Re: Blood and Iron

Though Bruno had made a great speech about his brother Ludwig being a suitable candidate for the Bundesrat, it was ultimately of little consequence in the grand scheme of things. Frankly put, whether or not Ludwig made a grandstand to vote against the war and protested it as vehemently as possible, it did not matter.

War would be waged, blood would be shed, and millions of young men would die for no reason. Bruno's only hope was that he could spare as much suffering as possible for his fellow countrymen, with whom he would agonize in the upcoming conflict.

And as another year came and went, the Great War became a closer and closer to reality. It did not take long, just as in Bruno's past life, for the Ottoman Empire to admit defeat in the Balkans. They had been thoroughly trounced, and even quicker than Bruno had anticipated, as a result of him indirectly selling arms to the Balkan League.

Just like in Bruno's past life, a second war erupted almost immediately after, as Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria all began to argue over various disputed territories in the region. The war was, as far as Bruno considered, inconsequential in and of itself.

Rather, what the Black Hand would do shortly after its end was a matter he needed to keep an eye on. And Bruno had been quite satisfied with how he had spent the last decade of his life. Over the course of the last ten years, Bruno had made ample preparations for the upcoming war effort.

Whether it came in the form of modernizing and streamlining German field artillery into four different calibers—75mm, 105mm, 150mm, or 210mm—as well as the adoption of a codification of mortars similarly organized into the following calibers: 60mm, 81mm, and 120mm.

Bruno had ensured through these developments that German artillery was sufficiently capable of both defending their own borders as well as raining hell down upon enemy fortifications. In addition, he had adopted a series of flak guns that were more than capable of lasting until the 1950s as efficient means of shooting planes out of the sky.

He had also helped establish the lines of communication between these units and the greater battalions, brigades, divisions, corps, and armies they were combined with. German communications were protected via a series of advanced encryptions made entirely possible by the introduction of the Enigma machine several decades earlier than it otherwise should have been.

All of these things paled compared to what he believed would be the single largest killer on the modern battlefield. The widespread adoption of machine guns and barbed wire were pretty much confirmed to be the two most efficient killers of the war in Bruno's past life.

Bruno often wondered in his past life how the man who invented barbed wire for the purpose of containing cattle would react had he known that his creation would one day be used as one of the single most devastating instruments of war—a device that helped contribute to the deaths of millions of young men.

But those deaths would only be compounded in scale as Bruno had introduced a far more effective machine gun, one that, if need be, could be entirely operated by a single man. The biggest problem facing machine gun crews during the Great War was that their weapons were entirely static.

It required significant effort to move them; an entire team of men had to disassemble the weapon and carry it to the next position. It simply was not feasible as a mobile weapon and could not reasonably be used in an assault.

Because of this, light machine guns were invented to fulfill this role of assault, but these were far from ideal, especially in this era, with the three most prominent of them being the failure-prone Chauchat used by the French Army, the bulky Lewis Gun used by the British soldiers, and, lastly, the abomination known as the MG-08/15.

This so-called "light machine gun" was simply a Maxim machine gun with a stock crudely welded to the back, a pistol grip added to it, and a bipod hanging off the water-cooled jacket.

Only God really knew how the German soldiers managed to carry this 40 lb. monstrosity into an assault over the trenches.

One can only assume that the cocaine which was regularly issued in their field medical kits was the deciding factor in this regard, and surprisingly, this behemoth of a weapon, which for reasons beyond imagination was technically classified as a "light machine gun," was actually the most effective of such weapons manufactured during the era.

Why was this the case? Because, unlike its rivals on the battlefield, this weapon was actually belt-fed, much like the heavy machine gun it was based upon. Meaning even with its ungodly weight, it was still able to fire at a practical rate several times that of its competition in the trenches.

All of which utilized limited box magazines that needed to be exchanged after every 20-30 rounds fired. The invention of the MG-34 several decades earlier than it should have been was a game-changer on the battlefield.

So much so that with the introduction of this weapon alone, the Schlieffen plan, which Bruno had rejected, became viable. Why was this the case? Because the MG-34 had over double the rate of fire as the MG-08/15 while being roughly half its weight.

