Fundamentally speaking, there is only one way to solve the problem of too little, and that is to increase the productive forces of the Soviet Union.

Of course, the USSR could not immediately become as rich as the United States, this could not and could not be done. There was no need for the Soviet Union to immediately become like the United States, and the Soviet Union could have taken targeted measures to solve the problem.

In Li Xiaofeng's view, the so-called targeted measures are to grasp the main contradiction. So what exactly is the main post-war contradiction in Europe? Naturally, it is inseparable from the four words of clothing, food, housing and transportation, and the most important of these four words is food, and whether you have a full stomach is the most difficult and critical problem.

For this problem, Li Xiaofeng made certain arrangements before the war, that is, to buy agricultural products from the Americas, and a large amount of grain was hoarded in warehouses in northern Finland, but this grain was not enough, so that the European people could not eat it openly, and they could not withstand it for even three months.

And a certain immortal can't come up with more money to buy food, so this food can only be used for emergencies. To solve the problem of famine, in the final analysis, it is necessary to find a way to produce more food. However, as mentioned earlier, the first year or two after the war were disaster years, especially 1947, when the grain harvest in the whole of Europe failed, and it is conceivable that from Ukraine to Poland, from Romania to Austria, these originally important granaries could not provide much help to the Soviet Union.

Li Xiaofeng has prepared a two-pronged strategy for this, the first is to promote cold-tolerant and drought-tolerant high-yield crops, so that Europe can produce as much food as possible. The second way is to vigorously develop the Far East, which is fertile and sparsely populated, and can play a great role if it is used well.

How to develop it? Immigration? It's really not, there are too many troubles for ordinary people to move over, no one likes to leave their hometowns to work hard in barren land, and forced relocation is too bad for character. Therefore, on the one hand, Li Xiaofeng did make efforts in this regard, giving more preferential conditions to attract people to go to the Far East to open up wasteland. On the other hand, he hit the idea of the massive prisoners of war.

Over the course of a few years, the Red Army had captured more than two million Axis soldiers, and if only these two million men were to be put in prisoner of war camps, it would be tantamount to raising two million more mouths out of thin air.

Therefore, under the unified arrangement of the KGB, more than two million prisoners of war were screened, and the die-hard Nazis were naturally dragged out and killed. The remaining accomplices are assigned to different jobs according to their individual skills. Cultured and skilled arranged to go to the factories controlled by the KGB to work, so that these guys could produce weapons and ammunition for the Red Army. Those who generally do not have outstanding skills in the education level are faced with two choices: either to go to the Far East to cultivate land, or to go to construction workers to build the Trans-Siberian Railway and other infrastructure. Anyway, Li Xiaofeng does not raise worthless waste, only when he participates in labor can he have food and enough clothes to keep out the cold, otherwise you will starve to death and freeze to death!

Don't underestimate the role of these two million prisoners of war, these two million people are a strong labor force, and their military career has made them develop a good habit of obeying orders, and their labor efficiency is much higher than that of ordinary people. As long as Li Xiaofeng is not too picky, does not squeeze and enslave them with his life, and does not play them to death, he can let them work for free for several years.

Judging from the data disclosed by later generations, half of the more than 2 million prisoners of war were cultivated in the Far East, and in just two or three years, a large number of high-quality farms were developed, and the grain output in the Far East doubled and increased. When these prisoners of war were released, Li Xiaofeng captured millions of Japanese, and successively captured millions of Nazis from Ukraine, Belarus, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, and Germany to serve as laborers. It was these Axis prisoners of war who ensured that the Far East turned into a large granary.

By the time the wretched creatures left, agriculture in the Far East was quite developed, with a large number of state-owned farms supplying almost a quarter of Europe's food needs. It made a great contribution to Europe's coming out of the shadow of the war.

In 1955, after a certain immortal entered his second term, in addition to encouraging immigrants to the Far East again, the most important thing was to sign a labor contract with New China, and bring in peasants from China to replace those "lovely" fascists, so as to ensure that agriculture in the Far East would not dive instantly.

Of course, these prisoners of war are not only allowed to farm, as mentioned earlier, only half of the prisoners of war are engaged in agricultural production, and the other part of the prisoners of war are mainly working as construction workers in addition to work. They also played a major role in the repair of infrastructure in Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and without these diligent construction workers, transport in Europe would never have been restored so quickly.

It is precisely because of the rapid restoration of transportation that the Soviet Union's coal, grain, cement, and timber can continue to pour into these countries, greatly alleviating the dilemma of lack of materials.

Of course, it is not enough to do this, as mentioned earlier, the main problem in Europe is the collapse of national credit and the lack of hard currency, the wealth accumulated in these countries before the war was almost wiped out by the Germans, and the gold in the treasury of various countries was moved back to their hometown by the Nazis, so that the Germans lived a "shameless" life during the war.

