Chapter 24: Blue Skies and Blue Seas

With a large sum of money, Akado returned to Berlin. Deceiving his superiors and hiding things from his subordinates, he once again obtained a large amount of funding. He transferred this money to the many small companies under his control, allowing them to grow continuously and then earn even more money.

No one would believe that a business conglomerate called the White Orchid Group used bank loans and funds from unknown sources to purchase a relatively unknown beverage company in the United States. The product launched by this beverage company was somewhat famous in America and was called Coca-Cola.

Moreover, this group acquired an obscure automobile engine manufacturing company in Germany named BMW Automobile Company.

At the beginning of 1921, this group facilitated the union of Daimler Motor Company and Benz & Cie. In 1922, it integrated these two companies to form a brand-new automotive production behemoth named Daimler-Benz Motor Company.

In the middle of 1922, the mysterious White Orchid Group generously donated 1.5 million US dollars to support the Krupp factory, the king of armaments, which was struggling with a broken capital chain. It was rumored that the de facto controller of the Krupp factory, Mr. Gustav Krupp, was so grateful to the White Orchid Group that he personally arranged for a guest room to be permanently reserved for the owner of the White Orchid Group in his mountain villa.

This group also made frantic moves in the Far East, purchasing an unknown synthetic metals company in Japan, a subsidiary of the Sumitomo Group called Sumitomo Steel Works, and renamed it Rheinmetall Co., Ltd.

And this group built factories in southern China to produce rubber and other products.

Of course, all these products were secretly transported to Germany. A portion was stockpiled as strategic materials for the Reichswehr, while another portion was sold under commercial pretenses to exchange for more funds to support the Reichswehr’s strained budget.

This massive asset management plan was known within the Reichswehr as “Operation Irrigation” and was a vital component of Akado’s secret plan to expand the Reichswehr. This plan could be said to be the very foundation of “Operation Pluto.”

These companies also provided ample funding for Akado’s private plans. With a large injection of capital, Akado’s personal projects made leap-forward progress. The practical application of liquid-fuel rockets was nearing completion, ballistic missile tests were being secretly conducted in the mountainous regions of southern Germany, and the nuclear energy research led by Einstein had also made some progress. Once the data on paper was processed, simulated experiments could be carried out when the time was right.

Some technical collaborations with German factories were also nearing success. Artificial rubber synthesis technology was being perfected daily, and Germany would soon be self-sufficient in the industrial raw materials it lacked most, such as rubber. Although the domestic financial environment in Germany was already very poor, Akado could still earn large sums of money from the United States, the Soviet Union, and China to support his secret and vast industrial-technological empire.

In 1922, the United States, Great Britain, Italy, France, and Japan signed the famous Washington Naval Treaty in Washington D.C., unanimously agreeing to limit the displacement of battleships and cruisers to under 35,000 tons and 8,000 tons, respectively. This gave the German Navy, which had been using old World War I battleships, a glimmer of hope.

Having seen the series of diplomatic victories achieved by the Reichswehr High Command in the Soviet Union and China, the navy’s generals placed their hopes on the High Command.

“Since it’s called the High Command, then it should at least include the navy, shouldn’t it?” the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy said in Seeckt’s office. After hearing this, Seeckt immediately agreed to the naval commander’s request, and without much hesitation, he deployed his ultimate weapon: Colonel Akado.

The Commander-in-Chief of the Navy also made his own promise to Seeckt: the navy would, under the leadership of the High Command, become a component of the Reichswehr High Command’s forces, rather than an independent military power.

With this guarantee in hand, Seeckt immediately dispatched Akado to the British Embassy. Through the introduction of his old British friend, Lieutenant Colonel Smith, Akado met with the British ambassador. Akado promised that Germany would not challenge the British Navy’s hegemonic status and poured out his grievances to the British ambassador, thoroughly convincing both Smith and the amiable British diplomat with facts.

Just three months later, the German Navy’s ship modernization plan, which was originally not supposed to be approved until 1925, received permission from the British in 1922. Subsequently, construction of new warships began in the long-prepared German shipyards.

Although the Allied powers, after discussion and taking French sentiments into account, stipulated that the new ships built by Germany could not exceed 10,000 tons, the German Navy was still jubilant. Many high-ranking naval officers also got to know the representative of the Reichswehr’s “Young Turk” faction, the man of real power, Lieutenant Colonel Akado Rudolph, during these negotiations.

Akado also seized the opportunity to propose his own new shipbuilding plan, submitting it to his friend, German Admiral Erich Raeder. The admiral immediately treated this report as a treasure and provided it to the shipyards under the navy’s jurisdiction.

