Iron Cross Fire

Early on September 26, Emperor Franz returned to Vienna with a message after his visit:

General Auffenberg, commander of the Fourth Army stationed on the Eastern Front, applied for dismissal, and General Ferdinand succeeded him as commander-in-chief.

This was not good news for Austria-Hungary. After the war, two army commanders were replaced in a battle. You should know that Austria-Hungary only deployed a total of 4 army groups on the Eastern Front. This mobilization dealt a heavy blow to the command system of Austria-Hungary. It will take several months to recover.

But there was a reason for the dismissal of these two idiots. Brudermann abandoned his troops and fled across the river by himself, and he didn't even have time to dismantle the bridge, which led to the complete collapse of the Third Army. This reason was not enough to shoot him a dozen times. Auffenberg was already disgraced for corruption, and this failure dealt a heavy blow to his reputation. After he retired, he was still dealing with those rumors and sneers.

Austria-Hungary actually sent these two unreliable people as senior generals before the war. It can only be said that their government was rotten. The bitter fruits caused by this need to be borne by the lower-class citizens and soldiers. This will inevitably lead to the uncontrollable growth of contradictions and promote the large-scale outbreak of nationalist awakening. It can be said that after this battle, the demise of Austria-Hungary, a multi-ethnic country, has been announced.

After that, the only people the Habsburgs could rely on were their nobles. But many nobles were also unreliable, the most typical of which were the Magyars, whose grievances with Austria had been established hundreds of years ago.

In order to prevent these Magyar masters from seeking independence, the Austrians had to give Hungarians a high degree of autonomy, and even allowed them to have their own government and prime minister.

It was not until the late 19th and early 20th centuries that the Austrians found a good way to deal with the Magyars - universal suffrage. That is, all Austro-Hungarian citizens in the Hungarian region had the right to vote in the local area, which seriously harmed the interests of the Magyar nobles, and they did everything they could to prevent the promulgation of this law.

So much so that later, every time Hungary demanded greater autonomy or went further, the Austrians would demand universal elections, and most of the parliaments ended in displeasure. Although this method of suppression is very effective now, it still has little effect in the long run. After all, the awakening of the nation is not something that the nobles can control.

Without saying too much, Kuster has a lot of things to do today.

It is impossible to deal with the company, as he is a soldier and does not have so much capital. They can only try to get the support of the government so that they can continue to develop.

So he called one of his official friends:

"Hey, Wiltok! This is Kuster."

A lazy and angry voice came from the other end of the phone:

"Brother Kuster, you are simply asking for my life!"

"Haha! I have something to talk to you about."

"What is it? Hurry up and tell me, I'm busy."

"Is there any way for me to meet with Emperor Franz and Minister Elenthal?"

"Of course, but you need to give me 2,000 crowns." Wiltok began to raise the price.

"It's too expensive. Let's round it off to 200 kronor." Kuster also started to be shameless.

"No, no, 1200 kronor. I still have a bottom line for this kind of behavior."

"250 kronor." Kuster joked.

"You should treat me to a few meals." Wiltok laughed helplessly.

"Hahaha! Brother, I'm waiting for you to say this! Treat me to a meal? No problem! Which restaurant in Vienna do you like? I'll take you to that restaurant without saying a word!"

"Oh, you are always so shameless. Okay, I will send a letter of recommendation to the Emperor's cabinet. As for the rest of the luck, it depends on you.

If the emperor and others really come to see you, don't forget me!"

"Brother, am I that kind of person? Hahaha!"

Kuster hung up the phone while talking and laughing, looking a little happy. But the footsteps outside the door froze his smile instantly.

"Fox, why are you here? Have you done what I arranged for you?"

Looking at the cold Kuster, Fox felt cold all over, but still said:

"General, we have brought back the tank chassis. The workers want to know what they should do now."

Kust raised his head and thought for a while. Thinking that he did have such an arrangement, he stood up and said:

"I am very sorry for my rudeness, but I am very grateful for your reminder. I just remembered this matter. My mental state has not been very good recently. Please forgive me.

As for the tank chassis, put a howitzer in it. As for the caliber, I have a drawing for you."

Unfolding the drawing handed over by Kuster, a 105mm howitzer was drawn on it.

Fox frowned and asked doubtfully:

"General, forgive me for being blunt. If we develop this kind of large-caliber artillery now, doesn't it mean that everything we have done before is in vain?"

"No, no, no, those two artillery pieces are relatively light and have a fast firing rate. And they do not require complex ballistic calculations, so they are very suitable as field artillery carried by infantry.

And this kind of large-caliber howitzer has no major advantages except for its great power. Especially its mobility, which is simply too bad. So I will try to install it on a vehicle to eliminate this huge disadvantage."

Fox nodded, as if he understood. Kuster waved his hand and motioned him to go out.

Kust sat back in his chair and weighed the pros and cons of self-propelled artillery.

The mobility of artillery is indeed frustrating. Even for modern towed artillery, it takes several minutes to fix the artillery, not to mention this large-caliber artillery.

Self-propelled artillery can indeed bring good benefits, but its high cost is prohibitive.

But Kuster doesn't care about such issues now. He is only thinking about how to use these war machines to please the emperor.

However, even so, Kuster still considers the logistics system responsibly.

Compared with Skoda heavy artillery, Kuster artillery is generally lighter. A single artillery model and type of shells will not cause too much trouble for logistics.

And Skoda heavy artillery has many models and more than one type of shells. This caused the unprofessional soldiers on the front line to be too lazy to change the long and short barrels; and changing shells requires recalculating the trajectory. These are too troublesome and must be simplified.

Kuster artillery has the upper hand in cost performance, but at this time people generally believe that large caliber is the truth. Therefore, Kuster had to personally distribute the artillery to some troops and use the actual combat results to convince the masses to adopt his artillery.

As for which unit to distribute the artillery to, there is no need to hesitate, it must be Franz's unit. Kuster gave him the artillery, which was beneficial to both parties.

Thinking of this, Kuster stood up again, put on his military cap, and walked out the door.

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