For centuries, Italy had been a prize more often than a power.
Its peninsula was carved, invaded by Islamic powers, contested, and ruled by foreign crowns—Spanish, French, Austrian—its cities brilliant and divided, its people forced to live beneath other banners. Even in the nineteenth century, Austria still held the north like a mailed fist, and French bayonets guarded the Pope in Rome.
Italy's unification did not arrive as a gift.
It arrived as a chain of wars, bargains, and timing.
In 1866, Italy fought alongside Prussia against Austria. The Austro-Prussian War did not make Italy strong overnight, but it cracked the old order and loosened Vienna's grip. Then, in 1870, France blundered into war with Prussia and pulled its troops away from Rome—leaving the city exposed for the first time in a generation. Italy moved quickly. The breach at Porta Pia, the Papal State collapsing in a day, and Rome—at last—belonged to Italy.
By 1871, the new kingdom made it official: Rome was the capital.
A young nation, finally whole.
And like all young nations, Italy was hungry.
The educated classes spoke of railways and industry, but the nationalists spoke of something older and hotter: Rome. The Roman past was no longer a museum piece; it became a political weapon. Speeches and newspapers began to invoke the legions, the eagles, the Mediterranean as a "natural" Italian sea. Not because history truly returns—history rarely does—but because nations tell themselves stories when they are deciding what they have the right to become.
Once, the Roman Empire had ruled the known world.
Its armies marched beneath the same sun from the Pillars of Hercules to the deserts of Asia, from northern forests to African shores. For centuries, Rome had been an axis around which civilization turned.
The Kingdom of Italy was new, but it did not feel new to those who needed it to be great.
It did not see itself as a beginning—
but as a return.
The land was the same. The name was the same. The ruins were everywhere—proof in stone that power had once lived here. Only time had intervened, and time, Italians told themselves, was not a judge. Only an interruption.
Now Britain and France carved the globe into modern empires of steel and steam, and Italy could no longer remain content with memories and monuments.
If the modern age demanded empires—
then Italy would reach for one.
Not as an echo.
As a rightful continuation.
And despite the presence of older, richer, more entrenched powers—empires that had spent centuries learning how to smother rivals before they could grow—Italy refused the role of latecomer. The kingdom was young, yes, but its ambition was ancient. Rome had once made the Mediterranean a private sea.
Italy meant to do the same.
Not with poetry.
With preparation.
For years, Rome spoke softly in Europe and worked relentlessly in the south. It understood the brutal arithmetic of empire: you did not seize a province by announcing desire—you seized it by ensuring that when the moment came, no one could stop you.
And the moment would come from the same place every ambitious power watched with greedy patience:
the slow collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
Once the Ottomans had terrified Europe. They had taken cities, broken armies, and carried the prestige of a conquering state. But by the early twentieth century that force had thinned into exhaustion. In the Balkans their frontiers shrank decade by decade. In North Africa their authority still existed on paper—flags, governors, decrees—but to European eyes it looked less like sovereignty and more like vacancy: a possession waiting for a stronger hand.
Italy's resentment had a name, and it was recent.
France had taken Algeria long ago, and in 1881 Tunis became a French protectorate—an event Italians remembered like theft committed in broad daylight. Italy had been outmaneuvered, humiliated, forced to swallow it.
That wound never healed.
It hardened into policy.
So Rome's gaze fixed on the next Ottoman provinces along the southern shore of the central Mediterranean:
Tripolitania and Cyrenaica.
They were not rich in the obvious way. Much of the land was desert—harsh and stubborn, offering little to men who expected immediate profit. But strategy was its own kind of wealth. Those provinces faced Sicily across a narrow stretch of water. Whoever held them pressed a hand against the throat of the central Mediterranean—against sea lanes, against influence, against the future.
Italy had wanted them for decades.
And after its humiliation in Ethiopia in 1896, Rome learned the lesson that pride had refused to admit: glory required method. No more reckless adventures. No more improvisation. Next time, Italy would move like a machine.
So the groundwork was laid—patiently, quietly, relentlessly.
Italian merchants flowed into Tripoli and Benghazi. Italian money bought land and contracts. "Civilian" survey teams mapped beaches and anchorages. "Fishermen" and sponge-harvesters returned with notes that read more like naval intelligence than livelihood—depths, currents, winds, approaches—until the shoreline was no longer foreign to Rome's planners.
Priests and missionaries traveled inland under the cloak of faith and charity and returned with information generals valued more than sermons: roads, wells, tribes, loyalties, vulnerabilities.
Diplomacy moved in parallel. Italy sought understandings—spoken and unspoken—with other powers: reassurance here, silence there, the quiet promise that Italy's ambitions would point south rather than toward a European neighbor. The Triple Alliance gave Rome legitimacy when it suited Rome, and cover when it did not.
