Guns and wands,

The story of Grindelwald

(Before I continue on with the actual story, I feel its important that the readers get details about the life of Grindelwald up to 1940, so you get a better idea of where I'm taking this story and what his motivations are. It may not be exactly a 'novel-like' stlye, actually it seems more like something out of a textbook, so I hope I don't bore you. Thank all the writers who gave me comments on this story, and I hope you give further suggestions on where I should take this next. Also, this was written before the 7th book came out, so many of the assumptions made do not match with the last book.)

An exerpt from 'The Muggle Wars of 1914-1945'

The Dark Wizard Grindelwald is considered by many historical experts as one of the main instigators of the two periods of muggle warfare which took place from 1914-1918, and then from 1939-1945. Most people believe that Grindelwald was an extreme anti-muggle who used his mechanations so that the muggles would destroy each other, however the truth is more complicated.

The man who would become known as Grindelwald was born to a wealthy wizarding family on May 23rd 1886 as Leudast von Walden. His mother, Freya, more than 20 years younger than Grindelwald's father, served as a homemaker, and was the only person young Leudast truly loved. His father, Ludwig, served as an intermediary between the Chancellor of the Wizarding Reich (for lack of a better term) and the Kaiser of Germany, keeping the leadership of each respective community informed on the happenings of the other.

The 'Klapperkiesten', a group of Prussian land-holding aristocrats that Grindelwald's family belonged to, had a long history of contempt for the muggles, despite the fact they often made contact with them, and Grindelwald's father was no exception, passing many of his attitudes onto his son.

When young Leudast reached the age of eleven, he was enrolled into Durmstrang, the most prestigious wizarding academy in all of Central and Eastern Europe. Reserved for pupils who possessed only a full-blood wizarding ancestry, the professors of Durmstrang taught both the regular and the dark arts alike. While at the academy, Leudast excelled in every field of study, most particularly in Arithmancy which he enjoyed above all, and was looked as by the students and teachers alike a leader and a role model. He also possessed an interest of prominent wizards of past and present, including Salazar Slytherin among others.

During his final year of schooling, Grindelwald was also involved in an exchange program where he stayed briefly with another bright young wizard of his age, Albus Dumbledore, taking the first name of 'Gellert' during his stay. Not much is known of the early acquaintence between Dumbledore and Grindelwald, yet it can be safe to say that the two were good friends until a family incident within the Dumbledore house, involving Grindelwald, drove them apart.

Aside from that incident, upon his graduation in 1904, it seemed, at least on the surface, that a bright future was in store for Leudast.

Yet the year 1905 did not bring fortune to the Walden family. During a diplomatic visit to the Bosnian magistrate, located on the frontier of Autro-Hungarian Empire, Leudast's father and many of his colleagues were ambushed and murdered by members of an extreme Serbian nationalist group known as the Black Robe. Upon receiving the news, Leudast vowed revenge, yet refrained from doing so upon request of his mother.

It was also at this time where Leudast was first thrust into a position of power, forced to take up the role his father had before. Seniority being paramount in the German wizarding society of the early 20th century, Leudast found himself being condescended to by the more experienced members, which Leudast took exception to.

Yet these troubles were small indeed compared to the trauma that came next; only half a year after Leudast's father had died, Frau Walden contracted a crippling disease. The healers were able to do nothing, nor was Leudast, despite using every spell and charm he knew. In the end, it was no good, and Freya Walden died an agonizing death. It was the death of his mother more than anything else that sowed the seeds of madness upon Leudast. More agonizing for Leudast was a feeling of helplessness, that he could not save the only person he ever truly loved. It was something that Leudast vowed would never happen again.

He believed that it was a conspiracy of the muggles along with the inferior races of Europe, of whom included the Jews, Gypsies, and especially the Slavs, who were somehow responsible for the deaths of his mother and father, and in a larger sense, the troubles the German wizarding community faced. Though Leudast continued at his post as the Imperial Intermediary, behind the scenes he was dedicated himself into learning forbidden, arcane magics, some of which possessed a dark potency was greater than the Three Unforgivable Curses. It was during the time between 1905 and 1914, the start of the First Global Muggle War, in which Leudast Walden took up a new alias, Grindelwald.

The state of affairs of the various muggle governments of Europe before the Great Muggle War was system of entagling alliances, which was primed to explode at any moment. Grindelwald, upon learning that the heir of the muggle Emperor of Austria Hungary, Franz Ferdinand, was scheduled to visit Sarajevo, near where Grindelwald's own father was massacred, he made his move.

On June 28, 1914, a young Serbian muggle by the name of Gavrilo Princip, murdered Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in their motorcar (a sort of transport that muggles used to get around) as it passed by. It was only until after the 2nd Global Muggle War, however, that it was discovered that Grindelwald actually manipulated the hapless muggle with an Imperious Curse to shoot the Archduke and his wife dead with a muggle wand. In any case, no more than three weeks after the infamous murder, (though those who study the muggles are still not quite sure how) the First Global Muggle War Began. Grindelwald, though his position as the Imperial Intermediary, was instrumental in helping to convince the aged and senile Muggle Emperor of Austria-Hungary, Franz Joseph, to go to war with Serbia, and promising the full support of the Germanic wizarding community. Grindelwald saw this huge Muggle Conflaguration as an opportunity to gain power for himself, gain glory for the German Reich, eliminate the Slavic peoples whom he felt were responsible for his father's death, and ultimately weaken the European muggles. Over the next four years, 10 million muggles would die, yet for all its terror the war's outcome was indecisive.

