Heidi knew something was wrong the moment Bruno began spending his days around the house. At first she thought that perhaps the man had gotten some extra time of leave for reasons unknown to her. But in the end, she knew this was too good to be true.
Sure she had her ways to find out just what exactly Bruno was up to. But she did not want to go behind the man’s back to find out. Rather, she trusted when the time came he would tell her himself.
And because of this, she waited patiently, all the while fulfilling her role as a loving wife and mother. The upside of spending time at his home while organizing the formation of the Iron Brigade was the fact that Bruno had managed to be around his children much more.
They were, after all too young to go to school, and because of this they spent their time at home, being raised by their mother. Now that he was home for the majority of the day, other than a few weekly visits to the Central Division in order to report the updates of his project to his superiors. Bruno found himself taking breaks quite frequently to play with his daughters, and to teach his young son valuable lessons.
As the weeks passed, Bruno found that he had more volunteers from the German Navy than he initially expected. In particular, the German Seebattalion, which was the Imperial German Naval Infantry, in other words their version of Marines had well over two dozen volunteers join the unit.
This made sense when Bruno considered the small scale of the Seebataillon and the fact that they really didn’t have much to do, as one only one of its two battalions had been deployed to defend German colonists in the Herero Wars
In fact, now that it was mid-October 1904, Bruno was all too aware of what had happened in the region. It did after all cause some major drama at the Central Division of German High Command. In an act of rebellion, the Khoi and Herero tribes had massacred 125 German settlers in what would be known as Namibia in the 21st century.
In retaliation, General Lothar von Trotha had ordered the extermination of the Herero tribes by killing all the men, as well as forcing the women and children into the desert where they would die from dehydration or exposure.
It was no doubt an act of cruelty, but considering the Herero tribes had murdered innocent German Settlers, Bruno quite frankly considered it not necessarily justified per se, but more so the natural result that would occur when a colonial subject performed such a heinous act against their masters.
In addition to this, Bruno was well aware of Lothar von Trotha’s character. Having served beneath the man in China during the boxer rebellion. Well, not exactly directly as Bruno was only a captain at the time who answered to a Lieutenant Colonel. But the man was in charge of the East Aisa Expeditionary Corps, which Bruno was a part of and thus could have been considered the boss of Bruno’s boss.
At the time, Lothar was the colonel whose response was to immediately throw Bruno into confinement after the incident with the Russian Brigands. His character was fierce and temperamental. Often choosing punitive action in the strictest manner before fully getting a grasp on the situation.
Naturally, the order from German High Command when they discovered that Lothar had effectively ordered an act of genocide was to repeal it. But Lothar simply pretended like he did not receive the orders of the Chief of Staff, and by extension the Kaiser.
No doubt he was currently carrying out his genocide. And as much as Bruno should have sympathy for the victims. He could really only find the blame lying with the Herero people. I mean had they not taken up arms, and butchered innocent colonists, who were living peaceful lives, and were by no means a part of the Colonial Army which the natives had their grievance against, then this tragedy would have never befallen them.
It really was a self-inflicted tragedy. And quite frankly, Bruno was of the mindset that if you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. No matter how horrible the consequences may be, it was the result of the natives’ own violence towards an occupying force that had the strength to easily wipe them out. What exactly did they expect to happen?
At the end of the day, it was an undeniable law of nature that might is right. If the natives did not have the power to repel the German Army, then what happened to them as a result of their rebellion was simply nothing that Bruno would shed a tear over. Even if it did result in an excessive retaliation such as extermination.
So Bruno simply carried on with his day, not giving a second thought to an act that many would consider a stain on Germany’s history. Because at the end of the day, should he win the Great War, and establish German hegemony in Europe. Then history would remember this incident not as a fault of the German Reich, but rather that of the Herero people who suffered the consequences of their own murderous actions.
Because at the end of the day, the concepts of human rights and equality were not the natural progression of human civilization unlike what so many people believed during Bruno’s past life. Rather, it was the direct result of America’s hegemony over the world following the end of the Second World war.
