Chapter 186: Rise of the Progressive Party
There was a saying that Bruno had once heard in his past life, and the older he got the more it made sense. "A society only has the amount of crime it is willing to tolerate..." Why did the black market arms trade exist in this world, despite the measures that could be taken to effectively eradicate it?
Because sometimes the great powers needed to supply the enemies of their enemies with weapons and munitions. Only that it could be quite embarrassing to have their finger prints on the guns... This was exactly what Bruno had down to help aid the various rebel groups in the Balkans in their aims to throw off the yoke of Ottoman oppression.
Was the Kaiser aware of these activities? Not at all, nor the German High Command, for that matter. This made it all the easier to put up a convincing fa?ade to the world who began pointing fingers at the Reich.
Fort that matter, could the arms factory which produced these weapons, in this case von Zehntner Waffenwerke, be held responsible for the death of the Sultan? No... Once the guns left the factory, they were not liable for whatever they were used for.
The fact of the matter was that it was incredibly easy for Bruno to have these weapons transferred into the hands of the Balkan League without leaving the slightest trace of his involvement. Proxies existed for a reason, hence why black market arms dealers had always been a thing.
Though the Ottomans were furious that their leader had been slain with German weapons by a local resistance movement in a territory which they had occupied for centuries. Ultimately they could not blame the Germans for the illegal trafficking of arms via the criminal underground into their territory, nor could they hold the Germans responsible for the crimes committed with said arms.
Still, Turkish resentment for the Germans grew rapidly overnight. In Bruno's past life, the Ottoman Empire joined the war in 1914 for a variety of reasons. One could argue day and night over which of the grounds the Turks used as a justification for entry into the war was the chief among them.
But in Bruno's honest opinion it was a desire to regain ground lost in the preceding wars which they had fought. Whether in the Balkans, North Africa, or during the Young Turk Revolution itself. Germany was an appealing ally, as a united Germany had never lost a war before.
And during the previous century the Prussian Army of which the united German Army was largely based upon, had steamrolled the French in under a year. They had done this alongside several other German states, and after marching through Paris they declared the formation of the Great Empire within the French palace of Versailles.
A humiliation both France and the world had not forgotten. It was perhaps because of this that the Ottomans saw the Germans as the favorite to win any great conflict fought between the world's powers.
Thus chaining themselves to the German Reich like a loyal hound in the hopes that during the aftermath they would be rewarded for their submission with the scraps left behind after their master had seized what he wanted most.
In other words, the Ottomans had hoped Germany would drag them across the finish line, and in doing so, grant them the territory they had lost in recent years. It was not to be in Bruno's past life. While in this life, Bruno had thoroughly ruined any chance of the Ottomans joining the Imperial Powers as the Central Powers were now known as.