Chapter 163 - 163: A Nation of Babies

Count Alfred von Tirpitz stood at the mouth of the slipway like a man who had been shown a new religion and hadn't yet decided whether to kneel or burn it.

Inside the cavernous shed, the air was warm with industry—hot metal, oil, wet timber, and the sharp bite of fresh paint. Cranes crawled along rails overhead, chains creaking as they swung steel plates like pendulums. Thousands of workers moved across the hull and scaffolding in disciplined swarms, Prussian-blue uniforms bright against the iron. Hammers rang. Rivets snapped. Steam hissed somewhere deeper in the belly of the ship.

And in the center of it all lay the thing that made Tirpitz's mind refuse to sit still:

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