The Rise Of Australasia - Chapter 1024

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Chapter 1024: Chapter 772: Commercial Use of Televisions

Since Germany’s defeat in World War I, under the strong advocacy of the French, the Allies imposed quite severe restrictions on Germany, including the prohibition of researching any heavy weapons.

These heavy weapons referred not only to airplanes and tanks, but also to machine guns, large-caliber rifles, and small artillery.

Simply put, the current German Army, apart from being equipped with rifles and handguns, was basically banned from developing other types of weapons.

A significant reason for the birth of the submachine gun in history was the Allies’ restrictions on Germany.

Unable to research larger scale weaponry, the Germans had to blaze a new trail by inventing an entirely new weapon: the submachine gun, which used handgun ammunition but had a rate of fire comparable to that of machine guns.

The British and French were indifferent to the submachine guns the Germans were researching. On one hand, it was because the Germans had done a good job with their intelligence work, and the data on the latest submachine guns under research had not been leaked.

On the other hand, the British and French did not care much about the submachine gun as a weapon. After all, there was some development of submachine guns within Britain and France as well.

But both countries did not regard this weapon with limited capabilities as important as one might expect.

The submachine gun was powerful, but its killing range and lethality were much smaller and not suitable for deployment on large-scale battlefields.

Stages more suited to submachine guns were in the realms of intelligence personnel’s infiltration and espionage, which is why the British and French gradually relaxed their restrictions on German submachine gun research.

Hitler was unaware of this point. In his eyes, this was merely an indication of Britain and France’s fear of him and Germany.

Furthermore, the great success achieved by Italy made Hitler resolute in developing even more powerful weapons to increase the fighting power of the German Army.

Having withdrawn from the World Alliance, Hitler understood he must find one or more ideologically similar allies to withstand pressure for him, allowing him time to develop.

Italy was a good choice, but Hitler was hesitant. After all, the performance of the Italian Army during the war was just passable, although they shared ideological similarities.

Ultimately, Hitler decided to meet with Mussolini in person. Having an ally in the Mediterranean would be a good thing for Germany.

But he could not rely entirely on Italy. Looking at the map of the European situation in his hands, Hitler felt such a strong desire for the Austrian region for the first time.

The current Austrian Empire still possessed the strength of a great power. If Germany could unite the entirety of Germania and annex Austria, the combined strength would surely not be weaker than that of the former German Empire.

Compared to cooperating with Austria in World War I, the current Hitler was more eager to directly annex Austria to control the war himself.

But Austria was not so easy to annex. Especially now that Austria was not as fragmented as it had been in history, most of the Czechoslovakian region was still under the rule of the Austrian Empire.

Under such circumstances, if Britain and France still allowed Austria to be annexed by Germania, it could only mean that Britain and France had given up hope of victory.

This was actually why Arthur did not support the partition of Austria after World War I. As long as Austria remained relatively united, the difficulty for Nazi Germany to annex Austria would increase infinitely.

As long as Germany could not annex Austria and the Czechoslovakian region, Germany’s industry would not recover to its peak, and it would be impossible to quickly arm a massive military force.

Although the current situation in Europe was relatively chaotic, the emergence of large-scale wars was still very difficult.

As the strongest two countries, Britain and France, though autonomous and with conflicts between them, were also unwilling to engage in serious conflicts with each other.

Under the influence of Britain and France, various conflicts arising in Europe typically ended peacefully, and Europe would not fall into chaos in the short term.

In such a situation, Arthur was happy to focus his attention on the domestic development of Australasia.

If there was any major domestic good news at the moment, it had to be about the development of entertainment, namely the commercialization of television.

Television had been around for several years, but how to reduce the cost of televisions and enable them to stably receive and broadcast images were crucial factors affecting the full commercial deployment of televisions.

In this area, after years of dedicated research, Baird had achieved quite outstanding results.

Under Arthur’s direction, Baird established Baird Television Limited, a company specifically responsible for developing and manufacturing new types of televisions.

Because of experience from a future era, Arthur valued television highly. Even though the current televisions were bulky and featured only small black-and-white screens, they still promised to bring significant changes to people’s entertainment lives.

The role of television would be even more extensive than that of radio, and in terms of cultural influence and international impact, television could do much more than broadcasts.

On February 2, 1931, Arthur personally visited Baird Television Company to see the latest television model discussed by Baird.

This enterprise, which seemed to have no royal connection, was actually predominantly owned and controlled by the Royal financial group.

Following previous practice, the Royal financial group invested 2 million Australian dollars as the initial funds for the television company, acquiring 98% of the company’s shares.

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