During the war, most of the European wizarding community viewed the war with a detached, almost amused air. There were some, Grindelwald among them, who wished to join the struggle, weighing national honor as greater than any contempt they might have had for the muggles. The more dire enemies, Grindelwald insisted, were its foes who lay outside the frontiers of the Reich, the French, British and the Russian wizarding communities.

Throughout the war, Leudast, known increasingly as Grindelwald to his coalition, gained influence among the younger members of the Reichzauberministerium (the German Ministry of Magic), who favored going to war to preserve Germany's honor, yet time after time this was voted down. Like the majority of the wizarding community, they felt the struggle was a muggle affair, and were content to sit back and let them muggles kill one another. Along with becoming further adept in the dark arts, part of 'Leudast's' job was to observe how the muggle armies killed one another, in which he came to fully appreciate the power and terror of the destructive devises the muggles used to wage war upon another, each new innovation more terrible than the last. Also, Grindelwald and the members of his pro-war coalition used muggle prisoners of war, mostly those from Serbia and Imperial Russia, as experiments for many of the dark magics he had devised, including many methods that were later used to brutal perfection by the 'Magiechekommando SS' on the Eastern front during the Muggle Wars of the 1940's.

When the war finally ended in November of 1918, all the blame of the war had been placed on Germany, whether they be the muggles or the wizarding community alike. The German wizarding community, was still required to pay reparations for a war they had not fought. Though the wizarding community had stayed out of the muggle war, the French and British wizards weren't shy about exploiting the victory the muggles had earned. This came as a terrible blow to the German wizarding community, none more than Grindelwald, who immediately suggested to the Chancellor of Magic to declare all-out war upon the wizarding governments of France, Britain, Italy and the United States. His pleas fell upon deaf ears, the German ministers believed that they should not risk conflict within the wizards of Europe for something the muggles had started, and that they should be responsible for not keeping their muggles under control in the first place. The senior ministers, becoming increasingly alarmed with 'Leudast the madman's' extreme pro-war idelogy, ousted from his position. Before he was escorted out, Grindelwald delivered a scathing harangue to the German Ministry of Magic as being 'traitors and criminals to the German Reich.' Soon afterwards, he was expelled from the wizarding community all together, his wand snapped in half.

Despite however much Grindelwald despised the muggles, the despair he felt of having his beloved Reich humiliated by enemies external and internal was nearly too much for him to take, even worse than the death of his mother. For two and a half years, Grindelwald wandered aimlessly throughout the German countryside, seeing the disorder and destitution of the lost war. Grindelwald then realized more than ever that if the wizards of Germany were to become surpreme, they first had to eliminate the inferior races of Europe, with the muggles in concert, before then turning upon the muggles and destroying them.

Grindelwald caught a break when he first met a young rabble-rouser by the name of Adolf Hitler. He was intrigued to find that many of this Hitler's ideals were the same as those he had preached to the German Ministry of Magic throughout the war, and despite Grindelwald's general disdain of muggles, they shared a belief that a consipracy of the lesser races, namely the Jews, the Slavs, the Communists and the traitors who had sold out Imperial Germany. Grindelwald found in Hitler, though a muggle and uneducated, a man who was fanatically patriotic to the German Reich, and willing to do absolutely anything to restore it to its proper place in the world.

Some historians who study muggles will say that Grindelwald had Hitler under control of an Imperious curse throughout the entire time, yet though the man who would be known as the 'Fuehrer' was greatly influenced by Grindelwald, most believe that Hitler's core ideology was already quite extreme even before Grindelwald came into contact with him. For an analogy, it can be said that Grindelwald provided the Incendio spell that that fuelled the torch of Hitler's madness. As for Hitler, he began to increasingly trust this 'Aryan mystic' as his spiritual advisor, and believed Grindelwald as his 'kindred spirit' from the wizarding world, destined to save Germany and restore it to greatness.

Though we may never know the true relationship between Grindelwald and Adolf Hitler, nonetheless, during this time the Nazi Party grew in size and tenacity. Grindelwald urged many who were formerly within his pro-war coalition to join the Nazi party, to serve as 'advisors'. Meanwhile, back in the German wizarding community, society was beginning to get more and more strained as the people had to pay indemnities to a war they had not fought. Grindelwald, though exiled from the German wizarding community, was viewed more and more as the man who stood up to the 'Decadent sages' who had 'sold out' the German reich, and many began joining secret societies who received funding from the Nazi Party. The German Ministers, however, discounted Grindelwald's clandestine activities that were eroding away their power, especially since he was associating with muggles to achieve this. They became increasingly detatched from the happenings of their subjects, never mind what was happening in the German muggle community, believing that the whole situation would sort it out by itself.

1929 was the beginning of the end for the German Ministry of Magic. In fact, recent historical documents suggest that Grindelwald may actually have induced the collapse of the international muggle economy using a form of coded Arithmancy. Whether or not it was Grindelwalds doings or not, it clearly played out to both Hitler's and Grindelwald's advantage. The suffering of the 'Great Depression', as the muggles call it, greatly increased the appeal of Hitler and the Nazi party, and when the collapse slid through the cracks and hit the German wizarding community, so did support for Grindelwald and his followers.

1933 was the breakthrough year for both Grindelwald and Hitler. Hitler had seized power by popular election, and promptly destroying the Weimar Republic with his pograms. Grindelwald's seizure of power was much more dramatic. In a coup that was no doubt inspired by Hitler's aborted 'Beer Hall Psutch', Grindelwald and his most fanatical followers attacked the German Ministry of Magic, where after dispatching the aurors, many of whom joined Grindelwald, stormed into the council chamber and declared himself master of Germany. With these two madmen at the helm of their respective regimes, it was only a matter of time before all of Europe, muggle and wizard alike, would be embroiled in all-out war...