Chapter 424: War Economy

When Borol stood before the new recruits under his command, he suddenly felt an urge to reminisce. He missed the familiar faces he could no longer find, like the burly Baru who always liked to shout and holler beside him.

“My name is Borol. I am your company commander. I did my first combat jump in Poland, then Holland, then a little trip to Denmark, and a few days ago, I went to Britain. So, I only have three more combat experiences than you. Nothing to brag about,” he said quietly to the expectant new soldiers.

To everyone’s surprise, his next words were astonishing: “The weather’s not bad today, quite cool… Everyone, stand at attention for three hours.”

After speaking, he shouted loudly, “Baru! If anyone moves, kick their ass.”

He then froze, silent for a long moment. After a pause, he finally corrected himself in a low voice, “Donner, you do it.”

“Yes, sir!” a young, rather slender soldier, not as tall as the former Baru, snapped to attention and replied.

From that moment on, Borol’s image among the new recruits became a collection of words: forgetful, cold, inhuman, rigid, dull, and slow to react.

There were 11,000 paratroopers resting and refitting in the Netherlands. About 3,000 were veterans withdrawn from the front, and the other 8,000 were the second wave of airborne troops that had not been committed. The German airborne forces, which had originally planned to throw in 15,000 paratroopers and 10,000 air-landed troops in one go, were ultimately not used as high-class infantry in Britain due to the Führer’s reluctance to sacrifice them.

So, in fact, the scale of the German airborne drop in Britain was smaller than those in the Netherlands and Belgium, but the losses were much greater. Of the 7,000 men in the first wave, only just over 3,000 survived, with more than 400 wounded. They had experienced truly brutal combat for the first time and had become even more valuable assets.

Of the new German soldiers sent to Britain, more than half were reinforcements with no combat experience. Led by a small number of veterans, they were thrown into the fierce, inch-by-inch struggle on the British mainland. For this reason, German casualties remained high, only slightly lower than their British counterparts.

On the morning of February 18th, the German flag was finally raised over the roof of Norwich’s city hall. In the square in the city center, young German recruits, who had learned how to kill and how to survive from their predecessors, sat with their backs against the walls of buildings, enjoying a rare moment of leisure after the brutality of the previous night and that morning.

The good news was that the British defenders had been almost completely driven out of the defensive line that was the ruins of Norwich. German armored units had already bypassed the city on both flanks and were launching a fierce attack on areas like Bungay. In the open countryside, the German army seemed to have instantly rediscovered its knack for lightning warfare, reaching the outskirts of Bungay in just two hours.

The bad news was that the weather today was somewhat gloomy. The bad weather the British had been waiting for seemed to be just around the corner. When it arrived, the German forces would be in an unprecedentedly passive position. But their hands gripped their steel rifles tightly, and the mud, dust, and blood on their faces seemed to prove that they had never entertained the thought of retreating.

While the outcome at the front was still uncertain, Akado was in Rotterdam, meeting with Speer, a man whose name was legendary in his mind as a genius of production and organization.

This man, Speer, was an architect and a prodigy at integrating industrial power. In another timeline’s history, even though he was not appointed Minister of Industry by Hitler until 1943, the period of Germany’s highest military production efficiency was not during the peak of its military strength in ’39, ’40, ’41, or ’42, but in the declining years of ’44 and ’45!

In the post-war memoirs of Nazi generals, many lavished praise on the military production organized by Speer, believing that he bore little responsibility for Germany’s final defeat. On the contrary, if Hitler had appointed Speer earlier, Germany might have held out for a few more years before its collapse!

In that other timeline, throughout World War II, with the exception of Czechoslovakia, Germany’s utilization of the resources and industrial facilities in the occupied territories was astonishingly low, with no efficiency to speak of. The problem Akado now faced was quite similar. To pay off the massive economic black hole created by the MEFO bills and government bonds, Germany had adopted the method of shifting the burden of war onto the occupied territories. This inevitably meant that the big capitalists and financiers who had purchased the bonds and MEFO bills had to be included in the distribution of post-war profits.

And this method of distribution was, in fact, inefficient and extremely damaging to the local industrial base. Short-sighted small and medium-sized enterprises would plunder resources and divide up the labor force, seeking the quickest way to recoup their funds, but in the process, they inflicted incalculable damage on Germany’s industrial system.

