The armored machines of the Eighth Army were not, in truth, Oskar's purely original invention.
They were a thing stolen from the future—an idea that history had already proven would work. But what history had once taken decades to stumble toward, Oskar had dragged into existence by force of will, money, and sheer refusal to accept "impossible" as an answer.
To the men watching now—Kaiser, generals, staff officers—none of that mattered.
To them, it looked like Oskar had reached into empty air and pulled steel out of it.
And more importantly, the machines were no longer fragile experiments hidden behind locked doors, guarded by excuses and whispers. They were no longer sketches on paper or prototypes that broke the moment they were pushed too hard.
They had become real.
They existed because Oskar had demanded they exist—and because he had given Imperial Weapons Works a single instruction above all others:
Build me an armored vehicle that can endure fire and carry the fight forward.
Not a curiosity. Not a parade piece. A weapon.
Now they stood in long, silent lines at the edge of the frozen field—forty dark shapes, half-dusted with snow, engines idling low. Exhaust drifted upward in slow white streams like the breath of restrained beasts. Crewmen moved around the hulls with tools in gloved hands, checking tracks and bolts, wiping frost from view slits, feeding oil into the machines like priests tending an altar.
And among them, Gustav Schwarzenegger—too young to have grown old in war, but already old in the way only a colourful life can make a man—spoke with quick confidence to a semicircle of gray-haired officers, pointing out plates, rivets, and angles as if he were showing them a new species.
Oskar watched it all without emotion on his face.
But inside, he felt something close to satisfaction.
He had named the machines without poetry.
Panzerkampfwagen, Modell Eins.
Armored fighting vehicle—first model.
No heroic title. No myth. No animal. No god.
Just a statement of purpose.
He had refused every suggestion of something grander. These were not banners. They were not meant to inspire crowds.
They were meant to survive fire.
And keep moving when men could not.
Panzer meant armored.
Nothing more.
And that was exactly the point.
---
Up close, the Panzer I looked blunt, compact, and unapologetically practical.
Just over five meters long, two and a half meters wide, and a little more than two meters tall—low enough that Oskar, towering above it, could look straight along the line of its main gun as if it were a table set at waist height. Beside him the tank felt almost modest, a steel animal built for ordinary men. A regular soldier could press himself against its flank and vanish from fire; someone like Gustav could slip inside it, move within it, command it.
Oskar could not.
He was simply too large for the machine he had brought into existence—and that, too, pleased him. The Panzer was not built for giants. It was built to carry men forward under armor, and to serve as moving cover where flesh alone would fail.
Its silhouette was squat and angular, all unnecessary height shaved away. There were no graceful curves, no wasted steel. Everything about it suggested a single idea:
Advance.
The armor reflected the same philosophy. The frontal plates were sloped sharply, thirty millimeters thick—not excessive, but intelligently angled to turn rifle fire, machine-gun bursts, and shrapnel aside. The sides and rear were thinner, fifteen millimeters, enough to stop small arms without turning the vehicle into an immobile coffin.
Fully loaded, the Panzer I weighed just under twenty tons—light enough to move with infantry, heavy enough to matter.
That weight would not have been possible without Africa.
Aluminum castings—engine housings, internal supports, weight-critical components—were already being produced using bauxite from Oskar's own African holdings. It was not visible from the outside, but it mattered more than the armor itself.
Power came from a compact diesel engine mounted in the rear, producing three hundred horsepower. It was not glamorous. It was not elegant.
It was reliable.
On roads, the Panzer could reach forty kilometers per hour, sometimes more. Off-road, it slowed—but it did not stop. It did not rush. It pressed forward, tracks biting into frozen earth and churned mud alike.
---
Its armament was chosen with the same restraint.
The turret mounted a 37-millimeter cannon—large enough to tear open machine-gun nests, smash fieldworks, and silence enemy guns, yet small enough to fire rapidly and carry meaningful ammunition without overburdening the chassis.
A coaxial machine gun sat beside it, slaved to the gunner's aim. Another was mounted in the hull, giving the tank the ability to rake trenches and suppress infantry directly ahead.
One hundred rounds for the main gun.
Two thousand rounds for the machine guns.
