Chapter 177: Time Traveler or Prophet?
Bruno was surprised when he received his morning paper along with his cup of coffee from his young maid, who personally ensured that he had these things every morning.
The announcement that the Ottoman lines had been thoroughly broken through as a result of a daring night raid, conducted under the orders of an Italian officer he was unfamiliar with, was indeed not the greatest news to receive in the morning.
To anyone else, this would be innocuous at worst and exciting at best, as it meant the war would be coming to a close sooner than expected. With that in mind, there would be less suffering in the world-if one were so inclined to care about the lives of strangers.
A rarity among the human species, to be sure, and frankly speaking, Bruno doubted such people actually existed. But to him, this news was more than troublesome.
The Italians were supposed to wait until reinforcements had arrived. A hundred thousand men were shipping off to Libya from the Italian fatherland for this very purpose.
And yet, the remainder of Italy's initial push into North Africa had succeeded where it had not in his past life. This had moved up the timetables of the Italo-Turkish War by several months, at the very least.
Sure, in the past, things had been moved up in the timeline, largely as a result of Bruno's own interference. For example, both the Boxer Rebellion and the Russo-Japanese War had ended earlier than they should have.
As for the Russian Civil War, it began in 1904 as a result of what should have normally been a swift and rather bloodless-at least by comparison-Russian Revolution of 1905.
But because of how thoroughly Bruno had crushed the Russian Army on behalf of his Japanese allies at Port Arthur and Mukden, the Revolution not only began earlier but also morphed into a full-fledged civil war much earlier than it should have.
These events had rather drastic impacts on world affairs but had more or less remained consistent with Bruno's past life as far as the integrity of the timeline was concerned. However, the butterfly effect was now revealing itself in far less subtle ways.
If the Italo-Turkish War ended in 1911 rather than 1912, it would mean that the Balkan Wars would begin that much earlier. And should they end at the same rate as before-or, God forbid, even quicker, as most conflicts in this timeline had resolved themselves with such expediency-then the Great War would not begin in 1914 as it had in his past life.
Was Germany prepared to wage war against their enemies? Most certainly so. They could easily hold the line with their current preparations until sufficient numbers of U-boats, destroyers, panzers, armored cars, and biplanes were produced in significant enough numbers to push into Paris.