In the original timeline, Germany’s industrial productivity and efficiency were already lower than America’s. But Germany occupied Western European countries like France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, which all had relatively developed industrial levels. Why didn’t the Germans utilize these precious resources, instead choosing to dismantle the industrial facilities in the occupied territories and transport large numbers of skilled workers to Germany as forced labor? The reason was simple: Germany’s racial policies, its short-sighted war planning, and, more importantly, a fundamental economic reason.

Hitler and his generals had always believed that the Second World War would be easily concluded within two years. The German army had conquered Denmark in the time it takes to eat breakfast, annexed the Netherlands in five days, finished off Belgium in 18 days, destroyed Poland in less than 20 days, and turned the French rooster into Vichy in six weeks. So when the German million-man army invaded the Soviet Union, everyone thought the war would be over by 1942.

The final result proved the Germans’ short-sightedness and wishful thinking. Churchill, standing amidst the ruins, flashed a ‘V’ sign and did not surrender. Stalin, after losing 5 million troops, showed no intention of negotiating. And of course, let’s not even mention that cripple in the wheelchair who jumped in to backstab them after making enough money—it’s all the Japanese’s fault, why’d they have to go to Pearl Harbor!

The racial issue is too profound and bloody to be analyzed in depth here, and such a heavy topic does not fit the consistently light-hearted and humorous style of this book. (Who threw that tomato? Uh oh! Sniper!). So, let’s talk about the specific economic reasons that forced the Germans to make one disastrous move after another.

As is well known, Germany was a defeated nation in World War I and lacked the economic capacity to rearm. Yet, historically, after Hitler came to power, he was able to expand the army, develop advanced weapons, build transportation networks, and get the factories running again without any resistance. What was the reason for this?

Simply put, he was borrowing money. He defaulted on war reparations and borrowed heavily from countries like the United States and Britain. Most importantly, he borrowed money from all of Germany’s industrial enterprises through national bonds and “MEFO bills.” The government basically wrote an IOU, took the cannons and planes to equip the army, and promised to pay the money back a few years later.

And where did the money come from? Invade Poland, plunder! Invade the Netherlands and Belgium, plunder! Invade Denmark and Norway, plunder! Invade France, plunder! In fact, Germany’s economy was constantly developing within this cycle of borrowing money to fight a war, and then winning the war to pay back the money. And what were they plundering? Nothing more than strategic materials, personnel, and equipment. It wasn’t that the government didn’t want to take control of these assets, but they had already been promised to the capitalists who had provided the money and effort before the war even started.

This crude and inefficient behavior could barely be sustained during times of victory. But once the war entered a stalemate, it would drag Germany into a vicious cycle: the capitalists see no benefit or return on their investment, so production becomes chaotic and stagnates, the front line loses its supply of blood, and as a result, the war is lost even faster… This is a key reason for Germany’s ultimate failure in the real world!

Now, the problems Akado faced, while slightly better than Hitler’s, were not much better.

The White Orchid Group, which he controlled, and the Krupp company, which he could influence, would at least not cause trouble. The Jews had also provided funds to support his invasion plans. His pre-financial crisis bottom-fishing had accumulated a considerable amount of capital, and more efficient production processes and conserved resources could just about sustain the Reich’s expansion. These were his advantages over Hitler.

However, he also lacked some of the fanaticism of mobilized racism, he hadn’t wiped out the Jews to seize more funds, the total issuance of MEFO bills was greater than Hitler’s, and the pace of the war was faster and its scale larger.

So, Akado was preparing to bring in Speer, hoping he could take on the heavy burden of integrating the industrial power of the entire German Reich and its occupied territories. If the industrial facilities and workers of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands could be fully utilized, and with Germany’s relatively abundant resource reserves, then around 1940, they could mass-produce vast quantities of Panther and Tiger tanks, just like the Soviet Union in another timeline. With an absolute advantage in armor, they could defeat the Soviet army while the T-34 was still on the drawing board.

Speer had been Jelinek’s deputy for some years. Around 1936, he was already one of the de facto controllers of the White Orchid Group. The undisputed mistress of the White Orchid Group, Mercedes, was naturally a powerful figure, but this man Speer, who just did his work and said little, was not to be underestimated.

Krupp had once unabashedly evaluated his father-in-law, Jelinek, in front of the Führer: “My Führer, Jelinek has made two outstanding contributions to the Reich. First, he raised a good daughter for the Reich; second, he wisely delegated all of his work to Speer.”

The novel has already been fully translated up to the final chapter. You can access it on my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/caleredhair