The warm breeze blows green, the grass grows and the warbler flies, in Fang Yan's calm and fulfilling life every day, time soon entered the spring and summer transition season of 1919.

As temperatures rise, the Spanish flu, which has been raging since last fall, has finally subsided; Schools, cinemas, sports grounds, dance halls and other public places have gradually opened, and the European continent, which has been frozen and silent for more than half a year, has gradually returned to its rightful vitality. However, in Germany, the birthplace of the Second Industrial Revolution, the people were still in dire straits under the blockade of the Allies. More than 250,000 Germans lost their lives to hunger and disease in the winter that had just passed, due to the extreme lack of food and medicine; Crematoriums operate day and night to cremate the remains to prevent the spread of the plague, and every newly erected cross in the cemetery is a sign of the tearing apart of a family and the long-term pain that goes hand in hand.

The Germans, however, soon discovered that the pain they were suffering today was nothing compared to the peace treaty that the Entente imposed on them.

On April 29, in the late spring, the Allies finally informed Germany to send plenipotentiaries to the Palace of Versailles on the outskirts of Paris to sign a peace treaty. For nearly half a year before that, the major victorious powers were engaged in fierce battles for the distribution of the spoils after the war. The ugliness of his eating is like that of several hungry dogs that refuse to let go of their mouths with the same piece of meat and bones in their mouths, and each decision is barely reached after "unpleasant compromises". While these jackals and hyenas pursued their own interests and ambitions, the whole of Germany struggled to suffocate in the midst of a strict material embargo.

When the German delegates received the text of the article on 7 May, they were stunned to find that what awaited them was a treaty of terror that the ancient Rome intended to completely destroy Carthage, which was completely different from the 14-point peace conditions of "no annexation", "no indemnity" and "no punishment" advocated by President Wilson. All the promises, all the precedents, all the traditions, were violated and trampled on by this peace treaty, which was more than 200 pages thick, and every German delegate who read it fell into an ice cellar!

Although Britain and the United States, in order to prevent Germany from becoming too naked under excessive punishment and then following in the footsteps of Russia into the arms of communism, and also to prevent France from becoming too dominant in the post-war European continent, the reparations originally demanded by France from 226 billion marks were reduced to 132 billion; But the unprecedentedly harsh peace treaty, in which the country's territory was divided and dismembered, the army was strictly restrained, and the sovereignty was brutally trampled on, also caused an uproar in Germany. In the face of the monstrous anger of the politicians, Field Marshal Hindenburg, the chief of the army staff, warned the government with calm reason: Now the army at the front has almost completely collapsed, and once the war resumes, Germany will be left with only a situation of complete defeat!

Under these circumstances, the desperate Weimar government was forced to accept the peace within the ultimatum of June 21. But it didn't end there. For unknown reasons, the news of Germany's readiness to accept the peace treaty was not communicated to the German High Seas Fleet, which was interned far away in Scapa Bay; When German naval officers read in the newspapers the news written by British journalists who were trying to make a big news, they collectively believed that the negotiations had broken down and that the war would resume. In order to prevent the fleet from falling into the hands of the enemy in a new war, the commander, Vice Admiral Luth, and the officers conspired to sink all the warships.

In the early morning of June 21, the British fleet, which was on a surveillance mission, went to sea for training, which was immediately perceived by nervous German naval officers as a signal for the resumption of the war. At 10:30 a.m., the light cruiser Emden raised the "Rainbow" signal flag, and all the German warships in detention began to open the watertight hatches and sea-opening valves to sink en masse. By the time the British fleet found out that something was wrong and rushed back to Scapa Bay, the situation was irreparable. In the end, in addition to the grounded battleship Baden and 7 miscellaneous fish ships were rescued, all 64 German ships, including 10 battleships and 5 battle cruisers, were sunk; And the size of this self-sinking fleet alone can already rank third in the world, and no other country except Britain and the United States can make up this lineup!

The collective self-sinking of the German fleet infuriated the Entente bloc. Because all the victorious powers, including Britain, coveted the elite ships of the High Seas Fleet: the excellent performance of German battleships had already become famous in the Battle of Jutland three years earlier, whether it was De Fringer who killed him in battle, or Seydlitz who insisted on returning home with heavy losses, they have all been immortal legends tempered by the fire of war. Even the battleships of the High Seas Fleet were calmly transferred after receiving more than a dozen large-caliber shells in two major turns of the former enemy, and their superior performance made all sides of the Allies envious. Now that he had finally waited for this opportunity to feast, the boiled duck had fallen into the stinking ditch under his nose, and the disappointment and resentment caused by the failure of his great expectations, how could he not let the Entente be furious with the deception of Germany?

