Capítulo 89: Chapter 167 The Battle of Poland (30)
On this day, senior officials such as Wilhelm and Rundstedt came to the front line.
After getting off the plane, Rundstedt looked around and sighed with emotion on his face. "Several of my military school classmates died on this land during the last war."
"Your Excellency General, this time we will definitely fulfill their long-cherished wish." Wilhelm comforted them.
"Your Highness is amused." Rundstedt quickly regained his composure. "It's been so many years since then, it's just a bit sad to be here again today." After saying these words, he still looked a bit like he wanted to speak.
Seeing this, Wilhelm took the initiative to speak. "It's okay to tell me what you have to say, General."
Rundstedt hesitated and then spoke cautiously. "Brauchitsch, he..."
"Walther von Brauchitsch? He wants to return to the army?" Seeing Rundstedt nodding, Wilhelm showed a hint of a smile. "It seems a bit humiliating to give him the position of battalion commander. How about giving him the position of chief of general staff, General?" Brauchitsch does have some military talent, but there are also many talents in the German army, and he is one more person. No more, no less than him. I gave him a chance before, but he didn't take it, otherwise he would be the current Army Chief of Staff. "Those who cannot keep up with the times will only be eliminated, just like this Poland."
"..." Rundstedt broke into a cold sweat, realizing he had brought up something he shouldn't have. The German army hadn't seen a promotion to Field Marshal in 20 years, and after the conclusion of the Polish campaign, a new Field Marshal would likely be appointed, with himself being the most probable candidate. He didn't want to lose such a supreme honor for a military man, hastily bowing his head and respectfully saying, 'I understand, Your Highness.'
Seeing that Wilhelm no longer wanted to delve deeper, Rundstedt also quickly changed the subject. "Your Highness, since we have so many super weapons, why did we only bring the K5 train gun?" This time they not only came for inspection, but also sent five K5 train guns to assist in the attack on Warsaw.
As the top commander of the army, Rundstedt certainly knew some secrets. Except for the top secret nuclear programs, he knows a thing or two about V1, V2, V3 and so on.
Wilhelm asked casually. "General, do you know what the benefits of war are?"
Rundstedt thought for a moment. "Territory? Resources? Population?"
Wilhelm smiled. "Those are just some of them. Although wars are bloody, every war destroys countless families and separates wives and children; it makes countless people displaced and leave their homes. But war also has its benefits. It will rapidly promote the development of human science and technology, almost every technological revolution is related to war."
"For example, during Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, where the front lines were extensive and demanded a significant shelf life for food, an expert named Appert, through repeated experiments, invented glass-canning of food, greatly enhancing its shelf life."
There is also assembly line production, whose original origin came from the Anglo-American War in 1912. The US military was in urgent need of a batch of 5,000 firearms and required a short time to complete them. At that time, American gun factories were all small self-employed workshops, and no one dared to take over. Later, someone came up with a way. Dozens of factories joined forces, each made a part, and finally put the gun together. This kind of production reduces costs and saves time.
Computers, nuclear technology, rocket and aerospace technology, the greatest technologies of later generations of mankind, are all products of the Second World War.
"Take airplanes, for instance; initially, they were not considered to be of any use in warfare."
In the early 20th century, with the emergence of heavier-than-air aircraft, militaries around the world began purchasing aircraft.
During the wars among European countries in the early 20th century, Italy seized a colony in North Africa from the Ottoman Turkish Empire, which later became Libya. In November of that year, Italy established an air force unit, and Giulio Zavodi was one of its pilots.
"Today, two full crates of bombs have arrived," Zavodi wrote in a letter to his father in Naples. "We will drop them from the plane. Strangely, no one informed us in advance, and we haven't received any orders from superiors, so we carefully loaded the bombs onto the aircraft. It should be interesting to throw these fellows onto the Turks."
The rest of the story is history.
Three years later, the armies of all major European countries had been equipped with small air ministries. They were at a painful juncture before the start of World War I.
