In the Kremlin, in a dimly lit, very large office, with a map of the Soviet-Polish border on the wall, Stalin sat behind a painted desk, with a pile of papers on a green tablecloth in front of him. An ashtray on the right hand side of the great leader of the Bolsheviks was filled with cigarette butts, indicating that he had been working here for a long time. In his left hand he held a report from NKVD Yezhov himself, which was related to Tukhachevsky's "reactionary military line" and "reactionary royalist line."

When Stalin's secretary put Hersmann and his adjutant Hans. When Lieutenant Colonel Spaydar and the Deputy People's Commissar of Defense of the Soviet Union Tukhachevsky invited them in, Stalin stood up, shook hands with them, and then silently gestured to them to sit down in their chairs and looked at Hersman with an inquiring look.

"Ludwig, let's talk about the aftermath, it's not easy to start a war, but it's even harder to end it."

Stalin had no opinion on how to defeat Poland - as long as he could defeat it, he could do whatever it wanted, even if the "Black Plan" was fake.

But after the defeat of Poland, Stalin had ideas about how to distribute the fruits of victory.

"Comrade Stalin, I believe that the Brest Treaty, with no land cession and no reparations, is the basis for the friendship between the Soviet Union and Germany."

Hersman meant the demarcation of the future borders in accordance with the provisions of the Treaty of Brest, according to which Russia lost several provinces along the Baltic coast and the Kingdom of Russian Poland.

In addition, the so-called "Western Ukraine" is actually not the land of Tsarist Russia, and never has been, Western Ukraine is the eastern Galicia of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which belonged to Poland before the partition of Poland by Russia and Austria. So in the Brest Treaty. It also did not belong to the USSR.

However, in the Soviet Union, Western Ukraine has always been described as part of right-bank Ukraine, calling it "lost territory".

Stalin put the "little report" in his hand in a drawer - Tukhachevsky's mistake was serious and unforgivable. But now is not the time to take him, at least not this month, and negotiations with Hersman will require his expertise.

"I note that you still want to preserve the Polish nation-state," Stalin said thoughtfully. "Is it necessary?"

Stalin meant that Poland could be completely partitioned! So that Western Ukraine could be taken - Western Ukraine is an industrial and mining region of Poland with good coal and iron mines. Coal, on the other hand, was a relatively scarce resource in the Soviet Union.

In addition, the geographical location of Western Ukraine is also very important. It was the Soviet Union's gateway to Central Europe, leading to Slovakia and Hungary.

"But there are about 25 million ethnic Poles in Europe," Hersman said, "and that's too much for us." ”

At present, the Polish Federation has a population of more than 50 million, of which about 25 million are ethnic Poles, about 4 million are Jews, and about 17 million are Ukrainians. There are more than 2 million ethnic Lithuanians and more than 1 million other ethnic groups. Most of the Poles in the Polish Confederation lived in the western part of the Polish Confederation, and if they were to be partitioned, they would be a problem for Germany.

"Comrade Stalin, I am also in favor of keeping Poland, which will facilitate our post-war rapprochement with Britain and France."

At this time, Tukhachevsky suddenly interjected, and also helped Hersman to speak! Stalin furrowed his brow. He knew what Tukhachevsky was thinking - the Polish nation-state could exist as a buffer state.

Although after Germany merged with the Baltics, the Soviets and Germany were already neighbors. However, the border between the two countries is not very long, and the eastern section of the border between the two countries also has Lake Pskov and a large forest, which is not conducive to the passage of large troops. Only the Baltic and Lithuanian borders with Belarus are more dangerous. However, the distance is not long, and a strong defensive line can be built to encircle Belarus.

But if the Soviet Union and Germany completely carved up Poland, the two countries would have a very long common border, especially on the southern front, where Ukraine and Poland meet. The area is very flat, there is no danger, and it is very conducive to attacking. And the hearts of the people there ...... It is absolutely not towards the Soviet Union. Because the people there did not live a day as Russians, after the fall of Austria-Hungary, the short-lived Western Ukrainian People's Republic completed land reform. The land (belonging to the Austrian aristocracy) was divided equally, and there were no class contradictions to exploit.

As for rapprochement with Britain and France, Stalin didn't pay much attention to it. The Soviet Union, together with Germany, has far surpassed Britain and France in strength, so it is Britain and France, not the Soviet Union, that need to make peace.

"If Poland becomes a buffer state," Stalin pondered, "then how shall we run the country?" Shouldn't we divide our respective districts? ”

Tukhachevsky sighed softly when he heard this, Stalin was too greedy. Dividing Poland in two, under separate Soviet and German administrations, would also deprive Poland of its role as a buffer, and sooner or later the Soviet Union would be annexed to the Soviet Union.

"How about the Bug River as the boundary?" Hersman said slowly.

He wanted to get his hands on Lviv (Lemberg), which had belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a very rich region, not only a large fertile black soil belt, but also rich coal and iron resources, and the center of heavy industry in the Polish Federation.

"But we also want Lviv!" Stalin said.

