The Wartime System of a modern nation carried a completely different meaning from the wartime transitions of nations in previous eras.
That was because the defense budget was like a bottomless pit, one that contributed nothing to economic growth.
Modern nations operated on the premise of continuous economic growth. When the growth rate fell, the nation began to falter, and when the economy contracted, depression followed.
Abandon the production of consumer goods and focus entirely on military production?
Stop spending on the civilian sector and keep pouring money into the bottomless pit that was the military?
If such an economic situation continued for too long, the South would collapse.
From the moment the Wartime System began, the South was effectively living on borrowed time.
And there was only one way to extend that time.
War.
Through the transition to the Wartime System, the South would become a massive war machine, devouring its enemies to sustain itself.
Wasn't that an excessive measure to take against the West alone?
I knew that. Given the West's tendency to concentrate its fortresses and key strongholds along the coast, the navy alone could deal the West a devastating blow without the need for a transition to the Wartime System.
But this war would not end with the annexation of the West.
If the South invaded the West, even the Imperial Center, as much as it was already in decline, would not simply sit back and watch.
The Imperial Center would impose all kinds of restrictions, introduce economic sanctions, and begin applying military pressure. Political and diplomatic pressure would follow, and war might even break out.
By then, it would be too late to declare the Wartime System.
Things would already have gone too far for diplomacy to resolve the situation.
The moment the Imperial Center sided with the West over the Sarsen-Lutetia Treaty issue, the possibility of a diplomatic solution had effectively vanished.
"Yes, even so, this is the right approach."
Still, compared to the original ending, in which everyone destroyed one another fighting over the Heroine, I could confidently say that this was a far better outcome.
Besides, it wasn't as though I had declared the Wartime System without giving it any thought.
The West was still undeveloped territory.
If I built railways, developed mines, crushed the corrupt nobles, and confiscated their land and property, the South could endure the transition to the Wartime System, even if the mainland South would still suffer considerable strain.
I had to trust the path I had chosen.
After all, I was the one holding the reins of the beast called the South.
"Your Grace, all military preparations are complete."
The report arrived one week after the transition to the Wartime System was declared.
At the port, the Dreadnought, having completed its final inspection, belched black smoke. On land, two divisions and their support forces stretched across the field of view.
Fifteen thousand troops in total.
There were several reasons for mobilizing only this many.
First, the Grand Dukes in this worldsetting generally commanded armies numbering 100,000. The Western Grand Duke was no exception.
But possessing an army and being able to deploy it to the right place at the right time were two different matters.
Most armies had borders they were responsible for defending.
In the West's case, its longstanding conflict with the natives meant that a huge proportion of its military was tied up guarding the borders.
Even if the West risked withdrawing troops from the border, another problem remained. Without trains, it would take weeks to move units from their garrisons to the front.
The West also couldn't simply conscript hundreds of thousands of soldiers as East Asia could, which further limited the number of troops it could mobilize.
In reality, even if the South scraped together every available soldier, the number would still amount to only a few tens of thousands.
"Raising a massive army against those numbers would be a waste."
The South was now unmistakably operating under the Wartime System.
Every factory in the South was running at full capacity. Since the factories of this era consumed enormous amounts of manpower, conscripting large numbers of people into the military would place a considerable burden on me as well.
Besides, our strategy was Blitzkrieg.
We would strike swiftly at their capital under the cover of warships positioned along the coastline.
In an operation like that, slow-moving ordinary infantry would be nothing but a burden. Increasing their numbers would be pointless if it meant sacrificing speed.
"In that sense, I also need to develop the next generation of weapons to increase the infantry's marching speed."
Warships were undoubtedly powerful weapons.
A fortress afloat on the sea, armed with ten 305mm naval guns, possessed enough firepower to change the course of a war.
However, warships had a fatal weakness that other weapons did not.
Their battlefield was the sea. They could pose little threat to inland areas beyond the range of their naval guns.
Even if our warships could swallow up the West and crush the East's fleet, they would never be able to advance all the way to the Imperial Center.
We needed new weapons suited to the coming era.
Tanks and armored vehicles.
They were the new steel that would dominate future battlefields.
The South's Army ultimately aimed to create a fully equipped mechanized unit, complete with armored vehicles and transport.
The German Army had demonstrated during World War II just how terrifying the mobility and striking power of a fully equipped mechanized unit could be.
...Of course, the reality behind the 'mechanized' divisions glorified by Nazi Germany was that their soldiers had been pushed to the limits of methamphetamine use.
