As the conference progressed, the topic raised by Hitler had completely shifted from the war against Britain to the attack on the Soviet Union. He began to make comprehensive plans for the preliminary work of this war, including the selection of strategic objectives, the initial offensive strategy, the deployment of troops, the gathering of supplies, and so on. Fang Yan could clearly see that Hitler's enthusiasm for this matter was far greater than the conquest of Britain - in the eyes of this stubborn racist, the extermination of the Slavic "inferior nation" and the seizure of a vast "living space in the East" for the Germans were undoubtedly his destiny as a leader.

Due to the gap in professional skills, Fang Yan and other three admirals had no choice but to become listeners. Hitler, Halder and others enthusiastically discussed with great interest what kind of reorganization of the mechanized troops needed to fight on the vast Eastern Front, although Fang Yan tried very hard to understand, but the foundation was too far behind, and after holding on for a while, he gave up. In the end, Fang Yan only got one message: that is, the army still needs to purchase a large number of tank fighting vehicles in the next 1 year, so as to multiply the number of armored divisions and motorized divisions.

"Therefore, in what direction will the focus of investment in military equipment production and human resources be in the future?" Fang Yan frowned secretly, he didn't have the joy of making a lot of money in his family business. In this war meeting, Hitler behaved like a hungry man who had broken into a dinner party, wanting any pastry at the sight of it, and stuffing all the good food into his stomach and never giving it up.

On the naval side, Hitler had already endorsed Fang Yan's strategy of "besieging first, then attacking," which required a huge investment in the construction of light warships and landing craft, and a massive expansion of the number of active military personnel in the navy. After all, warships need to be operated by people, and because of the large number of new ships, the extra cost of personnel training will also be a staggering amount.

And that's not all. In order to further deplete the British resistance, Hitler also had to have the Army Air Force carry out a massive bombing of Britain, which was obviously a huge hole that devoured resources and military spending, and it was impossible to expect to do it with a small amount of effort. In addition, Germany needs to maintain the current number of 900 aircraft per month, and it must tilt towards larger and more expensive twin-engine bombers, otherwise the bombing effect will not be guaranteed.

As for the expansion of flight crew training and ground crew, Fang Yan couldn't bear to think about it anymore. As a person who has witnessed the development of carrier-based aviation from scratch, Fang Yan knows very well what a money-burning thing it is to expand air power!

In this general environment of all-out preparations for the destruction of Britain, the army, which is temporarily unable to cross the sea, should take a back seat and give up the priority of resources and funds. In fact, even if it was only to capture Gibraltar and the British Middle East, the army would have to expend no less resources. Although the former is a small land with an area of less than 7 square kilometers, it has been a key fortress operated by the British Empire for more than 200 years, especially after entering the 20th century, the United Kingdom, whose national power is declining, has increasingly relied on this core stronghold to control the sea. For Gibraltar, which could easily cut off the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic shipping lane, Britain carried out the fortification construction almost at any cost.

According to the information available to Fang Yan, today's Gibraltar has long been a fortified golden city composed of city walls, fortresses, batteries, ammunition depots, underground tunnels and numerous warehouses. On the east side of the peninsula, the 426-meter-high limestone mountain has been almost half hollowed out, and the interior is a maze of tunnels and fortifications. Nine 234-mm guns, seven 152-mm guns, and 24 94-mm anti-aircraft guns were stationed in the main batteries of the fort, and the defenders were covered by stormy fire, both from the sea and from the air.

Unlike other coastal forts, Gibraltar's battery firepower is unusually focused on attacking enemy forces from land. When Britain modernized the fortress, although it was no longer the empire that once overwhelmed the world, it still firmly occupied the throne of the first naval power, coupled with a long-term military alliance with France, Gibraltar, located at the western end of the Mediterranean, basically did not face a strong enemy from the sea, only land pressure. Thanks to the high hills in the eastern part of the peninsula, the forts built on the hills had excellent northern range, and that was the only way to capture Gibraltar by land.

If the Germans attacked Gibraltar, they would have to face bombardment from six 234-mm guns and all seven 152-mm guns. This may not seem like an exaggeration, but it is a force invested on a front that is only 1.2 kilometers wide, which means that on average, less than 100 meters, there is 1 large-caliber artillery gun on the radar! The reason for this is the unique strip topography of the Gibraltar peninsula. The Germans had to endure a narrow frontal theater of operations all the way to the southernmost point, with little effort and heavy casualties.

