Chapter 39: The Rebirth of the Reichswehr
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In the southern part of Bavaria, at the secret German military base H-1, a large gate in the center of a fence topped with barbed wire was slowly pushed open by a dozen soldiers. A new Mercedes-Benz car that had been waiting by the side of the road started up slowly and passed through the open gate.
Lieutenant Colonel Guderian, in the passenger seat of the car, pointed to the open ground ahead and turned back to say to Akado in the back seat with a smile, “In a moment, we will be able to witness with our own eyes a sudden assault exercise combining tanks and air power. This is something I have carefully prepared for you.”
“There is a truck full of mid-level Reichswehr officers behind us. That’s all I could find. There are also a dozen or so technical personnel from the military factories. You should be preparing this exercise for them, not for me! The ones paying the money are those officers, and the ones making the weapons are those engineers. I’m just an insignificant person here.”
“Pfft,” Gustav Krupp, sitting next to Akado, let out a laugh. “As the vice-chairman of the Greater Germany Party, I must seriously tell you that you are the supreme leader of our party, not some insignificant person.”
“There are 60 cannons of 150mm caliber here, and 90 anti-aircraft guns of 88mm, all of the latest design. They can be towed by mules, horses, or trucks. I’ll bet my life that the weapons here are the most advanced in the world,” Krupp said, patting his chest in the swaying car to advertise his weapons after seeing Akado smile. “In the time it takes the French to fire one shot, we can return twenty.”
“How are the preparations for the secret weapons section?” Akado asked, interlocking his fingers and looking at Guderian. Compared to the cannons, he was more concerned about other things, for example, the few tanks the Reichswehr had only recently been equipped with.
“We have 30 P-2 tanks equipped. I’ve assigned the tank drivers who returned from training in the Soviet Union to intern in 5 tank platoons in rotation. Right now, many men are waiting for their own tanks. We have too few tanks secretly equipped, and the delivery is too slow,” Guderian said, glancing at Krupp with a look of resignation.
It was indeed too few. 30 tanks, organized into platoons of 6. Each tank could only be crewed by three people (a commander who also served as the gunner, a radio operator/mechanic, and a driver). These 30 tanks could only allow a total of 90 armored soldiers to use their own equipment.
Krupp shook his head, dashing Guderian’s hopes for more tanks. “Lieutenant Colonel Guderian, do you know how much money the Reichswehr gave the MAN company’s factory? Less than 90,000 German Marks! That’s not even enough to buy the wheels for the tanks! For the heavy artillery and tanks, the Reichswehr owes me and the MAN company a total of 700,000 US dollars. For every cannon I provide you, I lose tens of thousands!”
He looked at the resigned Akado and threw up his hands. “And that’s only part of the reason! We have to avoid the eyes and ears of the Allied Military Control Commission! We can only start work in the middle of the night, and we don’t dare to use large machinery. All of this increases costs and also limits the production speed and output. I’m lucky to have a large business and American loans to get by. MAN is in a miserable state. They’ve been pursued by the Swedish mining company for debts these past few days because they haven’t paid what they owe.”
Akado couldn’t take out too much capital to buy weapons. After all, the several companies he controlled also needed to develop. Although historically these companies eventually became super-enterprises, Akado didn’t dare to divert too much of their funds now. He was afraid these companies would miss their development opportunities and eventually be destroyed by him killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.
Historically, Hitler’s regime used the slaughter of Jews and the confiscation of their property to cover part of its financial deficit. But Akado, at this time, neither dared to do so openly, nor did the platform of his Greater Germany Party allow him to do so.
Akado had no choice but to sigh and offer what he thought was the best solution. “Krupp, give me a list. I will notify the Gestapo to take action. First, these people must all be wealthy. Second, industrialists are not allowed to appear on the list. I will only deal with purely speculative capitalists.”
Krupp nodded. Akado was going to confiscate property to make up for the economic shortfall. Although this method was very irregular and carried a great deal of injustice, it was indeed a way to quickly cover a financial deficit.
As far as he knew, Akado even tolerated the Reichswehr’s private mining of coal in the Ruhr industrial zone, selling it at a low price to France and Sweden to appease some of the French resentment and to lull high-ranking French officials into a false sense of security. This money was all deposited into the private accounts of high-ranking German generals. On the surface, it looked no different from corruption, but this money was secretly collected by the Gestapo and used as the Reichswehr’s extra military expenditure.
Akado had no other choice. The 90,000 German Marks he paid Krupp were skimmed from embezzled public funds. He used his authority to take a little bit of the egg white from every fried egg served to the soldiers for breakfast. The saved egg whites were sold to nearby restaurants, and that’s how he scraped together the “small sum” of 90,000 German Marks.
