Okay, so this is the über-long footnote to my fanfic, Tschüss und Wiedersehen for aphtrashbin. Cheers!
"Hinlegen!" -- Prussia's command at the beginning means lie down. I can't say for sure that it was used pre-Wehrmacht (WWII), but we'll stick with that until I find documents that beg to differ.
Alles gut -- an interchangeable way of saying, "all is well" or "all is good." Used nowadays by half-fluent German speakers like my mom and wannabes like me. And, you know, actual German speakers. Can also be used to wish others well, according to Angela Merkel. All hail Angela Merkel. We all wish we could be Angela Merkel.
"My aide-de-camp has gangrene" -- don't think I need to really source this, since even I learned from (shitty) New York City public school education that gangrene was a huge cause of death among trench fighters. Often they had to have their limbs amputated. Guess Prussia's aide-de-camp got a shitty job of it done to him. And again, it's a good emotional pivot point because someone as militaristic and loyal to his leaders would be deeply affected by his subordinates' comings and goings. Especially those working directly for him.
Northern-Westphalia, High German, Austrian German, Bavarian -- 'eyyyy, sonnnnn. So I often get corrected by other people who know minimal German for pronouncing "danke schön" as "dank schön," though I picked it up from my mother, who went to school in Cologne, and the lovely flyingminteagle, who is from Bonn. They're two cities right next to each other, so I can't speak for the rest of the state, but heyyyy. High German is the regular proper standard German you hear; although I had Gilbo speak it, I have this raging headcanon that he and Luddy are capable of every damn dialect out there and just switch around as they like, except when it comes to Bavarian German because they're sick of Bavaria trying to be special. And Austria says "na" instead of "nein" because it's Austrian German, which as far as I know is closely related to Bavarian. But since I still have problems hearing the difference between Dutch and German, we'll just leave it at that.
Poison gas -- the Germans introduced poison gas to the war in 1915, but of course this was not a new practice, and the French had used tear gas in warfare before. The Germans had already attempted a small gas attack against the French in October 1914. For argument's sake I had Prussia use it just because I wanted to mention it. Description of the gassing was heavily influenced by the half-memoir by Erich Maria Remarque, "All Quiet on the Western Front."
I just realized that I missed a huge opportunity to mention Hitler because he was a courier in a Bavarian unit during the war haha I suck
The Christmas Truce of 1914 -- mostly starting from Christmas night or around that time, the Germans, French, and British troops decided not to fight and ended up crossing into no-man's land to celebrate together, several incidents that petered into the next few days. I've known about this before Hima made it into a strip because of a review on the movie Joyeux Nöel, which I watched recently, so as you can guess most of what I imagine how it occurred came from it, including Daniel Brühl's unit being broken up and sent to East Prussia at the end (spoilers sorry not sorry). Word of it was spread less so in German newspapers, but Gilbo is a fucking nerd and we all know it, so he would have definitely caught wind of it early on. The football soccer games are questionable, but we'll keep them anyway. Austro-Hungarian units also did the whole Christmas tree and don't shoot thing, and did indeed send the note to the Russians at Galicia and Przemyśl, according to Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War by Max Hastings.
Speaking of which, the Mirror, the New York Times, and the Fieldzeitungen -- respectively English, American (still kickin', and one of my favorite if not one of the most boring newspapers out there), and military German publications. Because like I said -- Gilbert is a fucking nerd and even at the front would like to keep up on the news.
How does he get these papers while at the front always in battle model? I have no fucking clue. Prussia is just an extremely capable and bizarre creature.
"Fucking Bayern" -- popular western Christmas traditions like the trees are a product of Bavaria, which apparently likes to be special according to my Berliner professor.
Die Fliegertruppe -- the German air force. More like a scrapped idea of using this post because ERMAHGERD DA RED BARON EEEEEE. But I got to describe shooting stars and a decent dialogue between Prussia and Austria, so alles gut. Shooting stars flash, by the way. This is coming from a city dork who never got to see shooting stars until she started college in the middle of nowhere.
Kaiser Wilhelm II was apparently an English speaking nerd (runs in the country) who used slang weirdly. Supposedly he is speaking in the first few seconds of this video.
"...once upon a time with Sissi on his arm" -- like any other tragic historical babbu like Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, Franz Josef I lost a lot of close people throughout his life, including Elisabeth of Bavaria -- Princess Sissi -- who was assassinated via file stabbing by Luigi Lucheni in September 1898. Damn it, Luigi.
"Let us not forget about Saint Petersburg" -- Russians, unlike a lot of west Europeans, are and have been Orthodox Christians. Please do not ask about the semantics because I have never been religious and don't understand anything beyond Job killing everyone because he had to. Saint Petersburg was renamed Petrograd for being too German-sounding, and then Leningrad until about the fall of the Soviet Union. Nowadays it is a really nice city I would totally go to if I wasn't such a fucking broke American college student.
Tschüss und Wiedersehen -- because I am so fucking creative, yo. Tschüss is used commonly in Germany as an adorable, informal way of saying "bye" that I picked up and still use in my formal e-mail signatures because it is fucking adorable, and is often a cool conversation-starter when I'm on the job, actually. "Wiedersehen"'s pretty obvious. Still a lot more chill than the whole "auf wiedersehen."
And without further ado -- tschüss und wiedersehen!
