In March 1917, the first phase of the oilfield project in Kuwait was completed and officially put into operation. Under the drilling rig round-the-clock exploitation, more than 1,500 tons of crude oil can be mass-produced every day. On average, every week, a large oil tanker sails across the ocean into the Persian Gulf; After filling the oil depot with tens of thousands of cubic meters, it set sail around the Arabian Peninsula and sailed directly to Central Europe via the Suez Canal.

As the era of coal and steel gradually comes to an end, the importance of oil as an emerging energy source has become increasingly prominent. As a time-traveler with the memories of later generations, Qingying is undoubtedly taking precautions and opening up a stable source of oil for Germany, which is strict and oil-poor at home. Shortly after the end of the war, as the heir to the Hohenzollern family, he organized several teams to Kuwait, which was already under German rule, to explore for oil resources. Although he did not know where Kuwait's oil fields were located in history, due to the staggering amount of more than 110 billion barrels of oil in this small country, the probability of finding oil in this territory is undoubtedly extremely high!

Under Qingying's deliberate search, the oil that had been buried deep underground for hundreds of millions of years finally saw the light of day again. The exploration team was ecstatic to send a telegram back to Berlin saying that they had found a "flowing sticky black river". The oil fields in Romania are the difference between country ponds and vast lakes, and if Germany can make full use of the resources of this region, there will be no oil shortage in the country!

Overjoyed, William immediately raised a large amount of money to build a lucrative oil extraction base in the area. Because Qingying organized these exploration teams with the help of his family, Hohenzollern was undoubtedly the first to take the lead in gaining absolute dominance of Kuwait's oil exploitation from the competition between government forces and Junker magnates. And the reason why Qingying chose the hand of the Tongguò family to achieve this purpose. Or for the sake of consolidating the imperial power as much as possible: the lifeblood of oil can only be controlled by oneself. In order to form the advantages of strength and the root of the restrictions on the domestic Junkers giants.

Although the price of oil in this period was far less high than in later generations. However, with the gradual advent of the era of internal combustion engines, the increasing demand for oil will also make this field become an extremely gold-generating industry. At a time when Germany's average annual oil consumption has surged from 3.2 million tons before the war to 4.5 million tons, and is still growing with the development of chemicals, machinery, automobiles, warships, and other fields, it is clear that Wilhelm will not be satisfied with what he has achieved in Kuwait. After the first phase of the project was commissioned, the second phase of the project, which was several times larger, broke ground: it was expected to be by 1920. Kuwait's annual crude oil production will exceed the 3 million tonnes, making it a central pillar of Germany's oil supply.

In addition to Kuwait, which is the most potent, Nigeria on the coast of West Africa, and Baku in the Caucasus are also ideal sources of oil. Although the reserves of the former are only one-third of Kuwait's, their total amount is still very rich; The latter is Europe's traditional oil base, once accounting for more than 60% of the world's oil production before Venezuela's oil fields were exploited. Qing Ying was also preparing to carry out oil exploration in Nigeria and to carry out a certain takeover of the Baku oil fields under Denikin in the name of repaying debts - to this day, Germany had provided this agent in Russia with a large amount of arms, prisoners, food, and other materials, so that it was understandable that it could use the output of the Baku oil fields to pay off its debts. This dispersed source of oil would allow Germany to have greater flexibility in this area, so that it would not be destroyed by enemy forces and fall into a state of total paralysis.

After having an abundant source of oil. Germany will be able to confidently and boldly promote the achievements of the industrial revolution with the internal combustion engine as the core to all fields of the country. In agriculture, Germany can apply tractors to farming on a large scale. In this way, we will promote the mechanization, scale, and efficiency of agriculture. At that time, Germany's agriculture will inevitably rise rapidly with the cluster production brought about by the large-scale application of tractors, and its domestic production will hardly be under any pressure to raise its domestic output by a grade compared with the pre-war period; With the black soil of Ukraine, Germany can not only achieve self-sufficiency in grain imports from the United States, but also become an exporter of agricultural products.

The peasants, who had been liberated from traditional artisanal farming, were hired by the factories and enterprises that needed to expand production in response to the needs of the colonial market, and thus moved to the cities to become workers; And they will promote a new high-speed growth in Germany's industrial output in the new workforce. In fact, with the continuous advancement of the era of internal combustion engines, various new job requirements themselves will spring up from the soil one after another; The mechanization of agriculture also complements the development trend of industry, and finally spirals in a virtuous circle. More than 40 years ago, after the reunification, Germany was precisely because of the large influx of agricultural population into the cities and the provision of sufficient labor force for industrialization, so that the country completed the great process that Britain had achieved in just 30 years, and finally surpassed the latter to become the largest economy and industrial center in Europe!

