Chapter 15: The Grand Exercise

“To have a country but no defense is shameful!” With his personal motto, Seeckt kicked off the Reichswehr’s routine military exercise. “You are Germany’s defense! Let the exercise begin!”

Seeckt had been in high spirits recently. Using methods that were tantamount to robbery, he had managed to dig out another ten million-plus German Marks from the already stretched national budget. With this money as a down payment, he ordered two hundred thousand sets of new military uniforms. These uniforms made his German army look decades ahead of their old rivals in Britain and France.

Furthermore, under his initiative and with Akado handling the detailed execution, they had completed an ambitious grand plan to “rearm with ideology and morale,” focusing on cultivating the individual skills and initiative of the soldiers so they could master more advanced technology.

Originally, Seeckt did not emphasize advanced technology and equipment, instead stressing spiritual strength. However, in the process of implementation, Akado transformed this slightly flawed ideology into a correct one that valued both spiritual strength and advanced technology and equipment.

With a single command, the German Reichswehr’s routine exercise began. Infantrymen in teams of four ran between shell craters, carrying heavy Maxim machine guns. Signalmen holding command flags braved thick smoke to relay messages. The exercise unfolded in a lively manner amidst seemingly outdated equipment.

This bizarre exercise made the officers of the Allied Military Control Commission, who had come to observe, unable to stifle their laughter. They watched their once-powerful adversary now dancing a clumsy ballet before them like clowns. The joy in their hearts could not be described with mere words.

They saw brand-new German armored cars make a quick pass in front of the “enemy” positions before retreating far back to their own lines. Then, a group of soldiers would huddle around a map, drawing and analyzing for a long time before finally running back to their positions to prepare for an attack.

They saw a German cavalry unit of several thousand horsemen charge a defensive position composed of a dozen machine guns, even launching dozens of smoke bombs before the attack that made the horses’ eyes water.

They saw German machine gun teams of several men carrying a single heavy Maxim machine gun, slowly running forward. Meanwhile, a soldier who had reached the position first, carrying a rangefinder on his back, didn’t even wait for the machine gun team to get in place before raising his instrument to measure data and then lifting his right hand to signal that he had hit the target.

The entire exercise was a scene of utter chaos. In the words of a French observer: it was practically a farce.

Especially when they received the Reichswehr’s exercise evaluation report, several of the French officers laughed until they cried.

The report contained the following interesting passages:

At 0900 hours, the 1st Cavalry Regiment advanced and captured nineteen enemy machine gun positions. The operation was successfully completed.—A cavalry charge against machine gun positions had somehow succeeded.

At 1027 hours, the 2nd Infantry Battalion of the 1st Division defended against an enemy tank attack, destroying twenty enemy tanks and repelling approximately thirty others.—Infantry had somehow defeated tanks.

And the report also stated that in the afternoon, an infantry company had the audacity to report that it had shot down two enemy aircraft.

The German army had circumvented the Treaty of Versailles, using its limited funds to procure large quantities of peripheral products they needed. Although the treaty stipulated that Germany could not possess tanks, it did not strictly limit the number of armored cars. So, Akado took the initiative to purchase approximately four hundred new armored cars for the various units of the Reichswehr. These armored cars gave the several main divisions simulating tank forces a world-class reconnaissance capability.

Contrary to the worldwide assumption that Germany was using armored cars as a substitute for tanks, Akado did not treat these vehicles as a replacement force. Instead, he strictly ordered the troops to use these armored reconnaissance vehicles, equipped with advanced observation equipment, as the forward scouts for a tank force, providing intelligence on the enemy for tanks that did not actually exist.

In contrast, the “invisible” tank forces were, in fact, the cavalry units that existed all over the world. Akado had equipped the twenty main Reichswehr divisions under his command with nearly forty thousand horses. These somewhat outdated horse-mounted units were actually simulating large-scale advancing tank forces. They were also responsible for simulating mechanized towed artillery, self-propelled artillery, and armored grenadiers.

If a general who had fought in WWII were to arrive at this exercise, he would think he had gone mad. Because the training exercises the German Reichswehr was currently conducting were based on experience that he himself would only have summarized after fighting a five-year war.

Those machine gun teams moving with their heavy machine guns, if equipped with general-purpose or light machine guns, would be the perfect standard for mobile machine gun warfare.

Those soldiers charging enemy positions on horseback, if they were replaced with tanks, could easily achieve the ridiculous battle results they claimed today.

And the frontline command analysis based on perfect reconnaissance, the artillery support carried out with precision based on coordinates—even the American army of 1944 might not have been able to do it better than this German force.

