Chapter 38: The Grim Reaper's Scythe

The snipers in the buildings on both sides didn’t take long to open fire. They had been ordered not to shoot at Hitler, an order issued by Akado personally.

It wasn’t that Akado had gone soft. Just as Hitler didn’t kill Akado earlier because he was unwilling to deliberately commit murder in front of several hundred Reichswehr soldiers, Akado had his own considerations for not killing Hitler.

He needed such a person to deal with his own opponents within the Reichswehr. He also needed such a person to muddy the political waters to make it easier for him to fish in them. Even though he knew this was extremely dangerous, he still had to take the risk and let Hitler live.

But others were not as lucky as Hitler. The future Air Force Marshal, Hermann Göring, who was beside Hitler, was shot through the head by a sniper. As he fell to the ground, his legs were still twitching nonstop. His blood splattered all over Hitler, scaring him so much that he cried out.

Hitler sensed the danger and ducked towards a nearby corner, but Scheubner-Richter beside him was not so lucky. He was shot in the thigh and immediately collapsed.

Unfortunately, as he fell, he instinctively reached out his arm to grab onto something for support. As a result, he grabbed hold of Hitler, who was trying to take cover. This pull directly dislocated Hitler’s arm.

Hitler felt that he was injured. He didn’t know his shoulder was only dislocated; the intense pain shooting from his bone made his last bit of courage vanish. Hitler dropped his pistol and turned to run.

As he ran, he abandoned the three thousand chaotic Nazi Party members, making the farce even more uncontrollable. The Nazi Party didn’t even put up a decent resistance before they were disarmed by a few hundred Reichswehr soldiers. They knelt on the ground with their hands raised high, not even daring to lift their heads for a glance.

The event unfolded too quickly. By the time Hitler had run to a car not far away and the driver had started it and driven a few hundred meters, the body of Hermann Göring, the man who would have been a famous Air Force Marshal in history, was still warm, one of his feet still twitching.

Akado couldn’t wait that long. He directly ordered soldiers to go to Hanfstaengl’s villa to arrest him, because he knew that was the only place Hitler would go. He was also afraid that if Hitler’s imprisonment was delayed too much, history would no longer develop in the direction he was familiar with. The turning point he wanted to manipulate was Operation Barbarossa, the war in the Soviet Union—not now.

In this farcical conflict, a total of 17 Nazis and 3 policemen were killed. The extra dead Nazi was named Hermann Göring, an unknown minor figure at this point in time.

As expected, Hitler was hiding in Hanfstaengl’s villa. When the Reichswehr arrived, he attempted suicide but ultimately abandoned the idea. He was exceptionally dejected when he was handcuffed and said nothing the entire way.

The trial of Hitler was not Akado’s business. Although he knew Hitler would make a brilliant comeback and that the Nazi Party would truly rise after this trial, he was also waiting—waiting for the risen Nazi Party to destroy the conservative political forces with the force of a whirlwind. He would borrow a knife to kill, and he didn’t care if that borrowed knife ended up wounding him.

Akado took this opportunity to rush to the southern mountainous region of Germany, inspect the secret military base there, and order that the other 500 cannons stored there, along with 100,000 shells and 50 old biplane fighters, be sold to China. No currency was used for settlement; this batch of arms was to be entirely paid for with rubber.

This transaction was completed secretly via the transport lines through the Soviet Union. Although the cost was very high, it could solve Germany’s rubber shortage and also deceive the eyes and ears of the British and French, so the price was within an acceptable range.

Germany’s new friend in China, Chiang Kai-shek, generously agreed to Akado’s deal, secretly establishing a joint trading company in Guangzhou, co-owned by Germany and the Guangzhou revolutionary government. This company exported rubber to Germany in exchange for artillery and shells.

To cover the increasingly large secret expenses of the Reichswehr, Akado even persuaded President Hindenburg to sell the ownership of a Chinese railway under a German company’s name to a Chinese company. The profits were directly used to purchase rubber raw materials produced in Burma and Malaysia.

Following this, Akado did not return to Berlin. Instead, he took a plane directly to the German Ruhr industrial zone and visited the Krupp weapons factory there. Gustav Krupp, who had received the news long ago, personally came to the factory and gave Akado a tour of his industrial empire. Immediately after, he rushed to the MAN company to inspect the production progress of the tanks.

When he saw the chassis of the second “P-2 tank,” which was almost complete, he was so excited he could barely speak. Because of Akado’s suggestions, the P-1 tank, which was still on the drawing board, had been completely rejected. Its armor was too thin, its firepower too weak, and it had no space for a radio. The 1-series tank was no longer worthy of the Krupp engineers’ consideration.

