with the French?
Why does Germany, strongest in Europe, still negotiate like a weaker power?
Among students and officers, the talk was harsher. Among industrialists and financiers, colder. Even among workers—who had no love for war—the question lingered: If Germany keeps yielding, what will they demand next?
Germans had pride, and they did not appreciate compromise.
Not like this.
In Britain, satisfaction was brittle. The government framed restraint as wisdom, but the public felt uneasy. Britain had stood beside France and watched Germany refuse to yield. The so called German naval exercise lingered in memory—foreign steel moving freely through waters long assumed to belong to Britain alone.
In France, pride was bruised even in victory. Morocco had become a French protectorate, yes—but only by paying a price no one in Paris wanted to linger over: an inland sweep of Equatorial Africa on the order of nearly two million square kilometers—quietly signed away to be stitched onto German Cameroon like an afterthought.
In salons and ministries alike, men asked themselves the same bitter question: how had Germany managed to extract anything at all?
Russia, vast and distant, shrugged and moved on. The crisis had never felt personal enough to bleed for.
Austria-Hungary was relieved. Simply grateful that all had worked out for them. And now Germany would remember who had stood beside them.
Italy remembered nothing.
That omission burned hottest in Potsdam.
---
"Damn the Italians!"
Wilhelm II's roar echoed off the walls of his office, sending a clerk scurrying outside the door. His face was flushed with fury, his hands clenched so tightly that the knuckles stood white.
"How could we ever have believed they were allies?" he snapped. "How could we have trusted them at all?"
He paced once, sharply.
"If Italy had stood with us—truly stood with us—we might have held our position. The entire balance could have shifted."
He stopped, breathing hard.
Wilhelm II understood perfectly what this concession meant. Prestige once yielded was not easily reclaimed. And prestige was the Emperor's lifeblood.
"Father," Oskar said calmly, "the Italians were never going to give unconditional support."
He spoke without anger, without heat. This outcome had been expected.
"They look only to themselves," he continued. "Their ambitions pointed elsewhere—towards the reclamation of lands they feel are theirs, not toward loyalty. War threatens them as much as it tempts them. Their hesitation was inevitable."
Wilhelm glared, but did not argue.
Oskar had warned them.
Again.
Prime Minister von Bülow sighed heavily.
"His Highness is correct," he said. "Italy has never treated alliance obligations as sacred. If war comes in the future, we must plan as if they will hesitate—or betray—until the last possible moment."
"Then we will remember that," Wilhelm II growled. "All of it."
Kiderlen-Wächter spoke next, careful and measured.
"Your Majesty, though we compromised in Morocco, there are other ways to answer this at home. The people must see that Germany did not retreat without gain."
Wilhelm nodded slowly, the fury cooling into something harder.
"This was a disgrace," he said at last. "And we will not forget it. One day, we will wash it away."
His eyes burned.
"Britain and France will pay for this."
"Yes, Your Majesty," the room answered.
Everyone there understood the truth beneath the words.
Germany's rise could not be stopped by treaties alone. Britain and France would continue to contain, provoke, and pressure as long as Germany threatened their dominance.
And Germany, for its part, would not accept permanent containment.
War was not desired.
But it was being prepared for.
---
In Rome, beneath frescoed ceilings and the weight of old marble, the Royal Palace felt quieter than it should have.
Outside, Europe argued over Morocco.
Inside, Italy measured opportunity.
King Vittorio Emanuele III sat rigidly in his chair, small in stature but not in attention. Across from him stood Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti, calm and unhurried—the sort of man who made decisions like accountants made calculations.
"Prime Minister," the King said at last, "we refused Berlin. We offered them no support." His voice carried unease. "They will resent it. We are allied to them. Is it wise to offend them so openly?"
Giolitti did not flinch.
"Your Majesty," he replied evenly, "it is precisely because we are allied that we must think clearly. If Germany and France had stumbled into war over Morocco, the alliance chains would have tightened. We would have been dragged into a conflict not of our choosing." He paused. "That would be disastrous for Italy."
The King's fingers tightened on the armrest.
"Germany believes itself strong," Vittorio Emanuele said quietly. "And perhaps it is. But Britain, France, Russia…" He did not finish the sentence. He did not need to.
Giolitti nodded once.
"Britain has ruled the sea for centuries," he said. "Many have challenged them. Most have paid dearly."
The King looked up. "If war comes… will Germany win?"
Giolitti's expression did not change.
"Your Majesty," he said, "it is impossible to guarantee. Germany is powerful—yes. Growing, yes. But war is not a duel. It is a furnace. Even the strongest can enter it and come out ruined."
A breath.
"And Italy would pay for someone else's ambitions."
Vittorio Emanuele III sat back, grim, as if the truth itself had weight.
Then Giolitti's tone shifted—so slightly it would have been missed by anyone who didn't know him.
"Morocco—Agadir—has done something for us that no bribe or treaty could purchase."
The King's eyes narrowed. "What?"
"It has distracted them," Giolitti said softly. "Britain is staring at Germany. France is staring at Africa. Russia is staring at Europe. Their diplomats are exhausted, their newspapers screaming, their admirals calculating… over a crisis that is not ours."
The King held his breath, sensing the shape of what was coming.
"And us?" he asked.
Giolitti allowed himself a thin smile.
"We have been preparing," he said simply. "For years. The plans are written. Transports arranged. Credit secured. Editors softened. Officers briefed." He leaned forward a fraction. "Our men have studied Tripoli as if it already belongs to Italy."
The King's gaze sharpened.
"The Ottoman Empire is weak," Giolitti continued. "Not because it lacks courage—because it lacks time. If we hesitate, someone else will take Libya, or the Turks will fortify it, or Europe will remember to pay attention again."
A silence fell—heavy, decisive.
Vittorio Emanuele III rose slowly, as if standing inside a dream he had carried since childhood.
"Then this is our opening," he said.
"This is our opening," Giolitti confirmed. "And it will not remain open long."
The King's voice hardened, becoming something colder than ambition.
"Then we begin," he said. "Not for vanity—"
His eyes lifted, sharp with national hunger.
"—but because Italy will not remain a spectator while others divide the world."