Militarily, the benefits of abundant oil are similarly difficult to estimate. Since 1915, when the first batch of treaty cruisers of the "Hanover" class began, the German Navy's newly built front-line warships have completely eliminated coal-fired boilers and replaced them with oil-fired boilers that surpass them in all aspects, including cost, as the source of power for warships. And the capital ship, which was originally coal-burning, now has a preliminary proposal to replace the power under the clamor of a group of congressmen who feel that they can see the bright moon. Although the Washington Treaty clearly limited the replacement of guns and the modification of enhanced armor, it did not deal with power provisions.

For this overly radical view, Qingying naturally will not pay attention to it. In his mind, the ideal modification plan for the capital ships of the High Seas Fleet has long been planned: the King-class and Bavaria-class will be upgraded in 15 years, and the power system will be renovated together. By that time, there will be more superior power that can be equipped on board; If Germany's development in the power system is smooth, then there will not be much pressure on these two levels of ships to double their power after refitting. As for the remaining nine ships, Qingying is ready to let them be honorably retired after the expiration of 25 years of service. The innate shortcomings of these WW1 capital ships have limited their usefulness in future wars, and it is more valuable to rebuild new ships than to spend a lot of money like the Italians to change the old ships and end up being useless.

In the Air Force, an abundance of oil meant an abundance of light jet fuel, which would undoubtedly be a significant leap forward in the strength of the Luftwaffe compared to its historical strength. In addition to the mistakes in decision-making and confusion of aircraft types, the problem of fuel shortage in the air defeat of the Third Reich in history can be said to be the most direct factor: a large number of well-built planes can only lie on the ground due to lack of fuel, and young pilots also do not have enough flight time to train, and directly guide them to deliver food to the other side in actual combat. But in this plane, this tragic situation will undoubtedly never happen again. Qing Ying had the Air Force under Sickert and the Naval Air Force under Tirpitz to greatly increase the size of their reserve crews and increase their training time, so as to burn a number of mainstay flight backbones with aviation fuel. In the event of a future call-up, these men would serve as the sharpest dragoons on German chariots.

As for the guarantee of the Hohenzollern imperial power, the army under the command of the officer corps, Qing Ying naturally wanted to create an invincible steel torrent for it. Although the victory in the European war has made the pressure on the German Army less than ever, it will still have to take on irreplaceable missions for a long time to come. Only when Germany's war power has formed an irresistible absolute superiority over its neighbors, then France, which was once an enemy, and Italy, which has been at odds with each other, will follow Germany's order and will under tremendous pressure and will not dare to give birth to the slightest rebellion to defect to the United States and Britain. This had the same effect on controlling Austria-Hungary and Turkey's allies, as well as in deterring Soviet Russia in the East. Germany's assertion of strength on the land of Central Europe could also contain the revenge of Germany that Britain might have developed after the war in terms of the cost of war: when the power of the continent was already seriously out of balance, Britain's offshore balancer could only be a futile move.

In order to maximize the pursuit of combat performance, Qingying decisively shifted the research direction of the tank to diesel engine power. Compared with the traditional gasoline engine, the output horsepower of the diesel engine is larger, which is most suitable for heavy vehicles such as tanks; In addition, the characteristics of diesel fuel that are not easy to ignite also make its safety have obvious advantages over gasoline engines that can be used in a dozen; The reason why Soviet tanks in World War II dared to hang the auxiliary fuel tank outside the car was precisely to take advantage of the advantages of diesel in stability. The reason why the tanks of the Third Reich in history used gasoline engines was actually due to the lack of crude oil: the process of liquefaction of coal could only produce gasoline, not diesel, and the diesel oil extracted from the only bit of crude oil had to feed the wolf pack troops, which was simply not enough to meet the needs of the armored group. Today, however, this is no longer an obstacle for Germany.

In addition, the process of reorganizing elite mechanized units from the original structure also helped the German Army to sort out the officer corps, so that the important weapon of the country was firmly in the hands of Hohenzollern. (To be continued......)

PS: Thank you for the monthly pass support of toprock~~~