This was a prototype of a 2-series tank—although not a single 1-series tank had been produced, the designers still preserved it in their own way by skipping the 1-series designation when naming it.

After improving the transmission and shock absorbers, the P-2 tank was equipped with a 20mm rapid-fire cannon and a machine gun. These weapons were concentrated in a rotating turret. According to its performance specifications, this tank was completely superior to its hypothetical enemy, the French Renault tank.

The front armor of this tank was 15mm thick, and according to Akado’s requirements, bolts could be used to temporarily thicken the front armor plates. The designers and the drivers sent by the Reichswehr were extremely fond of this tank. When they saw Akado arrive, they all expressed their hope that this new tank could be mass-produced as soon as possible.

Although Krupp’s progress on the tank project was not rapid due to funding and technical difficulties, in terms of artillery production, the Krupp factory was like a fish in water.

With Akado’s prompts and requirements, the Krupp factory had now begun to use assembly lines to produce standardized and universal 88mm caliber cannons. This cannon was produced as a standard anti-aircraft gun and could also be used for direct fire against tanks in emergencies. Occasionally, it could also serve as support fire with high-explosive shells.

According to the requirements, most of the parts for this cannon could be shared with the navy’s 88mm anti-aircraft guns. This design saved Krupp two factory buildings and ten shell production lines. The outdated and numerous artillery production equipment was transported by train to the Soviet Union and sold at a high price to the Red Army factories, which were severely lacking in heavy industry.

Oil was imported from Romania and the Soviet Union, costing the Reichswehr a great deal of real money. Iron ore had to be imported from Norway, putting a further strain on Germany’s foreign exchange reserves. Although Akado had many promising factories in his hands, because these factories and companies needed funds for their own development, Akado could not squeeze out more money to support the continued expansion of the Reichswehr.

And due to the clandestine operations of the Greater Germany Party, as well as the growing mistrust of some old WWI generals represented by Hindenburg towards General von Seeckt, President Hindenburg ordered the replacement of the commander of the newly formed 2nd Reichswehr Division, General Zeitzler. The 2nd Division was to be temporarily commanded by Colonel Lutz, the former commander of the Inspectorate of Motorized Troops’ transport battalion. The transport battalion, in turn, was handed over to Akado’s follower, Major Guderian.

Because Colonel Lutz was promoted to the Inspectorate of Motorized Troops by Akado, it could be said that Hindenburg had handed over the 2nd, 15th, and 22nd Divisions all to Akado.

However, in the subsequent Reichswehr promotion list, while Colonel Lutz was approved for promotion to Major General, the nomination for Akado, who had been promoted to colonel slightly longer than Lutz, to be promoted to Major General was not approved. Seeckt, whether out of personal resentment or public duty, used his power in the Reichswehr to block Akado’s promotion this time.

The price Seeckt paid to block Akado’s promotion was also very high. He was forced to agree to Colonel Lutz’s promotion and personally approved Lutz’s appointment as commander of the 2nd Division. Furthermore, he reluctantly handed over control of the newly formed 3rd Division to Hindenburg.

But what no one expected was that the commander of the 2nd Division, Major General Lutz, secretly joined the Greater Germany Party on the second day of his promotion, becoming one of only three generals in the Greater Germany Party at this stage.

However, things were not all smooth sailing. The first dissenting voice appeared within the Greater Germany Party. Dr. Einstein, because he opposed Akado’s overall policy of military expansion and war preparation, wrote a letter to Akado, refusing the position of military technology advisor to the Reichswehr, and in the letter, he sternly criticized Akado for “disregarding the hard-won peace and plotting to provoke war.”

Akado had no choice but to write back to this righteous and stubborn scientist, apologizing, admitting that he had tarnished the sacred cause of science, and promising to renounce the use of the results of research by Einstein and other scientists to expand the war.

He also had Krupp and Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann pull strings to get Einstein appointed as a professor at the University of Berlin and had Major Gascoigne arrange for at least 20 Gestapo agents to monitor and protect him.

At a subsequent Reichswehr development conference, Akado persuaded Hindenburg to agree to the proposal to expand the Inspectorate of Motorized Troops’ transport battalion, secretly expanding this battalion into Germany’s first armored unit—the 25th Panzer Division. Heinz Wilhelm Guderian, the most experienced in armored warfare and the most thorough in theoretical research in Germany, was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel to temporarily oversee the expansion task.

Hindenburg, who was also not very optimistic about the prospects of armored forces, agreed to Akado’s suggestion without much thought. And General von Seeckt, who had never believed that armored forces could achieve much, did not bother to obstruct it. Thus, the first armored unit in German history was formally established.