By 1911, the truth was simple.
Italy did not merely desire Tripolitania and Cyrenaica.
Italy had been preparing to take them for a generation.
All it needed was the right hour—one brief moment when the great powers were distracted, their attention drawn elsewhere, their hands full with crises not of Italy's making.
And in Morocco…
that hour was arriving.
---
"Your Majesty," Giovanni Giolitti said, his voice low but urgent, "the Moroccan crisis has given us a rare opening. If we allow it to pass, we may never see its like again. Opportunities of this scale do not return on command."
King Vittorio Emanuele III nodded slowly. He was not a man given to rash enthusiasm, but he understood timing when it was placed plainly before him.
"I agree," the King said. "But before we move against the Ottoman Empire, we must ensure we are not isolated. Italy cannot afford to stand alone."
Giolitti inclined his head. "Britain and France will not object," he replied. "This time, we withheld support from Germany. London and Paris will remember that. They should be willing to look the other way."
"And Germany?" the King asked.
Giolitti allowed himself a careful smile. "Germany is displeased, yes—but not blind. They will not push us into the arms of the Entente out of spite. That would be strategically foolish, and Berlin knows it."
Vittorio Emanuele considered this, then nodded once.
"Even so," he said, "we should send a special envoy to Berlin. If nothing else, to test the ground."
Giolitti agreed without hesitation. "Yes, Your Majesty."
---
The Italian envoy arrived in Germany with polished shoes, prepared speeches, and a great deal of anxiety.
He was received coldly.
Wilhelm II refused him outright. The Emperor's anger had not cooled, and he had no intention of pretending otherwise. Bernhard von Bülow followed suit, declining to meet at all. Doors closed. Appointments vanished. Polite refusals were delivered with unmistakable finality.
When the envoy finally secured a meeting with Foreign Minister Kiderlen-Waechter, it was only to be told—bluntly—that the German Empire considered Italy's behavior during the crisis a betrayal.
The envoy spoke at length. He explained. He softened. He promised future goodwill.
None of it mattered.
Everyone in the room understood the truth: Italy had stood aside when Germany needed alignment, and no amount of elegant phrasing could erase that fact.
By the time the envoy left the Foreign Office, he was certain his mission had failed.
He had come to Berlin with polished shoes, rehearsed phrases, and the comforting belief that diplomacy could always find a seam—some small opening through which a man might stitch two offended governments back together.
Instead, he found stone.
Wilhelm II would not receive him. Bülow declined to meet at all. Even the polite faces in corridors carried an unmistakable chill, as if the very building had decided that Italy was no longer welcome within its warmth.
Kiderlen-Wächter granted him a short audience only to confirm what the envoy already suspected: in Berlin's eyes, Italy had stood aside at the moment allies were meant to stand together.
The envoy had explained. He had softened. He had offered future goodwill in the careful language of men paid to disguise fear as reason.
It had changed nothing.
So when he stepped out into the street, the air felt sharper. The sky felt lower. And he felt—absurdly—like a man who had walked into a cathedral and been told the gods were not home.
Then the message came.
Not from the Kaiser.
Not from the Foreign Office.
From Potsdam.
The Crown Prince would see him.
For a moment, the envoy did not understand the words. They sat in his mind like a misread telegram. After Morocco, after the strain and the quiet fury that had settled over the German court like soot, Oskar's decision to meet personally could only mean one of two things: either the Crown Prince intended to mend what his father would not—or he intended to make an example.
The drive to Potsdam was too smooth. Too orderly. The sort of calm that made the heart invent threats.
When the envoy arrived at the Oskar Industrial Group's main building—its stone and glass set close enough to the Brandenburg Gate to feel like a statement—he was led through corridors that smelled faintly of ink, polished wood, and money. This was not merely an office. It was a machine. And machines did not waste time on sentiment.
At the door to the inner office stood Karl.
The dwarf's posture was immaculate. His eyes measured the envoy the way an accountant measures a ledger—without emotion, but with precision.
The envoy offered his name.
Karl did not respond with words. He simply opened the door, stepped aside, and allowed the envoy to enter.
The office beyond was vast. Not ostentatious—disciplined. The kind of wealth that did not need to decorate itself. The desk was enormous and dark, a slab of authority set like a barrier in the center of the room. Behind it, tall windows framed the Brandenburg Gate and the street below, where Berlin moved in its ordinary rhythm, ignorant of the currents beneath its feet.
And in front of those windows stood Oskar.
Broad shoulders. Hands clasped behind his back. A silhouette cut from black iron.
He did not turn at first.
