Chapter 599: The Road to the Great War

In the thirtieth year of the Chinese New Year's Eve, the sound of firecrackers bids farewell to the old year, and welcomes the new year with joy, and the sky wishes every little partner here a rainbow of luck and unstoppable!

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The dry desert, where there doesn't seem to be a single molecule of water in the air, and the sun shines unobstructed on the earth, it seems that only the most tenacious weeds can survive in such a harsh environment, but in addition to sand and stones, several foreign objects can be found in the field of vision, such as the wreckage of the plane half-buried in the sand, the cloth is tattered, the metal skeleton is exposed, the dead pilot is lying face down not far away, the body has weathered into a dried corpse, the leather boots are missing, and the pockets of his clothes and trousers have been turned over. The pistols and survival kits he had with him were also missing; For example, abandoned trucks are littered with broken glass around the cab, deflated tires loosely wrap around the wheels, wooden tailgalleys with bullet holes, and a few empty wooden crates littered with mutilated wooden crates......

This is West Asia, where the two river basins once gave birth to a splendid ancient Babylonian culture, from which the iron cavalry of the Persian Empire set off and set foot on the European continent, swept through Asia and Africa, and created a prosperous and prosperous era. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. biqUgE怂 Nowadays, it is in the spotlight for its innumerable oil treasures and endless wars.

On the banks of the Qom River, the Ottoman Turkish bright red star and moon flags flutter in the wind on the high flagpoles, Krupp-made howitzers are neatly lined up in the open field, and gunners in Turkish hats roll up their sleeves and sweat to shoot. Every time the deafening cannon sounded, the billowing sand and dust filled the air, and after a few moments, a loud explosion came from the opposite bank, and there were a few more columns of smoke. In the same scene, German soldiers wearing ear protectors and field gray combat uniforms use mechanical tools to build a pontoon bridge across the river, a long line of steel chariots painted with the Iron Cross logo and half-tracked military vehicles full of infantry are waiting to cross the river, and above them, every half hour, a group of warplanes with black, white, red or green-white-red livery whizz whizz by, dropping bombs on the burning city, while the well-dressed and brightly decorated Italian cavalry dismounts and stands by, flanked by a large and sturdy horse, Horse-drawn light field guns and water-cooled heavy machine guns were preparing to follow the cavalry to attack......

At the end of 1932, the German-Turkish-Italian forces launched an indiscriminate bombardment and artillery bombardment of the Persian city of Qom, which sparked controversy in the Western world, as it was home to not only heavily armed Persian soldiers, but also tens of thousands of innocent civilians.

Persia, a West Asian country established with the support of Soviet Russia and the United States and Britain, was not recognized by most countries, and was even more bloody and brutal under the public opinion of the Allied camp. After the end of the war, the Persian Empire was occupied by Germany and Ottoman Turkey, and the local population could not bear the rule of foreign peoples, and from the early 20s began to resist the "expulsion of foreign enemies and the revival of Persia". The armed forces were mainly in the northern regions near Soviet Russia and the eastern regions bordering British India, and then two major armed factions were formed, pro-Soviet and pro-British. By 1930, the two armed forces had finally reached an alliance after several talks, thus laying the foundation for the establishment of the Persian state. In October 1932, the Persians proclaimed the state of state in Mashhad, and immediately gathered 40,000 troops to besiege Qom, a military stronghold then garrisoned by Ottoman Turkish troops. Before the arrival of Allied reinforcements, the long-planned Persian army relied on internal help to break through the Turkish defenses, killing more than 2,000 Turkish troops and capturing nearly 3,000, and then caused the sensational Qom Massacre, in which more than 2,000 Turkish prisoners of war were mercilessly slaughtered by the Persian army, and none of them reportedly survived.

In retaliation for the atrocities of the Persians, the Ottoman Turks gathered heavy forces to attack Qom, but the first two offensives were thwarted by the main force of the well-equipped and well-trained Persian army. Oil production in Persia fell by 20 percent in a short period of time due to the destruction of oil production, transportation and refining facilities, and the United States, which accounts for more than 70 percent of the world's oil production, seized the opportunity to start an oil price war in the international market, causing the price of crude oil in the European market to soar to 160% of the 1932 average.

Prior to this, Germany and Ottoman Turkey had concluded a peace treaty with Soviet Russia, and the annual oil obtained by the Allies from the Caucasus oil producing areas dropped from more than 9 million tons at the peak to 3 million tons, and most of the oil pipelines and loading ports were under the noses of the Soviet Russian army. As a result, the Persian Gulf oil-producing region became more and more important to the Allied camp, especially to Germany, which needed a lot of oil militarily and industrially.