This new shipbuilding method was unprecedented, as it was invented by the Americans in the mid-to-late stages of World War II for the mass production of Liberty ships and other vessels. This method involved dividing the ship into several parts, producing them simultaneously, and then assembling them together. Most of the parts on the ship were pre-produced standardized components. In wartime, warships could be produced at dozens of times the normal speed.

The navy began to use this method to stockpile destroyer parts for the future mass production of destroyers and merchant ships. This was because, in Akado’s plan, destroyers were responsible for anti-air and anti-submarine warfare, and most of their other equipment was common with civilian merchant ships. Although this would reduce the combat effectiveness of the destroyers to some extent, it would allow for the formation of naval fleets in a more standardized and rapid manner.

At the end of 1922, the standard German transport ship, the “Hercules-class,” was launched. With a full-load displacement of 7,000 tons, it became the standard configuration for German merchant ships, troop transports, cargo ships, and passenger liners.

Similarly, the construction of 20,000-ton class super-merchant ships began. These ships had very little superstructure, very large cargo holds, and were equipped with large elevators to transport cargo from the hold to the deck. These ships were how the German Navy was accumulating technology and data for the construction of aircraft carriers.

In the vision of Akado and Admiral Erich Raeder, the future German Navy would be composed of aircraft carriers, destroyers, large cruisers, and submarines, equipped with fighter aircraft as a long-range strike force, and would not engage in frontal combat with enemy battleships.

Originally, Admiral Erich Raeder was not optimistic about aircraft carriers and submarines and did not trust the capabilities of destroyers. However, after Akado took him to a private estate in the suburbs of Berlin and showed him the technology of achieving long-range attacks using liquid-fuel rockets, the supreme commander of the German Navy lost interest in the large battleships he had always pursued.

Thus, in the German Navy’s future composition plan at the end of 1922, the German Navy looked quite similar to the US Navy of 2014: naval aviation, marines, aircraft carriers, destroyers, submarines.

However, as a compromise with the old-guard naval commanders, the three originally designed Deutschland-class “pocket battleships” were still put into production. Akado used them to deceive the British Navy, as well as the conservative faction of the German Navy and the various foreign spies in the country.

Akado worked day and night. In the second month after returning to Germany, he dispatched his hand-picked personnel to the Soviet Union to secretly build Germany’s training base there. Soviet engineers and workers had already selected the site and begun laying airport runways and other infrastructure. So the instructors and trainees promised by the Germans boarded the train to Moscow.

This air force school, agreed upon by Akado and Seeckt and founded by Akado’s own hand, was located about 220 kilometers southeast of Moscow and was named Lipetsk. Nominally, this school was a training school for the Soviet Air Force, but in reality, it was controlled by the Germans.

Originally, this school was supposed to be established in 1925, but due to Akado’s efforts, it began teaching in 1922. Every six months, it trained approximately 450 air force pilots and commanders for Germany—more than twice the actual historical number.

Also being trained were over 1,000 aircrew and administrative personnel. These people also conducted secret military exercises on the great plains and in the forests of Germany, exploring the integrated air-ground offensive tactics that Akado had taught them and verifying the powerful destructive force of these tactics in actual combat.

However, factors constraining the development of the Reichswehr still existed. The financial crisis did not disappear with Akado’s arrival; on the contrary, it erupted even more violently. Germany’s fragile economy was on the verge of collapse. The head of government, Ebert, had to frequently summon General von Seeckt to try to persuade the Reichswehr to cut spending, but the effect was not significant.

“Ring, ring, ring.” It was late at night again, and again at the Allied Military Control Commission, the office phone rang once more.

A British officer on duty picked up the phone and asked in a somewhat listless voice, “This is the Allied Military Control Commission! Who are you looking for?”

“Your last operation was discovered! That’s why those four French officers died for nothing! You wasted a great opportunity! This time, I hope you won’t disappoint my good intentions! Write this down! German Reichswehr High Command, Special Affairs Office, Colonel Akado Rudolph! Keep an eye on him! And you will be rewarded!” After saying this, the person hung up the phone.

In the Commission office, a dozen officers sat around in a group. Ever since the incident with the four French officers, the number of officers on duty here had increased. They were from various countries, serving as protection and witnesses for each other.

“What does everyone think?” the oldest officer in the room, a Belgian, asked. He was a colonel, and also the highest-ranking officer here.

“At the very least, we cannot let our four French colleagues die in vain! Am I right, everyone?” a young British officer said.

The Belgian colonel looked around the room, and seeing no objections, he nodded. “Since we are all in agreement! Then arrange for personnel! Keep an eye on this German colonel named Akado Rudolph! Report any findings immediately!”