Dieter stared out over from the window, his back turned to the princesses. Their horns had been covered by magic suppressors, and they were incapable of performing even the most basic of spells. Celestia and Luna, assuming that Dieter’s attention was not upon them tried to remove the suppressors. They wouldn’t come off, and each tug was greeted with agony. They continued, nevertheless.

Dieter suddenly spoke. “I wouldn’t do that too much. If you remove the suppressors, your horns will go with them. It is, I am told, excruciating.”

Celestia and Luna blanched in surprise. They thought that he hadn’t noticed their movements. Outside, fires continued to burn, their orange glow casting eerie shadows in the dawn’s light. Dieter nodded to himself. The princesses were suppressed, and nature still took its course. They had simply used it to control the populace. It was pathetic. They had to find a way to keep to populace complacent through pretending that they were deities. Domination through the threat of violence was much better at keeping the population under control, but alert.

“Why are you like this? Why are you so cold and violent? Why are you so sadistic? Does nothing compute with you?” Celestia asked, trying to play on his conscience.

Dieter smiled coldly. He turned to face the Princesses, who found themselves thoroughly chilled by his expression.

“You think I enjoy this, don’t you?” He asked, “You think that I kill, torture, and dominate for fun. You think that I laugh as I work. Everything computes with me, Celestia. I simply view things without the taint of emotion. Emotions only cause pain. I know this first hand.”

Celestia blinked, her puzzlement evident.

“You believe that peace can be won through pacifism, through non-aggression. Peace is won by one thing, and one thing alone. Strength. To be feared is much better than to be loved. Fear ensures loyalty and discipline, and by extension, peace. Pacifism pertains to a lack of loyalty, as people rebel against your will.
This is plainly evident with you, Celestia. In the course of a millennium, you have been reduced to a powerful figurehead. Although you officially had supreme executive power, you were somewhat limited by the noble houses. They did not outright usurp you simply because they were afraid of the people, and your raw magical ability. It is possible they may have even feared your student, Twilight Sparkle. They believed that she was going to enforce your rule somehow, perhaps with their own elimination. The ordinary ponies thought of you and your sister as ‘deities’, and they believed that you controlled sun and moon. This is physically impossible, despite your powers, and was likely only a way of keeping everyone in check.” Dieter spoke coldly, his face giving nothing away.

Celestia was shocked. Dieter had seen through her veil that easily? He was obviously very insightful. What kind of world did he come from for him to understand such things so easily? It was true, she and Luna did not control the sun and moon. Celestia still tried to find a way out of the fix that they were in.

“What about when you...shot Philomena? I was comatose for four days, and for four days, the sun did not rise.” She shot a mock glance of annoyance at Luna.

“That was purely coincidental. It occurs naturally, once every thousand or so years. You likely used a similar event as an excuse to banish Luna to the moon when she became Nightmare Moon. It would have been used to solidify your political position if I had not killed your pet phoenix.” Dieter fairly grinned. The ponies were truly foolish not to have thought of that. This could be explained by the fact that most of them were semi-illiterate. Dieter had seen their education system. It consisted primarily of teaching them about “cutie marks” and their “destiny.” The only true intellectual he had met was likely Twilight Sparkle, and she had been kept on leash with blind faith in Celestia.

Celestia once again found herself blanching at Dieter’s insight.

“As for my reasons...it is a long story.”

“I was born on September 4, 1912. My early childhood was happy. The first two years of my life were times of plenty. I had a loving family, a kind mother, a reasonable father, and caring brother. Everything seemed perfect. I was still blissfully ignorant of the tensions that plagued Europe at that time. It was an innocent time for me.

When the Great War broke out in 1914, my father was one of the first to join the great army of the German Empire. I remember wondering why my father had to leave. At that point in my life, war was a concept that was alien to me. I did wonder why my mother was crying, but I did not pay it much thought at that time.” Dieter recited this without emotion.

“Four years passed. My father had miraculously survived what, at the time, had been the most brutal war in human history. He came back...changed. He tensed at loud noises. We were told not to whistle around him. When we disobeyed, he would scream something about shells, and threw himself to the ground. The war likely never left him until the day he died. This was a time of starvation and lack. The Great War had left the nation destitute, and the German people were required to pay for a war they did not start. My father worked hard to make ends meet in, of all places, a factory. I worked with him, despite my young age. My brother struck out to find his own work.

