Chapter 40: Victory Comes

Because of his slightly introverted personality, from childhood to adulthood, Lynn participated in very few public elections, and most of the time he watched the candidates from the audience, and as a soldier, officer, staff officer and commander of the Third Reich, he except for occasionally using words to prove himself and persuade the other party, most of the time he also belonged to the low-key doer. In the previous congressional race, Stupfer was in the limelight, but this time, Lynn had no choice but to take on the historic responsibility. After days of deliberation, he has integrated himself into a leadership role, exuding victory from the inside out.

Of the 500 new MPs gathered in Berlin, 209 were Baath members, and more than 40 percent seemed to have a big advantage, but Lynn was keenly aware that only about half of these 209 were credible core members of the Baath Party, and that some of them disappeared at the height of the struggle, and only then did they emerge like gophers when the Soviets backed down under pressure from all sides, and some were so well-known and influential in the local area that they could become members of parliament regardless of the party they voted to. They have only recently joined the Ba'ath Party, and their loyalty cannot be compared with that of the old party members.

In addition to the uncertainties within the Ba'ath Party, the Christian Alliance, and other parties that have reached a cooperative agreement, may also defect at critical moments, and all the phenomena that have occurred in history remind Lynn that the seemingly smooth road ahead is actually full of hidden dangers, and if she falls in this final stage, the sacrifices and risks taken before will be meaningless.

According to the rules of the political game for Germany jointly established by the Western allies and the Soviet Union, the parliament first elects the president of the country through a series of processes of nomination, speech and voting, and then the president of the country nominates the chancellor. These rules are similar to those of post-World War II democratic elections in Germany, in which the president, chancellor, and cabinet are not the result of a combination of political forces and competition, and do not require the elected party to have otherworldly leadership qualities, provided that no one party alone is allowed to hold power. Perhaps negligently, or perhaps with other intentions, the Allies and the Soviet Union imposed strict restrictions on the eligibility of candidates to stand for election, except for no age limit, which meant that anyone who was a legal citizen of Germany, whether a stinking hairy boy or a faltering old man, could theoretically be elected president and chancellor of Germany.

Hugo. Horst's identity file states that he was born on July 11, 1922, and was 27 years old when he accepted his nomination to become Germany's presidential candidate. Even if he was not elected, he was the oldest presidential candidate in German history, and his number one rival, the presidential candidate of the German Communist Party, Otto Brown. Barnikl is 33 years old. Such a "young age" is also unprecedented in the successive German presidential elections after the fall of the Hunter Sauron dynasty, and as for the other two presidential candidates selected by other parties, although their age is more suitable for the role of president, their experience and prestige are far behind.

As the most popular presidential candidate, Lynn was the first to be nominated and the first to speak on stage. On the floor of the Reichstag, he was like a Stupfer possessed soul, outlining a beautiful vision for the future of Germany for the parliamentarians, and he was so emotionally invested that even he couldn't help but indulge in it. If it is an ordinary civilian who sits in the seat of a councillor. Lynn would have won without having to vote, but politicians often prioritized their own interests, so they reacted calmly to Lynn's speech. That doesn't mean Otto, though. Banikl was able to turn the tide by his greatest strength and greatest disadvantage over the other three presidential candidates: the KPD's background, which was strongly supported by the Soviet Union. During the Soviet occupation. The KPD controlled all levels of government institutions in Germany, and the red ideology was also quite attractive to the German people who had experienced years of war, but the high-level leaders of the KPD failed to take advantage of these conditions, many of them were cloth clothes without any leadership experience, and the "nouveau riche" situation made them confused in power, reckless and bullying, coupled with the lack of strong restraint by the Soviet occupation forces, the whole of Germany was in a miasma. The living conditions of the population were even lower than during the Allied occupation, and the loss of popular support eventually led to the collapse of the KPD. In order to regain power in Germany through political elections, the KPD carried out a rapid and decisive reshuffle with the support of the Soviet high-level leadership, and Banikel, who had previously served as the chief executive of the Otbus region, became the new general secretary of the KPD by virtue of his outstanding political achievements, and the absolute superiority of the KPD in the local elections in Otbus also greatly increased the confidence of his own people.........