Akado even used a trick he had once read in some unknown book. He ordered many of the merchant ships under the Reichswehr’s control to “deliberately lose their smokestacks” when visiting ports in Sweden and Denmark. They would then purchase high-quality copper smokestacks locally and ship them back to the country as a reserve of copper raw materials. He used this clumsy method to make up for the Allied Military Control Commission’s control over the German Reichswehr’s copper reserves.
He also ordered the monitoring of all communications of the Allied Military Control Commission, intercepting and secretly inspecting their letters. He also arranged for soldiers to monitor all members of the Commission twenty-four hours a day. He even perfected the interception plan to avoid a repeat of the previous incident where they were forced to kill the French officers.
Despite these various restrictions and obstacles, the Reichswehr still managed to develop and grow stronger through the joint efforts of Seeckt, Akado, and others.
As of January 20, 1924, Germany’s top-secret document, the “Operation Pluto Execution Memorandum,” showed that Germany already possessed a regular army of 300,000 men, a secret reserve of 110 of the latest model aircraft, 17 destroyers, and 30 tanks.
Of course, this army was still very weak. Its neighbor, Poland, at this time had an army of over 600,000, twice the size of the German Reichswehr. But if one looked closely at the composition of this German Reichswehr, it was truly frightening.
Through the efforts of Akado and Seeckt, more than half of the soldiers in the German Reichswehr had a secondary school education or higher, and a quarter were university graduates. This force had a paratrooper reserve of 2,000 men, 4,000 soldiers who had directly used tanks or received training in their use, about 1,500 who had been in a glider, and over 300 who had actually simulated high-speed aerial combat in the skies of the Soviet Union.
What was even more terrifying was that in the 15th and 22nd Reichswehr Divisions, 17 people had applied for technology patents, and 94 had published professional papers on equipment such as artillery, tanks, and aircraft. A total of over 3,300 personnel had received integrated air-ground combat training.
On average, these troops had one radio for every 40 men, one mechanical transport vehicle (including cars and motorcycles) for every 33 men, and one warhorse for every 2 men. What was even more exaggerated was that every soldier in this army was qualified to serve as a platoon leader.
They could conduct live-fire shooting at least 5 times a day, while their opponents, the Polish and French armies, did not even meet this standard on a weekly basis. These soldiers had all undergone rigorous combat training, and every tactical movement was etched into their bones. On average, they could participate in a small-scale secret military exercise every two months.
In the secret base in the southern mountainous region of Bavaria, Akado had spent over a year accumulating a full 9 million rounds of rifle ammunition, 150,000 shells of the latest 150mm artillery, and a full 100,000 brand-new Mauser 98k rifles for the Reichswehr. The raw materials for these weapons and ammunition were mostly smuggled from countries like Sweden.
Of course, the German Reichswehr also stored 700,000 tons of oil, 100,000 tons of flour, smuggled 100,000 tons of rubber from China, and had built 200 kilometers of new roads and 400 kilometers of railways ahead of schedule through the “Operation White Dove” branch of “Operation Pluto.”
Money, money, money. Money was needed everywhere. The tight finances had driven the Reichswehr generals completely mad. Producing new weapons required large sums of money, building a network of roads and railways required large sums of money, stockpiling strategic materials required even more money, paying the army’s wages, maintaining weapons and equipment, supporting a large number of secret units, research fees for developing new weapons… Akado even fantasized that he could split one cent into two.
The German Reichswehr’s sources of funding were varied. The official source was the defense budget provided by the government, what everyone knows as military spending. The secret sources were partly from confiscating the property of speculative capitalists, partly from Akado’s own scrimping and saving, as well as income from exporting weapons, benefits from secret cooperation with the Soviet Union, and subsidies from Akado’s private income.
In any case, at the beginning of 1924, the German Reichswehr was reborn. It now had the strength to face its neighbors to the left and right on its own, the ability to defeat Poland and even challenge France. Reo had privately revealed to Akado that if he were to face the French army head-on, he was confident he could command the 15th Division to break through the defensive line of any French corps.
When Akado gathered his thoughts, he was already seated on the viewing stand for the exercise. On the parade ground, more than twenty new tanks were lined up. Accompanied by infantry transported by trucks and armored cars, they launched an attack on the designated target. They released smoke, advanced and retreated in good order, and quickly captured the target area. During the process, two biplanes flew low overhead, dropping two rocks to simulate air support.
Amidst a round of applause, the soldiers began to shout Akado’s name: “Akado! Akado!”
Then, led by the officers, everyone shouted an even louder slogan in unison: “Long live Greater Germany! Long live victory!”
Akado stood up, came to attention, saluted, and answered the cheering soldiers loudly: “Long live victory! Long live Greater Germany!”