Chapter 24: Relationships
At noon, outside the office of the Army General in the innermost section of the Commander in Chief's headquarters, Seeckt's personal secretary and military adjutant carefully opened the door a crack.
In his hands was a steak tray that had already been brought in more times than anyone could count.
"Commander in Chief," he said cautiously, "it's already half past twelve."
"I know…"
Seeckt's voice came from inside, but it hardly sounded annoyed.
On the contrary, it was almost lively.
"Interesting. Very interesting. Jörg, your judgment of the international situation is truly fascinating. Compared to that, your military literacy is a disaster. One part of you has clearly been kissed by God, and the other fed poison by the devil."
After tossing out that half serious, half amused verdict, his voice grew even more animated, not at all like that of a man approaching sixty.
The adjutant slowly closed the door again, then turned to the woman who served as Seeckt's personal secretary and asked anxiously,
"How long has the Commander in Chief been in there now?"
She hesitated.
"Since… yesterday at noon."
He stared at her.
"They're still talking?"
She nodded helplessly.
"Other than ordering coffee from time to time, he hasn't stopped."
"My God."
The adjutant's face changed instantly.
"Quickly. Call the military hospital. Tell them to send a stretcher over at once. Do you understand? The Commander in Chief has…"
Before he could finish, the office door suddenly swung open.
A strong mixture of tobacco and coffee rolled out into the corridor, so thick it felt closer to the air of a smoky salon than a military office. It was impossible to guess how many cigarettes had been smoked or how many cups of coffee had been emptied inside over the course of a single day and night.
Seeckt stepped out.
Despite the sharpness in his voice, the sway in his steps made it obvious that his body was close to its limit.
"Seymour, I know my body is not yours to worry about."
He then turned toward the secretary.
"Yuna, arrange for someone to send Jörg back. And without my direct order, no one is to enter this office. No one is to touch that blackboard either. Understood?"
Seeing the old man stagger, Adjutant Seymour rushed forward at once to support his arm and guide him toward the nearest lounge.
As soon as he sat down, Seeckt removed his gold rimmed half glasses.
The joy in his eyes could not be concealed.
He looked like a man who had just discovered buried gold.
"Flying clubs. Weapons research conducted through neutral countries instead of the homeland. A genius. A real genius."
He shook his head, unable to contain himself.
"It's just a pity his military theory is such a complete mess. Otherwise, I would genuinely believe God had fathered an illegitimate child on earth."
Was he happier because he had found talent?
Or because Germany's future had suddenly opened by several degrees?
Probably both.
"Seymour," he said, "issue the order. I want a list compiled of the newly formed air arm and the transport armor units."
His expression sharpened again.
"What I need is not just a genius."
He tapped his temple.
"I need an all rounder."
…
For the next several days, Jörg practically lived inside the office.
In his previous life, he had spent all his energy trying to escape high intensity work.
In this life, there was no escape.
Day after day, he revised drafts, corrected proposals, reorganized wording, added details, and cut redundancies. By the end of it, he had begun to wonder whether he had joined the Reichswehr to expand his influence and build the Progress Party, or whether he had simply become a glorified clerk for some giant bureaucratic machine.
At last, after yet another round of revisions, the draft plan was placed once more on Seeckt's desk.
This time, Seeckt finally nodded.
He pressed the papers down into the bottom drawer, then casually drew out two densely written lists from the stack beside him.
"I remember you said you were especially interested in the air force and transport armor," he said. "Originally, I intended to give you command over two divisions. But given your abysmal level of military education, I think making you a deputy division commander first, and letting you learn, is the more responsible choice."
He slid one of the lists across the desk.
"Choose one."
Then he added,
"The air force is still being watched far too closely by the Allied Control Commission. Only once your proposed cooperation with Soviet Russia allows us to begin training pilots can we make any major move there."
Jörg took the list and studied it carefully.
In a sense, Seeckt's power within the Commander in Chief's headquarters was almost unrestricted. Ordinarily, the highest practical ceiling for a captain would be battalion or regimental level responsibility. To appoint Jörg directly as a deputy division commander, and to give him actual weight within army reform, was already an extraordinary act of promotion.
Seeckt was doing it partly out of respect for talent.
And partly because he believed talent should be sharpened, even if rules had to bend.
Jörg's gaze moved line by line across the dense list of unit names.
Then one entry caught him at once.
He looked up.
"I want to confirm something first. In the First Transport Armor Division, is there a Captain Guderian serving as both a tactical instructor and lecturer in military history?"
"There is," Seeckt replied.
Then his eyes narrowed slightly.
"You want that posting?"
He gave a faint, almost amused warning.
"Let me tell you in advance, Guderian, the Inspector General of Transport Troops, is not a man anyone would describe as easy to deal with."
Seeckt knew something of Guderian.
The name was not famous yet, but it was not meaningless either. After all, he had been the one officer stubborn enough to spend half a year publishing arguments for armored superiority in military journals, despite being largely ignored.
He was genuinely among the first to insist that logistics transport might evolve into a combat arm in its own right.
Unfortunately for him, aside from a handful of younger officers, almost nobody took those views seriously. In the eyes of the mainstream command structure, turning transport units into the future core of war still sounded more eccentric than visionary.
Jörg, however, did not hesitate.
"That's fine," he said. "I happen to like challenges."
He had two reasons for choosing the First Transport Armor Division.
The first was obvious.
If he wanted to accelerate Germany's armored development, that was where the future lay.
The second was more personal.
Seeckt was right.
His current military literacy was still too poor.
Because the military academies had been effectively crippled under the restrictions of Versailles, serious training had been compressed into the army itself. If Jörg wanted to grow quickly, he needed a capable teacher, not just a title.
And Jörg was not the sort of transmigrator who crossed into another world and immediately assumed he was superior to everyone in it.
In his own view, even with the system, he was still just a man with historical foresight and very real blind spots.
The people of this era suffered from limited perspective, yes.
That did not mean they were fools.
It certainly did not mean he was omnipotent.
In some areas, he still needed to learn.
And if he could improve while standing beside a future world renowned general, then that was undoubtedly the fastest road available.
Compared with infiltrating older, more entrenched arms of the military, transport armor was also easier terrain.
Infantry and cavalry were both far more deeply rooted in established power networks. Jörg had no illusions about strolling in and bending those branches to his will. That was unrealistic.
But if he could personally help transform transport armor into true armored warfare units, then his authority inside that branch would become almost impossible to shake.
The current First Transport Armor Division, which would one day evolve into Germany's First Tank Division, could become his.
Not merely the Reichswehr's.
The same logic applied to the air force.
Only by taking an underdeveloped branch, something dismissed or underestimated, and pushing it to the peak could a man truly earn unquestioned prestige and real influence inside the military.
Of course, Seeckt knew nothing of Jörg's larger ambition.
He simply assumed that Jörg, like Guderian, was another officer captivated by armored offensive theory, and that this was why he wanted the posting.
After all, Guderian did have real military credentials. His staff exam scores were excellent, and that was precisely why he had been made an instructor in tactics and military history.
Still, the image was undeniably strange.
A deputy division commander going to learn from a battalion level officer.
And, more amusingly still, both men technically held the same rank of captain.
.....
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