Königsberg was not merely a provincial city.
It was the capital of East Prussia—Germany's eastern hinge—and it wore the old world the way an aging soldier wore his scars: proudly, even when the scars no longer stopped the blade.
From the outside, the place still looked like a fortress.
Not in the romantic way poets imagined, but in the practical geometry of the nineteenth century—angles, moats, bastions, gates built to impress and to delay. The famous city gates stood like stone statements from another age, and beyond them lay a wider ring of detached forts—later additions meant to deny an enemy an easy seizure of the provincial capital.
Even men in 1909 understood the problem.
Artillery had grown meaner.
Steel had grown sharper.
A shell did not care about beautiful masonry or proud angles. The old fortress concepts—those neat, confident shapes on a map—had become questionable under modern fire.
But the works still existed.
Stone. Earth. Geometry.
Waiting.
Oskar watched the city approach through the A-Class window, breath faint in the warm cabin, and felt the strange tension he had come to recognize in Europe's great institutions: the future pressing forward, the past refusing to move.
Königsberg was exactly that.
A fortress skin.
A soft underbelly.
Because East Prussia's defense had never truly been only walls.
It was geography.
It was rail.
It was the ability to move faster inside your own territory than an invader could move through it.
The Masurian Lake District lay to the south and east—dark water and marshland, narrow passages between lakes, corridors that could swallow armies and force them into predictable routes. And Prussia, in its most Prussian fashion, had reinforced nature's grip with fortifications placed like fingers around a throat.
Fortress Boyen at Lötzen—built on a narrow isthmus between the great lakes—was one of those fingers. A mid-nineteenth century fortress meant to control movement through the lake belt, to make the province's eastern approaches harder to turn into an open road.
Again—old thinking.
But not useless.
Not if you understood how to use it.
And that was the real doctrine, the doctrine men like Schlieffen had built their faith on: Germany's interior position. Germany's railways. Germany's ability to concentrate quickly on threatened points while an enemy—Russia, especially—took longer to gather itself.
In the old logic, the West received the hammer.
France first.
Paris.
Decision.
And the East?
The East held.
Not by winning glorious battles immediately, but by refusing collapse—buying time through maneuver, rail mobility, and interior lines. Using fortified nodes and difficult terrain not as a "wall," but as a lever: slow the invader, shape him, force him into bad routes, then strike where he was weak.
It was not heroic.
It was survival mathematics.
Oskar understood it intimately, because he had read history like a man reading his own obituary.
And now he was here—inside the hinge.
His appointment as Inspector of the Eastern Army Inspectorate had not been announced with fanfare. There were no parades. No open proclamations to satisfy newspapers hungry for drama.
It had been done the Prussian way.
Quietly.
Silently.
As if moving an entire army's future command structure was no more than shifting a pen on a desk.
Even his arrival in Königsberg had been handled discreetly.
The special train carrying him had stopped short of the city at a smaller station—an unremarkable place meant to keep eyes away. There, two men had waited for him in the winter air like pieces of history pulled forward by invisible hands.
General Paul von Hindenburg.
Brigadier General Erich von Ludendorff—acting chief of staff.
Hindenburg, broad and calm, the pillar.
Ludendorff, lean and intense, the blade.
And sitting in the back of the car with them, Oskar felt that familiar quiet absurdity: he had not "earned" these men through decades of marching and academy drills. He had earned them the way he earned everything else in this life—
Through leverage.
Through vision.
Through money no one wanted to admit existed.
It was crude.
It was effective.
The A-Class glided along the road toward Königsberg's military district, tires whispering over winter stone. The driver kept the pace gentle, as if even the car understood this was not a victory lap.
Ahead, the headquarters of I Army Corps waited—solid, disciplined, and old, like a brick expression of Prussian certainty.
And inside that headquarters, men were gathering.
Not crowds.
Not a ceremony.
Commanders.
Officers who would one day become the bones of the Eighth Army if war forced the plan into reality.
With the exception of a few individuals, the senior leadership of the eastern formations were already present—those tied to the three corps that anchored East Prussia's defense.
Oskar knew the structure, because he had forced himself to learn it the way a monk learned a text: line by line, until ignorance had no place to hide.
In wartime mobilization, the Eighth Army in East Prussia would be formed around:
I Corps
XVII Corps
XX Corps
And on mobilization it would be reinforced by I Reserve Corps, with cavalry divisions and Landwehr/Landsturm security forces filling the rear areas and guarding rail lines, depots, bridges—everything an invading army loved to cut.
Taken together, that meant an army that could grow to the low–mid two-hundred-thousands, depending on mobilization and attachments.
A great force.
And still—against Russia—never enough.
In front of the I Army Corps Headquarters, a small group of German generals stood waiting in the winter air, their breath fogging as they spoke in low, unguarded tones.
