The spring breeze and lotus flowers are blooming, and the summer of 1934 quietly approached, adding a bit of warmth to this busy beehive in Germany. At the top of Berlin's political circles, however, a storm is looming.

After more than a year of reconciliation and compromise, the relationship between the SA and the Wehrmacht not only did not ease, but became stronger over time: Rohm, with 2.5 million SA troops, was no longer willing to be subordinated to the army, and the clamor for a "second revolution" was already loud among the SA. In the face of the aggressive Rom, the officer corps, headed by Army Commander-in-Chief Fritsch, could not bear it anymore and issued an ultimatum to Hitler: if the National Socialist Party did not put an end to the incident by June 30, then the Army would take "every measure it deems reasonable to defend centuries of history and honor."

Faced with a showdown in the Army, Hitler, who had to rely on its support, could only make up his mind and pull out a dagger from one of his former closest comrades. Since the arrogant Rohm's connections within the Nationalist Socialist Party were extremely bad, Hess, Himmler, and others showed great enthusiasm for the purge of Rohm out of various personal and political considerations. Fueled by these men, Hitler mistakenly believed that Röhm was about to carry out a coup d'état, and that the actions he was about to take against the SA's top brass could only turn from mild control to bloody repression.

At 2 a.m. on 30 June, forces led by the SS and the secret police launched a lightning-fast arrest of the SA leaders who were still asleep. Since Rohm had just given the SA a leave order a few days earlier, and the district commanders had been neglected by the pleasure of the night, Hitler's surprise attack went very smoothly. When the SS broke down the door, the deputy leader of the SA, Hines, was doing the unsightly thing with his young male pet, and Hitler, who was furious, immediately ordered the two men to be executed. Rohm himself was also arrested, even though he had made countless demerits for the ruling of the National Socialist Party, but he was defeated by everyone. His fate can only be the end of drinking bullets and dying!

In line with the relentless struggle program of preferring to kill mistakes rather than let them go, the top brass of the SA was also subjected to Hitler's mass purge. The regional commanders, who were usually close friends with Rohm, were all shot, while the rest of the people woke up as lost lambs under Hitler's cold gaze, vowing to break with Röhm, who was "plotting treason". At the same time, the SS and the secret police also extended the claws of death to those who had been political enemies of Hitler; In the dark and bloody early hours of the morning, there were no laws left in the whole of Germany.

When the first rays of the morning sun fell on the land of Central Europe, the gunfire in Germany finally calmed down. The agitators of the "Second Revolution" led by Röhm were uprooted, and with them were annihilated by wavering elements who knew too many secrets within the National Socialist Party, as well as Hitler's former political enemies. The Wehrmacht was pleased to see that the SA threat had been removed, and it seemed that Hitler's National Socialist Party was really not going to destroy their detached and independent traditional position. They sent a warm congratulatory message to Hitler. praised his wisdom and decisiveness in strangling the "rebellion" in its cradle; Hitler's regime once again turned around and passed one of its most dangerous moments.

On August 2, 1934, the German political scene, which had been quiet for just over a month, made waves again: the 87-year-old Hindenburg died suddenly in office, and the presidency was suspended in time. On the one hand, Hitler held a state funeral for the field marshal, and on the other hand, he manipulated the Reichstag to pass a bill to merge the functions of president and chancellor, and he himself became the supreme "head of state" of the party and government, and at the same time took over the high commander of the armed forces. In order to close the loophole, he demanded that all officers and soldiers of the army swear personal allegiance to him, a situation that had not even occurred in the days of the former Empire!

As a member of the Navy. Fang Yanzi, along with the vast number of officers and soldiers, was asked to take this oath of allegiance. And to his great shock, the vast majority of people did not even make any complaints about this. After 18 months in power, Hitler had proved to the nation that he had what it could do to restore the country to its former glory. This made the Germans, who yearn for power and revenge from the bottom of their hearts, unable to oppose or reject them at all. In a ballot held in early August, 95 percent of the citizens who were eligible to vote supported Hitler's monopoly of party power, and 90 percent supported the army's personal pledge of allegiance to him. At this time. With the exception of the red tyrant Stalin, Hitler has become the most powerful dictator on the planet; And neither Mussolini nor Pilsudski in Poland were far from being able to match this former wandering corporal!