Even the most conservative estimates put Gibraltar on the ground for 100,000 men for a month. In addition, operations in the Middle East direction also require a significant investment of personnel. After all, it is one thing to defeat the local British army, and quite another to occupy it effectively, and even if the subsequent law and order war can be handed over to the second-line army personnel and Himmler's SS, Germany as a whole will need to invest no less force. And now, the army is even planning to expand the mechanized troops of 16 divisions by 1 time! Not to mention how many new vehicles and equipment are required to procure, the expansion and training of personnel alone is enough to make the Minister of Finance, Count Krosik, have the urge to flip the table!

Is there a way to balance Hitler's needs at sea, in the sky, and on land? The answer, of course, is yes. Germany only needs to implement a comprehensive war mobilization and let the people use every force for the war, let alone destroy Britain, and even super-heavyweights like the Soviet Union will definitely be overwhelmed by Germany's tens of millions of troops within 20 months. However, this is the choice that the Kuomintang political regime does not dare to face.

In this war, a very peculiar phenomenon is that Britain, which advertises morality, human rights, democracy and freedom, can bear the heavy burden and pain caused by the war without any scruples. Nazi Germany, which was clearly a dictatorship and full of concentration camps, tried to avoid putting more pressure on its citizens to go to war. At the end of 1939, German Economy Minister Wärt introduced a series of mobilization policies, which were only in the form of a call for encouragement rather than enforcement; With the exception of a few factories such as the Brom Group, the vast majority of companies still operate an eight-hour workday.

Of course, this move of Nazi Germany could not be because the Führer "cared about the people", as Goebbels propagated. The top of the government, headed by Hitler, was already well aware of the shocking and all-round corruption that the National Socialist Party had produced since it came to power; In order to prevent a recurrence of the national revolution of 22 years ago, the government must take precautionary measures to ensure the happiness of the people's lives and to anesthetize their minds. In the face of this environment, Fang Yan became more and more aware of how important it was for his cheap uncle Walt to be in the center of real power. With this relationship, he has the right to prioritize resources to ensure that critical projects are fully implemented.

Thinking of this, Fang Yan couldn't help but have another thought. Isn't it not to let his cheap uncle W. Walter put forward Hitler's ideas in order to retain power, and to strengthen the basis for Germany's future all-out war mobilization? If a frenzy of loyalty to Hitler's cult of personality can be formed in Germany as a whole, the likelihood of a revolution will inevitably drop sharply, and if a general mobilization order is issued in Hitler's name, all resistance and resistance will be crushed by this fanatical momentum. As for the consequences of doing this, Fang Yan couldn't care about that much. In the face of this ultimate goal of winning the war, everything must make way for it!

Towards the end of the meeting, Hitler finally thought of his own commander-in-chief of the Navy and consulted him on the question of destroying the Soviet fleet. In Hitler's plan, Leningrad, a major industrial city in the northern part of the Soviet Union, and Sevastopol, a southern fortress capable of sending bombers to threaten Romanian oil fields, were targets to be occupied, and the Soviet fleet was a presence that could not be ignored in battle.

In this regard, Raeder had to reluctantly let Fang Yan show his face. For no other reason, all the large and medium-sized surface ships of the Soviet Navy were developed from the warships built for them by the Brom Shipyard back then, and Fang Yan was completely aware of the disadvantages and shortcomings of these ships. It didn't take long for Hitler to burst into laughter at Fang Yan's statement, and kept patting the latter's shoulder.

“…… If all goes well, our army will be able to neutralize the threat of the Red Navy with only the power of aviation. In the Baltic Sea, the enemy fleet will not be able to get out of the Gulf of Finland at all, and even submarines will be blocked by our mines to the east of the Hanko Peninsula. The space of the Black Sea is slightly larger, but the enemy fleet is still only a turtle in an urn. The only thing we have to worry about is the arrival of Russian sailors. It is said that during the Civil War, the troops made up of sailors were the elite of the Bolsheviks. Seeing that Hitler was in high spirits, Fang Yan instantly became possessed by Bowman, and made a little joke along his mind.

Hitler was stunned, and then laughed again, and the corners of Hader's mouth were hooked, and their expressions were full of ease and teasing. The combat effectiveness of sailors ashore is off the charts? That's just a joke. At most, the personnel on the warship have only learned to shoot when they are enlisted, and they will not and cannot learn infantry tactics at all.

Compared to pure recruits who have just put on the uniform of the infantry, the sailor has no commendable advantages other than better physical and psychological qualities. When it came to the battlefield, Halder was fully confident that he would annihilate these laymen who had gone ashore to fight like a chicken - if he could not do this, how could the German Army dominate the world?