Re: Blood and Iron

Chapter 104: A Trip to Vienna



While Bruno was enjoying the peaceful days with his family, and Heinrich was struggling to figure out how to become a proper father figure to an adolescent girl he had suddenly found himself the adopted parent of. Things were progressing on the global stage in accordance with the changes Bruno had made to it.

The Tsar retained his power in Russia, and though he was forced to compromise insofar as to create a fully functional constitutional monarchy, one based largely upon that of the German Reich, he still retained significant authority as a monarch, unlike the modern liberal democracies of the 21st century which had "monarchs" as the "heads of state" for largely ceremonial purposes.

Russia began a state of rapid industrialization, having realized how much they had lagged behind the other foreign powers. At the same time, the wounds created by the Bolsheviks during their insurrection had slowly begun to heal. Something that time would eventually solve by itself.

The relationship between France and Russia was practically that of enemies. There was virtually no conceivable way after what the French had done to undermine the Tsar's sovereignty, both by trying to assassinate a foreign general in his employ while on Russian soil, and by supplying his enemies that sought to murder him and his entire family that the man would ever remotely consider aligning himself with the French.

Britain continued to match the German attempts to build a mighty navy of their own, outproducing them in terms of military warships, and shocking the world with the commissioning of the HMS Dreadnought which had pretty much overnight made every other battleship on the planet obsolete.

All the while, the sleeping industrial giant that was the United States of America stayed resting, showing no signs of awakening any time soon. Meanwhile, tensions continued to stir in China as the Qing Dynasty lived out its last days, seemingly unaware that the era of emperors in the land of silk was quickly coming to an end.

As for the German Reich, they continued to undergo the military modernization process that Bruno had set forth for them. With the military trials of the various infantry equipment Bruno had designed back in 1901, fully completed last year.

The German Army was beginning to issue semi-automatic rifles, general purpose machine guns, submachine guns, and semi-automatic shotguns to their Army. The shotguns, having proven their effectiveness within the ranks of the Iron Division of the Russian Civil War, suddenly became a sought-after item by the German Army on how contracted their domestic manufacture from Browning.

Meanwhile, the advanced Artillery Bruno had designed continued to undergo refinement and trials. But was showing significant promise. Within a year at the most, they would be approved and the manufacture of them would begin.

As for the Tanks, and Aircraft Bruno had made initial drafts of. They continued to undergo experimentation and development. With Bruno being a lead, say on what was added or removed from the designs.

It would probably be another two years at the latest before they began undergoing trials. To be adopted into service and put into production by 1910 at the latest. In addition to this, Bruno's suggestions towards building fortifications on their western borders had finally, after some time, been approved.

With the German Empire flexing its construction capacity to undertake such a massive endeavor on their borders with France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark. Naturally, this caused quite a bit of controversy with Germany's neighbors. But ultimately the German Empire declared it a matter of "securing its border from unwanted migrants."

Still, such an excuse did little to ease the worries of Germany's neighbors. Although many political strategists and military minds of the era had believed there was a high probability of what they considered being the "European War" would break out sooner or later, Germany's actions proved one thing, and one thing alone.

The German Reich treated the idea of this European War as an absolute certainty, rather than a mere possibility, and that was a notion put every one of its neighbors on edge. Other than its allies, of course.

It's perhaps because of this that Bruno was asked to lead some troops down into the alps to conduct a joint military exercise with the Austro-Hungarian Army. For reasons of national security, the new weapons being fielded were, of course, excluded from what was to be used during the exercise.

Still, this would be a good chance for Bruno to become acquainted with the Austro-Hungarian military leadership. And because of that, he accepted the offer. With this in mind, Bruno bade his wife and children a temporary farewell, assuring them he would be back by the time autumn began, before heading out the door in his uniform.

The train ride from Berlin to Vienna, where Bruno and his men would first meet up with the Austro-Hungarians was not nearly as long or cumbersome as the one Bruno had taken from Saint Petersburg to Vladivostok, and because of this he was actually in a rather good mood throughout the journey.

Eventually, Bruno stepped foot into the fabled capital of Austria and gazed upon its magnificence. It was a hard thing to explain, with Austria officially being a German state and all, it was somehow very different from Berlin.

This was not all that surprising considering how fragmented the Germans states were for most of their history. Many of them developed their own regional subcultures, and there was even a distinctive dialect spoken in Austria when compared to Berlin.

The reasoning behind Austria not being a part of the German Empire was fundamentally due to the grudges that had been held in the past between the Hohenzollerns and Habsburgs. While the Hohenzollerns were the Kings of Prussia, the Habsburgs were the Archdukes of Austria, and both had wanted for a very long time to unite Germany, it was simply a matter of a question of who ruled them.

Ultimately, the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, and the following Franco-Prussian War of 1871, solved this issue once and for all. With nearly all the German states with the exception of Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein and Luxembourg being united under Prussian rule.

Now that Bruno could see Vienna and the surrounding areas as they were before the World Wars which ravaged them and resulted in a significant loss of culture and heritage that would never be recovered. He couldn't help but hold a sense of awe of the way the world had been in

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It was this sense of awe that stayed with him entirely until he met with the leaders of the Austro-Hungarian Army who were just as haughty, and incompetent as Bruno had imagined them to be. After all, the Austro-Hungarian Army had a pretty bad reputation among historians during Bruno's past life for many reasons, and incompetent military leadership was most certainly one of them.