Rise of Austria: A Hapsburg TL

Extracted from Otto Liebknecht: Visionary

In 1910, Otto Liebknecht constructed the Liebknecht Model 10, a sturmgewehr (lit. storm rifle) designed to take the features of a machine gun into a rifle. It just happened that in one of his proof-of-concept demonstrations, he caught the eye of Emperor Otto Hapsburg, who offered him a substantial sum of money if he demonstrated this new weapon to the military. He showed it to several Generals, who decided to adopt it and subsequent models as the infantry weapon of the Reichswehr.

In mid-1913, Liebknecht introduced the LKM-13, and opened the company Liebknecht Military Designs Gmbh.

Liebknecht was far ahead of his time, an absolute genius in weapons design - Austria kept the secret of the LKM-13's manufacture a state secret until the 1940's, when the rest of the world had caught up, and attempts to copy it proved unsuccessful until the late 1940's. Liebknecht also designed the first Panzer in 1915 from one of his old designs in 1903, and by his death in 1936, Liebknecht Military Designs Gmbh. was one of Austria's biggest companies.
 
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