The door closed behind the envoy with a soft, final click, and the sound went through him like a cold needle.
He was suddenly very aware of his own size. Of how small a man could feel without anyone raising their voice.
"Your Highness," he said, bowing deeply. "I am honored."
Oskar turned just enough to acknowledge him—a glance over one shoulder, eyes unreadable—then looked back out at the city as though the envoy were merely another report to be filed.
His voice, when it came, filled the room with effortless weight.
"Ambassador of Italy," he said, calm as stone. "Greetings."
A pause.
"I must say—personally—I am dissatisfied with the Kingdom of Italy's handling of the Moroccan crisis."
The envoy's mouth went dry. He forced himself to speak smoothly.
"Your Highness, there must be some misunderstanding. Italy attaches great importance to its relationship with the German Empire. We meant no disrespect. We desire only peace among Christian nations—nothing more."
Oskar did not react as a man insulted.
He reacted as a man confirming a suspicion.
He raised the glass in his hand and drank—milk, white against the dark of his suit—slowly, as if savoring the small pleasure of making another man wait. When he finished, he let the glass settle, and the faint sound of it meeting wood landed like punctuation.
Then Oskar crossed the room and sat in a heavy armchair, as relaxed as if the envoy had come to discuss weather.
The envoy held his posture, still bowed slightly forward, still trying to read a face that refused to offer him anything.
Fortunately for him—mercifully—Oskar did not linger on Morocco.
Instead, he asked a question so abrupt it felt like a door opening into a different room.
"Tell me," Oskar said, "is your country ready to move against the Ottoman Empire?"
The envoy blinked. He nodded at once. That was no secret. Europe had watched Italy circle the Ottoman provinces for years like a hungry dog.
"Good," Oskar said. "Very good."
He folded his hands together as if concluding one subject and beginning another, as if Morocco were merely an irritation rather than a wound.
"Understand this, Ambassador. Italy has not performed admirably." His eyes flicked up—cold, not cruel. "But the Empire still values its relationship with Italy."
The envoy's pulse quickened.
Oskar continued, voice even, almost conversational. "We welcome Italian expansion in North Africa. We welcome a weaker Ottoman Empire. If Italy requires weapons, munitions, war material—Germany can provide them. Not openly, perhaps. Not foolishly. But we can provide them."
The envoy felt a rush of relief so strong it almost made him dizzy. This was not what he had expected. Not from Berlin. Not after being turned away like a beggar.
Oskar leaned back slightly, letting the thought settle.
"And there is more," he said. "Our position in Africa has changed. If you succeed in Tripoli and Cyrenaica, Germany and Italy will finally share a border. Neighbors. That means railways. Supply lines. Joint projects. A practical alliance, not merely a paper one."
The envoy fought to keep his expression neutral. Overjoyed was too weak a word for what he felt. In Rome, they would call this a miracle.
But he had lived long enough among politicians to remember the oldest truth of all:
there is no free lunch.
"Your Highness," he said carefully, "what price would Italy pay for such… generosity?"
Oskar's mouth curved—almost a smile.
"Oh," he said, as if the answer were obvious. "It is simple."
He leaned forward just slightly, enough to make the envoy lean forward too without meaning to.
"When Italy occupies Tripoli and Cyrenaica, my Oskar Industrial Group will receive the rights to extract oil."
The word landed strangely in the envoy's mind.
"Oil?" he repeated, before he could stop himself. "Is there oil there?"
Oskar's smile widened a fraction, amused—not at the question, but at the innocence behind it.
"Who knows," he said lightly. "No one has drilled deep enough to find out. But deserts keep secrets. And I believe that land keeps secrets beyond what your ministers are ready to imagine."
The envoy hesitated only long enough to remember his duty.
He bowed again, deeply, his mind already racing ahead to Rome.
"I understand, Your Highness. I see no reason Italy would refuse such an arrangement. I will report this immediately. I will bring you their answer as soon as I have it."
Oskar watched him with the stillness of a man who had already seen the answer written in the future.
"Good," he said.
The audience was over.
The envoy was guided out as quietly as he had been guided in, the door closing behind him with the same soft finality.
Outside, Berlin continued to move beneath gray sky and winter light.
But the envoy's hands shook slightly as he pulled on his gloves.
Because somewhere in the heart of the German Empire, a man had just asked for a resource that most of Europe still treated like an inconvenience—and had asked for it with the confidence of someone who already knew what the century would run on.
And Oskar, alone again in his office, looked out toward the Gate as if it were a threshold not for Berlin, but for the world.
If Libya yielded what he expected…
Germany would never beg for fuel.
Not in ten years.
Not in a hundred.
Perhaps not in a thousand.