Time is like fine sand, passing quickly from Fang Yan's fingers; Soon, he went through another year and a half, and became a 13-and-a-half-year-old handsome boy in the New Year's Day bell in 1922.

Due to adequate nutrition and proper exercise, Fang Yan's body has grown significantly compared to the beginning when he first crossed over; When Rudolph, who had been separated for half a year, said goodbye to him, he was shocked to find that his young son's height had reached the tip of his nose. Rudolph, who felt slightly desolate because of the passage of time in his heart, was more overjoyed with Fang Yan's growth; Although the two of them exchanged phone calls and letters on weekdays, the father and son still had almost endless words after meeting, and after dinner, only the sound of their conversation was left in the study in the rental house.

For a year and a half, Rudolph has received an uninterrupted injection of funds from North America, and over time, the amount of money bleached by Walter has grown at a staggering rate. In the second half of 1921 alone, Rudolph received a huge sum of more than 700,000 US dollars, which not only allowed him to refurbish and replenish all the precision equipment in the shipyard that had been looted by the Allies, but also allowed him to take a large number of shares in the Kiel and Weser (Bremen) shipyards, and surpassed Germania in the integration and acquisition, becoming the second largest shipbuilding giant in Germany after Wilhelm Shipyard in terms of scale. The rapid devaluation of the Deutsche Mark played a key role in the fact that Rudolf was able to achieve such considerable success in the annexation of domestic enterprises: at the end of the war in 1918, the exchange rate of the dollar against the mark remained at 1:5, but in early 1921 it fell to 1:75, and at the end of the same year it fell to 1:300. Since Rudolph received foreign exchange with strong purchasing power, he formed an almost overt plundering of capital from domestic sellers after the exchange!

The only thing Rudolph regretted was that the Brom-Foss shipyard missed the first light cruiser built by the German Navy after the war. Just past December 8, 1921, construction began at Wilhelm Shipyard on a replacement ship for the old cruiser "Niober", which was modeled after the last light cruiser of the Kaiser era, the "Cologne", and was equipped with eight 150 mm guns, but it was already planned that a large number of welds would be used in construction to save weight. The main reason why the shipyard failed to get this order this time is that Rudolph has to keep a low profile: after all, the funds he has received in the past two years are black money that cannot be put on the table, and if he shows the hard power that the shipyard has that is incompatible with the current economic situation, it is likely to be suspected by everyone, and thus involved in Walter's financial fraud in North America.

Rudolph also had a faint worry about this situation. Although the shipyard no longer needs this contract of nearly 800 million marks (because of the depreciation of the mark) to survive, those machinery itself has depreciation costs every year (for example, a boiler worth 10 million has a design life of 20 years, then the annual depreciation cost is 500,000 yuan); In addition, if there are no continuous orders, the skills of those designers, especially the manufacturing personnel, will gradually become unfamiliar, and eventually they will not be able to meet the top level of the times. You know, the foundation of Brom-Foss's establishment in the Kaiser's era was his specialization in business, otherwise the most advanced war cruisers would not have placed orders on the banks of the Elbe; Although the construction of civilian ships can make all kinds of equipment useful, it is more than one grade worse than regular warships in terms of design standards and craftsmanship.

"Why didn't my father expand the power of the shipyard to foreign countries?" After learning about Rudolph's hidden worries, Fang Yan, who had already planned well in his heart, said with a smile. He pondered for a moment, and then spoke again: "As far as I know, both Krupp and Wilhelm Shipyard began to set up subsidiaries abroad in order to circumvent the restrictions imposed on the German Navy in the Treaty of Versailles: Germania acquired a small civilian ship enterprise in the Netherlands to continue researching submarines, and Wilhelm Shipyard even sent people and materials directly to Japan; There were new submarines that the Empire had compensated the Japanese for, and these technicians who had gone to the Far East were engaged in research and development in the name of assisting in maintenance. If we also set up subsidiaries abroad and transfer some of the shipyard's equipment and personnel overseas, we will be able to effectively guarantee our professional quality because the design team and manufacturing personnel are not subject to the restrictions of the agreement. ”