The military might of the United States and its repeated crackdown on those who opposed their beliefs across the world throughout the 20th and 21st centuries was the reason that liberalism had become the norm in western civilization.
Had the Central Powers emerged victorious in the Great War, or had the Axis won the second world war, then the norms which were often taken for granted in western civilization during the 21st century would have been replaced entirely with a very different system of values.
And that was all that needed to be said. So, after putting such petty matters into the back of his mind, Bruno returned his attention back to the creation of his Iron Brigade. The obvious choice of a standard infantry weapon was the Gewehr 98 rifle. Manufactured in significant numbers, the Reich could easily spare a few thousand of them to be given to the German “volunteers.”
However, because he had months to form the Iron Brigade and deploy to Russia, Bruno wanted to make a few minor modifications to these rifles. To put it simply, Bruno could not stand the iron sights on the standard issue Gewehr 98. They were simply atrocious according to his more modern sensibilities.
It was because of this; he had his family’s company refurbish the rifles that were to be fielded by the Iron Brigade. Specifically, so they could be converted into the G98m variation which were manufactured in the interwar period of his previous life, and issued to Nationalists during the Spanish civil war, as well as in limited numbers to the Waffen-SS at the start of the Second World War.
As for artillery, the Krupp 7.5 cm Model 1903 was selected for use by the Iron Brigade. For starters, it was not a cannon actually issued to the German Army or at least in any significant capacity, rather it was used as an export weapon to other nations. Such as Serbia, Japan, Romania, et cetera.
In this timeline, the Germans had sent this weapon to the Japanese during their war with the Russians in Manchuria as a means of aid. And by now was also being shipped to the Russians as well. It was Krupp’s answer to the Canon de 75 modèle 1897, which was a French weapon that had made the German artillery of the previous century obsolete.
However, the 7.5cm Model 1903 lost in military trials against the Waffenwerke von Zehntner 7.5 cm FK 1901. Which was Bruno’s design based upon the interwar era 7.5 cm FK 16 nA from his past life. Which was now being mass produced for military service.
Of course, the 7.5cm Model 1903 was “adopted” in limited numbers for the purpose of counter espionage. Its sole purpose was to basically be used as a display piece for potential spies to observe and report incorrect information to their nation. Because of this, and the export models, Krupp was producing enough to easily supply the Iron Brigade in their wars abroad.
Finally, there was one other piece of equipment being employed by the Iron Brigade in this war. And that was the MG 01. Or more specifically, the MG 01/03, which was a variant in this timeline that Waffenwerke von Zehntner manufactured to fulfill the needs of the German Army who had begun investing heavily into machine guns before the MG-34 was ready for mass production.
In other words, it was an MG 08 with a tripod mount rather than the notorious sledge mount. And it also made use of a metallic belt like the PM M1910, which the Russians would adopt in 1910.
This was in contrast to the cloth belt that the Germans, and other nations adopted for their variants of the Maxim Gun, also known by the nickname of “The Devil’s Paintbrush” due to the millions of young men whose blood it spilled across no-man’s-land during the Great War of Bruno’s past life..
It was because this machine gun was in ready supply, and was highly capable of performing the roles Bruno needed it to that he had selected it for service within the Iron Brigade. After all, the German Reich was the only nation currently investing heavily into Machine gun development and production. As most nations still had not understood their value on the battlefield. Even after their prominent use during the Second Boer War, and the Russo-Japanese War.
And since this was the case, Bruno knew that the Red Army would not be able to get their hands on such devastating weapons. Perhaps if they were lucky, they could get one or two. But not enough to effectively counter the Iron Brigade. Especially if Bruno fielded Machine Gunners at the platoon level.
Thus, Bruno had finished the requisition forms for the specific equipment he wanted for his Iron Brigade. Which he had no doubt would result in a victory for the Russian Tsar. If there was one concern Bruno had about deploying to Russia, it was simply this.
He had no idea when this war would end, or how many communists he would have to butcher in the process. Surely he would not become known for painting the Russian landscape red with the blood of Marxists, right?”