In his campaign speech, Banikle started with a low profile. He frankly analyzed the many shortcomings of the KPD regime during its time in power, especially the suppression of national industry in the field of industry and commerce, and also expressed his idea of joint governance in the form of rhetorical questions -- to govern the country jointly by all parties, to avoid the mistakes of military dictatorship, to rationally distribute industrial and commercial resources, and to achieve the goal of national peace and security through the restoration of comprehensive national strength. Although there were no flowery rhetoric or promises throughout the speech, the simple content of the speech greatly changed people's impression of the KPD, and even Lynn had a strong feeling that this person would be a formidable opponent not only today but also in the future.

On the road to the pinnacle of power, every opponent should not be underestimated. In the third presidential candidate, Willie of the Christian League. After Stock's speech, the Liberal Democratic Party candidate Bodo. Reitberg was the last to take the floor. The party won only two regional advantages in central Germany, winning 33 seats in the Reichstag, far less influential than the Baath Party, the KPD, and the Christian Union, but Reitberg's speech was a blockbuster. He advocated industrial concentration under the free market, and emphasized that Germany must make every effort to restore and expand its industrial and technological advantages, and concentrate the country's strength to rebuild industry, restore and expand trade and exports with the technological advantages of industrial products, and use trade increase to restore national strength and improve people's livelihood. He admired the iron-blooded chancellor "Bismarck", an outstanding representative in the history of German politics, and hinted that Germany should first maintain its glory in the next few years, wait until its national strength is strong, and then use political diplomacy and military deterrence to recover its lost territory. He advocated that a strong country should have a strong leader and a strong policy, and even if it fell into a trough temporarily, it must not give up the dignity of the national body. When Reitberg's speech ended, a considerable number of parliamentarians gave a standing ovation, which far exceeded the intensity and duration of the two previous candidates, but the international observers who were in charge of monitoring the scene, especially those from France and the Soviet Union, had grim expressions on their faces.

After a round of speeches, Congress proceeded to the voting process. After a tense and depressed wait, the Swiss Sant, President of the International Observers, announced the results: Hugo. Horst topped the list with 46.8 percent of the vote, followed by Barnikl and Reitberg with 28.1 percent and 20.5 percent, and the large but less organized Christian coalition received only a symbolic 4.6 percent.

Although Lynn, backed by the Ba'ath Party, had a significant advantage in the vote, he unfortunately missed out on the first round of the election, and according to the election rules, the second round of voting will be held in Congress the next day, and the candidate will have a brief opportunity to speak. However, on the same night, a series of vicious arson incidents occurred in the Berlin city, and the arrested people claimed to be supporters of the KPD, and the arson was to vent their dissatisfaction with the manipulation of the voting results by the Western world and the imperial forces. Early the next morning, many of Berlin's street billboards were plastered with leaflets that attacked Hugo in fiery terms. As the commander of the uprising, Horst showed contempt for the lives of the people, declaring that once such a man became president of the country, he would inevitably purge dissidents once the regime was firmly established, and then embark on a dangerous path of rearmament and military expansion.

In front of the Reichstag building, thousands of stunned and indignant people shouted slogans to resist war and resist dictatorship, trying to influence the parliamentarians who participated in the vote. Field Marshal Weix led the procession, neither armed nor violent, but used their prestige to intimidate the "people", and this situation had a profound effect on the vacillating parliamentarians. In his speech before the vote, Lynn, who was the last to appear, made a killer move, saying bluntly that the German Baath Party could mobilize 100,000 members to build up pressure in Berlin, but for the sake of German independence and peace, they would rather be framed and lose than bury this hard-won political election opportunity, and if the second round of voting still could not be decided, they did not rule out the possibility of a coalition with the KPD......

10 September 1949, Berlin, Germany. In the second round of the congressional vote, the Baath Party's presidential candidate, Hugo. With 51.7 percent of the vote, Horst won a decisive victory, and although the Soviet observers believed that there was a human factor in the vote, the result was finally ruled valid by all international observers, and the young president of Germany and the world under the age of 30 became the youngest president in the history of Germany and the world. After this, the conservative Willie of the Christian Union. Stock's nomination for Chancellor was voted for, and the Baath Party and the Christian Union came to power, which was considered an important turning point in the stability of war-torn Germany. Moscow soon announced that it would recognize the new German government and would fulfill the terms of the armistice declaration, and that the last troops stationed in Germany would be withdrawn immediately after the completion of the defense handover, but Germany's independent sovereignty was still guaranteed by the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union would retain the right to intervene in the event of an illegal armed entry into Germany, under any name or by any means.