"Relax, Lieutenant. ”

Schulenburg pointed to the silver tea set and good refreshments on the coffee table and smiled at Parsifal.

"You see, I did just invite you to tea. ”

Parsifal couldn't relax at all, and the moment he heard the word "drink tea", his hands couldn't help but tremble.

Schulenburg seemed to be a mild-mannered man of good family and personal accomplishments, and on the surface he seemed to be an ordinary department manager, seemingly unaffiliated with some powerful organization, but he did work for Stacy and had the rank of lieutenant colonel.

A Stasi lieutenant colonel invites you to tea, which can never be a good thing, and it often means internal censorship, torture, human evacuation, hard labor camps, and other horrific things. Similar words include "check the meter", "deliver a courier", and "community warmth" - ordinary things can become very scary as long as they are tied to Stasi.

Trying to maintain the composure and reserve expected of a soldier, and not letting the panic leak from his face, Parsifal sat down slowly, only a third of his ass sitting on the chair.

Schulenburg shrugged and secretly smiled wryly.

The young man must have been troubled by his maid of the cow clan, despite his repeated claims that he was a virgin, and confirmation by his superiors and accompanying men. But he was believed to have been called for tea to investigate whether he had violated the Racial Marriage Act, and to that end he submitted a collectively signed petition to prove that Lieutenant Parsifal had not violated the sacred law and had committed an immoral act......

What a bunch of lovely guys.

In fact, there are signs of expansion and prolongation as the war continues. In order to monitor the movements of various countries and deal with a huge amount of intelligence information, Stasi has long been too busy to spying on the private lives of junior officers. As long as you figure this out, you naturally won't worry about Stasi coming to trouble Parsifal.

Ignorance is really troublesome.

After muttering a sentence silently, Schulenburg straightened his posture and said in a formal tone:

"Before the official start, allow me to congratulate you on the fact that you have been promoted by order of the General Staff. Congratulations. Captain Parsifal. ”

With that, Schulenburg stood up and stretched out his right hand.

Parsifal was still sitting, the freshly baked captain of the Wehrmacht overwhelmed by the sudden promotion. I don't know what to do. Until 5 minutes later. He realized that Schulenburg was still waiting to shake his hand.

"I'm sorry, Lieutenant Colonel. ”

The moment he came back to his senses, Parsifal jumped up like a spring. The two hands are clasped tightly.

Sitting down again, fear and questions still haunted Parsifal.

Promotion is a good thing, every soldier is eager to increase the stars on his shoulders, especially for the logistics department, since they have much fewer opportunities to receive medals than combat units, accumulating merit to promote the rank has become the most realistic means. But even so, it is still not easy to get promoted, and in peacetime, it takes at least a few years to climb from lieutenant to captain, and Parsifal's promotion speed is already unusual.

But the question is why the order for the promotion of the Wehrmacht was passed on by a lieutenant colonel Stasi? Moreover, it was a direct order from the General Staff.

This is not unusual at all, and it even raises suspicions that there is some conspiracy.

The conspiracy did exist, but it was not directed against a lieutenant.

"Captain, I'm sure you know the truth that 'power always comes with responsibility'. ”

"Yes, sir. ”

"I won't say any more words of encouragement here, let's get straight to the point. Captain, from today onwards, you will be in charge of the railway logistics of the Riga Fortress. ”

There was another thunderbolt in the clear sky, and Parsifal's mouth was wide open, and he couldn't say a word.

Although the order for promotion was unexpected, it could still bring a little surprise, but let a small captain be in charge of the logistics of the army of tens of thousands of hairy bears...... That's a big joke!

As everyone knows, whether or not materials and personnel can be delivered to the front-line troops in a timely and correct manner is the benchmark for judging logistics work and is also an important factor in determining the outcome of a war. The most important key to this is a highly efficient railway system. In the "Seven-Day War," the Defense Forces relied on such a railway network to provide a guarantee for the rapid development of mechanized troops, and ultimately contributed to the realization of the set strategic goals.