Then, one day, disaster struck our family. Father and I had received our money from the owner of the factory. A week’s worth of pay was only good enough for a single loaf of bread. People were desperate. As my father and I walked down a dark alley towards our home, we were threatened by two knife toting robbers. They demanded our money. Father was a brave man of action and honor, and he resisted. They slashed him to death. When I screamed, they beat me within an inch of my life.

After I healed from my injuries, I noticed a steady decline in my mother’s spirits. She never spoke, she rarely did anything, and she avoided me and Erich as best she could. I suppose she couldn’t bear to be reminded of her dead husband. She killed herself just after I turned twelve.” There was flicker of what looked like mourning in Dieter’s eyes. It was quickly replaced by his cold indifference. “You have no idea what it is like to wake up one morning, to find your own mother hanging from the ceiling.”

Celestia was horrified by what she heard. What kind of world was this? What people could continually fight as such and inflict such suffering on one another?

“I and my brother, Erich, were orphaned. Erich was saddened, but he didn’t hold it against the murderers. I, being the more impulsive child, swore vengeance. They haunted my memories, and I felt my soul harden against them. My father was not the only one they had killed. They were arrested for fifteen other deaths. My hatred boiled over. I snuck into the prison in which they were held in the night. Using a gun I had stolen from a police officer, I shot both of them in cold blood.

I suddenly realized that I had descended to their level. I had become a murderer, a merciless killer. For many years I was tortured by what I had done. I had taken the lives of two human beings. They had killed my father, and devastated my family, certainly, but that did not give me the right to simply kill them. I made sure that Erich never found out, and I was never caught. But I was tortured by the realization that I had taken the lives of two beings created in the image of God.

I was nineteen when Adolf Hitler took power in 1933. He had spoken of a utopia filled with the racially pure, one through strength. I was fully enraptured with his ideas. I agreed. I believed in everything he said. It seemed so wonderful. A world of perfection and peace, what else could one want. When the Waffen-S.S. was established, I was one of the first ones to sign up. I was quickly initiated as an officer when I showed an ‘amazing gift in the skills of combat and tactics.’ Furthermore, I had an excellent memory and was often considered one of the best. I rose through the ranks quickly, and earned the Iron Cross first and second class in the invasions of Poland and France.

Erich joined the Wermacht. By sheer chance, our units served together. He distinguished himself in both France and Poland. For a time, I was happy. I had finally found a place where I was fed and cared for, where I was respected for who I was. My men looked up at me with what could be considered awe. They admired my combat ability, my tactical and strategic domination. Several claimed that I was living proof of Aryan superiority. I quickly forgot about the men I killed. Killing no longer computed with me, since I had repeated the actions so many times.” Dieter had regained his composure, and now spoke almost mechanically, as if reciting from a book.

“The Invasion of Crete was another battle that I had taken part in. I remember it clearly. We were dropped from the skies, to take this small island from the British. I hated flying. It made me nervous to be in a situation over which I had no control whatsoever. The plane, for all I knew, could be shot down anytime. I did not want to be incinerated within that infernal machine, and I certainly did not want to plummet to my death.

I was thankful to be on the ground. I had been in combat many times, and the actions were like friends to me. Bullets whizzed overhead. I saw men on both sides dying. We had been scattered far from our correct landing positions, and many of my men were separated and shot by zealous British forces. It was horrifying. So many of my men died, and I had killed so many of the enemy. It was worse than other battles that I had been in. One thing truly haunts me. I had destroyed a British machine gun position. Having run out of ammunition, I affixed my bayonet and charged. There was one survivor. He could only have been eighteen, and he had the most beautiful brown eyes I had ever seen. He stared up at me with hope in his eyes. He reached up as if to shake my hand, his own shaking in fear. I drove nine inches of steel through his eye. Part of me died that day. It had been different previously. I had either been fired upon, or I had good cause to do what I did. This boy had done nothing but followed his orders, and I killed him. It was only compounded when I was awarded the Knight’s Cross for my actions.”

Celestia and Luna shuddered at this grisly account. It was made that much more chilling by Dieter’s lack of emotion outside of his words.

