Oskar sat down as if he had merely proposed moving a railway station.
Hands folded. Expression calm. He waited for the room to do what old rooms always did when a young man said something unforgivable.
It didn't take long.
Moltke was the first to move—of course. His chair scraped back, his mouth already forming the shape of indignation before the thought had fully settled.
"Your Highness," he said sharply, "you cannot mean that. The Empire's eastern holdings may be scattered, but they are not worthless. Kiautschou—Qingdao—is among the most important overseas positions we possess. We invested years of diplomacy and enormous effort to acquire it. If we abandon it now, we announce to the world that Germany retreats the moment pressure rises. All our work will have been for nothing."
It was not only strategy in his voice. It was ownership. The old generation's possessiveness—maps colored by pride.
Across the table, Wilhelm II's face had darkened, not with theatrical anger but with something deeper: offense. Memory. The weight of time spent bending foreign courts to his will. The Kaiser had fought for that foothold in China. He had worn the humiliation and the triumph of it both. Qingdao was not merely a port—he had treated it as proof that Germany belonged among the world's masters.
Oskar did not blame him.
He knew what his father would be remembering: the Juye incident, the missionaries, the seizure, the diplomacy, the Eight-Nation Alliance marching into China while Europe watched and measured strength like men measure muscle. He knew Wilhelm would be seeing the city itself—once a fishing village, now a neat German town with schools and churches and order. Germany's own small Hong Kong, built not with conquest alone but with stubborn, expensive will.
To let it go was a loss of face.
And face, in empires, was blood.
Wilhelm's voice came cold.
"Oskar," he said, "I assume you have some grand plan yet again. So enlighten us. Why would you propose something so… un-German?"
Oskar smiled—not warmly, not cruelly, but with the quiet confidence of a man who had already run the numbers and buried the sentiment.
He leaned forward, elbows near the map, fingers steepled into a triangle like a judge preparing a verdict.
"Father," he said, "if war comes—and we all know it may—then the East becomes a trap."
Murmurs stirred.
He continued anyway.
"The Anglo-Japanese Alliance exists. If Europe burns, Britain will not allow us free passage. Japan will not hesitate to seize what it can. Our East Asia Squadron will be isolated. Our men in Qingdao and our people in Oceania will be cut off—captured, starved out, or destroyed. I will not pretend otherwise, and I will not gamble German lives on pride."
Moltke opened his mouth, but Oskar cut the space before the protest could become speech.
"Even if our fortifications are strong," Oskar said, "fortifications do not eat. They do not manufacture shells. They do not replace barrels, medicines, boots. A fortress without supply is not a fortress—it is a coffin with walls."
Tirpitz shifted then, slow and heavy, like a battleship turning its guns.
"Your Majesty," he said, choosing his words carefully, "Japan is not a small country anymore. It has proven itself a great power. It defeated Russia. Its navy grows rapidly. And its officers have studied our methods for years. If Japan strikes our eastern holdings, the distance alone will decide the outcome—regardless of bravery. Even a Moss Men garrison would run out of ammunition eventually if it cannot be supplied."
Tirpitz's eyes flicked toward Oskar—brief, measured.
"The Crown Prince's suggestion deserves consideration."
Moltke's nostrils flared.
"That is speculation," he snapped. "Japan may not even dare. We can reinforce. We can strengthen Qingdao. We have invested too much to throw it away like scrap."
Falkenhayn spoke next, calm where Moltke was sharp.
"Reinforce with what?" he asked quietly. "And through which sea? Even if we send men, how many can we truly send? How fast? How safely? The East is far. Too far. In war, distance becomes an enemy of its own."
Moltke scoffed. "What then if Japan attacks, we simply take back our losses after we win."
Tirpitz's gaze stayed steady.
"And the men we lose?" he asked. "The ships? The trained crews? Those cannot be reclaimed with signatures. Even victory will not restore what the sea swallows."
Wilhelm II said nothing. His hands remained on the table, but his knuckles had whitened. He looked like a man listening to an autopsy of his own ambition.
Oskar let them argue a moment longer—Moltke's wounded pride, Tirpitz's careful hesitation, Falkenhayn's cold realism, his father's heavy, unspoken resentment—until it all began to blur together. Not strategy. Not statecraft. Just old men circling their own bruised egos, arguing feelings while calling it logic.
He exhaled slowly, rubbed a hand down his face, and leaned back as if the sound itself had exhausted him.
"Enough," he said.
The word cut through the room cleanly. Conversation died on instinct, like a pack going still when a stronger voice speaks. Oskar did not raise his tone. He never needed to.
"You are debating this as if the choice is between glory and cowardice," he continued. "It is not. It is between reality and theater."
Moltke's mouth opened.
Oskar raised a single finger without looking at him. "Facts first."
He tapped the table once, close to the map.
"Oceania. Our so-called empire in the Pacific. How many Germans live there in total? Roughly sixteen hundred. Not armies. Not settlers in any meaningful sense. Clerks. Traders. Plantation overseers. Police. A few hundred here, a few dozen there. Most of those islands are not German in practice—they are native land held together by paperwork and the hope no one notices."