However, in the process, the railway network exposed many problems, and in the early stage of the war, it even almost affected the progress of the war and almost bankrupted the entire operation. This was also highlighted later in the lessons learned.

Even Alfheim, which has the world's largest railway network and has accumulated a lot of experience and planning in advance, will encounter unexpected problems in the military application of railways, and when the same thing is done by the principality, the trouble will escalate into a nightmare.

Parsifal knows this well. After several missions to deliver supplies to Riga, he came to a conclusion that was representative of the voice of the Yalfheim technocrats - that the response of the duchy's logistical systems and infrastructure to the demands of war was the material for a nightmare for the bureaucrats.

First of all, due to the long-term carelessness of the railways, the reality that the country is too vast, the selfish interests of the local bureaucracy and aristocracy, and the necessary wariness of foreign enterprises. The construction of railways in the principality has always been in a very backward state. The country as a whole does not form a network of interconnected railways, but large sections of fragmented single-track railways, and double-track railway bridges are rarely seen, most of them are two railway bridges back and forth, and the distance between the two bridges is usually hundreds of meters away. What's even more fatal is that except for the part that is in the hands of V.E, the principality does not have a special agency to coordinate at all. It's just that according to the traditional method, the relay transportation is carried out by animal power transportation, and it is conceivable that the transportation capacity is so low.

Under these circumstances, it is impossible for the principality to draw up a perfect, detailed, long-term transportation plan, and all decisions are made by taking it for granted and patting the head. As a result, they overestimated the number of wartime train counterparts and stopped transportation on almost every commercial railroad in their hands. Then 50 carriages were organized into a military column, and the civilian truck formation could have been 100 carriages a long time ago. During transportation, in order to maintain the "same speed of movement", all trains were ordered to travel only at the speed of the train in the worst condition. Coupled with the fact that a large number of locomotives had their antifreeze stolen and drunk by soldiers, and that there was a long-term lack of maintenance, many locomotives were in poor condition, and as a result, the Principality's military trains were slower than bicycles......

To think that's all there is to the nightmare is a big mistake. Feeding the mobilized army also reflected the complex bureaucratic thinking of the United Principality of Rus'. Both the military train and the Behemoth pack animal convoy would stop for a meal every six hours. Although the company has added a cooking car to each train. And there are field kitchen utensils carried with the car, but the cooking facilities at the train station are too few, and they are far away, which is difficult to meet the demand. The troops marched all day hungry. Then, in the middle of the night, two meals were served in a row. At Viziama station. This confusion reached its peak: the local stationmaster had a complete mental breakdown. The order of all departure signals was reversed, and more than a dozen military columns were delayed for 12 hours, and then they ran into the toilet and hanged themselves.

After the stationmaster hung up. After high-level coordination between the two sides, he temporarily served as the station commander and dispatched the military trains to none other than Parsifal, the only person with experience in railway dispatching at the scene at that time. After a week of nervous breakdown, rail transport began to get on track, and he was relieved.

"People who haven't experienced that kind of chaos firsthand can't believe it, I, who have never shot anyone, in those days, all I thought about every day was to drag the bureaucratic bastards of the Principality under the wall and shoot them. ”

"I believe it. ”

Looking at Parsifal's self-deprecating wry, Schulenburg nodded.

The chaos of the railway system is only a microcosm of the logistics system of the entire principality, whether at the front or in the rear, the nonchalant atmosphere of the principality can be seen everywhere, and every qiē is full of chaos.

The rear was busy with palace struggles, and the forces of all sides were inextricably bitten, and inevitably affected the front line and logistics. While the generals on the front line were busy dealing with all kinds of open guns and hidden arrows, they did their best to strengthen the defense system, pay close attention to training the soldiers, and improve the level of supplementary troops as much as possible, so that the combat effectiveness of the troops could be restored to the pre-war level. However, the effect is not very good, judging from the report, those young people who are used to holding dung forks still have a lot of confusion about the difference between a smoothbore gun and a rifled gun, and often the wrong bullet leads to damage to the firearm.

If the Principality is still so chaotic when the human army is coming, I am afraid that it will be difficult to maintain their fragile defenses. To this end, it is necessary for V.E. to provide assistance to the Principality in addition to increasing its arms leasing.