Enough to fight, not enough to waste.
Inside, the tank was cramped, loud, and unforgiving.
That, too, was intentional.
The Panzer I was not built for comfort. It was built for survival. Steel walls, hot air, engine vibration—every crewman would feel the machine around him at all times, because a man who forgot where he was tended to die quickly.
It was crude. Almost agricultural in places, like a tractor wrapped in armor, with a turret bolted on top.
But it worked.
And that was everything.
---
The Panzer I was never meant to fight alone.
Oskar had designed it to walk with infantry—to crush wire, bridge trenches, absorb fire that would otherwise tear men apart. It was not a knight. It was a moving bunker. A shield that advanced.
It did not win wars.
It made wars winnable.
And in that, it marked the end of something older and far more costly.
The age of flesh advancing alone.
---
Oskar stood at the edge of the field, arms folded, watching Gustav Schwarzenegger speak with barely contained excitement to a semicircle of generals—and even to the Kaiser himself.
Behind Gustav, the forty tanks idled in silent formation, their dark hulls forming a backdrop that made every human figure look small.
Gustav gestured wildly, explaining firing arcs, crew coordination, maintenance routines, and recovery procedures with the breathless confidence of someone who knew—deep down—that he was making history.
Oskar allowed himself a small smile.
The boy had come a long way.
Once an orphan. Then a lottery winner. Then a stable hand at the Potsdam palace. Then—through charm, stubbornness, and more than a little luck—the unlikely suitor of Princess Luise.
Now?
Now he was one of the first tank commanders in history.
He had learned engineering. He had learned discipline. He had learned how to command men inside a steel box where panic could kill faster than enemy fire.
He was not yet worthy of an imperial princess.
But he was close.
And Oskar intended to see that he became worthy.
---
Then the officers drifted in closer to Oskar, after Gustav finished speaking—generals with frost on their collars, aides with notebooks already open, men who had spent their lives measuring war in battalions and timetables now staring at forty black machines as if the earth had grown iron teeth.
They congratulated Oskar—too warmly, too quickly. A new weapon always did that. Every man in uniform could smell the promise of advantage, and advantage was the only perfume that truly mattered in Europe now.
Gustav Krupp stood beside Oskar, shoulders squared, face carefully neutral, but his eyes glittered with the quiet pride of a man watching his empire of steel take another step forward.
Wilhelm II stepped into the circle, hands clasped behind his back like a man inspecting a cathedral.
His gaze moved along the line of tanks, past the sloped plates and the turrets, past the exhaust steaming into the winter air.
Then he spoke, and the words carried the weight that only an Emperor's voice could carry.
"Chief of the General Staff," he said, "we must procure these machines. Begin at once. They will be useful—very useful—when the day comes that we must make war again."
"Yes, Your Majesty," Moltke replied automatically.
But Moltke was not a man who signed blank cheques, even for destiny.
He turned his head slightly, eyes narrowing.
"How much," he asked, "does a single Panzer cost?"
Oskar's mouth twitched into a small smile.
He enjoyed this part—not because he liked money, but because he liked watching old minds collide with new arithmetic.
"Thirty-five thousand marks per vehicle," Oskar said calmly, as if describing the cost of a horse.
A few men blinked.
Oskar continued, voice even, almost conversational.
"To build an armored division with one hundred and fifty tanks would cost roughly five million two hundred and fifty thousand marks—just for the tanks."
He lifted a gloved hand and pointed lazily toward the distant supply columns parked beyond the field.
"But tanks don't fight alone. An armored division needs trucks—fuel trucks, ammunition trucks, supply trucks, infantry transports. About fifteen hundred trucks minimum. Plus motorcycles for scouts and runners, field mechanics, dispatch, coordination…"
He shrugged slightly.
"So the true cost of one complete armored division is closer to twenty million marks. Possibly more, depending on how well you want it fed."
For a moment the men simply stared.
These were not poor men. Many of them sat daily in Muscle Motors A-Class cars worth fifty thousand marks each, riding in padded silence while clerks and soldiers froze outside.
But war spending hit the brain differently.
It wasn't personal luxury anymore.
It was institutional surrender of control.
