Bruno and Svetozar returned to the German encampment that had been made in the mountains for the sake of housing and supplying the 20,000 or so German Soldiers who Bruno had brought with him to the Austrian alps.
Quite frankly, Bruno did not know how much time the German Kaiser and his Austrian counterpart had been planning this joint military exercise, but it must have been months in the making. Either way, he really didn’t care, as that was not his responsibility.
Though the Kaiser didn’t explicitly explain his reason for sending Bruno to Austria as the leader of his forces. The answer was already obvious to the man. He was here firstly to show off the failures of the Austro-Hungarian Army, and to strengthen the relationship between the German Reich and their southern neighbors.
Despite his rather blunt nature, Bruno had shown a remarkable ability to impress powerful men and their families. The Tsar had seemingly forgotten the fact that Bruno was both the cause and a solution to the Bolshevik Revolution, which tore his country apart and threatened the livelihood of his entire royal dynasty.
Instead, he simply remembered Bruno as the “Red Scourge.” A man who had annihilated the Red Army at every turn and hunted down their leaders to the ends of the Earth in order to remove their stain on history.
Nicholas only had good things to say about Bruno, seemingly forgetting the previous conflicts between the two of them. While Meiji also spoke of the man as if he were some kind of legendary figure, seen throughout history once every few centuries.
Now was the chance to make his mark on the Austrians. And Wilhelm was smart enough to send his envoy to do just that. And though the Austrian military leadership was offended by Bruno’s remarks and actions. The House of Habsburg had a fairly good opinion of him, even though they had really only gotten to know each other over the course of a single day.
In addition to that, the most important general of the Austro-Hungarian Army was now sitting across from Bruno as they addressed the problems that plagued the army. With Bruno taking a sip from his beer before offering his views on the matter.
“Frankly speaking, there are several issues I have with the Austro-Hungarian Army and its current organization. If I may be so bold, your organization to three distinctive branches is, frankly speaking, a nightmare.
You have the Common Army which is itself split between German and Hungarian Regiments. But the problem is that there are Italians, Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, and God knows how many other ethnic groups with their own distinctive languages within them as well.
And they have German officers and NCOs who don’t speak the same language as the troops beneath their command. And then there’s the Hungarian Regiments, which have the same problem, but instead with Hungarian speaking officers and NCOs.
Not only do these two distinctive styles of regiments have a hard time communicating with one another while deployed together in the field, but the Officers have a difficult time conveying their orders to the troops within their own regiments.
I understand the political complexity of the Dual Monarchy, which created this clusterfuck of an Army, but there really needs to be some form of uniform language in order to succeed on the battlefield.
Not only that, but then there’s the other two branches, Imperial-Royal Landwehr and the Royal Hungarian Landwehr, both of which inexplicably exist in conflict with the Common Army. And serve the same function as the German and Hungarian Regiments within the Common Army.
Why is this even a thing? What purpose do these branches even serve? It is a needless complication solely for the sake of politics and serves no tactical or practical purpose on the battlefield. This is a matter of war, and in warfare you can’t have such complicated organization fuckups or else you’re doomed to fail against a more organized and better equipped army!”
Bruno was perhaps more fired up during this topic of conversation than he had remotely displayed himself over the course of the past few days since arriving in Austria. And with good reason, there was no logical or rational explanation for the organization of the Austro-Hungarian Army.
And he was not even going to get started about the Austro-Hungarian Navy. There was not enough time in the world to cover both of these issues. The thing is, it was not like Svetozar disagreed with Bruno, nor did he take offense at the tone which Bruno spoke his complaints in.
Everything Bruno said was perfectly valid, and the only reason the Austro-Hungarian Army was divided in such a chaotic manner was due to the complex political nature of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Bruno was particularly livid about this matter, because it was a prime example of what happened when you allowed politicians who had never stepped foot on a battlefield, let alone held a proper military command, to interfere in the matters of the Military. Especially on a level as critical as the organization of troops and how they operated in the field.
By the way, these complaints were equally valid for wealthy nobleman who were parading around on the laurels of their ancient ancestors, as they were to the civilian population elected to office democratically.
More than once had politicians screwed up military operations in significant manners within Bruno’s past life. All because the military answered to these civilians who had no reference or framework for how warfare should be conducted.
Fundamentally, the military should follow orders from the military. And not civilians, regardless of their social status. Everything else was madness, madness and stupidity, as far as Bruno was concerned.
Bruno would continue to offer solutions to the problems he had ranted about. Such as merging the three branches into a single branch. The problem of communication, however, was simply something that should have been solved with the foundation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and was not easily solved.
Had the Austro-Hungarians set a proper national language in 1867 when the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary were unified, then they would have been able to mandate that said language was learned by all school children in all institutions of learning.
Even if they spoke their local languages in their homes, the mere fact that everybody could speak the national language, whether that was German or Hungarian, was quite honestly the only real solution to this problem that was now more present than ever to those who witnessed it.
The very existence of the Dual Monarchy had guaranteed that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was doomed to collapse from the very foundation of it. If Austria had simply stayed as the Austrian Empire rather than join together with Hungary, they would have much more easily been able to institute such critical policies much earlier. And without any pushback from the Hungarian population.
And honestly, other than giving crash courses to the soldiers of the Army, forcing them to learn a new word of the German language every day they go through training until they were at the very least conversational, much in the way the French Foreign Legion required all of its new recruits to undergo, Bruno simply did not have an explanation on how to fix this issue that would result in a significant lack of performance if not fixed before the start of the Great War.
Hence why Bruno ultimately voiced his only partial solution to the problem, which was not exactly a fix, more like a bandage over a mortal wound. If these matters couldn’t be solved in the coming decade on a societal level, then Austro-Hungary was doomed to collapse.
But quite frankly, that was indeed Bruno’s ultimate objective, as annexing the Austrian Crown lands into the German Empire was a long-term goal of his. As for Svetozar Boroević, though, he promised Bruno that he would do everything in his power to make these changes a reality. It was ultimately not within his authority to do so.
Austria would need serious pressure to do so, whether that came from the German Empire, or from some conflict which forced them to realize their failures. It was simply out of either Bruno’s or Svetozar’s control.
Even so, the two generals would continue to discuss problems with the Austro-Hungarian army and a list of solutions. Including the standardization of ammunition. Which Bruno had learned from his past life.
Both Austria-Hungary and Germany utilized two different supply chains. If these supply chains could be unified, it would make logistically supporting the two empires in the field a much, much easier task to manage.
But again, these were issues neither of them had the power or authority to solve, and could only bring up to their superiors, hoping they would act on their advice.