"There belongs to Austria-Hungary!" Hersman shook his head, "According to the Treaty of Brest, it should be up to us!" ”

Stalin's face darkened, and he looked at Hersmann coldly, "You now have more than 23 million tons of steel (1936 production, including Austria and the Czech Republic), and if you control Lemberg, then you will soon be able to increase the production of steel to 30 million tons, because there are good coal mines and iron mines there!"

And last year we only had 12 million tons of steel and 116 million tons of coal, which puts our two countries in a state of excessive unevenness. ”

Although the Soviet Union claimed to be the "third in the industrial world", it only claimed to surpass Britain in terms of the scale of heavy industry, and it was a lot worse than Germany. If we compare technology, the gap between the two countries is even greater -- this is also one of the reasons why the Soviet Union was violently beaten by Germany in the early days of the Soviet-German war, and the industrial strength of the Soviet Union was not comparable with that of Germany before the war, and the gap between the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union was even greater if you count France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, which were occupied by Germany.

In addition, the heavy industry of the Soviet Union also had a shortcoming - a shortage of coal!

Although the Soviet Union has a lot of land. There is no shortage of resources. But in the densely populated and easily accessible western regions, there is not much coal (mainly concentrated in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine), while Lviv, which is currently part of Poland, has rich coal resources.

"Whoever occupies it first will be in control," Hersman said after a moment's thought. "Right-bank Ukraine and Western Belarus belonged to the Soviet Union, and Lithuania, Danzig and the Danzig corridor belonged to Germany. The rest of Poland was to belong to the independent Republic of Poland, under the joint protection of the USSR and Germany...... As for the jurisdictions of the two sides, in principle, first served, how about it? ”

This seems to be a more favorable plan for the Soviet Union! Because the Soviet Red Army could go down the road from Minsk, their main stronghold on the Western Front, to Lublin in the southwest (northwest of Lviv), thus cutting the Polish Confederation in two sections and blocking the German eastward advance into Lviv.

Moreover, the route of this march is very flat, and there are railway lines to take advantage of. In addition to the Bug River and the Brest Fortress. There was no longer any danger of stopping the advance of the Red Army.

Stalin took out his pipe, opened a white tin cigarette case, stuffed it with some tobacco, then rubbed it on the fire, took two puffs, and then nodded slowly: "First served, it sounds good...... So be it. He thought for a moment and asked. So when are you going to start a war? ”

"September 1939," Hersman said. "We need another two years to prepare."

"How long do you have to prepare?" Stalin spat out a cigarette, "If I'm not mistaken, you have been preparing for more than ten years. ”

"Yes, but it's still not enough." Hersman shook his head, "First of all, there are not enough reserves of oil and non-ferrous metals. We only have 16 million tons of oil now, and hopefully we can reach 20 million tons in 2 years...... This is the amount needed to sustain the 2-year war. ”

Germany now has the same synthetic fuel capacity and oil reserves. It's all secret, and the situation with the former is not clear even to the Soviets. That's why Hersmann was able to deceive Stalin and say that Germany needed 10 million tons of oil a year.

"In addition, our weapons revealed a lot of deficiencies in the Spanish war." Hersman smiled bitterly, "Our tanks can't beat your T-26s. It is estimated that it will not be able to defeat the Polish 7TP tank, and it will be necessary to wait for the third and fourth to be put into production. Our Aircraft ...... The Bf-109 was not ideal, and the Fokker D.31 was not as good as it should have been, and it needed to be improved or a new aircraft developed, so it would take another 2 years to prepare. ”

Now sent to Spain is the Bf-109B, which is the first air superiority fighter after World War I to be heavily equipped with troops and take the liquid-cooled route, which naturally will not be in place in one step, and there are many problems on the Spanish battlefield, which will take time to improve.

The Fokker D.31 is even more problematic, it is an air-cooled aircraft developed on the basis of the Fokker D.21, which uses a lot of new technologies, and is also equipped with a high-horsepower air-cooled engine, which should be a very good fighter. However, the performance on the Spanish battlefield was not satisfactory, mainly because the fighter was positioned by Fokker as a "multi-role aircraft", and Fokker also wanted to install turbochargers on its fuselage in the future, so the aircraft was built too large and too heavy.

The advantages of the high-horsepower engine are all wasted by their own weight, except for the large bomb load, good dive performance, and relatively fast speed (not particularly fast), there is not much advantage (but it is still enough to crush the I-15 and I-16 series).

So Hersman gave his brother-in-law Anthony in late April this year. Fokker gave orders to immediately begin designing an air-superiority fighter with air-cooled engines, which had to be completed by the end of May 1939.

It is required to have the possibility of acting as a carrier-based aircraft; It has excellent aerial fighting performance; The practical height is hollow - 3000 meters - 5000 meters; The flight time with the auxiliary fuel tank is more than 6 hours, and the maximum range is more than 3000 kilometers; The maximum speed (altitude of 4200 meters) is more than 550 kilometers per hour.

Moreover, Hersman also suggested that Fokker could carry out technical cooperation with Japan's Mitsubishi Corporation, which has experience in manufacturing carrier-based aircraft, and that joint research and development could be carried out...... (To be continued.) )