“Worse was yet to come. Just twenty-one days later, Operation Barbarossa began. I was selected to be part of the Invasion of the Soviet Union. Erich was attached to my unit. After months of heavy fighting, things seemed to be going our way. We had pushed our way to the gates of Moscow, and had laid siege to Leningrad. We were repulsed time and time again. Then, there was Stalingrad.

I was at Stalingrad. It was a horrible fight. At first, it seemed that we would win. After three months, we had taken ninety percent of the city, which by that time, had been reduced to piles of rubble. We were swarmed by Soviet forces, who charged at us crying ‘Not one step back!’, ‘For the Motherland!’, and ‘There is no land beyond the Volga!’. During this time, they began hugging our lines so that our own artillery would hit us.

Erich died there. He was standing next to me. The next moment I was thrown back a massive explosion. I escaped with only a few bruises. Erich was not so lucky. He was staring down at his torso in distant horror as his intestines spilled out through a crescent moon slash. I rushed to him shortly before he collapsed, his guts wrapping around his legs as he staggered forward. He died in my arms. By that time, I had finally realized that growing attached to people, to love someone, would only end in pain. Everything would eventually die. There was no point. I detached myself from what was happening, and became known as ‘soulless’. I prided myself in logic and indifference, just as you find me today. We were repulsed from Stalingrad, and began the long retreat towards the Fatherland, Germany.

Many died during the retreat, as we were harried by Soviet ambushes. I lost many friends. I mourned not, I did not care. My own life was not truly important to me. We were failing because we were not strong enough to stay the course, to keep pushing. Hitler himself was weak, his ideas and fascination with the occult severely hampering the strategies the Generalfeldmarschals put forth. He, I found, did not know how to wage war.

We retreated all the way back to Berlin. I was determined to escape, not for my sake, but to resurrect the Reich. That has been my purpose. I will bring peace through war. Pacifism will always lead to further conflict, as the strong swallow the weak. But domination and pacification were logical ways to put an end to resistance. I didn’t know how I would do it, but I swore that I would. But before I could escape, I was shot.” Dieter looked bored.

“I awoke here. Slowly, I began to realize how pathetic you really are. You have built a society around pacifism and love. Such a society is inherently weak. You have argued that Equestria has lasted a thousand years. However, this thousand years were years of technological stagnation. It was clearly demonstrated to me how your military is inadequate even against pathetic, mentally retarded foes such as the Diamond Dogs and the Changelings. I annihilated both singlehandedly. This was something you were truly incapable of. Love, you reasoned would heal all things. Peace, you thought, would stop you from being attacked. I know firsthand that this is foolish. Only strength will stop strength, and war will stop war. That is the way of the world.

It was in all inevitability that your nation would collapse within the next two years. You were surrounded on all sides by power hungry foes, such as the Griffons and the Hooviets. I simply hastened your downfall, to secure final domination. Even now, your infantile nobility is being purged. They are corrupt, and thus a threat to the efficiency of the New Order.
I still have not decided what to do with you, however. Logic dictates that I terminate you as well, but the emotional side of my personality, which still has not been fully buried, wishes to grant you mercy. It is an idea now alien to me. The Changeling Queen begged my mercy, and it was not provided. Your general, Shining Armor did not beg, and mercy was not granted either. Your student begged when I threatened those she loved, and she was not shown mercy either. Instead we suppressed her free will and broke her spirit. I have two logical options. I can kill you, or I can dominate you.” Dieter spoke with an utter lack of emotion. It was almost as if he was simply talking about the weather.
Celestia and Luna stared at him in defiance. They would not be his slaves. They would refuse to submit to him. They were the strongest willed beings in Equestria, and they would fight him to the end. Their minds could not be changed.

“We will never submit!” Celestia snarled.

“I didn’t ask which fate you would prefer.” Dieter replied, grinning in a way reminiscent of a predator that has cornered its prey.

He reached a decision. He gestured to the guard, and made a slicing motion over his throat. He turned away as the Princesses were dragged out. Two shots rang out, followed by two thumps as their corpses hit the floor of the palace. He smiled as he stared out over the beautiful Equestrian countryside, marred by war. A new era had arrived.

THE END

Author's Note

Thank you to Nuggetmanu2 for proofreading and ideas. Thank you to all readers for support and suggestions. You guys are great! Please feel free to comment and offer opinion.