Section 201 800
After the debriefing, Bernard hurried out of the palace and told Wilhelm II that he was going to deal with the matter at once, and that he had to keep the matter a secret, and that no country should know that Germany could obtain 1,000 tons of gold reserves a year. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info
At the same time, Bernard suggested that Wilhelm II convene a meeting of the presidents of the Ministry of Finance, Deutsche Bank, and the German banking syndicate to discuss the issue of a new German mark. The Kaiser was also advised to reconsider the navy's new shipbuilding plan, because Bernard believed that Germany should be able to issue more national debt.
Wilhelm II very much agreed with Bernard's statement, the British provocative double plan is simply an insult to Germany, Wilhelm II does not want to engage in an arms race with the British, but the old guy of the finance minister warned himself with all kinds of data that if he competes with the British infinitely in terms of the number of warships, it can only lead to the collapse of German finances.
But now, Wilhelm II felt that he didn't need to listen to the rhetoric of the Minister of Finance, the Germans made one dreadnought, and the British made two? Well, the Germans will have to build four!
Wilhelm II was now angry with his cousin's England.
not because of anything else, because he was dishonored.
During the second Moroccan crisis that broke out in July last year, Wilhelm II sent the Leopard battleship to the Moroccan port of Agadir to declare German interests in Morocco in a tough posture and resolutely oppose the French annexation of Morocco. At the same time, he was in conflict with the French in the African colony of Congo, and saw that a war could break out at any time.
Wilhelm II was confident of defeating the French, but he did not expect that his relatives, England tended to support France, and disdained the French army Germans, but the British navy made them fearful, it was a powerful navy that had not been matched for hundreds of years.
The political support is not bad, Germany is confident that it will fight a war with France, and if it starts a war on land, Germany has an absolute chance of winning, so he dares to take a tough posture in front of the French, but in the economic field, Germany is too far behind Britain in the world's financial center and France, which is known as a loan shark country.
The crisis had just broken out, and before it had developed into a war of arms, Germany was suddenly hit financially by Britain and France. The stock market plummeted by 30% in a single day, the public began to lose confidence, a bank run broke out in the country, and people began to demand that the currency be exchanged for gold. Deutsche Bank lost 1/5 of its gold reserves in a month, and the main force of the run was French and Russian money, and the mastermind was the French Chancellor of the Exchequer, but without the attack of London financiers, France and Russia would not have so much confidence.
With Deutsche Bank's gold reserves about to fall below the minimum statutory reserve ratio to cover cash payments, and in danger of the possible collapse of the Deutschmark, the Kaiser had no choice but to compromise with the French, recognizing France's status in Morocco and ceding part of northern Cameroon to France in exchange for French southern Congo under French Equatorial Africa.
Wilhelm II's heart was hurt and his pride was greatly damaged, and two days ago a large number of bankers, including Deutsche Bank President Rudolph, were summoned to ask them if Deutsche Bank was capable of providing enough gold reserves to support a major European war.
The bankers did not have the slightest confidence, and the meeting broke up, and at last Wilhelm II told them, very dissatisfied: "The next time I ask you this question, I hope to get a different answer from you gentlemen." ”
Wilhelm II demanded that Deutsche Bank raise its gold reserves to more than 500 tons, and Germany must ensure that it could no longer be bothered by financial problems and dare not fight for its world rights. The German government even revived the war gold fund conceived by Frederick the Great 200 years earlier, hoping to deposit 100 tons of gold and silver at Julius Castle in the western suburbs of Berlin in the Spandau fortress, so as to avoid a last-ditch emergency in the event of an economic collapse during the war.
Gold, gold!
In the past few months, Wilhelm II has been thinking about gold, but he did not expect that the Chinese really knew each other, and sent pillows when they were sleepy, and at this time sent 1,000 tons of gold to Germany, and so much every year.
The behavior of the Chinese made Wilhelm II excited, of course, and of course there was a little loss, after all, he was still spurring German bankers to increase their gold reserves to more than 500 tons, and China casually threw 1,000 tons, making it look like Germany was a beggar.
But in any case, Wilhelm II was determined to get this gold, and he wanted to get it at all costs.