Credit support is the first priority to restore the confidence of the economies and citizens of these countries. To put it bluntly, it is to give them gold in order to maintain the exchange rate of the currency. Generally speaking, in normal international relations, no country will give money to other countries for nothing, everyone is not a living Lei Feng, and nothing good can be done stupidly!

There may be comrades who are about to jump out and say that the white-eyed wolves raised by Taizu are free support. As I said before, Huaxia at that time had almost no say in the world, and in order to safeguard national interests, it could only spend money to make a group of dog meat friends and let them help shout two voices.

Some comrades may say again that the Americans are selfless in supporting Europe through the Marshall Plan. Really? I'm afraid not!

As mentioned earlier, the situation in Europe at that time was a total left turn, the Communist Party and the Socialist Party won a considerable number of support, and the whole of Europe was in danger of ****. Under these circumstances, the Americans had to contribute generously and pay for Western Europe to defend itself against the threat of communism. In the final analysis, Americans are spending money to buy peace and protect their own interest system, and they are really not selfless.

What's more, the Americans had already reaped enough benefits in Europe before the Marshall Plan. I'm afraid many people don't know that before the Marshall Plan, the United States had already "aided" Europe. Before 1947, the United States had "lent" billions of dollars to Europe, including $4.4 billion from Britain, $1.9 billion from France, $513 million from Italy, $272 million from Denmark and $161 million from Greece.

Isn't it great that some comrades will immediately shout? The question is, do you see the quotation marks on the loan above? The Americans did not borrow this money for nothing. As soon as Japan surrendered, Truman immediately canceled Lend-Lease and then forced the cash-strapped Britain and France to agree to its terms through negotiations and other means.

What are the conditions? Britain was asked to renounce its imperial domination of the overseas Dominions, to relinquish control of trade, and to make the pound sterling completely freely convertible.

These conditions are almost a kick to the British Empire from the throne, without the bonus of overseas colonies, and can not engage in trade protection, but also completely open the pound, the British Empire is really a country!

For example, the last opening of the pound directly led to a violent run in Britain that year, which caused Britain's gold reserves to disappear more quickly.

The Americans were also quite harsh on France, and in addition to forgiving France's wartime loans of 2.25 billion, they also gave hundreds of millions of low-interest loans. In exchange, Paris would have to agree to abandon the protective import quota system and allow free access to the French market for American goods.

On the surface, these loans are to promote international free trade that the United States has been advocating, to implement open and stable currency exchange, and to bring international cooperation closer. In practice, however, the money was quickly spent within a year, which meant that the borrowed dollars were returned to the United States after a round trip in England and France.

That is to say, the Americans, without making a fuss, forced Britain and France to give in, and from these two countries they got what they had always dreamed of. To make matters worse, this "aid" did not solve the social problems of Western Europe at all, and by 1947 Europe's trade deficit with the United States had reached $4.742 billion, more than double that of 1946. In other words, it took only two years for the Americans to earn back the money they "supported" Western Europe through a very unequal "free trade". Even in the future, it will continue to earn happily, and Western Europe will have to repay the loan and interest in the future.

To tell the truth, this deal is really too cost-effective, you think about it, Europe lacks everything, and the United States not only did not lose but also grew explosively in World War II, its products are of high quality and very competitive, and they are sold to Europe, not to say that they dominate the market, but also have few opponents. Is such free trade really free? The level of scraping of the ground by Americans is really high!

However, it is not without problems to scrape like this, because after all, Western Europe after the war was a cripple, and its purchasing power was destroyed. The larger the market for the Americans, the smaller the market for local industry and commerce in Western Europe. This creates a vicious circle, that is, the smaller the local industrial and commercial market in Western Europe, the fewer jobs it provides, and the fewer jobs it provides, which means that it is difficult for businessmen and workers to obtain a stable income, and without income, there is no desire to consume. In the end, the market in Western Europe is probably getting smaller and smaller!

In other words, when this market disappears, Americans will not be able to make money, and even if you can trade freely, people can't afford it, what can you do?

In fact, the problem erupted in 1947, because of the extreme imbalance in trade, the consumption power of Western Europe plummeted, which greatly hampered the interests of the United States. To put it bluntly, the real purpose of the Americans to turn around and engage in the "Marshall Plan" is to spend some blood to support European industries and restore the purchasing power of Western Europe, even if this will damage the benefits of the United States' previous "free trade" to a certain extent, but in the long run, it will protect the interests of the United States.

