Time flies, with the leisurely ringing of the New Year's bell, time enters 1938.

The war in the Far East continued, and under pressure from the Soviet army, the Japanese army abandoned Nizhny Udinsk in the Far East and retreated to the east of the Great Khingan Mountains, but refused to give up the territory of Outer Mongolia that it had occupied. The Soviet army confronted the Japanese army in the Far East and Mongolia, but on the contrary, it contained a large amount of Japanese military strength.

The Soviet army simply stopped its military operations against China, sat on the hill and watched the tiger fight, and even began to negotiate with the Beiyang government behind its back. Due to the sudden reduction of pressure on the Soviet and Russian fronts, Beijing was able to transfer its troops to the south, and a situation of stalemate with the Japanese army was temporarily formed. After the Japanese captured Nanjing, the Japanese navy was temporarily unable to go up due to the blockage of the waterway between Jiangyin and Zhenjiang, and stopped the attack after the attack was blocked.

Beijing has recruited more than 3 million recruits in various provinces, and the current total strength is close to 5 million, basically three times that of the invading Japanese army. However, the newly formed part still needs to be adjusted and trained, and there is no counterattack ability at present. With the arrival of the New Year, the entire front began to fall silent, except for the local battles that were still taking place.

As a result of orders from the East, the tank production lines of the four major Austro-Hungarian tank factories, which had been converted to mainly produce agricultural machinery after the war: the Linz Reich Standard Automobile Tractor Manufacturing Company, the Steft Automobile Company, the Islaja Internal Combustion Engine and Automobile Manufacturing Company, and the Steyr-Diesel Engine and Automobile Manufacturing Company, were reactivated.

Since the Austro-Hungarian Army only retained the 550,000-strong army establishment of four armies after the war, it only retained seven armored divisions. Although during the war in Europe countries realized the importance of tanks and armored vehicles, in fact, military equipment technology developed slowly in the two decades after the war. So far, the Austro-Hungarian Army has not been equipped with tanks that have significantly improved their performance compared to the European war, except for the replacement of the riveting process with welding technology in the manufacture of the body and turret, and the improvement in engine and armor performance, the firepower and main gun caliber have hardly improved compared to the European war.

The Austro-Hungarian Army did not experiment with a variety of multi-turret tanks like other countries, and was currently equipped with two main types of tanks: the PT-25 light tank, weighing only 15 tons, armed with a 37 mm/L43 tank gun, and the PT-28 medium tank, weighing 24 tons, armed with a 57 mm/L45 tank gun.

Unlike the tanks of various countries at this time, which were equipped with gasoline engines, Austro-Hungarian tanks and armored vehicles have been using Steyr diesel engines from beginning to end, although the maximum power is only 310 horsepower, but due to the large torque, the mobility can meet the requirements of the War Department for 46 kilometers of highway and 28 kilometers of off-road maneuverability.

The entire Austro-Hungarian army, including the Marine Corps, was equipped with about 2,600 tanks, which was not a lot, and the number of armies in Europe was less than that of Germany and France, the Germans were equipped with about 3,100 tanks, but they were equipped with about 2,000 various tank destroyers and other deformed tanks, which hindered the number of their tank equipment.

The Germans were always able to make some strange but not useful armored weapons, and Lee Hayden had no choice but to make the Austro-Hungarian Army as undisturbed by German equipment as possible.

What worried Lehedon was the rapid build-up of the Russian armed forces.

Although the heavy industry bases in Ukraine and the Donets region, as well as the oil fields in the Baku region, were lost during the European war, the Russians lost 40 percent of their heavy industry and population, and their strength was greatly weakened. After two five-year plans, especially after 31 years, with the large-scale introduction of Western industrial technology and equipment, Russia has successively built five new steel bases in the Ural region and the Kazakh Republic, and with the discovery and development of the Siberian oil fields and the oil fields in the lower reaches of the Ural River and the Turkmen oil fields, Soviet Russia's industry, especially heavy industry, has developed rapidly.

By 1937, Soviet Russia's steel production exceeded 10 million tons, surpassing Britain to become the world's fourth largest industrial country. With the development of industry and the strengthening of the economy, the military strength of Soviet Russia also grew rapidly.