On the other hand, since the end of the war, the Allies led by Germany have carried out large-scale oil exploration in the Persian Gulf region, and the number of oil fields with commercial exploitation value has increased to 37, and by the early 30s, 32 have been put into commercial exploitation, with an annual oil output of more than 22 million tons, about 80% of which are exploited by German enterprises, and the remaining 20% are invested and exploited by Ottoman Turkey, Italy, and Ireland. During the same period, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands extracted only 8 million tonnes of oil in Southeast Asia. If the United States, Britain, and Soviet Russia supported the greater Persian state to recover its homeland, the strategic interests of the Allied camp in the Persian Gulf will inevitably be greatly damaged, which Berlin, Rome, and Istanbul do not want to see, so Germany and Italy have successively sent additional troops to the Persian region, and by the end of 1932, the regular army of the Allied countries deployed in West Asia has reached more than 700,000, Germany has invested one-sixth of the total active force, Italy has invested one-seventh, and the Ottoman Turkish troops stationed in the Persian region account for nearly half of the active army troops!

With the combined attack of the three Allied powers, the historic city of Qom was reduced to rubble by modern weapons, and tens of thousands of people fled their homes across the desert and the Gobi to the border regions. After the capture of Qom, the coalition forces continued to advance towards Mashhad, the capital of the Persian state, and used long-range bombers to bomb it on a large scale, and volunteers from the Soviet, British, and American countries flew fighter jets purchased from abroad to intercept it. In late January 1933, a number of fierce air battles broke out over Mashhad, and volunteers from many countries shot down more than 50 bombers of the Allied Forces at a relatively small cost, which shook the government and the public of the Allied countries. Through battlefield investigations, the German and Italian militaries realized that the existing bombers had the shortcomings of insufficient self-defense and defense capabilities, and that it was difficult for them to cope with the resistance of the fighters, regardless of whether they were in small formations or in large formations.

The German government first sent an official note to the British government, demanding that it strictly implement the Persian agreement signed in 1916 and the memorandum signed in 1927 that the two sides should not support each other's sphere of influence and instigate the resistance forces, immediately stop all kinds of aid to the Persian state, and close the land passage from the Anglo-Indian border to the Persian state indefinitely.

During the earlier signing of the Baku Agreement, Germany signed a secret memorandum with Soviet Russia, stipulating that Germany would no longer support the Estonian rebels, that Soviet Russian personnel and equipment would not cross the border into the Persian region in any form, and that the two sides would coexist peacefully and not invade each other. As a result, the German military revised the war plan against the Soviet Union drawn up in the mid-20s, and raised military funds by issuing additional national bonds to purchase mechanized military equipment for the army on a large scale - 2,000 half-tracked combat vehicles produced in Ireland alone were ordered in one go.

With regard to the US government's involvement in the Persian dispute, the German government adopted the strategy of encircling Wei to save Zhao, openly accusing the US military of committing a series of crimes against humanity during the Mexican Civil War, and wantonly trampling on many articles adopted by the two Hague international conventions. At the same time, Germany instigated Argentina and Paraguay to attack Uruguay over a territorial dispute left over from history, thereby creating tensions in South America and further distracting the attention of the US government and even international public opinion.

At the end of February 1933, the Allied forces captured the Persian capital of Mashhad at the cost of more than 20,000 casualties. Under the harsh strangulation of the Allied forces, the armed uprisings in various parts of Persia quickly subsided, the oil fields that had been reduced by the destruction of production and transportation facilities were restored, and the Irish government announced that the new oil fields in Bahrain would be put into operation, which would produce a stable output of 500,000 tons of crude oil per year, and the Europeans regained confidence and thwarted the storm set off by the United States in the international crude oil market in time.

The international crude oil market has seen significant turmoil, with countries that are highly dependent on crude oil imports suffering the most. In the early 30s, the oil produced in the Japanese mainland and the northern islands could not even meet the daily needs of the navy, the development of heavy industry and the demand for oil for transportation facilities basically depended on imports, and in just two months of the oil price war, the Japanese government and enterprises lost hundreds of millions of dollars, and the situation that was already in the period of economic depression was even worse. Japan's government and opposition covet crude oil production areas like a hungry wolf, and the thorny fence can't stop its thirst for fat sheep. Although the US government still provided hundreds of thousands of tons of crude oil to Japan at the agreed price during the period of sharp fluctuations in oil prices, so that Japan's important industrial facilities would not be completely shut down, the Japanese government envied and hated the ability of the Americans to manipulate international oil prices.

Against this background, the representatives of Germany and Japan met for six days on a German warship in the Persian Gulf, during which they repeatedly communicated with their governments by coded telegram, clarified the obligations of the two sides during the diplomatic and military action against the United States and Britain, and agreed that the two countries would divide their spheres of influence in the middle of the Indian Ocean in the future. This secret agreement emboldened Germany to confront the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union at the same time, and it also gave Japan the confidence to boldly seize oil- and rubber-rich Southeast Asia from the old empires of Britain and the Netherlands.

(End of chapter)