Of course, the premise of this kind of assistance is that it must not adversely affect Alfheim himself, such as the provision of machine tools, machine tools, and punching presses, which are useless in the short term and threaten Alfheim in the long term, so these things are not on the list of aid and sale.

Instead, V.E outsourced the management of the Principality's railways and agriculture, as well as providing a certain amount of material and personnel assistance.

"Outsourcing?"

"That's right, you can understand it as a kind of leasing of human resources. The company provides professionals to manage all aspects of the Principality on behalf of the Principality and improve work efficiency. Dispatch employees are paid by the Principality, and if they are not satisfied, they can complain or terminate their contract, but I don't think they will have a problem with dispatches who are only paid a third of their salary and are three or even four times more efficient than bureaucrats. ”

This is indeed very tempting, but it does not seem to have much impact on the course of the war.

"Thrift, Captain. ”

Schulenburgh laughed and explained:

"The principality lacks gold and efficiency, but it does not lack heads. By outsourcing some of the ineffective departments to us, they can save a lot of gold to buy and lease weapons, and they can also save a lot of pious gray animals to use these weapons on the battlefield. ”

The United Principality of Rus' was backward in all respects, both in industry and agriculture. Despite the fertile Kiev Plain, the average wheat yield per hectare is a measly 1.4 tonnes. A rough estimate of the wheat yield could be increased to 6.4 tonnes per hectare if V.E sent experts to manage the soil, make a plan based on the number of frost and rainy days and market demand, and allow farmers to cultivate it rationally. According to Schulenburg's own estimates, once the V.E company took over the management of agricultural production, for every 1 ton of wheat produced, the Principality could transfer 2~3 people to the production positions of farms, slaughterhouses, transportation systems and other relevant departments to become soldiers every year.

The same is true for industry, where V.E does not provide manufacturing equipment, but it can outsource the transportation and maintenance of weapons. This greatly reduces the scrapping rate of weapons, shortens the time it takes to repair weapons, and trains a group of professional maintenance personnel for the Principality.

Privately, Schulenburg also revealed to Stolypin that the company could also send lecturers, conduct professional training for junior officials, and conduct internships under the guidance of outsourced personnel. In this way, the principality would be able to reduce its dependence on outsourcing in the future and obtain a relatively good number of professional bureaucrats after the war, which would be very attractive in the long run. Of course, the Principality had to pay for the dispatch of lecturers to teach classes......

Up to now, there is no specific number of how much human resources this outsourcing plan can save for the principality, and it is initially estimated that at least about 50,000 young and middle-aged people can be squeezed out, which is enough to level the strength comparison on the battlefield.

Cheap, practical, quick-paying, able to train a pool of talent, and above all in the hands of the principality, the alternative to "talent outsourcing" succeeded in attracting Stolypin's discerning client, who introduced him to the Grand Elder Werther. It is said that the response in the Presbyterian Church has been good, although there have been some murmurs of opposition, but in the face of the company's fierce silver bullet offensive, most of the murmur will soon disappear.

Now there is only one problem left, and the company must have a platform to show the effectiveness of outsourcing and silence the last remaining doubts completely.

And Parsifal, the young man who once managed a chaotic train station into a model station in just one week, is the best PR target.

"Captain. ”

Lieutenant Colonel Schulenburg put away his flirtatious smile, patted Parsifal on the shoulder, and said in an extremely formal, commissar-like tone:

"It's the organization's trust in you, and it's also a test for you. The motherland, the people, and the army are watching you, and we at Stasi will fully support your work. I believe that you will live up to your mission and add new merits to your resume. ”

An encouragement, but also a warning. It is unequivocally declared that Parsifal has no right to refuse this appointment, and that there is no room for failure, otherwise he will meet a very unfortunate end.

It's not as simple as just leaving a few bad comments on your resume......

Looking at Schulenburg, who was smiling like a jackal, Parsifal's lips moved, and after a long moment, he squeezed out an expression that couldn't tell whether he was crying or laughing. (To be continued......)