The sky is clear, the sun is blazing, and the summer cicadas in the forest chirp tirelessly, as if they did not feel the arrival of autumn in Central Europe.

After nearly half a month of hard work, Qingying finally established a direction and a beginning for Germany's future development in various fields. Diplomatically, Germany would try to include the Ottoman Empire in its alliance system in order to fully expand its influence into the Middle East, thus creating a direct threat to India and the British African colonies. Strategically, Germany will vigorously manage the colony of Guiana in South America, which it has received from Britain and France, and at the same time guard the British South Atlantic shipping lanes, it will also become an important outpost that can overlook the United States. In terms of espionage, the North American Intelligence Agency will also be established in the following time: since there is no war between Germany and the United States on the plane, the Germans will undoubtedly still be quite convenient to move within the United States.

At the same time, Germany's arms sales and human trafficking programs to Russia were gradually implemented. Whether it was the nascent Red Soviets or the White Russian opposition regime established by the old officers of Tsarist Russia, the large amount of Russian-made arms in Germany's hands was the first choice for them to expand their own power. Not only were the Russian soldiers familiar with the use and maintenance of these weapons, but their ease of repair and ammunition replenishment was unmatched by the standard weapons of other countries; As long as the military leaders of all parties do not want to see the high-priced weapons they buy face a huge depreciation risk that can only be used once, they will definitely give priority to their own goods when they have their own goods!

The Russian prisoners who are still imprisoned in various German prisoner of war camps and factories are even more eye-catching to the separatist forces in Russia. Their physical elements and combat skills are beyond doubt, as long as they are given guns. will be able to pull out an army that can be the mainstay of the civil war in a short period of time. Now the central government of unified Russia no longer exists. The Bolsheviks' dissolution of the Constituent Assembly by force had long since left the parties to the question of the ownership of Russian power with their fists: if tens of thousands of elites were available to their own side. How can it be compared to those who have forcibly requisitioned the crops from the fields temporarily?

When the envoys of the German government announced to the White Guard forces that Crown Prince Alexei was still alive and said that Russian-made weapons and prisoners of war could be sold, both Kolchak, who pursued the republic, and Denikin, who cared about the imperial system, all of them celebrated and threw themselves into the negotiations for the purchase of weapons and the release of prisoners of war with great enthusiasm. Denikin, who was entrenched in the North Caucasus and the Don River, had a little less money in his hands, and for the time being, he only squeezed out less than 10 million rubles in cash from between his teeth to buy the army's fire; Kolchak, on the other hand, was prepared to pay 60 tons of gold directly in hard currency, equivalent to more than 100 million rubles, in order to get arms and prisoners at the same time. As for the Semenov forces entrenched in the Chita region, Kolchak assured Berlin that he would open the Trans-Siberian railway line in the short term. In order to achieve a deal with Germany through Guò Vladivostok.

The dealings between Germany and the White Guards were apparently concealed from the Russian rulers who had moved to the Kremlin. The majority of the Bolshevik Party members were shocked, angry, and unacceptable to this betrayal of the German government: after all, the other side had been cooperating with them for a full decade before that, and many of the people on both sides had formed a deep friendship during this period. However, Ulyanov himself saw this quite thoroughly: the honeymoon period between the two sides was based on the common basis of overthrowing the Tsarist rule, and now that Germany's goal of solving the great problems in the East has been achieved, the fundamental ideological opposition between Germany and itself naturally dominates. After the news that Alexei, the former crown prince of Tsarist Russia, was received by the Kaiser in Berlin, the Soviet Russian top brass was more certain of the attitude of the other side in this Russian civil war: after all, he could save Alexei under his nose. There are only those German spies who have also been rooted in Russia for ten years!

"Comrade Ulyanov, what shall we do now?" In front of a sickbed in the Kremlin. Sverdlov, who chaired the Central Executive Committee, said worriedly, "The Germans are ready to start selling arms to the White Army, and the Denikin group, which is entrenched in the North Caucasus, can easily get a large number of weapons by shipping through the Black Sea; And although Kolchak in the east is blocked by us in the west, they can still use the Trans-Siberian railway to make contact with the Germans in the Far East! The gang that appeared near Chita was limited in strength, and it was difficult to firmly block the Trans-Siberian Railway; Crucially, we don't have any means to co-opt and support the bandits, and it's only a matter of time before they're eliminated or appeased by Kolchak. ”

