"It is a shame to have a country without defense!" Sickert began the routine Wehrmacht's exercise with his motto: "You are Germany's national defense!"

Recently, Sickert can be described as a spring breeze, and by means of near-robbery, he dug up more than 10 million Deutsche marks from the already stretched state funds, and used this money as a deposit to order 200,000 new military uniforms, which made his German * team look decades ahead of the old rivals of England and France.

And at his behalf, Accardo carried out an ambitious plan to "rearm the mind and morale," focusing on cultivating soldiers' individual skills and initiative to master more advanced technology.

Originally, Sickert did not pay attention to advanced scientific and technological equipment, but emphasized spiritual strength, but in the process of implementation, Accardo transformed this slightly erroneous idea into a correct idea that attaches importance to both spiritual strength and advanced scientific and technological equipment.

With an order, the routine exercise of the Wehrmacht began, the infantry ran between the craters in groups of four carrying heavy Maxim heavy machine guns, and the signal corps holding high the command flag braved the smoke to convey the message, and the exercise was enthusiastically staged in a field of backward equipment.

The strange maneuver made the officers of the Coalition Arms Control Committee who came to observe laugh, and the joy in their hearts was simply beyond words to describe as they watched their once formidable opponent now dance lamely in front of them like clowns.

They saw the brand-new German armored vehicles swing quickly in front of the enemy position and retreat to their own position far away, and then a group of soldiers gathered around the map to sketch and analyze for a long time before they ran back to their positions to prepare for the attack.

They saw that the German cavalry unit riding thousands of horses attacked the defensive position composed of a dozen machine guns on the opposite side, and even threw dozens of smoke bombs that choked the tears of the war horses before the attack.

They saw several members of the German machine gun team running forward slowly carrying a heavy Makqin machine gun, and the soldier who ran to the position first with a ranging instrument on his back did not wait for the machine gun team to take position, but took the instrument to measure the number and raised his right hand to signal that he had hit the target.

The whole exercise was chaotic and, in the words of the French observer, it was a joke.

Especially when they got the report on the conclusion of the Wehrmacht exercise, several judicial officers laughed with tears in their eyes.

The report contains the following interesting passages:

At nine o'clock in the morning, the 1st Cavalry Regiment advanced and captured 19 enemy machine-gun positions, and the battle was completed smoothly - the cavalry assault machine-gun positions were victorious.

At 10:27 a.m., the 2nd Infantry Battalion of the 1st Division defended against an enemy tank attack, destroying 20 enemy tanks and repulsing about 30 others - the infantry actually won the tank.

And the report also said that in the afternoon, an infantry company was ashamed to report that it had shot down two enemy planes.

Although the treaty stipulated that Germany could not have tanks, it did not strictly limit the number of armored vehicles, so Accardo took the initiative to purchase about 400 new armored vehicles for various units of the Wehrmacht, and these armored vehicles gave several main divisions of the German simulated tank force a world-class reconnaissance force.

Contrary to the world's belief that Germany would replace tanks with armored vehicles, Accardo did not use these armored vehicles as a substitute for tanks, but strictly ordered his troops to use these armored reconnaissance vehicles equipped with advanced observation equipment as forward scouts for tank units, providing enemy intelligence for those tanks that did not exist at all.

On the contrary, those invisible tank units are actually cavalry units all over the world, and Accardo has equipped nearly 40,000 war horses for the twenty main divisions of the Wehrmacht, and these slightly outdated troops on horseback are actually simulating tank units advancing on a large scale. It is also responsible for simulating mechanized towed artillery, self-propelled guns and panzergrenadiers.

If a general who had fought in World War II came to the exercise site, he would definitely think that he was crazy, because the experience of the training exercises conducted by the German Wehrmacht was summed up after fighting five years of war.

Those machine gun groups that carry heavy machine guns on mobile, if equipped with general-purpose machine guns or light machine guns, are simply the perfect standard for mobile machine gun position operations.

Those soldiers who stormed the enemy's positions on horseback, if they were replaced by tanks, could easily achieve the ridiculous results they had achieved today.

And those front-line command and analysis based on perfect reconnaissance, and the artillery support carried out accurately according to the coordinates, even the American * team in 1944 may not be able to do better than the German unit in front of them.

