Chapter 449: The Devil and the Architect
Hungary was a kingdom that had not been the same since the Great War ended. And that was to be expected. Once united with Austria as a great power of the world, it had suddenly found itself alone—left to fight civil wars within its former territories.
Austria had faced the same collapse, but they had the power of the Werwolf Group backing them, allowing a swift return to law and order—and a seamless annexation into the German Reich, where its vast wealth was used to help rebuild the country and heal the scars that had nearly torn it apart.
Hungary was not so lucky. Suffering from all the same ills as Austria coming out of the Great War, it had no savior. No liberator. And its king? His solution to a growing number of problems was to utilize what remained of his army to suppress violence, crime, dissent, and illness...
Whether of the addiction variety, the mental kind, or perhaps even those who were spiritually ill—when one was drowning and the only branch to save themselves with was the barrel of a gun, it was an option better than simply giving up and accepting your end.
And so the Hungarian Army marched. Powerful? That was relative. Most of Austro-Hungary’s armored vehicles had ended up in the hands of the German Army after the Archduchy of Austria joined hands with their German brothers.
Hungary was left with a mixture of surplus rifles, primarily chambered in 8x57mm Mauser. Water-cooled machine guns. Field artillery dragged by horses. Armor? Trucks? These were relics—scarred, rusting things, used more as mobile shields and makeshift gun platforms against entrenched infantry than for any true doctrine of armored warfare.
Air support? Virtually nonexistent. The Austro-Hungarian wood-and-canvas planes were easily shot out of the sky by superior German flak guns—ironically left behind after their sale to the K.u.K. before the collapse of the Dual Monarchy.
No, these men needed help. Help maintaining order. Suppressing ethnic revolts. Advancing the goals of Greater Hungary. A new map sat on the Hungarian king’s desk—King Arz of Hungary, a general of the Great War who, during a time of anarchy, had crowned himself when no other option was available. And now, there was little more he could do but gaze upon the borders laid out before him.
His uniform was regal and tidy, the crystal glass in his hand filled with the finest port wine brought in through river channels from the shores of Portugal itself. He looked less like a general and more like a king masquerading as one—despite clearly having earned the medals pinned to his chest.
Even so, the map was new. The world had changed in the wake of the Great War, and so too were the lines on it redrawn. Germany was greater and more united than ever. Lost territories—or those who had simply refused to yield out of stubbornness to the Hohenzollerns—finally reclaimed.
But Hungary? It was smaller than ever. Feebler. Barely held together by the will of a sovereign, and the men who had called him king when all others had abandoned them in their hour of need.
Sure, it wasn’t as dire as the Treaty of Trianon had been in Bruno’s past life—brutally so—but in this world, here and now, it was a disgraceful thing for a man to look at.