"The Emperor has truly taken the lead this time," one of them said, shaking his head faintly. "An eastern army command in peacetime—no one expected that."
He was Lieutenant General August von Mackensen, commander of the XX Corps, broad-shouldered, sharp-eyed, already wearing the air of a man who had survived more than one political storm.
"And fewer still expected His Highness the Crown Prince to be placed over it," he added with a dry smile.
Another officer nodded.
"True—but talent does not come only from the parade ground," he replied. This was Lieutenant General Hermann von François, commander of the I Corps, leaner, more intense, a man whose eyes carried a restless intelligence. "His Highness may not be an Army man by upbringing, but he has Hindenburg and Ludendorff beside him. That alone changes the equation."
Mackensen hummed quietly in agreement.
"With those two," he said, "the Eighth will not be idle."
In peacetime, the Imperial German Army did not maintain standing field armies.
It maintained corps—permanent, territorial formations—and army inspectorates, which existed to oversee training, planning, and mobilization preparation.
Field armies—the great numbered armies—were born only at war.
That was what made this moment unusual.
What Wilhelm II had authorized was not a fully formed Eighth Army, but something close to it: an embryonic eastern army command, built around the East Prussian inspectorate and the corps stationed there. A staff that could plan, test doctrine, coordinate equipment trials, and prepare mobilization years in advance—under a single guiding hand.
That guiding hand now belonged to Oskar.
It was an exception.
And exceptions always bred resentment.
"Well," Mackensen said, allowing himself a thin grin, "some men will not take this news well."
François smiled too.
They both knew exactly who he meant.
Lieutenant General Maximilian von Prittwitz, commander of the XVII Corps—a man notorious throughout East Prussia for his arrogance and his confidence in imperial favor. Prittwitz had never been subtle about his ambitions; more than once he had openly declared that the future Eighth Army would naturally fall under his command.
After all, he was the Emperor's favorite.
Or so he believed.
Oskar's appointment had shattered that certainty.
And with it, Prittwitz's pride—publicly.
Which explained why, on the very day the Crown Prince arrived in Königsberg, Prittwitz had suddenly declared himself ill and requested leave to return to Berlin.
"He chose a poor day to fall sick," François said quietly.
"If His Highness is as approachable as the rumors suggest, then perhaps he will be forgiving," Mackensen replied. "If not…"
He didn't finish the sentence.
Prittwitz's career was already wobbling.
"If he leaves a poor impression on the Crown Prince," François said, "he can forget about remaining in the eastern command structure."
Mackensen's expression hardened.
"Hmph. That man should be transferred out regardless. He brings more trouble than strength. The East does not need that sort of arrogance."
François didn't argue.
Then—
The conversation died instantly.
From down the street came the soft, controlled hum of an engine.
A black Muscle Motors A-Class sedan rolled into view, its polished surface reflecting pale winter light, tires crunching lightly over frost. The car slowed as it approached the headquarters, and the waiting officers straightened instinctively.
The vehicle stopped.
The door opened.
Oskar stepped out.
The car shifted slightly under the release of his weight.
In the winter light of 1909, the Crown Prince stood just over two meters tall, broad as a doorframe, his general's uniform sitting on him like it had been designed for this moment alone. Dark blue cloth. Gold thread. White gloves. A presence that drew the eye before the mind could react.
Behind him emerged General Paul von Hindenburg, calm and immovable, followed by General Erich von Ludendorff, lean, sharp, already scanning faces.
François and Mackensen moved forward immediately.
"Your Highness," François said, bowing. "Welcome to Königsberg."
"Your Highness," Mackensen echoed.
Hindenburg leaned in slightly and murmured their names to Oskar.
Oskar smiled.
"My men, General François, General Mackensen," he said warmly. "Thank you for coming to greet me."
His gaze moved over the assembled officers—measuring posture, eyes, confidence.
Then he noticed who was missing.
The absence was obvious.
Oskar's smile faded.
"Why do I not see General von Prittwitz?" he asked calmly.
The question landed like a dropped plate.
Mackensen answered, careful but honest.
"Your Highness, General von Prittwitz reported himself unwell and requested leave to return to Berlin."
Oskar's eyes sharpened.
"He returned to Berlin?" he repeated. "Without informing me?"
As commander of the eastern army command—embryonic or not—Prittwitz's leave should have crossed his desk first.
François cleared his throat.
"It appears he requested permission directly from the General Staff."
Oskar said nothing.
But the temperature around him dropped.
"Hmph."
The sound was quiet—but final.
In that moment, Lieutenant General von Prittwitz ceased to exist in Oskar's future plans.
Disrespect on the first day was not ignorance.
It was a challenge.
And Oskar had not come east to tolerate challenges.
Hindenburg's expression hardened.
Ludendorff's eyes flashed.
The message was clear to everyone present:
The Iron Prince had arrived.
And the first test had already been failed.