alternatehistory.com

Digest of report to Reichstag on the state of the army


1) The army's cost has increased since last year.
2) Mobilization exercises in individual provinces have shown a general increase in speed as the rail timetables have been worked out.
3) Rail timetables have now been determined for various contingencies - defending to the North, East, South, West and various combinations thereof.
4) The artillery arm is quite satisfactory, though more heavy siege guns would be preferred. Krupp is working on these.
5) The cavalry needs some significant reform, chiefly in the matters of provision of mounts. While the current system provides sufficient horses, it does not allow for nearly enough spares and the horse artillery needs larger teams.
6) Regular rifle practice is good.
7) Reservist rifle practice has been gaining in popularity. Request to the Reichstag for permission and funding to host Landwehr rifle competitions, with gradated bonuses for good accuracy.
8) Manoeuvres have demonstrated the need for Regulars to go along with the Landwehr. A long debate takes place as to at what level Regular-Landwher intermixing should take place, with the most radical being squad level! (i.e. regular noncoms and officers for every single mobilized squad, no all-regular squads.) This is considered at least one step too far by almost everyone.
9) To aid unit cohesion, recommendation is made for the calendar to be amended. Cycled refresher courses should now take ten months of the year, with the other two months incorporating very large scale manoeuvres.
10) Request for funds for further development of the Dreyse needle gun, owing to concerns over long range accuracy and the imperfect quality of the seal.
11) Recommendation for one extra battery per mobilized division; this is accepted with little debate.
12) Each Regular regiment to form multiple lists of who to mobilize, depending on degree of mobilization. The idea here is to cream off the best of the linked Landwehr for any large field army, and the rest to form garrison divisions and the second line.
It is felt that a field army of upwards of 400,000 could be supplied by this means, of which roughly half would be regular infantry and the other half would be high quality Landwehr, and still allow for another ~200,000 or so for garrison work and line of communication - though of course forty divisions could not be supplied all at once in one place. In the event of a surprise attack then full mobilization would produce ~600,000 line troops and no garrison troops, minus whichever regions are unable to fully mobilize.

The overall picture is one of optimism - the army's funding increase is a relatively minor source of friction as much of it is going towards paying the Landwehr, and ironically enough a lot of the money being paid out is thus going on things which are taxed and thus cycling back into governmental coffers.
Bismarck feels this is all far too feel-good and wishy-washy; Frederick III, on the other hand, considers it all to be working rather well. The army has influence, but not control; the people feel enthusiastic, but not militarist; and both the Russians and the French are far too busy with their respective incidents to actually be any sort of threat while his army trains up. (The other German states are too small to worry him.)