"Hi Heinrich, welcome to Trieste."

Muller was greeted on the platform by a small but stout lieutenant colonel.

"Well, Frank, I didn't expect you to pick me up at the station in person." Mr. Mueller hugged each other on the platform with an old friend, Lt. Col. Wrangel, his colleague from Split Naval Base and a year after he graduated from the naval school in Pola a year after him, and the two had a good relationship. They hadn't seen each other for four or five years, and their hair was starting to turn a little gray.

"There is no way, I am currently in the Navy Command, in charge of personnel reception, and I have retreated to the second line." Wrangel said, "I heard you were coming here, so I came in person." ”

"Thank you."

"Okay, you're welcome." Wrangel said, "There are quite a few of you who have gone to the Far East. ”

"I don't know, I came the next day after I was notified." Mr. Mueller said, following Wrangel to a sky-blue military car, where the orderly behind him helped him carry his suitcase and put it in the trunk of the car.

Cars drive on Trieste Street, which has grown to a population of more than 700,000 over the decades, making it a famous large seaport city in Europe. The streets are brightly lit and the traffic is endless.

"How are the wives and the children?" Wrangel sat in the front seat of the car and looked back and said.

"Fortunately, the eldest daughter is married, Hart is studying at the Naval Academy, but the second child doesn't like our business, and the remaining two are still in elementary school." Mueller said he has five children, three sons and two daughters. There is no small amount of stress in life.

"Heinrich, the situation in the Far East is not good, do you think the Chinese and the Japanese will really fight?" Wrangel said.

"It's hard to say. Since the Chinese formed an alliance with us, the Americans have supported Japan. Originally, we and Germany could still make the Japanese obedient, but now, we can no longer suppress them. "Since the Great Economic Crisis in the United States, the Japanese government is now governed by the military, and the pace of armaments has been accelerated. And the Japanese Navy achieved the same tonnage of ships as ours in the Washington Naval Treaty. ”

"I heard that the negotiations on the second treaty on the limitation of naval armaments in Berlin are not going well, and it is possible that the countries will not be able to renew the treaty, and a new round of naval arms race will begin again."

"That can't be helped. The Japanese withdrew from the Washington Naval Arms Limitation Treaty under the pretext that we sold four battleships to the Chinese, and now the countries are no longer able to reach a consensus. Behind this was the shadow of the Americans, and Roosevelt hoped to promote the recovery of the domestic economy by reorganizing armaments. Although we have been less affected by the economic crisis, the domestic economy has also struggled to grow, but fortunately it is supported by the market in the Far East. ”

In 1929, the collapse of the U.S. financial market triggered an economic crisis that swept the world, followed by a comprehensive decline in industrial and agricultural production in various countries, and a large number of enterprises went bankrupt. It was as if overnight, people's wealth had evaporated. But it doesn't end there. With this economic crisis, the entire world economy has entered the "Great Depression Era", and the recovery of industrial and agricultural production in various countries has been slow. Unemployment remained high, and society began to be unstable.

Due to tax barriers and a sense of confrontation, Germany and Austria are not particularly closely linked to the US economy, and have been less affected by the economic crisis, and because of the support of China, an emerging market, the economy is doing much better. Even so, in 1933, at the end of the crisis, the value of industrial and agricultural production in Germany and Austria was 20 percent lower than in 1929.

As a result of the effects of this great economic crisis, in Italy and France. Fascism arose and went to the path of totalitarianism. Began to rearmament and increase the country's military spending. The development of military power to stimulate the rapid development of other important industries in the country, especially in the fields of iron and steel, chemicals, shipbuilding, vehicle manufacturing, etc., in order to survive this economic crisis.

During this period, Japan also abandoned the "constitutional era" for about 20 years, once again embarked on the road of militaristic foreign expansion, and first withdrew from the "Washington Treaty on the Limitation of Naval Armaments" and began to vigorously expand its armaments, entering a state of war in an all-round way.

History has come full circle, back to the era of the massive arms race that preceded the European War.

It was May 25, 1935.

Carrying two heavy suitcases full of civilian and military uniforms, Müller walked out of the Navy guest house next to the Navy Command, next to the Navy Headquarters, where several large buses sent by the Navy to pick them up were already waiting for them downstairs.

The car drove directly to the docks of the Imperial Mail Line, next to the wide passenger terminal where a luxurious Imperial cruise ship was moored. About 130 naval and army officers boarded the ship bound for the Far East.

More than two hours later, the cruise ship sounded three long whistles, the three boarding ramps on the pier were removed from the hull, and the band played "God Bless My Emperor Friedrich" on the pier, and the large cruise ship with a full load displacement of more than 30,000 tons slowly left the dock under the traction of two tugboats. The deck beneath their feet began to shake, and the ship began to sail towards the fairway, and passengers gathered on several decks, waving their hands or hats to say goodbye to the crowd on the docks.

It was a cloudy day, and there were about 5 degrees of wind and waves on the sea, which was nothing to the people who came from the navy, but it still made some first-time visitors feel unsure.

Muller was not on deck, and he had been in his cabin since he was on board, and the military provided them with second-class tickets, one for every two people. In the same room as Mueller was an army officer.

The two introduced themselves to each other, and the army officer, Vjokovic, was a Croat from the armored unit.

"You're also going to China?" Mueller asked.

"Well, we are helping the Chinese train armored troops, and there is also some technical cooperation." "It didn't take long for the Chinese to form armored forces. ”

"Ah, the Chinese can make their own tanks?" Mueller said curiously.

"There are some, but the production is not high, about 800 units per year, their car production is about 500,000 units per year, and about ten armored divisions have been formed." "China is not as backward as we imagined, and the overall level of industry is already on par with the Japanese," Vjokovic said. Are you also going to China? ”

"Well, though, you need to go to Annan for a while." Müller said that because of some tensions in the Far East, both Germany and Austria have strengthened their fleets in the Far East. On his current trip to the Far East, he needs to make a detailed assessment of the comparative forces of the air forces in the Far East, including China and Japan. (To be continued) R640