Although the High Seas Fleet caused this incident because of the discrepancies in the local British media, the consequences of the incident could only be borne by the defeated Germany. On June 28, Germany's new Foreign Minister Müller signed the revised Versailles Peace Treaty in a trance, and when the detailed terms of the peace treaty were transmitted back to China, the whole of Germany burst into an unprecedented torrent of anger like a flood bursting its banks.

Under this treaty, Germany lost 14% of its land, 10% of its population, half of its iron ore and coal reserves, and all its special rights and interests in overseas colonies and overseas investments. The Dawn Empire, which had once stepped into the world, was shrouded in endless gloom, and finally lost all the rights and status it had at the beginning of its founding. East Prussia, the birthplace of the Hohenzollern dynasty, became an administrative enclave, and the Poles, who had been trampled under Berlin for nearly two centuries, turned into serfs and sang, and with the support of Britain and France, they usurped a large area of West Prussia, including the port of Danzig, and became the core bridgehead of the latter's strategy of "drawing Germany in the west and rejecting Soviet Russia in the east". To the west, Germany was not allowed to keep any buildings, fortifications, or troops within 50 kilometers east of the Rhine, and even the land on the west bank of the Rhine was stolen by France, and its most splendid Ruhr industrial area was exposed to France without defense.

In addition, Germany was subjected to unprecedented terror in the military and economic spheres. The total number of active personnel in the army shall not exceed 100,000, and it shall not possess tanks, heavy artillery, aircraft, poison gas bombs and other sophisticated equipment; Compulsory military service was abolished, and the General Staff was dismantled to the bits and pieces. Originally, the Entente were also prepared to leave Germany with a fleet equal to that of France and Italy, but the self-sinking of Scapa Bay made them punish this force like crazy: 8 dreadnoughts with poor performance were handed over, and the entire German navy could only retain 8 former dreadnoughts, 8 light cruisers, 16 destroyers and 16 torpedo boats, a quarter of which were still in reserve. The German navy's world ranking plummeted from second place in the world behind Britain at the time of the armistice, and even worse than Turkey, which had a battle cruiser of the Goeben. The reparations of 132 billion marks demanded by the treaty were nearly half of the original 226 billion, but still 40 times the total revenue of Germany in 1913!

In the days following the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, protesters of grief and anger were everywhere in Germany; The façade of the Berlin Chancellery was shattered by stones and beer bottles, and even the police who maintained order were secretly on the side of the people and sneered at the top of the Weimar Republic. The struggles and struggles of a whole generation of Germans were all wiped out under this paper treaty; What ordinary German was dissatisfied with the Weimar government that signed the treaty?

Even the wealthy Zhu family, where Fang Yan lived, suffered an unprecedented setback because of this treaty. In retaliation for the collective self-sinking of the German Navy in Scapa Bay, Britain and France began to plunder a large number of German machinery and equipment as a "debt payment"; In addition to the largest Wilhelm shipyard, the most technologically competent Brom Foss shipyard is the second company on the blacklist to be eliminated.

On the third day after the peace treaty was signed, a large ship sailed up the Elbe, and nearly 100 armed British soldiers descended from it. They went straight to the defunct shipyard and handled the precision machinery in the factory and slipway with great skill. Those large facilities that could not be taken away in their entirety were violently cut and dismantled, and then packed into ships; And even valuable non-industrial items were taken by the pirate-turned-British in the process of carrying forward the spirit of their ancestors. The oak floor and Persian tapestries in the office of the chairman of the board of directors Leo were all swept away in the search of the other party; And he had no power to stop the robbers from breaking into the house, and could only watch them loot the assets and facilities that had condensed the endless efforts of himself and his father, and finally left only a desolate wasteland like locusts crossing the border!

Leo, who was nearly seventy years old, was hit by the double blow of the country's collapse in just a few days, and immediately became ill, and his health and vitality quickly left this old man with a broken heart. A week later, he passed away with endless sorrow and pain, and before his death, he was still complacent and unwilling to recite the name of the shipyard. Forty years of dreams and hard work have been shattered overnight, how can others understand the pain in it?

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