5-September-1915
"What is the meaning of this… why are you taking these things?" shouted a Russian aristocrat in German while my men entered his palace and removed all valuables
"By order of the regent all your properties are nationalized and become part of the public treasury of the Kingdom of Ukraine, this decision is final and irreversible, make sure your guards do not interfere, they should surrender their weapons… but nothing you have in the Kingdom of Ukraine belongs to you anymore" I said while walking in front of him and ordering my men to subdue the noble's guards
"These lands are mine… they were granted to me in my name…" said the Russian noble
"They are not anymore… you are free to do whatever you want now, but you have no possessions here… so go wherever you wish, but these lands are no longer yours" I said while walking inside the palace
"These pieces are solid gold" said Hans while inspecting one of the chairs in the dining room
"They need to be dismantled and sent to storage, break the chair if necessary, everything must go back to the government since we need those funds" I said while watching my men continue looting the mansion and extracting everything of value
The last few days had been very intense since the moment had come to search the entire city, every house, every warehouse to find everything of value inside them
We had gathered several tons of food in the city and had been so successful due to the efficiency of the process that groups had already begun to be sent to other cities and towns, first to establish police garrisons, adding many Austrian officers who spoke Ukrainian so they could guide those patrols as liaison officers for communication
Food distribution programs had also begun, with everything we had acquired we had enough food for approximately two months to give them what they needed to survive, but of course we might have to significantly reduce the amount of food everyone receives since they would need to endure at least a full year before the next harvest, so the only thing left was to find a way to obtain more money and food
Wilhelm had already begun producing paper currency, Ukrainian marks, and had started distributing them among the population of Kiev with the intention of backing the gold that had been confiscated from the entire city and covering twenty percent of food prices, which had clearly been reduced so the state could gain some breathing room with what we would eventually have to return
We had not even finished settling in when German demands arrived regarding how many tons of wheat we were expected to produce and how much we needed to generate if we wanted to sustain ourselves, and while it was achievable, we were starting from nothing, absolutely nothing, and we had to feed everyone, which meant producing food not only for forty million Ukrainians for an entire year… but also for twenty million Germans, without even considering that this could increase once all harvest data was available
And they had only given me twenty five million marks… they demanded results as if I had been given the seven hundred million I had requested… clearly someone had interfered with those expectations, I would not be surprised if it was Hindenburg, but there was nothing left but to move forward, even if I was removed from the position I still had to feed Ukraine… or the deaths would be on my hands…
Fortunately my manpower problems were beginning to be solved, Austria-Hungary had approved the same program I had created and around nine thousand Austrians had been recruited to join my organization, so I now had twenty two thousand men under my command and was beginning to organize patrols in the main cities of Ukraine that were relatively safe from the front, as well as patrols along the roads
But first of all we had to requisition food and gold, where the food was stored in granaries within the same towns where it was distributed, and the gold was sent to Kiev in exchange for paper currency
A woman's scream caught my attention and drawing my pistol I approached the room where the sound had come from, seeing that a group of my men was struggling with what appeared to be an elegantly dressed lady
My eyes focused on the object in question, a gold necklace around her neck that my men were trying to remove
"Stop screaming and take off the necklace" I said raising my voice while noticing a group of servants standing with their heads lowered watching everything
The woman said something in Russian but Ferdinand was not with us to translate what she was saying so her words were meaningless to me, so I simply aimed upward with the pistol and fired
Finally subdued the woman quickly removed the necklace and handed it to my men
"The earrings too" I said pointing at the earrings in her ears, she hesitated for a moment not knowing what to do until one of my men grabbed her ear and removed them
"Check those boxes and furniture there could be jewelry" I said leaving the room where I saw the Russian noble trying to enter the hallway but my men were keeping him outside
After things calmed down everything was removed, barrels of beer, wine, cured meat and sack after sack of food they had stored to keep building up reserves in Ukraine
This was already the final stage of everything, where everything had been taken from the Russian nobles and Russified Polish nobles, other types of nobles would be dealt with later, since from what I understood the idea was to drastically reduce the nobility that held significant power and confiscate their lands to give them to the peasants, although I had intervened there delaying that process since as long as the land remained nationalized it allowed us to better control production before distributing it through agrarian reform
This had been repeated in Odessa and Ekaterinoslav, which were the largest cities under our control, and together with Kiev enough food had been gathered to feed the population for a few months while the same process began in the countryside
