Chapter 20: The Red Regime

“Akado, are you really going to the Soviet Union? And then from Siberia to China?” Seeckt asked, staring at Akado.

Akado sighed helplessly and replied, “General, the French will definitely make a big issue out of this incident. The Allied Commission will also enter a period of assertiveness. Some of our facilities and plans within the country will be forced to a halt.”

Seeckt thought for a moment and tried to persuade him again, “That’s why you’re needed here, Akado! There is so much work to be done here. If you leave, won’t the French have an even easier time?”

“So for these matters, I can only ask for your help, General. I will go to the Soviet Union to personally inspect the second phase of Operation Thumbtack there, and then get those Bolsheviks to help us build the air force and armored corps we’ve never dared to have,” Akado said while organizing the documents on his desk.

“Are you asking me to clean up your mess? Akado! You’re leaving this whole disaster behind and having your superior handle the aftermath for you? You really are quite impolite,” Seeckt said, raising an eyebrow. “I won’t do these things for you! You do it yourself!”

Akado glanced at Seeckt, locked the organized documents in his safe, and then closed the safe’s outer panel. If one hadn’t seen it with their own eyes, who would have thought that his safe was hidden behind the shoe rack at the entrance?

Then he straightened up and looked at Seeckt. “Although we have our disagreements on some issues, our goals for the Reichswehr and for Germany are completely aligned! Helping me is helping yourself! You know this very well!”

“But you’ve caused me a lot of trouble! To avoid such trouble, I’d rather work alone in the future,” Seeckt laughed. “Perhaps I’ll just push you out to give the French an explanation!”

“And then what? Scrap Operation Pluto? The trouble I’ve brought you is far less than the benefits I’ve brought the Reichswehr! You know this very well too. If I hadn’t met your expectations, you would have kicked me out of the High Command long ago, correct?” Akado gave a confident stretch and said to Seeckt.

“How long will you be back?” Seeckt finally sighed and compromised. “I think the Reichswehr still needs you.”

Akado secretly breathed a sigh of relief. He knew he had passed Seeckt’s test this time and was safe for now. “About 40 days. I’ll be back in 45 days at most. We still have many things to do and can’t afford any delays.”

“The Russians are not easy to deal with right now. You have to be careful, Akado! They are currently cracking down on landlords and capitalists. They are not very friendly to the entire Western civilization,” Seeckt warned Akado.

Akado threw up his hands and said, “They haven’t been very friendly to Western civilization since the era of the Mongol cavalry, have they?” He then burst into laughter.

Seeckt laughed along for a few moments, then stopped. “Since you know that, what makes you so confident they will cooperate with us?”

“The reason is simple. Right now, all of Europe isn’t very friendly to us either! That makes them more likely to accept a Germany that is not accepted by Europe,” Akado said, his own smile fading.

“What else? I want to hear all of your plans!” Seeckt said, his eyes narrowing. “We cannot afford to lose the negotiations with Russia! If we lose, the entire Operation Pluto for the Reichswehr will go bankrupt.”

“First, the Russians and we see eye-to-eye on Poland! Neither of our two countries wants to see the state of Poland exist,” Akado said. “You know this. We have a shared interest.”

It was no secret that Seeckt detested Poland. He had once expressed his views bluntly in a private letter: “Poland’s existence is incompatible with the survival of Germany. It is something I cannot tolerate.”

And the Soviet Union was similarly not fond of its new western neighbor. The Soviet Red Army had launched an offensive towards the Polish capital in the summer of 1920, but they were soundly beaten by the Polish army and retreated back to their starting point in disgrace.

“That can’t be all you have. Tell me more,” Seeckt said, leaning back on the sofa and picking up the coffee Grace had brought.

Akado had nothing to hide. In fact, his biggest trump card was knowing that the Soviet Union, currently ostracized by the Western powers, was eager to find allies. “Another point of leverage is that the Soviets need our advanced technology. This technology can help them increase their productivity.”

He pointed to the copy of the Treaty of Versailles that sat on the table like a decoration, a treaty he had never once abided by. “Furthermore! They are not a signatory to the Treaty of Versailles, which means they have no obligation to enforce its provisions. Coupled with the vast territory of the Soviet Union, it is the ideal location for us to train our pilots and tank drivers.”

Of course, there was a part he didn’t mention. He was also eyeing China in the Far East and had already initiated some cooperation with them. He wanted to pull China into his sphere of influence and mire the unstable Japan in a war with China in the future.

“A good plan. I will find a reliable translator for you. I hope your trip to Russia and China goes smoothly,” Seeckt said, raising his coffee cup and draining it in one gulp.