He let the words settle.
"Many of the people living there do not even know they are under German rule. That is how thin our presence truly is."
He went on without pause, his voice precise, almost clinical.
"And how did we acquire much of it? Spain sold us the Carolines and the Northern Marianas after losing to the United States—because Spain could no longer hold them. Twenty-five million pesetas. About seventeen million marks at the time. Adjusted, perhaps twenty-five million marks today."
The number hung in the air. Small. Embarrassingly small.
"Twenty-five million marks," Oskar repeated, "for islands our own diplomats described as tiny, sparsely populated, and marginally productive. Their primary value to us is copra—dried coconuts. Resources we can obtain just as easily, and far more securely, in Africa."
Moltke stiffened. Wilhelm's eyes narrowed.
Oskar did not react. He was no longer speaking to pride. He was speaking to the cold hard logic of numbers.
"And then there is Qingdao," he said, his tone shifting—not softer, but sharper. "Kiautschou. Yes. Our jewel. Our symbol in Asia. I understand what it represents."
His gaze flicked to his father, briefly. Not accusatory. Simply acknowledging the years of effort and humiliation bound up in that place.
"But what is it in reality?" Oskar asked. "A fortress at the end of a rope we do not control."
He leaned forward again, fingers steepled.
"The city's population is roughly sixty thousand—overwhelmingly Chinese. Perhaps two thousand Europeans among them. And if war comes?" He shook his head once. "Our garrison is not an army. It is a siege waiting to happen. Even if we scrape together every available man—including naval personnel—we might muster four thousand defenders."
He let that sink in.
"Four thousand men cannot defend the pride of an empire against Japan's navy and Britain's sea power."
Tirpitz's jaw tightened as he considered it. Falkenhayn did not speak at all.
He was listening.
Oskar spread his hands, almost bored by the resistance, as if the argument had become predictable long ago.
"So what do we actually lose if we release the East?" he asked. "Not resources. Coconuts and phosphates can be sourced elsewhere. Not manpower—this is not the evacuation of millions. It is a few thousand Germans at most: clerks, planters, traders, garrisons, their wives and children. We can bring them home, or redirect them to Africa—where our holdings are contiguous, defensible, and worth the effort."
He let his gaze drift across the older ministers, daring any of them to argue with the map itself.
"Even now," Oskar continued evenly, "in Cameroon, my three Bauxi towns are expanding at a steady pace. Families of Workers are settling in. Cash crops are increasing. Timber, rubber, Bauxite, minerals—real resources—are flowing outward thanks to German trade with the natives."
He did not smile. He did not need to.
"Also our losses there are negligible. Since restructuring administration under my system, we have not lost a single German to native uprisings. Discipline is firm. Incentives are clear. Alliances are maintained. We govern effectively as protectors, not oppressors."
A faint pause.
"The tribes now exercise greater autonomy among themselves. And yes, that has led to conflict between them." His tone remained clinical. "It is unfortunate. But it is no longer Germany's problem, as they are now free to do as they please."
He leaned forward just slightly.
"The point is that our African holdings have real weight behind them. They have value, they can be supplied. They can also be defended. And they can be made even greater with some more investment. And in my opinion that is an empire worth investing in."
His fingers tapped the table once, softly.
"Oceania and Qingdao are symbols. Africa is substance."
His tone never rose. It didn't need to.
"So yes," Oskar said, and the words were almost casual, "if we let go of the East, what we lose is face."
Moltke's cheeks colored. "Face matters—"
"Yes," Oskar cut in, still perfectly even. "It matters. I do not deny it. But I refuse to have German men die for pride dressed up as policy."
The room went quiet in that particular way it always did when a truth was stated plainly enough to insult everyone at once.
Oskar's voice didn't soften. It sharpened.
"But do not misunderstand me," he said. "This is not abandonment. It is conversion."
He tapped Qingdao on the map—one precise touch, like placing a seal.
"Kiautschou returns to China. Openly. Formally. We stop pretending we can hold it in a European war. In exchange we secure what matters: commercial privileges, investment guarantees, and legal protection for German firms and nationals. Germans remain there as merchants—not as a garrison waiting to be buried behind a wall."
His eyes moved around the table, collecting faces.
"And if war comes, German nationals can move inland under Chinese authority instead of dying at the end of the world so Berlin can boast it still owns a port."
Wilhelm's face tightened as if he'd swallowed iron.
Oskar did not flinch.
"And yes," he added, anticipating the moral outrage before it formed, "we make it explicit: no official missionary provocations. No imperial sermonizing that turns commerce into a crusade. We trade. We build. We invest. The port becomes leverage—not bait."
Then his finger slid across the Pacific, over the scatter of islands like crumbs spilled across an ocean too wide to police.
"As for Oceania," Oskar said, "the only power in the region strong enough to truly secure those islands—and the only one likely to accept them—is Japan."
Moltke's eyes sharpened, the old reflex of outrage arriving on time.