However, mainstream technology organizations are still slow to understand the strategic importance of this setting. In October 1910, Scientific American magazine criticized the idea of using aircraft as weapons of war, stating: "Except for the purpose of reconnaissance, we consider the usefulness of aircraft to be rather limited, since its carrying capacity is small and if to avoid enemy artillery fire, it can only operate at high altitudes, and the destructive effect of the explosives it drops on cities, fortresses, enemy camps or troops on land, let alone warships at sea, is very limited. In short, aircrafts have a very limited impact on war. It has no real effect."
Indeed, in the early days of the war, aircrafts were still used only as observation platforms, but air-to-air warfare was a natural step in the evolutionary history of air combat. Both sides of the battle have aircrafts and pilots, and they will soon meet on a narrow road above the trenches. The initial confrontation is indeed more gentlemanly, or very chivalrous, because these air warriors still have something in common with each other. Our compatriots on the ground are out of reach.
But it didn't take long for them to realize that the enemies in the trenches with muskets aimed at your head were saluting the same flag as the enemies with silk scarves around their necks and gliding past in spray-painted Albatross. Someone pulled out a pistol in the air, the first plane was shot down, and the air battle began.
Soon, aerial observers like Giulio Zavodi, flying over enemy lines, realized how easily they could drop explosives. Tactical bombing as a doctrine was born. In the words of Scientific American magazine, air-dropped bombs really began to "have a real effect on the war effort."
"It's easy to imitate, but difficult to create. If the enemy sees our super weapons today, they will try their best to imitate and counterfeit them. Maybe within a few years, those weapons will be used against us. And they will also try their best to find out the method that can defend against this kind of super weapon. This will greatly reduce the effectiveness of the attack."
Just like a nuclear bomb, no one knew whether it could be made or how to make it before the United States created a nuclear bomb. It was not until the United States detonated its first nuclear bomb that other countries were convinced that this thing could really be built, and major countries followed suit.
What the Americans did was called innovation. At that time, no one knew whether a nuclear bomb could be made. They were just trying to cross the river by feeling for stones. After everyone knew that it could be made, it became an engineering problem, which could be easily solved with the efforts of the whole country. It is true that in future generations, even some small countries that are so poor will be able to create them.
As for defending against these super weapons, even a nuclear bomb has the method of "dig deep, store plenty of food." Current super weapons, of course, can also be countered.
For example, a "radio proximity fuze" is considered a "super weapon." According to post-war statistics, the 127mm gun, the main force of US shipborne anti-aircraft artillery, requires an average of 500 shells to shoot down each enemy aircraft when using radio proximity fuzes; while using conventional artillery shells, it takes four times more, that is, 2,000 rounds. Most of the artillery used to defend against kamikaze attacks in the later stages of the war relied on radio proximity fuzes.
Unfortunately, early proximity fuzes were not very strong in anti-interference ability. They would easily explode early as long as they were below 100 meters above sea level. Or the simplest and roughest high-intensity clutter interference could effectively deal with such proximity fuzes.
The V-1 missile did cause great panic in the British when it first entered the war, but it didn't take long for the British to find a way to deal with the V-1 missile. Because the V-1 missile flies at a leisurely altitude, some of the Royal Air Force's more skilled pilots can dive very close to the missile and suddenly fire to shoot it down.
Later, some bold pilots regarded the V-1 as a big toy and did not even bother to fire it. They drove the fighter plane under the missile and flew side by side at constant speed. The wings were under the belly of the missile. Then they turned the fuselage over. The wings would overturn the V-1 missile and crashed.
Another example is the acoustic homing torpedo. This kind of torpedo is different from the ordinary torpedoes at that time. It can guide itself to the engine of the enemy ship to destroy the enemy ship's power system. This kind of torpedo that can turn on its own to track the target initially caused panic in the British Navy, but they quickly found a solution by dragging a machine behind the ship that could make a lot of noise to make the torpedo deviate from the course. As a result, this type of heavily equipped guided weapon did not play a big role. Instead, it was because of several incidents of turning back to attack the submarine that launched itself after launching it. This type of torpedo was criticized among the officers and soldiers of the submarine force.
Therefore, Wilhelm plans to use those shocking super weapons at the most critical moment to deal the greatest blow to the enemy.
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