Ulyanov leaned back on a cushion, his glossy bald top shining in the sun; After a while, he slowly spoke: "If Kolchak and they can use the money to buy weapons and ransom the prisoners, why can't we buy them?" In my opinion, we should also make demands on the Germans in this regard in order to increase the strength of the Red Army. Compared to Denikin in the remote corner and Kolchak in the isolated East, we are undoubtedly better equipped than these rebels to actually make deals with the Germans. ”

Sverdlov said with some puzzlement: "But Comrade Ulyanov, will the Germans still sell us weapons?" Not only did they kidnap Alexei, the former crown prince of Tsarist Russia, but now they are in close contact with the White Guards; There are all signs that they have turned the spearhead of hostility against our Bolsheviks, and have chosen to prop up the forces of the White Russians against us. ”

Ulyanov said lightly: "You only see one point of it, but you don't have insight into the whole core of it. It is true that the German Government's position on the Soviets has changed radically from half a year ago, but this does not mean that they will immediately tear up their faces with us. It is for this reason that Berlin defines the meeting between the Kaiser and the former Tsar-Dauphin as a meeting between relatives, and the German press does not hype up the whole story of the execution of the Tsar's family by us, but only allows the people to brew their feelings spontaneously. If Germany really wanted to draw its sword against us, its domestic media would have used the surviving former Tsar Dauphin as a medium to launch an overwhelming propaganda and condemnation of our execution of the Tsar's family, where would there be such a calm as it is today? ”

Ulyanov exhaled a long breath, and his words became calm and confident: "This time, the reason why the German government will contact the White Army is not only ideologically opposed to us, but also out of their own interests. We had promised them a total of 24 billion marks in reparations in the armistice, but now we have not paid even a fraction of the reparations in the division of the country and the imminent beginning of civil war: in order to recover their losses, they will inevitably take advantage of the current tensions and make war profits in the form of guò profits. The Tsar's coffers, most of which went into Kolchak's hands, were undoubtedly the most eye-catching wealth of the Germans, and I can almost conclude that this was the core purpose of the Germans' arms sales! ”

"It was for the sake of money that the Germans did not choose to confront us directly, but left a way back, so that the Soviets in the civil war would also have a reason to buy goods from them." Sverdlov said suddenly. Ulyanov nodded: "Although this is just my speculation, its correctness is almost absolutely certain. Therefore, as long as we offer the right price, the Germans will certainly not refuse to put the mark in front of us. For the Red Army, armament and well-trained servicemen were likewise a considerable lack of civil war necessities; Although the Germans will certainly charge us a high price, it is much better than paying reparations for nothing. ”

Things turned out as Ulyanov had expected. The German ambassador smiled at the green foreign currency notes offered by the Moscow government, as if he had never killed 13 Soviet soldiers to steal Alexei and made enthusiastic deals with the White Russians. Although Qing Ying himself did not have any good feelings about the methods of the Russian Bolsheviks, he was still driven by interests and could only reminisce with these old friends and new enemies: they were not as generous as Kolchak, who held a large amount of gold, but they occupied the heart of Russia and were able to provide a relatively large amount of wealth in the long term.

During this period, there was also a small episode in the Far East: Seeing that Russia's internal strife was about to begin, Japan, which had a long-standing feud with Russia, sent a large number of warships across the Japanese Strait in the name of protecting overseas Chinese, and escorted as many as two divisions of army units to the landing in Vladivostok. After more than eight years of repression, Japan finally got its hands on Russian territory in the Far East. In a certain way, Japan, which ranks at the bottom of the great powers in terms of its own industrial base, is more worried, and even afraid, than Germany that Russia will avenge the Russo-Japanese War in the future. And the current occupation of this opponent's only seaport in the Pacific Ocean is an important preventive action to make the "Russian Pacific Fleet" a historical term and thus prevent Russia from posing a threat to the Japanese mainland!

Although the Japanese government has repeatedly stated that this will not affect the operation of the Trans-Siberian Railway and that the trade between Berlin and Kolchak can still proceed normally, the German government is still quite wary of this. In their plan, Japan should look to the sea to wrestle with the United States, and definitely not to expand aggressively on the Asian continent, even if there is a certain inevitable connection between them. Out of consideration for striking the other side, Germany, after the United States openly condemned Japan's blatant aggression against the territory of another country, also issued "goodwill advice" to Japan that it should not carry out further operations on land. (To be continued......)

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