Whatever the Chinese demanded, as long as it was not for Germany to abandon the question of principle such as Qingdao, he could agree to it, and he immediately summoned efficient German officials.
After Wilhelm II had a secret and tense meeting with the banking industry and the Ministry of Finance on Chinese gold, the Germans suddenly changed their major strategy and decided to engage in a naval arms race with the British at all costs, and there was only one thing that limited the size of the German navy, not money, but German shipbuilding capabilities!
Now the Ministry of Defense is satisfied, the Admiralty is satisfied, and even the Ministry of Finance is satisfied.
The banking industry is even more stimulant-like.
Germany decided to issue a special naval bond of 1 billion marks, specifically for the British 40 million pounds of naval allocation, 40 million pounds is equivalent to only 800 million marks, and Germany may not lose to Britain in the fight for wealth.
Of course, everything will have to wait for the gold ore samples to arrive in Germany and confirm that 1,000 tons of gold can be smelted, because even with the exact news from Deutsch-Hua Bank, the Germans are a little bit unconvinced.
However, it did not take long, ten days later, the airship with the samples arrived in Germany, and the three German warships had already loaded the batch of gold ore, and after examining these gold ore samples, the Germans had confirmed that the information from Deutsch-Hua Bank was reliable.
At this time, Yang Chao urged the Germans to hurry up and fulfill their promises.
Immediately afterwards, the manager of the Berlin branch of Yangzi Bank immediately signed an unprecedented loan agreement with the thirteen German banks behind Deutsche Hua Bank:
First, a consortium of German banks jointly provided Yangzi Bank with an annual loan of 10 billion marks with an interest rate of 3%.
This interest rate can be described as pitifully low, and it is impossible for the interest rate on the national debt of the British people to be so low these days.
Second, the loan will be used entirely to support German industrial companies to invest in China, and depending on the industry, the Chinese will use the loan to issue interest-free loans of 10% to 100% of the investment amount to different German companies.
Yang Chao's industrial introduction is planned, and of course the key enterprises get more loans, and those cotton spinning and wool spinning are not welcome at all, and there is no dime loan, because those industries are not in the plan at all.
The signing of the loan agreement immediately caused an uproar all over the world, Britain, France and other countries were dumbfounded, and public opinion was full of crazy comments from Germans, all of whom believed that this move would collapse the German economy, especially the banking circles generally believed that if the Germans issued such a large-scale loan, it would definitely cause bad inflation, because Germany did not have enough gold reserves to support it.
But just as the heated discussion began, the Germans made further moves.
The German Ministry of Industry immediately launched a plan called "Actively Encouraging China's Industrialization Development" to encourage German companies to invest in China, and formulated a special investment guide, strongly recommending German companies to invest in Shandong and the three eastern provinces, telling German companies that there is an area ruled by Yang Chao, the world's richest man, and where to invest can get the best government services.
Then the Ministry of Industry also provides a set of special procedures to promote German enterprises to invest abroad, mainly in China, simplifying the administrative approval of all overseas investment, basically as long as a well-run, has a perfect tax record in Germany, and continues to make profits, you can easily get the Ministry of Industry's guarantee stability, and then immediately get the Chinese encouragement loan.
If the banking industry promotes 10 billion marks in loans, it is nothing more than the greed of financiers, just to make huge profits, then what does the German Ministry of Industry mean by this move? Did the Germans really become internationalists, bent on the development of others?
How did Britain and France know that if they didn't do this, the Germans would not be able to eat Yang Chao's 1,000 tons of gold at all, because they couldn't give Yang Chao 10 billion marks in banknotes, and Yang Chao's gold would not be able to be mortgaged in their banks, and if Yang Chao took their paper marks, he would have to give Yang Chao the opportunity to spend the money, and Yang Chao could only spend it by lending to German companies, so there was really no other way to mobilize enough German companies to invest in China.
The airship that sent gold ore samples, without waiting for the German fleet transporting ore to arrive in Germany, set off for the return trip, with a thick cooperation agreement, the Germans mobilized 800 enterprises in less than a month to reach an agreement with Yang Chao, including the steel plant project alone, there are 30, and they are all large steel mills with an investment of more than 10 million marks.
