Europe's "post-war economic syndrome" has begun to manifest.

Unlike France, Germany was largely unaffected by the war except for East Prussia and Austria-Hungary except Galicia.

With the demobilization of a large number of troops, industrial and agricultural production in both countries quickly returned to pre-war levels. But after a brief "post-war boom", European countries began to face a surplus of products, under-operating factories, and rising domestic unemployment. In times of war, in fact, due to a large number of orders from the military, the industrial production of Germany and Austria has been greatly improved, and most of these rapidly developing industries are concentrated in the military, steel, metallurgy, machinery, chemical and shipbuilding and military-related fields, but with the reduction or even cancellation of military orders, these enterprises are facing the situation of insufficient operation or even shutdown.

During the war, Germany and Austria lost their entire overseas markets, and it was now quite difficult to return to the American, British and colonial markets due to the high tariff barriers set up by Britain and the United States. Before the war, Germany had monopolized the U.S. synthetic dye market and most of the ammonium nitrate market, but during the war, the United States confiscated all German patents and handed them over to American companies for free use, which caused a number of large chemical conglomerates such as DuPont and Dewey to emerge in the United States within a few years, coupled with high tariff barriers, it was already more difficult for German companies to return to the North American market.

Japan, on the other hand, took advantage of the war to begin to occupy the vacancy left by the withdrawal of the German-Austrian market in the Far East and Southeast Asia, while American products took advantage of the opportunity to dominate the South American market.

In fact, the world did not leave much market space for Germany and Austria, and the British had built up a large and closed colonial market after hundreds of years of operation, excluding other countries, including the United States. The economic situation of the British was much stronger than that of Germany and Austria due to the support of the large colonial market.

In fact, before World War I, the United States was already among the world's leading industrial output, but its development before the war was mainly dependent on the huge domestic market, and there was always a huge deficit in trade with Europe. The war in Europe brought new opportunities to the United States, and in the early days of the war, the United States engaged in a large number of arms transactions with various belligerents as a "neutral country," and the war also led to the tremendous development of the originally weak military industry and shipbuilding industry of the United States.

Before the war, the annual production capacity of the shipbuilding industry in the United States was only 150,000 deadweight tons, but it was raised to the level of 1.2 million tons per year in just a few places, although there is still a huge gap with the annual manufacturing level of 8.8 million tons of British shipbuilding and 5.1 million tons of German shipbuilding, but it has already stood on the second line like France and Austria-Hungary.

The European war also transformed the United States from the world's largest debtor before the war to the world's largest creditor, and in fact, it was only the United States that benefited the most during the entire European war. Britain spent more than 20 billion pounds on the war and almost exhausted the wealth accumulated over hundreds of years, and France and Italy became the losers of the war, not only losing a large number of colonies, but also having to bear huge war reparations.

Germany and Austria were relatively better, their strength was expanded, and there were war reparations as compensation, although the war reparations could not fully compensate for the losses of the two countries in the war, but on the whole, there was a slight surplus.

The most pitiful of all is Russia, the largest empire in the world before the war, which lost more than 2.6 million square kilometers of territory and one-fifth of its population at once, and was also mired in the mud of civil war. Now in the civil war, Russia has become the largest market for Germany and Austria, and the two countries continue to transport surplus military supplies to Ukraine, the Don River and the Caucasus in exchange for large quantities of grain, oilseeds, meat and industrial raw materials.

This greatly mitigated the shock caused by the post-war economic crisis in both countries.

The economic cold wave began to hit slowly, because Britain was selling the remaining merchant ships to the world after the war, in 1919, in addition to the four major Austro-Hungarian shipyards received orders for 26 Mediterranean-type short-haul passenger and cargo ships from domestic shipping companies, the four major shipyards with a production capacity of nearly 2 million tons did not get a single order from abroad. Under the impact of this economic wave, small shipyards in Austria-Hungary closed down, and machine-building enterprises associated with shipbuilding were also in trouble.

The Navy, on the other hand, is selling to the world eight capital ships that have not yet been outfitted in France.

The war was over, and the Austro-Hungarian Navy could not afford the maintenance and daily expenses of such a large number of capital ships.

Anxious to open up overseas markets and avoid plunging the domestic economy into recession, Heldon was envisioning ways to intervene with the state. Different from the Anglo-American model of purely free and competitive economic development, German industry has always had the shadow of government intervention in its development, and some powerful consortia have been formed to promote and strengthen the competitiveness of German industrial products in the international market. The formation of the consortium economy is essentially inseparable from the support of the government.

For example, Krupp armor steel production, thanks to the supply agreement with the German Navy, the Krupp consortium was able to form an annual production capacity of 500,000 tons of armor steel within a few years, which is almost impossible under the Anglo-American free competition economic model. In the Anglo-American economic model, companies have to bear the risk caused by investment, while the German side has greatly reduced the investment risk of enterprises due to the government's procurement guarantee.

Of course, this is sometimes not conducive to improving production efficiency and enhancing the competitiveness of products.

The economic model adopted by Austria-Hungary was almost the same as that of Germany, but in order to ensure that enterprises maintained a certain degree of competitiveness, Hirton had been emphasizing the need to maintain at least two competing enterprises in each industry. Even though the Israia consortium is already the largest monopoly in the entire empire.

For example, the procurement of armor steel has always been a competition between the Linz steel plant and the Carlsen steel plant, and the winning bidder can only get 80 percent of the order, and the rest of the order has to ensure the production of the other factory.

The economic model of state intervention adopted by Germany and Austria is somewhat similar to an economic model between the monopoly economy and the planned economy, which is conducive to maintaining the overseas competitiveness of enterprises, and the disadvantage is that it is not conducive to the development of small enterprises, resulting in insufficient innovation ability of enterprises.

These are also some of the weaknesses of the German nation itself, and in terms of creativity and imagination, the Germans who live a rigorous life lag far behind the enthusiastic and unrestrained Latin peoples.

Now, in order to speed up China's industrialization, Hayton Lee began to aggressively sell his state intervention program to the Beiyang government.

The method adopted is somewhat ridiculous, and it is the so-called "Soviet-aided" method that he has embezzled.

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