Re: Blood and Iron

Chapter 728: The Age of Isolation is Over

The Situation Room beneath the White House had gone silent.

The large projection screens still showed the aerial photographs, grainy, ghostly, half-obscured by clouds; but the implications were already understood.

Where the port of St. John’s had stood that morning, there was now only a gray smear of twisted steel and burning oil slicks.

The Atlantic, once considered the moat of democracy, had turned into its open wound.

President Roosevelt sat hunched forward at the head of the table, hands clasped beneath his chin.

His cigarette burned untouched between his fingers.

To his right, the Chief of Naval Operations spoke in a voice that wavered between disbelief and outrage.

“They didn’t just hit a shipyard, Mr. President. They erased it. Every hull, every drydock, every escort ship. Radar stations across the Canadian east coast went blind ten minutes before impact. Our analysts believe the Germans jammed them. We didn’t even know that was possible! They have reach we didn’t think possible.”

A long, tight silence followed.

The President exhaled, smoke curling through the dim light. “Are you telling me not a single radar picked up the enemy’s signature?”

“Briefly, we dispatched our nearest wing of fighters embedded with the Canadians in Newfoundland, but they were shot down before we could get a proper idea on the scale of the enemy force.”

Another voice, sharp, nasal, impatient; the Secretary of War.

“We should have expected this. We’ve been so focused on North Africa, we left the entire northern hemisphere wide open. If Berlin can reach Newfoundland, they can hit Halifax next. Maybe even New York.”

That drew murmurs around the table. The idea, New York under air raid, had once been absurd. Now it didn’t sound absurd enough.

Roosevelt leaned back in his chair. His voice was calm, but everyone in the room could hear the iron beneath it.

“So you’re telling me that after spending a year, three fleets, and a billion dollars to secure the coast of north Africa, that in doing so I have left the Atlantic undefended?”

The Secretary of War didn’t answer. The silence was answer enough.

The Army Chief of Staff cleared his throat. “Sir, the campaign in North Africa is entering its final phase. We’re securing access through the Gibraltar strait. Once we have done so, the Spanish Armed Forces will not be enough to stop our invasion of the European continent. The German bulwark will be broken.”

Roosevelt cut him off. “Then we win a desert and lose a continent.”

He rose, pushing back from the table, pacing slowly toward the wall map.

The Atlantic loomed large across it, blue lines tracing convoy routes from Norfolk to Casablanca, from Halifax to London. All of them now vulnerable.

“The Germans couldn’t cross the ocean in 1914,” Roosevelt said quietly. “We built our foreign policy on that fact. We believed the Atlantic was a barrier. It seems we’ve forgotten what happens when the enemy learns to swim.”

A junior intelligence officer, a man barely out of his twenties, voice trembling, spoke up from the back.

“Sir, signal intercepts suggest the Luftstreitkräfte launched from bases in Greenland under formal treaty with Denmark. That puts them within striking range of the entire Eastern Seaboard.”

Heads turned sharply.

The Secretary of State frowned. “Greenland? That’s Danish territory. They’re neutral.”

“Neutral,” the intelligence officer replied, “doesn’t mean empty. The Germans brokered security agreements with Denmark nearly half a decade ago. Do you remember what happened to the HMCS Ottawa? Back then the Danes said it had suddenly exploded, but we knew better. The Germans have clearly had a larger military presence there than they should have for years.”

The President’s expression hardened. “So the Reich has forward bases on our doorstep. Christ Almighty.”

He turned to his aides. “Get me General Marshall, Admiral King, and Secretary Knox back here by nightfall. I want new contingency plans, continental air defense, coastal fortifications, and naval intercept protocols for long-range sorties. The Atlantic is no longer a highway; it’s the front line.”

—

By evening, the Oval Office had transformed into a command post. Teleprinters rattled without pause.

Aides moved in and out carrying decoded reports from Ottawa, Halifax, and spies embedded in Europe. Or at least those who still remained undetected.

The mood was brittle, something between denial and revelation.

Roosevelt sat with his advisers, the lamp throwing his shadow long across the desk. “How soon can we replace the Avalon fleet?”

“Not soon enough,” Admiral King said. “We can spare a few destroyers from the Pacific reserves, but our heavy carriers are already stretched thin. Every shipyard is committed to the African supply chain.”

“And if we leave North Africa unfinished?”

“Then we give up any chance of invading Europe,” King said flatly. “And the Germans will be on our shores by Christmas….”

Roosevelt rubbed his temples. “Gentlemen, I won’t have the United States caught between oceans with no fleet to command either.”

He gestured to the map pinned across his wall. A red string connected Washington to Halifax, to the burning wrecks off Newfoundland. “This,” he said, “is no longer a war that will be fought beyond our home soil. And the Germans just proved it.”

The Secretary of State hesitated. “Public opinion won’t take that easily, sir. The American people were told victory in Africa would secure peace. Now…”

“Now,” Roosevelt interrupted, “they’ll have to learn that peace is never secured. Only bought again, and again.”

He turned toward the open window. The wind carried the faint sound of sirens, an air raid drill, newly reinstated.

“The Canadians believed the same lie we did, that the ocean would keep them safe. That Geography was our greatest defense. I intend to make sure that lie dies here, not in Manhattan.”

—

That night, at a late emergency session of the Joint Chiefs, the first plans were drawn up for Operation Sentinel, a rapid militarization of the North Atlantic.

The orders were clear:

Deploy fighter wings to Halifax and Labrador. Reinforce radar and anti-air coverage along the New England coast. Divert a quarter of the North African logistics fleet to home defense. Begin construction of a new forward base in Newfoundland within sixty days.

It was a logistical nightmare, and the political equivalent of an admission of failure.

As the meeting adjourned, Roosevelt lingered behind, staring at the map under the dim yellow lights.

His aides had gone, leaving only the hum of the teleprinter and the faint crackle of the fireplace.

He spoke softly, to no one in particular.

“I sacrificed the ideals of our nation, and restored order through bloodshed, and jackboots. For all our banners of liberty, we had become what we feared… an empire of necessity. And this entire time, he had the ability to kick down our door and ravage our homeland.”

He took his cigarette, pressed it to the ashtray, and watched the smoke curl into nothing.

“Gentlemen,” he whispered to the ghosts of the room, “the age of isolation is officially over.”