Moltke's expression hardened—not with shock, but with that familiar conservative reflex: too fast, too much, too dangerous.
He leaned in toward the Kaiser in a low murmur, speaking the language he always used when restraining Wilhelm's enthusiasm: caution, budgets, readiness, priorities, the danger of reckless innovation.
Wilhelm II's eyes still shone with fascination, but the brightness dimmed as Moltke fed him numbers and obstacles.
The decision came out, inevitably, as compromise.
Tanks would be purchased—yes.
But not in the way Oskar wanted.
Not yet.
There would be no immediate creation of armored formations across the whole army. Tanks would be treated as attachments—distributed in small numbers, added to existing units, controlled by traditional command structures.
Only the Eighth Army would receive a full armored division.
Oskar did not argue.
Imperial Weapons Works could not supply multiple full armored divisions yet anyway. Better to build properly, scale quietly, and let the old men believe they were in control while the machine grew underneath them.
By evening, Gustav Krupp and Moltke the Younger signed the procurement agreement:
one thousand Panzer I tanks, delivered over the next two years.
A thousand sounded enormous to civilians.
To Oskar, it sounded like a beginning.
Because Germany's western forces were divided into seven armies.
Spread the tanks across them, and each army would receive only a little more than a hundred machines.
A handful.
A tool.
Perhaps one tank for every thousand infantrymen.
Hardly enough to shield the flesh of the army, but enough—if concentrated correctly—to punch a hole where the enemy did not expect it.
Still, the Eighth Army was different.
The Black Legion would not receive "attachments."
It would receive a true armored division—over one hundred and fifty tanks, organized, trained, and commanded as a spear, not a crutch.
Oskar envisioned it operating independently—seeking weak points, breaking lines, encircling, exploiting chaos. Not merely crawling forward to support infantry like Moltke imagined.
Both doctrines had value.
But only one doctrine truly unlocked what tanks could become.
---
When the ink was dry, Wilhelm II turned back to Oskar.
"Oskar," he said, voice thick with satisfaction, "I am pleased. These tanks will greatly improve the fighting power of the German Army."
He hesitated, then added with reluctant honesty:
"The cost is… significant. Even with our economy growing, it is still no small burden. But perhaps, in time, we can shape the army into the form you envision."
Oskar dipped his head.
"Father," he said simply, "it is my duty to strengthen the Empire."
Then his tone sharpened.
"However," Oskar continued, "tanks are a secret weapon. If knowledge of this leaks, the advantage dies. The enemy will adapt. They will build their own. They will prepare counters. And we will pay for that in blood."
He glanced around the gathered officers—men who liked to gossip almost as much as they liked to command.
"So," he said calmly, "we do not call them merely tanks or armoured vehicles."
A few brows furrowed.
"We call them water tanks," Oskar went on, dead serious. "On paper. In documents. In reports. If an enemy agent intercepts procurement orders, they should be confused as to why we're buying so many 'water tanks.'"
For a heartbeat, the room was silent.
Then Wilhelm II nodded slowly, appreciating the cleverness.
"Agreed," the Kaiser said.
He lifted his chin.
"Classify these vehicles as a top-secret weapon. From this moment forward, they are to be referred to only as Wassertanks in official documentation."
His eyes hardened.
"Any man who leaks information—regardless of rank—will be court-martialed."
The chill that ran through the circle was immediate.
"Yes, Your Majesty," the officers replied—suddenly very aware that secrets in an empire were enforced not by honor, but by fear.
Wilhelm II's gaze lingered on Oskar a moment longer, curiosity flickering through his satisfaction.
"Oskar," he asked quietly, "is there anything else hidden away?"
He had long accepted that his son's mind produced miracles.
What worried him—what always worried him—was not Oskar's genius.
It was whether the boy had the discipline not to ruin himself with his own impulses. Everyone knew Oskar's appetites: women, risk, speed, defiance. A brilliant prince could still die like a fool.
Oskar smiled, as if reading the thought.
"Father," he said lightly, "there is one more thing I want to show you."
He glanced toward the darkening horizon, where the last light bled into snow.
"But not today."
His smile widened, just slightly.
"We'll do it tomorrow."