Re: Blood and Iron

Chapter 160: Creating the Deutsche Luftstreitkräfte



Bruno spent another five days at sea after meeting with Nikola Tesla before eventually returning home. Frankly speaking, he did not want to go to work the next day. But then again, he seldom got to choose his own hours.

Duty and service were things that truly ended only with one's death. One always had a responsibility to their family, community, fatherland, monarch, and God. To shirk these obligations for the sake of rest was a sign of sloth.

Such was one of the seven deadly sins. Reasonably so, as laziness and its temptations had been the ruin of many a great man. Even worse, it was often a gateway to one's personal destruction, both in terms of their immortal soul and physical being.

It was perhaps because of this that Bruno, despite being exhausted from the visit, made sure to spend some appropriate time with his wife and children, all of whom he loved very much, before eventually retiring for the evening at an appropriate hour.

The next morning, he was up bright and early at the crack of dawn. Was he as well-rested as he could reasonably be? No, not in the slightest. In fact, some form of minor fatigue lingered within his system until being replaced by a healthy dose of coffee. Bruno then kissed his pregnant wife on the cheek before heading back to the office.

Upon arriving at the Central Division of the German Army's high command, Bruno found himself at his desk before something peculiar popped up in front of him. One of his superiors, a Field Marshal whom Bruno both deeply respected and directly answered to, dropped a folder in front of him, speaking with a peculiar grin on his face.

As a legendary "Death's Head Hussar," August von Mackensen was perhaps what one would call a man exemplary of the cavalry spirit-riding through guns blazing on horseback into the fray, while wholly obsolete. It was a tradition of warfare that dated back thousands of years.

Germanic cavalry was known to have played a critical role in Rome's utter humiliation at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD.

A battle so ingrained in German heritage that a statue of Arminius, otherwise known as Herman the German, was erected in 1875 as a commemoration of their victory over the Romans. This battle ensured that the Germanic peoples were never fully Romanized, or even primarily so.

Only a small portion of Germania was ever conquered and settled by the Romans, which was reclaimed by the various Barbarian Kingdoms after the fall of Rome in 476 AD, and to some extent preceding it.

Perhaps because of this proud and ancient lineage of which Generalfeldmarschall von Mackensen had partaken during the early stages of his career, he had been most aggrieved by Bruno's insistence that the era of cavalry had come to an end.

Initially, he had resisted the attempts to disband the overwhelming majority of cavalry units, relegating what little remained of them to the positions of scouts and forward observers. That is, until he witnessed the destructive nature of the new generation of warfare first-hand with the introduction of modern weaponry among the German Army over the course of the last few years.

The MG-34 alone made cavalry a suicidal position, one that had zero advantage on the battlefield as a combat unit. Then there was long-range artillery. While Bruno's tanks and armored cars were still largely under development, needing a few more years to work out the kinks, one particular vehicle was entering its prototype staging.

This vehicle made August von Mackensen feel almost as if he were a young cavalry officer again, and it was that which the folder he handed Bruno contained information about.

Thus, with a wide smirk on his face, the aging Field Marshal patted Bruno on the back and told him what he thought about the man.

"You know, boy, I have been awfully sore about you destroying the role of cavalry in the Army... But had I known what you had been planning all along, I would have supported you to the fullest extent early on!"

Bruno had more or less followed the course of history with the introduction of the He-51 biplane. By that, I mean he decided to retrain the cavalry units to become the world's first combat aviators.

This was essentially what the Germans had done in his past life once airplanes entered service in the Great War, and the realization that cavalry was useless as a combat profession in the modern era finally dawned upon the Great Powers.

These powers had stubbornly denied this objective reality for the course of half a century after they were proven woefully obsolete in the Crimean War. With the He-51 entering its prototype phase, Bruno had recently, shortly before his visit to Romania and the United States, introduced a request to begin reorganizing cavalry units from horseback to airplanes. The reorganization efforts were classified to the highest extent under the label of "das Projekt Azurblauer Ritter" or, in English, "Project Azure Knight." This was a reference to the chivalrous tradition of cavalry units, who commonly saw themselves as the successors to the Knights of old, as well as the blue tint of the sky in which they would fight on their new battlefield.

After looking through the folder and seeing that his project was approved and that testing of the He-51, specifically the fighter/reconnaissance variant had begun, Bruno smirked and made a snarky comment to his current boss.

"If you had more trust in me, like the Kaiser does, then perhaps you would have realized I always planned to have a replacement for the cavalry. You can rest assured, as the Knights of the Sky, your legacy will live on in a new frontier. I wouldn't just disband the cavalry and throw them into the infantry; that would be insulting!"

August von Mackensen's expression was priceless as he grimaced at Bruno's words, stunned into silence for several seconds before walking off. But not before leaving behind a certain remark to Bruno about who he reminded him of.

"You cunning little brat, you are just like your father!"

As the legendary Field Marshal stormed off, Bruno chuckled while hollering after him, making a comment that only further caused the man to seethe in silence.

"I'll take that as a compliment!"

After which, Bruno shook his head while laughing as he read over the details in the folder and the new work he had been assigned. Essentially, he was now tasked with creating the world's first Air Force, which, much as it was known during his past life, was labeled under the term "Deutsche Luftstreitkräfte."