The Rise of the Empire

In short, Prince Ruprecht's answer satisfied the Kaiser. After the meeting, His Royal Highness returned to Bavaria with the dress of the German Honorary Marshal sent by the Kaiser. Now that we have made an agreement with the Kaiser to deter those old antiques, there are naturally some things that need to be prepared.

But to be honest, it is really not that easy to come up with something to frighten the most powerful army in this plane. The prince's brain is big enough, but the industry in this plane is very weak. Tanks and armored vehicles What's the use of knowing more information? Isn't it useless if you can't figure it out? It seems good to make some innovations, but in fact, whether it is Schlieffen or Moltke, these people's theoretical military literacy is still sufficient, and these things have no effect except to make the other party dismissive.

The so-called finding the right breakthrough before doing things, generally speaking, there is no difference between the Bavarian army and the Prussian army in terms of firepower. Thanks to the relatively sufficient funds, there may be more heavy artillery and machine guns than the general Prussian army, but this is just Quantitative change, not qualitative change.

Apart from letting the people in the Prussian inspection team feel that the army in front of them is not short of money and has great firepower, they will not have any other feelings. Therefore, if we want to say how capable our army is and how powerful our firepower is, this is obviously a step down If it is successful, it will not be of any benefit to the prince's plan in the future.

What is qualitative change? There is no essential difference between the Bavarian army and the Prussian army. The improvement of firepower is only one aspect of the prince's military reforms over the years. What is the most important aspect and the most energy-intensive aspect? Mobility of troops! Logistical supply and support capabilities!

How far can massive troops travel in a day? If the army is used as a unit, a legion carrying a certain amount of supplies can advance 15 miles a day for three consecutive days. It's about 24 kilometers. Of course, this is the speed after breaking away from the railway traffic line. And even without a fight.

And this speed is obviously unable to implement the plan formulated by Schlieffen. Because Schlieffen demanded that the far-right troops start from the coast of Dover and reach the Seine within 25 days. The total distance is about 400 miles. This speed obviously exceeded the highest speed of the large corps at that time, and the 25 days also included the combat time. Although the Germans beat the French in the border battles in history, the forward speed was still reduced. The attack speed is only 13 kilometers per day....

This calculation method is impossible to succeed either in fact or in theory. And Comrade Schlieffen exposed the sentence "The right-wing troops should make great efforts"! It means that the order has been issued to you, and you can figure out how to reverse it, anyway, just run over! The typical officer nuzzled his mouth, and the soldiers broke their legs when they ran.

Although the prince does not think that this plan can be successful from the bottom of his heart, he is not sure whether he can persuade the Prussian General Staff. The importance of marching speed, of course, it is impossible for the Prussian Legion to conduct a pilot project. His Royal Highness can only carry out a pilot project in the Bavarian Army at his own expense. The prince was moved by his own spirit....

Don't even think about turning it into a motorized army like World War II, it's impossible at all. You must know that the German army only had 4,000 vehicles in 1914, and many of these vehicles were small guys of 1.5 tons. With this little vehicle and this little capacity, it was even possible to transport an armored division and a heavy tank battalion in the second battle. Can't complete the task?

His Royal Highness' criteria for this so-called Bavarian mobile division is actually very simple,

That is, after departure, the division can travel 25 to 30 miles per day with equipment and supplies for the first three days. For the next week, the speed was about 20 miles per day.

All heavy artillery, ammunition vehicles, field hospitals, field bakeries and other large items can be towed by motor vehicles. Reduce the carriages to the minimum. Except for the avant-garde cavalry regiment attached to the soldiers, the number of carriages and carts owned by the entire division does not exceed 40% of the normal German army! Other capacity is fully covered by motor vehicles.

Some may say, why cut the horses? The reason is simple, these four-legged guys are too edible, the same military unit, take an army as an example, during the Franco-Prussian War, four people can produce one horse on average. But in World War 1, three people equaled one horse. And because of the extra horses, the food consumption of the entire army increased by 50% with the same number of people! In other words, people in the army eat very little, and 30 tons of food per day is more than enough for a division. But if you include the feed for the horses, this number becomes 130 tons...  

And people can resist it if they are hungry or half full, but horses are more expensive than people. Even if the portion is enough, it will not work without concentrated feed! The result is that the horses have been reduced in numbers before they have reached the battlefield and the number of personnel has not been greatly reduced.... The most important capacity is gone, and the speed behind can only get slower and slower.

Therefore, in the prince's opinion, reducing the number of horses is equivalent to increasing the army's logistics supply requirements in disguise. After all, the fuel used by cars is much less than feed, grain and so on. As for stability, it's actually about the same. After all, even if it starts, the army's marching speed is only more than 40 kilometers. Moreover, the road conditions in Europe are relatively developed. The Belgians can quickly paralyze the railway line, but the road line really can't do it....

So how many vehicles does such a motorized division of 14,000 people need? His Royal Highness initially estimated that there were about 200 vehicles. But considering the tragedy of this era, the maximum gasoline engine power is only 70HP. This power is not even as good as the cars of later generations. In the end, in order to ensure the needs of the troops, the entire division was equipped with more than 350 vehicles of various types.

In fact, this data is already very good. You must know that in 1914, a German army had 1,168 carts. This is not counting the additional transportation force configured to supplement the army's combat consumption. Even considering that the military aircraft transport team has a lot of extra materials that need a constant speed, the current transport capacity of the car is more than twice that of the large car!

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