After these large steel mills are fully put into operation, the steel output will reach 10 million tons, making China's steel output the third in the world after the United States and Germany, and higher than the UK's steel output of seven or eight million tons.
There were also some guests sitting on the airship, most of them engineers who went to China to inspect the site selection, but there was one person who was more strange, she was a journalist, the German journalist Leonie!
After interviewing Yang Chao in Russia, Leonie wrote the transcript of the interview into a long series of reports that were published in German newspapers and immediately caused a sensation, because the praise of Germany by a Chinese minister was so much that nationalist Germans liked it.
Leonie became famous in Germany because of this, and suddenly became a hot and famous journalist in Germany.
Although Leony's report was ridiculed in Britain and France, the press in both countries believed that it was nothing more than the dream whisper of the Chinese, and the British and French did not believe that Germany would stand up and lead the world in this century, nor did they think that the Chinese could rely on Germany's rise to improve their international status.
Of course, there are also some brainy media who say that this is the Chinese stirring up the feelings of the people of Germany and Britain and France.
But judging from Yang Chao's performance all the time and the big move of cooperating with Germany, this is really an outright pro-German element, so more people believe that Yang Chao is just a German brain-dead fan, and if the brain-dead fan says that Germany will lead the world, it doesn't matter whether he is a conspiracy or not, because that's what he thinks.
Reasonable people do not doubt Yang Chao's intentions, but they just lament that it is really sad that such a person has great power in China, and what is even more sad is that he inherited a large amount of wealth from his ancestors from unknown sources.
But public opinion in Britain and France is of little use, the point is that the Germans love to listen, and the Germans genuinely believe that they will become world leaders and will lead the world forward in the coming decades.
For this reason, many Germans have a good impression of Yang Chao, and many newspapers have already called Yang Chao the most sincere old friend of the German people.
Even the Kaiser was satisfied after reading Leonie's serialization, and his mind was full of Yang Chao's praise for Germany, and Wilhelm II was full of good feelings for this Chinese at this time:
"What an honest Chinese. It seems that the Chinese are not all cunning and treacherous. No wonder he's the richest man! ”
Wilhelm II thought so, recalling Yang Chao's arguments such as "the German territory is too small" and "the German nation does not have enough living space", which annoyed him again.
Yes, why did the Germans have to settle in Central Europe, why did the British occupy the whole world, why did the Slavs occupy the vast Eastern European Plain, and even the Chinese had a vast territory!
One by one, "why", in the mind of Wilhelm II, the more he felt the unfairness of the world, the Germans started too late, and at the same time he felt a kind of suffocation, a sense of suffocation by France and Russia from both sides, with the existence of these two countries, Germany should not think about expanding its territory.
It is really unrealistic to destroy these two countries, and Germany can only open up from the sea, and can only occupy colonies, just like the British occupied South Africa and have a gold vein that is hundreds of kilometers long.
As for China?
Wilhelm II suddenly had the idea of destroying China and annexing Chinese territory, because he suddenly felt that China, which also had huge gold deposits, looked like South Africa arranged by God to Germany.
But this crazy idea was only fleeting, and I was glad that the Chinese made the right choice and honestly handed over the gold to Germany, otherwise he really had to destroy China at all costs, at least to grab the gold mines of the Chinese.
Thinking of the Chinese, Wilhelm II opened his eyes and played with the diamond scepter in his hand in love, this huge diamond is still the largest diamond in the world, and it is an extremely valuable blood diamond, which is the symbol of German power.
However, a few years ago, Wilhelm II sealed the scepter for a while, not wanting to see it. Because the British found a Cullinan diamond in South Africa, which weighed more than 3,000 carats, compared with that diamond, William II suddenly felt that he was too shabby, and the diamond belonged to the British, to his cousin, King George of England.
But more than a year later, the British asked the Americans to process this diamond, and the result was that the largest finished product of this rough stone was only more than 500 carats, which was only half of his own blood diamond, and he immediately cherished this diamond, named the diamond the dragon's heart, and specially took it out for exhibition, which was to disgust King George of the British Empire and satisfy his ridiculous self-esteem. (To be continued.) )