Naturally, I had no intention of imitating that aspect of their military.
Compared to Nazi Germany, which had entered the war because of the Mustache Führer's rash judgment, the South enjoyed several advantages.
Nazi Germany had to confront the great powers from the very beginning. The South, however, was in a different position.
The North, the Empire's second-largest industrial region, lay on the opposite side of the Empire.
Occupied with fighting monsters in the north, the North had no resources to spare for the South.
The Republic, relatively free from the influence of mages, knights, and entrenched interests, was also pursuing its own modernization. However, the economic Depression had left it in no position to focus on anything else.
Moreover, the South was modernizing faster than anyone else.
No one could modernize more efficiently than me, someone who knew the history of modernization on Earth.
In other words, we were in a position to develop at our own pace while outstripping the East, the West, and the Imperial Center.
Now was the time to make the most of that advantage.
With my hands clasped behind my back, I looked out the window and issued an order.
"Lucilla, send a declaration of war to the West."
"Is there any need to go out of your way to do that? Since the West launched a night raid, we have every justification to carry out a surprise attack of our own without declaring war."
"If you want to win a battle, that might be fine. But if you want to win a war, you mustn't."
A military that behaved like a gentleman—even after suffering a night raid, it would declare war and warn the residents before launching an offensive.
That was precisely the image I wanted the West to have of our military.
"Looting in occupied territories is strictly forbidden. Also, include whether officers have contracted sexually transmitted diseases in their personnel evaluations, and make sure they closely monitor soldiers for any sudden or suspicious behavior."
I knew that allowing soldiers to loot occupied territories was an effective way to boost morale.
Old generals hadn't permitted looting because they were fools. For an army, morale was just as important as life itself.
But we had no need for such measures.
A boost in morale?
Was there any more effective way to boost morale than watching the enemy army collapse under the Dreadnought's naval gunfire?
Simply knowing that such overwhelming firepower was on our side was enough to reassure our soldiers and inspire them to fight.
"Once the supply units are ready, we depart immediately."
With that, I threw on my coat.
I intended to take part in this battle myself.
Charles Raymonds.
It was time to see the shameless face of the man who had launched a night raid and then remained silent for an entire week.
***
It wasn't that the West was unaware that the South was preparing for war.
No matter how shameless the West's nobles were, they hadn't expected to escape retaliation after launching a large-scale air raid in the middle of the night without declaring war.
But had the West been making thorough preparations of its own?
Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.
"The natives' resistance along the western border is fierce! They're bringing in mages, who had hardly been seen until now, and even High-Rank Monsters! They're launching an all-out offensive!"
"The Wyvern Unit is suffering casualties! Where on earth did those native bastards suddenly get this kind of force...?"
"If we could just hold off their attack, we'd be fine, but we can't hold the line! We don't have enough Wyvern Knights!"
The tribes along the western border, which had remained quiet for some time, suddenly began resisting fiercely.
Over the past week, news had spread that the West had lost almost the entire main force of the Wyvern Knight Order in its armed conflict with the South.
Seizing the opportunity, the natives of the West gathered every ounce of strength they had and launched a guerrilla campaign along the border.
Public opinion in the West was hardly favorable toward the war, either.
In the West, where military power was practically its only asset, the military enjoyed privileged status. More precisely, that privilege belonged to the nobility-born military, excluding commoner conscripts.
However, the West's noble-born soldiers and knights had suffered devastating losses in the recent battles.
Those losses had to be made up somehow, and the burden ultimately fell on the common people.
Forced conscription began, and the nobles imposed emergency war taxes to squeeze even more money out of the population.
Naturally, public opinion deteriorated.
If the West had at least been defending its own territory against an unprovoked attack, the situation might have been different. But the truth was that the West had started the conflict by provoking the South over the Sarsen Fortress issue.
Support for the war was extremely low.
Few people wanted to fight the South, a region with which they shared close cultural and racial ties.
This was the inevitable consequence of decades of the West squeezing its own people to finance its wars.
The conscripts were poorly trained and had abysmal morale, while the taxes collected from the population were insufficient to cover the costs of war.
The result was a pitiful army, incapable of standing against the South's elite forces equipped with guns and warships.
Only the West's upper echelons remained oblivious to this reality.
"We've gathered 40,000 troops. That's four times their number, so we should be able to repel the South's attack without difficulty."
Misled by the flattering assurances of their sycophants, the nobles were convinced that victory was assured.
While the West assembled a ragtag army, the South's forces crossed the border into the County of Sarsen.