With the rapid development of industry, especially the military industry, the Soviet army has been equipped with nearly 8,000 tanks and more than 12,000 combat aircraft of various types, which is an astonishing scale and number. As the military power increased, so did Zhuashvili's ambitions. The war in the Far East was actually a military test, and Soviet Russia was testing the reaction of Germany and Austria, but unfortunately, Germany and Austria did not take any substantive action except verbally to express their reproach to the Soviet invasion of the Far Eastern Republic.

This only emboldened Zhuashvili.

At the instigation of Soviet Russia, civil strife broke out in Ukraine, the Don River, the Caucasus Federation, and the Ottoman Empire, and although the situation was calmed down, there was no internal stability in these countries, and there were often strikes or demonstrations instigated by the Social Workers. Over time, countries have become increasingly unstable within themselves.

Especially in the Ottoman Empire, the Anatolian region and the two river basins were already in a state of virtual semi-independence, and the Istanbul regime managed to maintain its dominance only with German support.

The news of the appearance of American planes on the battlefield in China made Li Haidon very serious, and it seems that Roosevelt still returned to the old way of improving the domestic economy by increasing armaments. The Americans, hoping to instigate a war and sell arms to revive their economies, inevitably confronted the German-Austrian and American forces behind their backs in the Far East. The British, on the other hand, were helpless to see the Japanese destroy their carefully crafted sphere of influence in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River in China, and at the same time hoped that Japan would break out into a direct conflict with Germany and Austria, without wanting to harm their own interests.

Marshal Horti, the Minister of the Admiralty, arrived in Rhodes, and the Emperor spent most of the month in his estate on Rhodes. The emperor revised the shipbuilding plan for the second half of 1938, submitted by the Admiralty, canceled the construction plan for all six heavy cruisers, hoping to convert them into medium aircraft carriers.

"Marshal, why waste money on the construction of heavy cruisers with a displacement of 15,000 tons at the cost of 90 million crowns, and a medium aircraft carrier with a displacement of 25,000 tons? Do you think that a heavy cruiser can be stronger than a medium aircraft carrier? ”

"It's not, it's just that the Admiralty thinks that aircraft carriers need escort warships."

"But the aircraft carrier fleet needs air defense cruisers, not heavy warships armed with 210-mm naval guns, and I don't think 210-mm naval guns can be used as anti-aircraft guns. We already have a plan to build 10 large anti-aircraft light cruisers, which are still built by conventional thinking, and there are still people who think that our aircraft carrier fleet will fight the enemy within the range of the ship's guns. ”

"Well, Your Majesty, I accept your point of view. But how did the special funding for the Navy go? Marshal Holty was referring to the gold that Admiral Yankel had seized from the Russians in the Bay of Biscay, and that Helton had promised to reward the navy with half of it. But it was blocked by parliament.

"There is no way, there is no way for the Imperial Diet to pass through it, but I have reached a compromise with the parliamentarians, and they will be mortgaged to the Imperial Bank, which can be allocated to the navy first, but the principal and interest will be returned from the funds for the construction of the navy after 1947."

"Wouldn't that affect the future construction plan of the navy?"

"But I think it's still more tense at the moment, Marshal, we need to rapidly increase the strength of the Navy." "The world is very dangerous now, and we may be involved in a big war again. ”

Horthy was taken aback, for the first time he had heard the Emperor explicitly mention the possibility of the Empire being involved in war, and although the danger of war had been repeatedly mentioned by naval intelligence, most of the senior military generals believed that no one in Europe had the ability and courage to challenge the new order established by Germany and Austria.

"Your Majesty, although this is possible, the situation is not so critical, right?"

"It may be dangerous that the French government is in the hands of a group of hot-headed totalitarians, and Russia, after rearmament, has begun to want to restore the territory of the Imperial Russia, which, of course, is active in Ukraine, the Don and the Caucasus, and with the support of Russia, these activities are becoming more and more frequent, and the Turkish local government in Anatolia also has a large number of Soviet and Russian advisers in operation, as in Spain. We need to be prepared in advance for war, and the strength of the navy needs to be strengthened. ”R1152