Chapter 418: Cities of Light, Shadows of Silence
Over the course of the past few weeks, Bruno had been doing his best to overhaul the capital city of Tyrol on a practical miniature scale. He had enlisted the help of the German Armys’ Corps of Engineers best minds in the project.
This was simply a mockup, a protoype for the futue layout of all cities across Eruope. And it was progressing swimmingly with each passing day. But this was a distant future, Tesla had only just finished proving his prototype could work, and it would be another five years, perhaps even a decade before every city in the German Reich was powered by such revoluitionary technology.
It was perhaps because Bruno understood that this was a solution to a problem on a much larger timescale that while he marveled at the realization of these innovations which would soon be spreading across Europe, his thoughts drifted across the Atlantic. The United States, once a beacon of progress and innovation.
But In the wake of Germany’s triumph in 1916, the world found itself at a crossroads. The old empires of Europe lay fractured, their colonial grips loosening, while new powers emerged, eager to shape the future. Amidst this global upheaval, the United States remained steadfast in its isolationism, a sleeping giant unaware of the shifting tides that threatened to erode its influence.
The decision to remain neutral during the Great War had spared American lives but at a significant cost. The nation’s detachment from global affairs led to a stagnation that was both intellectual and economic.
The "brain drain" saw luminaries like Tesla, who once conducted experiments in New York, seeking more receptive environments in Europe. Particularly the fertile pastures of the German Reich where Bruno poached them away from their homeland in return for ample rewards and a far looser leash to work with.
Without the crucible of war to drive innovation, American industries lacked the impetus to evolve, resulting in overproduction and dwindling markets. Politically, the landscape was equally tumultuous.
The absence of Woodrow Wilson from leadership meant the progressive movements that sought to position America as a global mediator never took root. Instead, a series of administrations, deeply entrenched in isolationist policies, focused inward, neglecting the seismic shifts occurring globally.
In the power vacuums left by war torn European empires, nations in Latin America and the Caribbean seized the moment to assert their independence and redefine their identities. Mexico, for instance, perhaps emboldened by what they perceived to be weakness by the American Government made a push for a forgotten claim over the southwestern United States.
For the first time since the Mexican-American war had come to the shores of the United States, and it was once more from their southern neighbor. But the military of the United States had been neglected, without the foreign imperialistic policies of the progressive movement, the Great White Fleet had not received the funding necessaery to keep it capable of competing with modern adversaries, let alone receive proper maintanaince over the course of the last decade.