At the very moment when Hitler completed his radical metamorphosis from chancellor to Führer. A new round of expansion of the German Navy also began. The top echelons of the navy, led by Raeder, never thought of succumbing to the oppression inflicted on them by the evil Treaty of Versailles; Hitler's withdrawal from the Conference on Disarmament and the League of Nations in October 1933, but not being punished by the Entente, reassured the top brass of the Navy, and the violation of the peace treaty became more intense and resolute.

In addition, the current maritime situation also makes it impossible for the German Navy to be satisfied with the status quo and not move forward after the construction of a new 135,000-ton ship. France's new Dunkirk-class battleships are in full swing, and more than a dozen cruisers of various types have been started in the past few years; This made it necessary for the German Navy, which regarded it as a direct hypothetical enemy, to take appropriate measures to deal with it. Raeder soon ordered the organization of a special commission, headed by the new Chief of the Naval Staff, Günter Brown? Led by Lieutenant General Gunzawa, the army expansion plan for the next 10 years was studied.

What Fang Yan didn't expect was that as a mere captain, he was also appointed as a member of this committee because of the reputation he had created by writing books in the past. To a large extent, however, this was the culmination of Nakashihiko: he was preparing to influence the construction of the German Navy in the new era in order to prepare as well as possible for the coming world war. Others don't know, but Fang Yan clearly understands what the consequences of Hitler's adventurous expansionist policy will eventually lead to: no matter how much Britain and France implement appeasement and concession, they will have an inviolable bottom line; And Hitler's grand ambition to eliminate Poland, unify Central Europe, and establish a Greater Germany in the style of the new Roman Empire could not be consistent with the bottom line acceptable to these two countries!

In order to prepare the German Navy for war in the next five years, Fang Yan quickly devoted himself to expounding the strategy and formulating the shipbuilding plan. Unlike all the other members of the committee, Fang Yan's plan was based only on the new ships that should have been built in 1935~1939. And in terms of the specific ship level, his plan is also very different from everyone else. At the mid-term briefing held in early winter in November, everyone at the meeting was silent in the face of Fang Yan's proposal to build 3 new battleships, 5 fleet aircraft carriers, 32 ocean-going armored destroyers, and 200 medium-sized submarines; They were all waiting for the young man to give a reasonable explanation of his claim.

Facing the dozen or so senior officers at or above the colonel level sitting on both sides of the long table, Fang Yan did not have the slightest timidity, and he immediately told these colleagues about his plans. Since the strategy of the German Navy was to attack in the open ocean and destroy the enemy's right to use the sea, a combination of carrier-based aircraft and submarines would be the most effective means. Whether it's searching, reconnaissance, hunting, or hunting, hunters in the sky and underwater can support each other in different dimensions; And the effect of this will be greater than if they were to go it alone or work with surface ships.

Therefore, the core of the construction of the entire navy revolves around these two arms. For technical reasons, large fleet aircraft carriers of the same tonnage are more powerful than light aircraft carriers; The opposite is true for submarines that run naked and are cheap consumables, hence the specifications of the two. As for the quantity, Fang Yan also gave the detailed fleet composition in his plan, as well as the rotation cycle plan, to ensure that there is always a fleet with good strength active in the war zone when the war end. The construction of battleships is the icing on the cake, the purpose of which is that in the event of bad weather or the destruction of aircraft carriers, the entire fleet still has a certain amount of deterrent power. After all, the Dunkirk-class under construction in France has a 30-knot high-speed Scud, and if the German fleet does not have a battleship in the center, then once the two sides meet, the German fleet will have a great possibility and will be swept away by a wave of rapid forces led by French high-speed battleships!

Hearing Fang Yan's explanation, the people in the congregation whispered for a while. The interaction between carrier-based aircraft and submarines is definitely a new topic, especially for the German Navy, which until now did not have legal carrier-based aircraft. Although the young man said that he could perform war games in front of everyone at any time, it still took a lot of practical exercises to make a final judgment. After a while, Lieutenant General Guze slowly spoke: "Captain Jonas, I have temporarily decided that your tactical ideas are feasible. However, there is another key point that I need you to explain to me. Why is there not a single cruiser in your planning, and the destroyer has two prefixes, 'ocean-going' and 'armored'? I've never heard of such a destroyer, and I'm looking forward to what kind of answer you will give me. (To be continued.) )