Disadvantages were not without their benefits. Because the Treaty of Versailles prohibited universal conscription in Germany and limited the total number of German troops to one hundred thousand, the Reichswehr’s standards for selecting personnel were exceptionally strict. Volunteers had to pass a series of physical and psychological tests—even though Akado had shamelessly doubled the true size of the Reichswehr in secret, these stringent selection criteria were not relaxed.

After enlistment, a soldier’s term of service was at least 12 years, and an officer’s no less than 25. Once in the army, every soldier would receive specialized training in a particular field, with an emphasis on their leadership abilities.

Since the Treaty of Versailles stipulated that Germany could not establish regular military academies, Seeckt and Akado consulted and decided to bypass this rule by establishing military education systems at the company and regimental levels. Privates were trained to become non-commissioned officers in the company-level education system, and NCOs were trained to become officers in the regimental-level education system.

Akado assured Seeckt that once war broke out, all active-duty German soldiers could be promoted at least one rank, instantly expanding the size of the army tenfold or even more.

This army was tested in semi-annual military exercises, which verified their professional skills and their sense of honor in their military profession. Although they lacked modern high-tech military equipment such as tanks, aircraft, and anti-aircraft guns, they used cardboard and wooden models for training during the exercises. So-called incoming enemy aircraft were sometimes represented by toy balloons.

However, if you got close to them, you would hear individual soldiers on their radios always calling out, “This is so-and-so platoon,” or “This is an 8-man machine gun team.”

A foreign observer who had somewhat figured things out remarked with emotion, “The Reichswehr is no joke. The German army should be a matter of concern for every general staff in the world.”

So Seeckt couldn’t help but be smug. Because his number one subordinate, Lieutenant Colonel Akado—a man who was completely unknown just two years ago—had used the existing conditions and, after more than a year of hard work, had finally brought the nascent Reichswehr to fruition, turning it into a first-class armed force that the whole world had to take notice of.

However, the large number of simulated tank units and the marginalized practical role of the cavalry in the exercise made Seeckt very dissatisfied. He finally found Akado on the afternoon the exercise began, chatting with a group of “tankers” who were driving tractors.

“Akado, I have given you too much trust, so much that it has made you get carried away! Should I perhaps revoke some of your authority to let you know that the Reichswehr is not some people’s toy?” The moment Seeckt found a private spot, he began to roar at Akado.

Akado seemed to have known this was coming. The General von Seeckt he knew, while possessing a forward-thinking vision, also had a stubbornness that surpassed ordinary men. “General, can you truly be so certain that your decision is definitely the right one?”

Seeckt was taken aback. He frowned at Akado and nudged a stone at his feet with his boot. “You know what I’m talking about. Since you know, why did you still do it?”

“Because I am certain that the future of war will be decided by fuel, by metal, by the massed shock of concentrated tank formations, and by large-scale envelopment and destruction of the enemy through mechanization. But the equipment you trust cannot achieve what I’m talking about,” Akado said, smiling at Seeckt. “How can you advance one hundred kilometers a day and be able to immediately engage in combat with the cavalry and bicycle troops you speak of?”

“But this is the Reichswehr! This is the last bit of military strength Germany has left! All I can do is ensure that this force is steadily improved, not blindly believe in some fantasy theories written on paper,” General von Seeckt said fiercely. “Germany cannot afford this risk! And you cannot bear this responsibility!”

“And you cannot bear the responsibility either, General! If, because of your stubbornness, Germany misses this period of development, and when the next war comes, Germany is defeated because it was short one tank, one truck, or one cannon! How will you be responsible then?” Akado stared at Seeckt and retorted without yielding an inch.

The old general before him was the patron who had discovered him, the superior who had supported him with almost all his power. They could even be called like-minded friends dedicated to revitalizing the German Reichswehr. But in the face of their deeply held beliefs, the two men’s eyes finally turned red with anger.

Staring blankly at Akado, Seeckt finally sighed. His slumped shoulders suddenly made the stubborn old man look ten years older. “I am revoking your authority to supervise the reorganization of the 1st Division. But I am giving you supervision over the reorganization of the newly formed 3rd Division. We will wait three years. If you can prove your theories in three years, I will let you be. If you fail, I will shoot you with my own hands!”

“If my theories of war are not proven, I will not wait for you to act,” Akado said with a cold laugh. “General, sir, I will give you an explanation.”

Seeckt walked away without looking back. “I hope you are not joking around with tens of millions in defense funds.”

Akado replied firmly, “I never joke with my dreams.”