"To Japan?" he snapped. "That is madness. Britain will snarl. The Americans will glare. The French will protest."
"They can protest," Oskar said. "But the Japanese will still accept it—because they will understand what it is."
He leaned forward slightly, not to intimidate, but to make the room listen.
"A once-in-a-generation offer," he said. "A legal transfer. No war required. No fleet required. No blood required. Japan will not be offered such a gift again."
His voice stayed level, but the meaning underneath it was naked: take it clean now, or take it dirty later.
"And if war comes," Oskar added, "Japan will seize those islands anyway. The only difference is whether we gain something first—or lose men and ships and receive nothing but humiliation."
Tirpitz spoke at last, low and careful, like a man testing ice.
"And what price, Your Highness?"
Oskar's mouth did not smile, but his eyes did.
"More than Spain ever received from us," he said. "And enough that no one can pretend it was charity."
He let the sentence hang—just long enough for them to picture it: headlines, outrage, envy, the sheer weight of it.
Then he set the number down like a paperweight.
"Japan's state budget sits on the order of a billion marks," he said. "They can afford one hundred and twenty million for the entire package—if it is presented properly. And those funds do not vanish into ceremonies and medals. They go into what matters. Africa. Infrastructure. Fortifications. Rail. Production. A German Empire that can actually be supplied when Europe ignites."
He looked around the table again—at men who still treated prestige like armor, and at a Kaiser who carried trophies like both crown and wound.
"And if the public screams?" Oskar asked.
He shrugged, almost lazily.
"Let them scream at me. I will take the heat. Father—you present it as goodwill toward China and Japan, consolidation of German holdings, strategic foresight. An act chosen from strength, not forced by defeat."
He leaned back, hands folding again as if the verdict had already been stamped and filed.
"This is not retreat," he said. "It is refusal to be overextended—calculated, deliberate, and meant to improve Germany's position if the world finally loses its mind."
Silence answered him.
For once, even Moltke struggled to find words. He could always reach for pride—German dignity, imperial face, the shame of "yielding" to Asia while Europe watched. But Oskar had strangled those arguments with numbers and distance and the simple, ugly truth of ships and supply. Pride did not feed garrisons. Pride did not escort transports. Pride did not stop the sea.
So Moltke stayed silent—jaw tight, eyes hard—because anything he said now would sound like a boy defending a toy.
The others did the same, not because they loved the plan, but because they could feel its shape: unpleasant, effective, difficult to refute.
Wilhelm II sat rigid, troubled—not because he failed to understand, but because he understood too well. Qingdao was not merely a port. It was proof. A flag planted in the East. A piece of his reign hammered into stone and harbor and German streets. Letting it go felt like surrendering a part of Germany's pride—and a part of himself.
And behind that pride, lurking like a second shadow, was the fear he had whispered and shouted for years: the Yellow Peril. Japan rising. China waking. Populations too vast to be mocked forever. Japan counted in tens of millions—dangerous enough. But China—China was counted in hundreds of millions. If it centralized, modernized, and learned to use its weight like a weapon, then no European empire could pretend it would remain small forever. It would become a continent that marched.
That was what haunted Wilhelm: not today, not next year, but the direction of time.
Yet he did not lash out.
Because another truth sat beside the fear—newer, colder, more hopeful in its arrogance. Germany itself was swelling with people and industry. The birthrates were high. The nation was young. Already more than seventy million, and growing—an iron machine that, under Oskar's hand, seemed to be learning how to multiply itself. If Germany endured, if it did not waste itself chasing distant symbols, then perhaps the Kaiser's nightmare would not be a nightmare at all.
Perhaps Germany could outgrow it.
Perhaps Germany could outlast everyone.
At last Wilhelm exhaled—heavy, restrained, stripped of ceremony—and spoke like a man swallowing a bitter medicine because he knew it would keep him alive.
"Very well," he said. "We will proceed as Oskar proposes."
Relief did not arrive as triumph. It arrived as shoulders loosening, as a room of powerful men realizing they had finally chosen a path and could stop staring at the cliff edge.
"Yes, Your Majesty," Imperial Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow replied at once, his tone measured but decisive. Beside him, State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Alfred von Kiderlen-Waechter inclined his head in agreement, already shifting in his seat as if clauses and formulations were assembling themselves behind his eyes.
This would not be a military matter now. It would be a diplomatic earthquake. Treaties, memoranda, carefully worded announcements to calm markets and foreign ministries alike.
Oskar let out a slow breath.
The East, for the moment, was resolved.
He told himself the logic was sound: Japan would have less reason to strike Germany. Less reason to bind itself to Britain with blood. And if Japan gained islands and prestige in the Pacific, perhaps it would have less hunger to reach into China and tear out a port by force.
Perhaps—just perhaps—one future war could be starved before it learned to breathe.
He knew it was naïve.
He knew the world did not become reasonable simply because a plan was intelligent.
But still, for a moment, he allowed himself the smallest hope—that this time, reason might win a few years.
That the century might bleed a little less.