For example, CIA Director Dulles said, "The precondition of the Marshall Plan was that we wanted to help Europe recover so that their manufacturing could compete with us in some markets, and that would help them be able to buy our products in large quantities." ”

To put it bluntly, the Americans are fattening Europe, killing them when they are about the same, cutting some meat and wine. In the short term, the benefits are reduced, but in the long run, they are a trickle. And from later history, we can also see that the Americans have successfully realized this intention, and on the big cake of the world economy, the Americans have cut off the fattest part, leaving a little bit to Western Europe and a little bit to Japan. Neither Western Europe nor Japan can threaten the transcendent position of the United States, and once an economic crisis occurs, it will be Japan that will be the first to be sheared, and if the wool sheared by Japan is not enough to fill the hole, then the United States will shear the wool of Europe, which is equivalent to the whole world being transfused for the United States.

Later, why did Europe huddle together and why did it engage in the eurozone? It's not that I want to be sheared less wool. It's just that old Europe didn't expect the Americans to be so ruthless, and the euro was just introduced, and the US imperialists pleaded NATO to do the Yugoslav Federation, and directly gave the euro a down.

To tell the truth, the United States has reaped enough benefits through the Marshall Plan, making a lot of money politically and economically, and it has also made the whole of Western Europe owe favors to others, and at every opportunity it will take it out to talk about things and play the emotional card.

Of course, there are also those who are not very American, such as France, whose pride does not allow them to be completely controlled by the Americans. Therefore, after accepting the Marshall Plan, France did not do exactly what the United States intended. Instead, the French took the money of the Americans and used it to advance their own goals. For example, Monet's colleague Pierre. "We used the Americans to force the French government to do what we thought we needed to do," Uri admitted. ”

So later we can see that the French are much more independent than other Western European countries, and after de Gaulle came to power for the second time, he withdrew from NATO, restored normal relations with the Soviet Union, and established diplomatic relations with New China. These are all manifestations of the French using the Marshall Plan to maintain their independence. If France does not have this kind of confidence, how dare it call out?

What is even more interesting is that in the mid-fifties, only one-third of French adults admitted to hearing of the Marshall Plan, and even 64 percent of those thirds declared it bad for France!

Turning back to the topic, the reason why the Americans were able to control Europe was because of the Marshall Plan, and the Soviet Union wanted to control the chassis that was easy to occupy, and I am afraid that it was not enough to have guns and guns. Not to mention the need for bleeding in Central and Eastern Europe, I am afraid that in order to offset the "bad" effects of the Marshall Plan, the Soviet Union would do well to pull Europe along, and if it can give it some assistance, it is unlikely that it will fully accept the harsh conditions of the United States before the Marshall Plan. And without those harsh conditions, Americans may not be able to easily relax and carry out the Marshall Plan.

If Li Xiaofeng can make old Europe consume more time between ambiguities, then even if the United States carries out the Marshall Plan in the future, I am afraid it will not be as successful as in history.

But the key issue has to come back again, after all, you have to have money. How can the Americans be repelled without real money? How can old Europe be brought into obedience? So Li Xiaofeng is now very concerned about the issue of money. And the first thing he targeted was the wealth of the Nazis.

During World War II, German Nazi forces looted the bank vaults of the occupied countries and then shipped large quantities of looted gold back to Germany in batches. Not only that, but the Nazis also looted a large amount of gold jewelry from the victims who died in the Nazi concentration camps, and even brutally pried off the gold teeth of some of the camp victims, and then shipped the gold jewelry back to the country to be melted down and cast into gold bars, on which were engraved with the words "Reichsbank".

Although most of this "spoil" was used to pay for the high costs of the war, the amount of gold in Nazi Germany's hands was still very significant until the end of World War II. In April 1945, before the Soviet Red Army besieged the German capital Berlin, Nazi officers decided to quickly transfer the remaining gold from the "Reichsbank of Germany", so they quietly packed them and shipped them to the administrative district of Upper Bavaria in southern Bavaria. However, due to various reasons, this batch of Nazi gold never reached its destination, and its whereabouts have been unknown ever since, which has been a mystery that has puzzled the world for more than 50 years.

In April 1945, Patton's troops discovered a fantastical treasure trove in the Mercks salt mine southwest of the town of Gotha in Thuringia, Germany. There are more than 7,000 marked bags, knee-high, in 20 rows, each spaced about 1 metre apart. On the other side of the room were bundles of cash, each with the word "Melmer" printed on the label.

According to statistics, the treasury contains 8,198 gold ingots; 55 boxes of gold bricks (2 pieces per box, each weighing 10 kg); hundreds of bags of gold utensils and articles; more than 1,300 bags of gold marks, gold francs and gold pounds; hundreds of bags of gold and silver coins from 15 other countries; 9 bags of rare ancient gold coins; Deutsche Mark Cash; 20 silver ingots weighing 200 kg each; silver bars, silver plates; 1 bag of white gold (containing 6 white gold ingots); There are also 110 bags of diamonds and jewels looted from different countries. In other tunnels, a large number of precious works of art have been found from museums and private individuals in various European countries...... (To be continued.) )