Chapter 127 Script

After inspecting the arsenal, Yannick came to Skoda's car production room.

The Mladá Boleslav factory is where Skoda specializes in producing cars. Yannick shook his head when he saw the chaotic workshop where workers were still making equipment by hand. "The production here is too backward, and the models produced are not advanced enough. We should fully introduce our army's truck production line." No matter how powerful the blitzkrieg is, it will be useless without supporting logistics supplies; for armored forces, cars are as important as tanks. The Soviet Union was able to support such a large tank force during World War II, which was the result of the United States supporting hundreds of thousands of cars. (The more than 400,000 trucks and 50,000 jeeps that the United States aided the Soviet Union became the backbone of the Red Army's motorization. The automobile tires provided to the Soviet Union accounted for half of the Soviet Union's production, nearly 4 million pieces)

There are three main types of German military trucks today.

The first is the Opel 3-ton military truck. At this time, Opel was not a poor guy who was acquired by others. Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Volvo and the like were all little brothers in front of it.

The Opel 3-ton military truck has a 6L inline 6-cylinder water-cooled gasoline engine, which can make a fully loaded 3-ton (actual load 31 tons) Opel military truck run on the road at a maximum speed of 85 kilometers per hour. The tank capacity of the vehicle is 82L, which can guarantee a maximum range of 320 kilometers on the road, and even if it is traveling off-road, it can have a maximum range of at least 230 kilometers.

It became the main model for the German battlefield transportation mission during World War II, and the vehicle provided important support for the smooth progress of the German blitzkrieg. It can be regarded as the backbone of the German battlefield and the main artery connecting the front line and the rear.

However, no matter how good the model is, it will be difficult to move when encountering the extremely bad road conditions on the Eastern Front.

Although German companies have made great efforts to repair the roads in the Soviet Union in recent years, not even one-tenth of the road conditions have been improved so far, which is really a headache.

For this reason, Yannick chose the 6×4 GAZ AAA three-axle truck with a load capacity of 2 tons produced by the Gorky Automobile Plant in the Soviet Union for the second model. At that time, the Soviet Union had just produced this GAZ AAA model and participated in the famous Karakum Desert Rally, completing a 9,500-kilometer race on roads, country roads, wilderness areas, sand dunes, quicksand zones, etc.

After the outbreak of World War II in the original time and space, the GAZ AAA truck was often used as a combat platform. Equipped with the Maxim 1901M4 quadruple anti-aircraft machine gun, it is a very effective weapon for air defense and killing soft targets on the ground. During the war, the Soviet army often used this truck to launch attacks and strike the enemy in frontier areas where there were no roads.

Yannick was ready to "learn from the barbarians to defeat the barbarians."

The third model is even more interesting, it is the Ford heavy truck.

Yes, it is the famous American Ford Company.

I don't know whether it is because of the profit-seeking nature of businessmen or because they are born "hard" people. Ford's founder Henry Ford has a great liking for Germany.

According to the history of the original time and space, Yannick sent people to visit with a try-it-out mentality a few years ago, and was warmly welcomed by Henry Ford.

Things went smoothly afterwards. Henry Ford first opened an automobile company in Berlin, Germany, and provided trucks for the German Army. Later, under his matchmaking, the International Telephone and Telegraph Company (ITT), Standard Oil Group, DuPont, Mobil and other industry giants in the United States went to Germany to invest and set up factories.

Because under Yannick's instructions, these American companies enjoyed considerable preferential policies in taxation and other aspects, such as taxes that were only one-third of those in the United States. This huge profit made the profit-seeking businessmen ecstatic. In just a few years, 36 of the 100 largest companies in the United States had opened branches in Germany, and the rest of the small companies were countless.

Even the giants of Wall Street set their sights on Germany across the Atlantic Ocean and provided Germany with a loan of more than 30 billion US dollars. It can be said that Germany's ability to get out of the economic crisis so quickly was inseparable from the funding of these American "old friends".

And driven by interests, many American companies transferred technology to their German counterparts without any scruples.

DuPont sold the technology of chloroprene rubber and aircraft explosion-proof agent to Farben. Standard Oil provided its tank lubricant technology to its German partners. The successful establishment of the German Air Force was inseparable from a gasoline plant for aircrafts set up by Standard Oil in Germany.

These actions were naturally discovered by the US military intelligence agencies stationed abroad, and reports were submitted to the superiors. "Our agents found that some American companies were illegally providing products and technologies to the Germans." However, this report did not work. Obviously, those high-ranking bigwigs have long known about these actions, but they acquiesced.

Yannick certainly knew that some people wanted to use Germany as a knife to stab the British Empire so that it could roll down from the throne of the world's number one hegemon.

If there had not been a time traveler like him, history would probably have continued according to the original script of time and space.

What did Germany lack most in World War II?

Oil!

As early as the 1930s, Standard Oil and Germany's Farben had established a close cooperative relationship, and the two sides were even major shareholders of each other. With the outbreak of the European war, this cooperation did not end.

When the people of the United States and Britain had to line up in front of gas stations due to gasoline shortages, Standard Oil Company was continuously transporting oil to Germany on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean through the neutral country of Switzerland.

Britain blocked the Atlantic sea route from the Arctic to the southernmost tip of South America, using encirclement to stop all ships bound for Germany and confiscate the cargo they carried. In this situation, Standard Oil Company had to act secretly. They reached an agreement with neutral countries such as Switzerland to change the destination of tankers to these neutral countries, and then transport the oil to Germany from there. In this way, the British encirclement was easily broken. Those agreements with neutral countries were later called "shadow agreements" because of their secret nature.

According to business archives disclosed after the war, during World War II, 20% of the oil sold by Standard Oil Company worldwide was exported to Germany.

The result was that the arrogant British Empire was beaten and cried for help, begging its cousin to help.

The United States said that it could help, but it was not free.

In desperation, Britain almost sold out all its stocks, bonds, foreign exchange reserves and gold reserves in the United States. In order to get the British to buy American things, the United States even took the loan method and let the British slowly repay after purchasing. In this way, the Americans emptied the pockets of the British little by little, and also made the British owe the Americans a lot of debt. After the war, Britain owed the United States tens of billions of dollars in debt, and these debts were repaid until 2006. This directly led to the decline of the British Empire, and the British’s hard-earned assets and hegemony in finance, trade, shipping, etc. were transferred to the hands of the Americans.

Then the Americans said that since the money was gone, then take the things.

Britain’s aviation, radar, shipbuilding and other technologies were the world’s first at that time. These technologies were almost transferred to the United States at a bargain price or even for free. Even the birth of nuclear bombs in the late World War II also had a share of the credit of the British. The British atomic bomb research institute was moved to the United States by the United States and joined the Manhattan Project. Relying on World War II, the United States almost did not spend a single soldier or a little cost, and got all the advanced technologies accumulated by Britain after its rise.

But the greedy Americans were not satisfied, and exchanged 50 warships for eight islands of the British Empire, including the Bahamas, Jamaica, St. Lucia, and Trinidad. Most of these warships were inventory from the First World War, and the shortest ship was 18 years old. Although these islands were leased to the Americans, the lease period was 99 years, which was almost like giving them away for free. After the Americans obtained these islands, they quickly built 17 bases on the islands and constructed the so-called Western Hemisphere Defense Line.