The first Romanian tank to come off the fabrication line was named Ferdinand, after my father. Since the guy was rather shy and under the thumb of my royal mother, the name fit quite well.
It was a modified T-26 Soviet tank, with a larger turret and a twin 23mm autocannon, as well as two machine-guns. No radio, hydraulic suspensions, speed limiter, and other fancy stuff, but it did have a smoke launcher, a locomotive horn and headlight and a sniper scope for the cannon. Only 8x magnification, but I hoped technology would advance enough for my preferred 60x mag I used for my World of Tanks settings. Much easier to hit weak-spots that way.
And why a locomotive horn? Well, a tank commander couldn't climb out and shout orders, right?
As for headlight, well, one would need to shine a light to see what he shot at. Maybe blind the enemy too.
Luckily, the tank design we stole from the Soviets was quite rugged, allowing for easy winter use, and any likely terrain.
The first Armored Cavalry Division would need 400 such light tanks, which would take about a year to complete. Changing factory orders from tractors to tanks was easy, training workers to make them was a different thing. For support, I computed about 1000 trucks with infantry and 400 with fuel, ammo and other parts.
Just enough fuel to reach Budapest, in fact. How amusing.
I tried using my family connections in Britain to obtain some free weapon stuff, but they weren't very glad about me for some reason. Must have been a random luck thing, but the British did find out about the thousands of Jews being transported to Palestine, armed to teeth with CAC weaponry.
Oh well. To the French then!
They kept trying to create a Little Entente alliance with Cehia and Yugoslavia and such, as if that could work. The French were fucked, and they knew it.
But why not milk their advanced tech while I could?
And propose some immigration plans, for the French Levant, like exporting Turks into Turkey and importing Jews. At least the Jews were not Muslim, right?
With some unused Rabbi funds, and a bit of blackmail diplomacy, I was able to set up a French Palestine in the south of Levant, where more Jews could be happily 'deported'.
France was also rather anti-Semite at this time, so the opportunity to get rid of Jews and send them 'home' was seen as a win. Many poor Jews felt the same.
This adventure did net me 400 Renault F-17 tanks that the French kept since the Great War, just enough to train my first armored division, plus several planes and a small destroyer, one scheduled for a scrapyard in Indochina.
It really wasn't my fault the damn ship sank inside the locks of the Suez Canal, I swear! I wasn't even driving it that fast...not compared to a plane.
Luckily, being a King meant I wasn't arrested, detained or shot by the British. Just never allowed to pilot a warship again. Or so they think. I do have a submarine.
Anyways, I went to visit my unwilling friend, Mr Henri at the IAR airplane factory in Brasov, where his 27th jet plane project blew up for no reason.
I ignored the burning plane on the runway, and instead compared the jet schematics to my own modern (yet not detailed) knowledge.
"You tried using peroxide fuel again?" I asked with a smile. That thing was only good enough for torpedoes, which were meant to explode.
"Gasoline is not powerful enough!" Henri yelled with flair and drama.
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
"Of course it is. Might need some additives in the gasoline, and a better engine though. Don't worry, we have time. Only by 1939 do we need operational jet fighters." I continued in a calm voice.
Jet fighters would be nice, but radio finding and then radar were more important. We could never outproduce the USSR or Germany in fighter production, but radar guided guns would mince any enemy planes crossing our border.
Henri Coanda looked at me with a strange face, as if I said something out of this world. "You said passenger planes before."
"It is a dual-role industry, my friend. What do you think happens when a plane hits my palace at Mach 2?" I asked a bit rhetorical, and began drawing an ME 262 from memory. it wasn't a good plane, but it did work fine for its times.
Once finished with the German plane, I continued with a Mig-21 drawing, something I knew even better, since I seen and touched one before. No clue what the inside of the plane was, but then I wasn't an aircraft engineer.
Henri took my drawings and hid them in his safe, then shook his head. "Stop blowing my mind, your Majesty. Those planes look like something that would actually fly."
"I wonder if the shockwave of trans-sonic flight is similar to the same thing for trans-luminal speed. A light-cone I imagine, but how could I generate enough energy?" I mused to myself, and walked away, leaving the famous engineer confused, yet pondering deeply just like I intended. Give a man a fishrod, and he could fish for himself, right?
I did think sometimes of my predicament, being transported back in time, but in another body. Surely, a mind would have no mass at all, thus reducing the energy needed to accelerate it past the lightspeed barrier, and thus backwards in time. Still, a mind-state, even a limited human one like myself, would contain a shit-load of data, data that would be needed to function properly after transfer. Adding the HOI 4 interface to my new self was simply the cherry on top, barely a few gigabytes to whatever many exabytes a human mind required. Or perhaps the other way around, considering I could see the entire planet in my mind, in real time.
I drove the racing car to the railway station at modest speed, not even breaking the current world record for 1931.
Waiting in my railway car, Captain Codreanu had a thick file of enemies, needing my approval for elimination. Communists, spies, agitators, whatever foreign nationals or local minorities...you couldn't make a country-sized omelette without breaking a few eggs, or heads.
I took out a pencil, and began marking people for death, sometimes using my game menu to make sure I had the right guy.
V for vendetta, X for quiet death and 0 for Null. I didn't want all my enemies dead, after all. Some had their use, other were double agents and so on.
However, in general the choice was simple. Was the target loyal to King and Country? Was he useful in some way? Would his death cause me problems? Was he a potential problem later? Was he a current enemy?
The menu only flagged the first and last choices, thus for the rest I had to use my own cognizance or OOC knowledge.
Not that I cared much about those about to die, to be fair. At least 200 million people will die soon enough, most of them in Asia and USSR. Removing a few of them early, and smoothing my own path was necessary.
As for spies I knew about in other countries, Kim Philby for example, and some inside the Manhattan Project, I would reserve that for the right time. For example, the year 1939, late September. I did not want an alliance between UK and USSR. They would carve my country, and possibly my corpse between them.
Codreanu picked up the finished death list with reverence. "My King, what do we do about the Germans still living here?" he asked a bit hesitant. The Legion was kinda pro-German at this time.
I knew a good solution for that, used in my past. Nicolae Ceausescu sold the Germans living in Romania to West Germany, for about 4000 marks each. I was sure Adolf would buy proper Germans too. Maybe trade his Jews in turn? Anyway, a deal would be easy. I was a German King after a fashion.
"The Germans must return to Germany, of course. Who will fight the Soviets otherwise?" I asked the man in a knowing voice.
"Ah, you're waiting for the right moment. Very wise, my King." Codreanu said looking a bit awed, then took the file and walked away, already spreading signed death notes to his lieutenants waiting in the station.
I recognized Horia Sima among them, the man who would take over the Legion after Codreanu died. If he died in this timeline. I wasn't sure what do make of the man. On one hand, he was a fanatic, and those were dangerous. On the other hand, someone will be needed to hold Moldova for me, when the Soviets came. And they will. They always do.