Recently the administration had changed location since the governor's palace had become too small for the Austro-Hungarian administrators Wilhelm managed to find who could read Ukrainian and speak German
Even though the regent wanted everything to be spoken and handled in Ukrainian, German had also been enforced within the administration to process documents, which required additional personnel to translate and handle information in German
The Mariyinsky Palace was now the seat of government, where the entire high administration gathered
"We have finished the gold requisitions in the cities… we obtained one ton, with one hundred twenty kilograms per…" I said reporting the numbers my men had given me
"You are joking…" he said, looking at me with clear disappointment
"That is what we managed to requisition, we checked everything… houses, shops, mansions and palaces, warehouses, ports, that was all we could obtain from the search" I said nodding
"This is nowhere near what I expected…" the regent said, standing up and pacing back and forth with a hand on his chin
"I can assure you nothing was lost along the way, everything arrived as it should… everything was requisitioned just like the food" I said, holding his gaze
"I do not doubt your integrity, Major Karl… it is just that I expected at least ten to twenty times more gold than what you told me… I thought with this I could have something to negotiate with Romania for part of their harvest… at least so the Ukrainian mark would have some value for them… because right now it has none" the regent said, clearly worried
"The Russian nobles probably took everything that was not nailed down or too difficult to transport… only those who thought nothing would happen stayed, and we took everything from them… the rest are just rubles which, beyond their material value, are not of much use to us" I replied, feeling the pressure the regent must have been under
"The factories are stopped, the market is adjusting to the shock of separating from Russia… we cannot charge our… masters… for the use of the railways… and the largest mines that could solve our financial problems, coal, iron, manganese, are all in the battle zone… until they are taken there is nothing we can do… we have nothing…" he said, grabbing his head and clenching his teeth
"Calm down… do not panic… we are not in an ideal situation… but I suppose we can still do something… you are a Habsburg archduke… you can request a large loan from an Austrian bank… use the influence of your… grandfather, great uncle, your relatives… and try to make something happen… the most important thing is to fight the famine" I said, placing a hand on his shoulder as he seemed close to breaking
"We are distant relatives… and my father… he could help, but because of my decision I ruined his chances at the Polish crown, so we are not on good terms, I do not think he will give me anything… and the only thing that made me important was that by law I could be part of parliament… now I cannot… so I have lost everything that gave me influence in Austria-Hungary" said the regent
"We cannot save everyone, it would be naive to say that… I will try to inform the Kaiser of the situation so he can attempt to send more funds or pressure Romania into negotiating a fair deal for food and livestock… now that requisitions have passed the town by town phase we will not get large quantities unless we get lucky, but we can still obtain food in other ways… there are forests… we can cut them, sell the wood or process it into fishing boats, obtain fish from the Black Sea… create groups to search forests for mushrooms and roots… we may still be within the season before snowfall… there are still things we can do" I said seriously
"What about that method of yours to produce food in winter, is it feasible… here" said the regent
"It is… but… I am not here just for altruism… I want to help… but I also want to make money… I have two loans to pay… they are not cheap, so I hope you understand that I need to profit from something… I broke my head trying to understand greenhouse systems and how to apply them, so it is fair that I receive something very generous from the Kingdom of Ukraine" I said, watching his expression change
"What do you want…" asked the regent while running his thumb across his lower lip
"Land near Kiev… to the south, to be precise… they are state lands… if they were in my name I could, without hesitation, make massive investments… use the Kaiser's budget to build tractor factories and try to bring in industry to process phosphates into industrial fertilizers… and see if it is feasible to buy livestock somewhere… with that we can try to solve the next harvest" I said seriously
"You are not going to profit, right… I cannot afford that… I cannot exploit my people while they suffer…" said the regent firmly
"No… we depend on Germany and Austria-Hungary, we have to be as efficient as possible… if necessary we make no profit in the short term, but I can do it next year when there is more food… that is where… but not during this emergency" I replied, nodding
"Good… if I do this, you will put all your agricultural ingenuity under the Kingdom of Ukraine" he asked, stepping closer to his desk
"I have to if I do not want to lose the position, but what I offer is my greenhouse system, engineers who already know how to build them and connections with German industry to obtain glass panels, steel and everything else needed…" I said, looking at him directly
"Good… get to work… use all the land you need… based on that I will grant it to you in your name with full ownership" said the regent, slowly nodding as he closed his eyes
"Good… I am heading to the train, I will request the telegraph, by tomorrow we should have those experts here and I will redirect all work from Posen to here" I said with a smile
"Do it" he said before I quickly left toward the train station
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