Rudolph glanced at Fang Yan, and his eyes did not show a look of shock and surprise. Due to the unanimous support of the navy and people of insight in the industry, these small actions of exploiting the loopholes in the peace treaty have long been an open secret in the industry, and the people sent to Japan by the William Shipyard and even the government have pinched their noses and admitted it at the strong request of Japan. Seeing that the young Fang Yan could have such insight, Rudolph's heart was full of joy, he reached out and touched Fang Yan's smooth and fluffy hair, and said gently: "I understand that you are thinking about the interests of the family. However, the development of subsidiaries abroad can only achieve research independence at best, but it cannot solve the problem of lack of orders. At present, Britain, France, the United States, Japan, and Italy are holding talks in Washington aimed at limiting naval armaments, and even the Netherlands, Spain, the three Nordic countries, and South Americans, which have the need for ships, are involved. In the future, it is very likely that the demand for naval ships in these countries will be drastically reduced. Even if we develop abroad, it will be difficult to win valuable orders for warships, and this is not significantly better than at home. ”

"Father, you seem to have neglected a kingdom." Fang Yan still had a confident smile on his face, shining like fine porcelain and jade under the light of the study; His thin lips opened lightly, and he spat out a term that stunned Rudolph: "Soviet Russia." ”

Seeing Rudolph's suddenly changed face, Fang Yan paused slightly, and then explained simply: "Indeed, the communism that this country believes in is to completely eliminate us, the capitalists who feed the workers, and it has also used extremely cruel and barbaric means to abuse the bourgeoisie in the civil war, which is no different from beasts. However, once the relationship between the two sides escalates to that of a state-to-state relationship, the class positions that the rulers use to maintain the regime will yield without choice but to the interests of reality. I think it won't be long before Germany will come to terms with Soviet Russia, and that is a good place for our shipyards to take root abroad. Although Fang Yan, as a traverser, has a deep understanding of the current situation, he does not intend to pour too much into Rudolph; After all, his body is still just a teenager under the age of 14, and acting too shocking will only do him a hundred harms and no benefits.

Rudolph smiled, not responding too much to his young son's "whimsy" in this regard, but he soon found that Fang Yan's words, which did not seem to have much argument, were once again a prophecy.

On April 10, 1922, the First European Economic Conference was held in the northwestern city of Italy, where representatives of almost all European countries gathered, including Soviet Russia, which had just won the Civil War. In addition to some exchanges limited to the economic level, the more important agenda of this meeting is undoubtedly how the Western world should face the nascent Soviet Russia: with the failure of various white armies and foreign intervention forces, Britain and France and other countries have to face up to the reality that the Soviet Russian regime has been consolidated.

However, the meeting was at an impasse from the start. Britain and France put forward a number of conditions, such as that Soviet Russia should first repay the debts of more than 18 billion rubles owed by the Tsar, the Provisional Government, and the local governments to the Entente after the October Revolution, return or compensate all foreigners' property confiscated in Russia, abolish the foreign trade monopoly, allow foreigners to have extraterritorial jurisdiction in Soviet Russia, and let the Entente supervise the finances of Soviet Russia. Only after these conditions were fulfilled would the Entente recognize the international status of Soviet Russia, lift the economic blockade, and issue reconstruction loans.

Obviously, such conditions could not be accepted by the Soviet and Russian sides. After three years of world war and four years of civil war, the new Soviet Union was so poor that it was reduced to a pair of trousers: its steel production in 1921 was only 316,000 tons, less than one-fifteenth of the 4.79 million tons in 1913, as evidenced by the stark disparate figures. Obviously, to let Soviet Russia pay off its astronomical debts to the Entente is tantamount to making an already skinny man carry another hundred pounds of burden, let alone return all the confiscated foreigners' property!

In fact, according to the will of Lenin, the leader of Soviet Russia, it was not impossible for him to admit the debts of the former government to the Entente. However, this must be based on the premise that the Entente will have to pay for the nearly 40 billion rubles caused by the previous intervention in the civil war in Soviet Russia. Even if Soviet Russia could not demand full compensation from the other side, it would at least have to get a large amount of low-interest or even interest-free loans back as the initial funds for rebuilding the country, otherwise this astronomical debt to the Entente would not be able to be repaid. However, who would have thought that these evil imperialist countries would be so gluttonous and greedy: they did not negotiate with themselves on an equal footing, but tried to squeeze their own flesh and blood by all means, and in the end they would decide whether to give themselves a piece of meat or a bone according to their mood!