The heavy door of Hitler's private study shut heavy.
Curtains stopped the light from the entering.
A map of Eastern Europe behind his desk, a map drawn not with borders, but with intention.
The men gathered in silence.
Hermann Göring crossed his legs and knocked two fingers on the arm of his chair.
Heinrich Himmler sat unnaturally still, his round spectacles fogged slightly from the cold.
Rudolf Hess scribbled notes he wouldn't be permitted to keep.
Ribbentrop, Keitel, and Rosenberg looked toward the figure standing before the map.
None spoke.
Adolf Hitler finally turned.
"You have all heard me speak of Lebensraum," he began, voice low and measured, "but what I speak tonight is not a theory. It is a path. A necessity. A truth carved in blood and stone."
He stepped closer to the map, his finger drawing an invisible line from Berlin to the plains of Ukraine.
