On the morning of September 26, Emperor Franz returned to Vienna with a message:

The commander of the Fourth Army, 'General Offenberg', stationed on the Eastern Front, applied for removal and was succeeded by 'General Ferdinand' as commander-in-chief.

This is not good news for Austria-Hungary. After the start of the war, in one battle, the commander-in-chief of two army groups was replaced in succession. You must know that Austria-Hungary has only deployed a total of 4 armies on the Eastern Front, and this transfer has dealt a heavy blow to the Austro-Hungarian command system. There is no recovery in a few months.

But it was not for nothing that these two were dismissed. Brudman left his troops and fled across the river on his own, and he didn't even have time to tear down the bridge, leading to the total collapse of the Third Army. For this reason, it was not enough to shoot him a dozen times back and forth. Offenberg was already disgraced by corruption, and this defeat dealt a heavy blow to his reputation. After he retired, he was still dealing with those rumors.

Austria-Hungary even sent these two unreliable people as senior generals before the war, and it can only be said that their government is rotten. However, the bitter consequences caused need to be borne by the lower classes of citizens and soldiers. This will inevitably lead to the uncontrollable growth of contradictions and promote a large-scale outbreak of nationalist awakening. It can be said that after this battle, the demise of Austria-Hungary, a multinational state, was announced.

After that, the only thing the Habsburgs could rely on was their aristocracy. But many of the nobles were also unreliable, most notably the Magyars, whose feud with Austria had been settled for centuries.

In order to prevent these Magyars from becoming independent, the Austrians had to give the Hungarians a high degree of autonomy and even allow them to have their own government and prime minister.

It was not until the late 19th and early 20th centuries that the Austrians discovered a good way to deal with the Magyars – universal suffrage. That is, to allow all Austro-Hungarian citizens in Hungary to have the right to vote in the region, which seriously jeopardized the interests of the Magyar nobility, who did everything to prevent the promulgation of this law.

Later, every time Hungary demanded greater autonomy or further, the Austrians would demand universal elections in Hungary, and the parliament would mostly break up. While this method of suppression is effective now, it still does not work much in the long run. After all, the awakening of the nation is not something that the aristocracy can control.

Without further ado, Kuster has a lot to do today.

It's impossible to deal with a company, he doesn't have that much capital as a soldier. They can only continue to develop if they try to get the support of the government.

So he called one of his official friends:

"Hey, Wiltok! This is Kuster. ”

There was a lazy and angry voice on the other side of the phone:

"Brother Kuster, you're almost killing me!"

"Haha! Isn't there something I want to find you? ”

"What's the matter? Hurry up, I'm busy. ”

"Is there a way for me to meet with Emperor Franz and Minister Ehrenthal?"

"Of course, but you need to give me 2,000 crowns." Wiltok began to sit on the ground.

"It's too expensive, let's get a fraction, 200 crowns." Kuster is also starting to lose face.

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

"250 CZK." Kuster joked.

"You might as well treat me to a few meals." Wiltok smiled helplessly.

"Hahaha! Dude, I'm waiting for your words! Dinner, please? Say! Which restaurant in Vienna City do you have the right eye, I'll pick up the guy and take you to that one without saying a word! ”

"Oh, you're always so shameless. Okay, I'll send a letter of recommendation to the Emperor's cabinet, and as for the rest of the creation, it's up to you.

If the emperor really comes to see you, don't forget me! ”

"Is that the kind of person I am, dude, hahaha!"

Amid the laughter, Kuster hung up the phone, looking a little happy. But a burst of footsteps from outside the door made him smile instantly.

"Fox, why are you here? I've arranged for you, have you done it? ”

Looking at the cold Custer, Fox felt chills all over his body, but he still stubbornly spoke:

"General, we've brought back that tank chassis. The workers wanted to know what they were supposed to do now. ”

Kuster looked up and thought for a moment. Thinking that he did have such an arrangement, he stood up and said:

"I'm sorry for my rudeness, but thank you very much for the reminder. I just remembered this, I haven't been in good spirits lately, please forgive me.

As for the tank chassis, stuff a howitzer into it. As for what caliber, I have a drawing for you here. ”

Unfold the drawing handed over by Kuster, which depicts a 105mm howitzer.

Fox frowned, and said with some doubts:

"General, IMHO. Isn't it tantamount to saying that everything we have done before has been in vain by developing this large-caliber artillery now? ”

"No, no, no, those two guns are lighter and have a fast rate of fire. And they do not require complex ballistic calculations, so they are quite suitable as field guns carried by infantry.

And this large-caliber howitzer, in addition to its great power, does not have much merit. Maneuverability, in particular, is simply terrible. So I'm going to try to attach it to the vehicle to eliminate this huge disadvantage. ”

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

Kuster sat back in his chair and weighed the pros and cons of the self-propelled guns.

The mobility of the artillery is really worrying. Even with modern towed artillery, it takes several minutes to stationary artillery, not to mention such large-caliber guns.

And self-propelled guns can indeed bring good benefits, but their high cost is prohibitive.

But Kuster didn't care about such issues now, all he was thinking about now was how to curry favor with the emperor with these war machines.

Even so, Kuster thought responsibly about the logistics system.

Compared to the Skoda heavy artillery, the Kuster gun was generally lighter. A single artillery model and shell type will also not give much trouble to logistics.

And there are many models of Skoda heavy artillery, and there is more than one type of shell. This caused the unprofessional soldiers on the front line to be too lazy to change the long and short barrels; Changing shells requires a recalculation of the trajectory. These are too cumbersome and must be simplified.

The Kuster gun had the upper hand in terms of cost performance, but at this time it was widely believed that the caliber was the truth. As a result, Kuster had to personally assign artillery to some units and use the results of actual combat to convince the masses to adopt his artillery.

As for which troops the artillery will be assigned, there is no need to hesitate, it will certainly be Franz's troops. Kusta gave him the artillery, which was beneficial to both sides.

Thinking of this, Custer got up again, put on his military hat, and walked out the door.