The disadvantages were not necessarily without the benefits, and because of the ban on universal military service in Germany and the restriction of the total number of German troops to no more than 100,000, the Wehrmacht had extremely strict criteria in the selection of service personnel. Volunteers had to go through a series of physical and psychological tests - even though Accardo shamelessly and secretly doubled the true size of the Wehrmacht, this harsh selection condition was not relaxed.

After joining the army, soldiers serve for at least 12 years and officers for no less than 25 years, and once in the army, each soldier will receive special training in some area, with an emphasis on the leadership qualities of these soldiers.

Since Germany could not establish regular military academies, Sickert and Accardo decided to circumvent this rule and establish a military education system at the company and regimental levels of the army, in which privates were trained as sergeants and sergeants were trained as officers in the regimental military education system.

Accardo assured Sickert that once war broke out, all active German servicemen would be promoted by at least one rank, and the size of the army could be increased tenfold or more in an instant.

This army was tested in semi-annual military exercises, which tested its professional skills and sense of honor in its military profession. Although there were no modern high-tech military equipment such as tanks, airplanes, anti-aircraft guns, etc., they used cardboard and wood to make models for training, and the so-called incoming enemy planes sometimes used toy balloons.

However, if you get close to them, you will hear a single soldier always shouting over the radio: "I'm a platoon" or "This is an eight-man machine gun team."

A foreign observer, who had seen a little bit of the way, lamented: "The Wehrmacht is not a joke. The German * team should be brought to the attention of all the staffs of the world. ”

Therefore, Sickert could not be dissatisfied, because his number one subordinate, Lieutenant Colonel Accardo, who had not been known until two years ago, took advantage of the existing conditions and after more than a year of hard work, finally brought the new force of the Wehrmacht to fruition and became a first-class armed force that impressed the whole world.

However, the large number of simulated tank units and the overly marginalized cavalry in the exercise made Sickert very unhappy, and he finally found Accardo, who was chatting with a group of tractor-driven "tank crews" on the afternoon of the exercise.

"Accardo, I've put so much trust in you that you've gotten a little carried away! Should I take back some of my power so that you know that the Wehrmacht isn't a toy for some?"

Accardo seems to have known this for a long time, because although the general he is familiar with has a forward-looking vision, he also has a stubbornness that surpasses ordinary people: "Can the general really be sure that your decision must be right?"

Sickert was stunned for a moment, looked at Accardo with a frown, and fiddled with the stones under his feet with his feet: "You know what I'm talking about, and since you know, why do you do it." ”

"Because I'm pretty sure that what will determine the future war is the oil, the metal, the cluster impact formed by the large-scale concentrated use of tanks, and the large-depth encirclement and destruction of the enemy by the troops relying on mechanization, but the equipment you trust can't do what I'm talking about. Accardo looked at Sickert with a smile: "How can you rely on the cavalry troops and bicycle troops you said to advance a hundred kilometers a day and be able to go into battle immediately?"

"But this is the Wehrmacht! This is the last bit of German military power, and all I can do is to ensure that this force is steadily improved, and not blindly believe in some utopian theories written on paper. General Sickert said fiercely: "Germany cannot afford to take this risk! You cannot afford to take this responsibility!"

"You can't afford to take on this responsibility, General, if Germany misses out on this period of development because of your stubbornness, when the next war comes, Germany will be defeated because it lacks a tank, a truck, or a cannon!" How can you be responsible?" Acardor retorted without flinching as he stared at Sickert.

The veteran general in front of him was the Bole who promoted him, the boss who supported him almost with all his might, and they could even be said to be like-minded friends of the revitalization of the Wehrmacht. But in the face of each other's insistence on the concept, the two finally had red eyes.

Looking at Accardo in a daze, Sickert finally sighed, his drooping shoulders suddenly made this stubborn old man ten years old: "I will take back the reorganization and supervision of the first division, but hand over the reorganization and supervision of the new third division to you, we will wait for three years, after three years, if you can prove your theory, I will let you go, if you fail, I will shoot you with my own hands!"

"If my theory of war is not confirmed, I will not wait for you to do it. Accardo sneered: "Your Excellency, General, I will give you an explanation." ”

Sickert walked away without looking back: "I hope you are not joking with tens of millions of defense funds." ”

Accardo replied firmly: "I never joke with my dreams. ”