With such overwhelming firepower deployed at the squad level, there was no reality where Germany would not annihilate the Allied troops at the First Battle of the Marne, where, in Bruno's past life, Germany had been defeated, resulting in the four-year horror that was the Western Front.

It was a short march into Paris from there. So why had Bruno rejected such a plan? It was his honest belief that a quick victory like that of 1871 would only further French revanchist sentiment, as the Franco-Prussian War had done.

The French Army needed to bleed massively and endure the horrors of sending wave after wave of their men to their deaths at the German border, only to be repelled each time. Every man, from the lowest enlisted personnel to the highest Generals, needed to understand that fighting the German Reich was an act of futility.

That they would always be inferior, and because of this, attempting a third war in less than a century was folly. It was his hope that he could eradicate an entire generation of Frenchmen, and in doing so, drown any revanchist sentiment among the failed republic in a sea of their youth's blood. Only then would the stubbornness and arrogance of the French be thoroughly humbled.

Hence why, despite the extreme viability of the Schlieffen plan resulting in a near-immediate victory within this life, Bruno had openly rejected it and used his influence to force Germany into a defensive war on the Western Front, while he mobilized the 8th Army to knock out the Balkan States, followed by the Italians as quickly as possible.

All of Bruno's plans had finally come together, but today he was surprised to find that something unimaginable had occurred, and one that was not his doing in the slightest. Over the last year, Heidi had been operating her charity with the full financial support of Bruno's multiple monopolies.

Bruno, while initially taking an active role in helping organize the charity, eventually withdrew from the process altogether once things were properly up and running. And it was because of this that Bruno was dumbstruck when Heidi knocked on his office door with a stack of papers in her hands.

His wife was once more pregnant, and noticeably so, but even then, she did not take a break from her charitable work. No, she was serious about helping the people of Germany, and not just Germany; her work extended into Austria-Hungary, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Luxembourg as well.

However, when Bruno gazed upon the papers his wife handed him, he was well and truly shocked. He was quick to check the numbers repeatedly before asking the question on his mind.

"Are these figures accurate?"

The tone in his voice was one of absolute severity, as if, should his wife lie to him about what he was witnessing, he would be very angry with her, but she simply smirked smugly before leaning over the desk and grabbing hold of her husband's tie, where she dragged him in close to her before whispering her answer.

"Of course they are… I always told you I would do my best to help you… You have been rambling on about the Great War that is to come for some time, and until now, I could never help you or ease your constant worries. But what about now, my love, did I do good? Was I finally able to help alleviate at least in part the massive burden you constantly carry on your shoulders?"

Bruno forced himself away from his wife's controlling grip, instead placing the folder down, which contained the information that had so stunned him, all the while he himself grasped her wrists, pulling her into his arms as he hugged her tightly and kissed her on the lips, before responding to her question with an answer she had been longing for.

"Heidi, my love, you may have just saved the lives of a million young men… Words cannot express how thankful I am for all that you have done for me this past year…"

What Bruno said was revealed by the folder and the contents that lay openly on display, as he had not shut it when he placed it down upon his desk. Heidi had been hard at work using her charity and Bruno's connections to recruit over a hundred thousand trained nurses and doctors for the sake of the upcoming war.

She had also been stockpiling medicine in near-unquantifiable figures, as well as any other medical supplies that were necessary. Among these massive reserves was a newly invented medicine that Bruno's largest pharmaceutical company had only recently finalized the development of, one that had been in the process of creation since 1903.

Penicillin, the life changing anti-biotic, was on the list of most sought after medical treatments on the litany of resources which Heidi had purchased in bulk.

Meaning that not only would the German Army have the support staff of reserve nurses and doctors for the unprecedented figures of wounded soldiers who would be treated, something they were severely lacking in Bruno's past life, but the antibiotic which had saved more lives than just about any other medicine was ready to be used, thus increasing the likelihood of a man's survival upon being treated.

Heidi's actions would go on to single-handedly save the lives of hundreds of thousands if not millions of young men who would be wounded in action during the Great War, and it was something that Bruno had completely overlooked in his preparations.

Bruno would go on to call his wife an angel who God had sent to the Earth as a means of saving the German Reich in ways which he had rather ashamedly failed to prepare for on his own. A quote that would forever lie next to her name in the annals of human history.