As the first officer to arrive at the scene of the “accident,” Akado was summoned multiple times by diplomats from the French embassy and officers from the Allied Commission. This delayed Akado’s itinerary, but guided by numerous testimonies, he was largely cleared of any wrongdoing.

During the two weeks he was being summoned, Akado wasn’t idle. In the autumn of 1921, he arranged for his friend and follower, Guderian, to intern in Munich. To achieve this, Akado pulled many strings, which also helped him make many friends in the Reichswehr’s logistics department. For these social activities, Akado even hired an old court etiquette officer and spent two weeks of evenings brushing up on aristocratic etiquette.

Just as winter was arriving, Akado finally boarded the train to the Soviet Union. His entourage, for reasons of secrecy, consisted of only three people.

Akado; his adjutant and bodyguard, Gehr; and a translator from the Reichswehr’s logistics department named Block.

Not much needs to be said about Gehr. From the time he picked Akado up at the train station to take him to the Reichswehr High Command, he had been assigned to Akado as his personal bodyguard and adjutant. His status had risen along with Akado’s, and he was now a second lieutenant in the Reichswehr, on par with Seeckt’s secretary, Grace.

Block was a genius, at least a linguistic genius. He was fluent in six languages, could write French, German, and English in beautiful script; he could speak German, French, English, Italian, and Chinese, and even knew Arabic. During the First World War, he was a member of the German officer corps stationed in Turkey.

But the person in the highest spirits on the train was Akado Rudolph, sitting by the window and watching the endless, ice-and-snow-covered plains. At the end of 1918, he had been a junior NCO, not even considered a full officer. Yet in just three short years, he had become a hot-shot lieutenant colonel in the Reichswehr.

Unlike other lieutenant colonels, Akado held the reins of the German military’s newly created espionage force, the Gestapo. He could also influence the decisions of the Reichswehr’s main force, the 15th Division. He was personally building the 3rd Division, whose commander position was temporarily vacant. He had personally created almost all of Germany’s motorized units and maintained good friendly relations with more than half of Germany’s generals. Of course, he also used the Gestapo to spread rumors, thereby becoming the most famous officer among the grassroots of the Reichswehr.

Now, he was personally heading to the Soviet Union to secretly build an air force for the entire Reichswehr and would also act as a secret envoy to the distant China to earn funds for the German Reichswehr. It could be said that he now held the Reichswehr’s purse strings and had one hand on its gun barrel. He was arguably the most powerful lieutenant colonel in the Reichswehr.

However, time was running out for Akado. He knew that in 1923, Hitler would launch the famous Munich Beer Hall Putsch. This putsch would land Hitler in prison, but his influence would expand to an unprecedented degree. It was less that Hitler was arrested for his crimes and more that he went to prison to use the newspaper headlines for publicity.

Thinking of this, Akado rested his forehead in his right hand. Hitler’s success was not just based on petty cleverness. The man truly had an aura that commanded obedience and a domineering spirit that charged forward in the face of difficulties.

If he didn’t handle this well, the Reichswehr he had painstakingly built would become the Nazi’s private army in a few years, Hitler’s personal powerful war machine. And his own fate would be very clear—he would be arrested and beaten to death or become a dog leashed and raised by Hitler.

The Reichswehr had no ideology, so it stood above politics, becoming the backbone of Germany. But because the Reichswehr had no ideology, its nearly blank slate of a mind could be more easily occupied by a new belief. The outcome Akado knew was that the Reichswehr was dominated by Nazi ideology. This time, he had to prevent that from happening.

Of course, it wasn’t for world peace, nor was it for the benefit of all mankind. Akado simply did not want to let go of the power in his hands, did not want someone else riding on his head and shouting orders. He had to think of a way to stop Hitler and his Nazi Party’s expansion. Akado thought with a headache: This is a very, very difficult problem.

Just as Akado was racking his brains, Block, who had gone for a walk, returned, bent down, and said softly to Akado, “Lieutenant Colonel, we’ve arrived at the Moscow train station.”

When Akado and his men stepped off the train with their luggage, they were stunned by the scene before them. An entire military band was playing the newly adopted Soviet national anthem at the station. A dozen young girls in short skirts stood on the snow-covered platform, holding bouquets of bright flowers, and smilingly stuffed the flowers into the hands of Akado and his men.

“Wasn’t this supposed to be a secret? What is this situation?” Gehr quietly asked the translator, Block, who was at a loss for what to do.

Akado, with a look of resignation, accepted the flowers, shook hands with the military officers who walked over, then turned back to look at his men and said with a wry smile, “It’s a red regime. This sort of thing is all the rage with them.”