The Rise of the Third Reich

"If I remember correctly, your surface ship force can only have 35% of the strength of the British Navy, regardless of whether the Washington Naval Treaty or other naval treaties are in effect. In other words, you must use 1 to counter 3, And your enemies may also include the French and American navies, right?”

Stalin stood next to a BT-2 light tank, with his hands behind his back, looking at the steel body covered with rivets, and said quietly.

Ludwig von Heinsberg-Hersmann is carefully watching an M1 anti-tank gun. This Soviet-made artillery, which introduced technology and production licenses from Germany's Rheinmetall, was placed on a cement base located in the Kremlin.

Stalin built a weapons exhibition hall in his palace and collected many army and air force weapons. When Herschmann was invited to visit the Kremlin, Stalin took him on a tour. Accompanied by Romuald Adamovich Mukelevich, Director of the Navy of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, Admiral Raeder, Commander of the German Navy, and Natalie Leshinskaya - now a member of the German Army Consultant researcher of the Policy Council and researcher of the National Socialist International Policy Council.

"35% is enough for us," Hessmann laughed when he heard Stalin's question, "Aren't you also there? We are all socialists and comrades in the same camp!"

After hearing this, Admiral Redl, who was present, gave Mukelevich, the number one figure in the Soviet Navy, a friendly smile. In the past few years, the relationship between the Soviet and German navies has been very friendly, and both regard each other as allies. The fleets and aviation forces of the two countries regularly hold joint exercises in the Baltic Sea, and have also formulated operational plans to jointly fight against the "imperialist navy."

In these "plans", the role of the surface fleets of the Soviet Union and Germany in the decisive fleet battle was just a decoy - facing the British naval battleship force with a total tonnage of more than 500,000 tons, the surface fleets of the Soviet Union and Germany did not fight at all. Ability. Therefore, using J.30 (called SB-1 in the Soviet Union) torpedo attack aircraft and Hs-120 dive bombers to launch attacks from the air became the only way to win.

Through long-term cooperation with the Japanese Navy, the German Naval Aviation and the Luftwaffe (the current director of the Air Force is not Fatty Go but Hessmann’s old friend Major General Kesselring) have mastered many tactics for bombing the fleet, including how to fly in the middle of nowhere. Searching in the sea, large-scale dispatches of combat aircraft groups and coordinated operations of different types of aircraft - historically the Germans were simply weak in this aspect, but the Japanese were very good at it.

Therefore, the German Navy's current vision for the future decisive battle at sea is still to use the battleship force as bait to lure the British Navy's main fleet into the combat radius of the German shore-based aviation, and then concentrate more than 1,000 aircraft of various types for indiscriminate bombing!

In order to achieve this vision in the future, Germany must start from now on targeted weapons design, production and troop training. This kind of sea and air battle is actually the result of long-term accumulation. It is not just that everything will be fine just by inviting Yamamoto Isoroku to Germany.

"Comrade Stalin, we are now designing a 30,000-ton to 35,000-ton high-speed battleship," Hersman said. "It will have a speed slightly higher than the USS Hood battlecruiser and a relatively complete defense."

What is being designed is a battleship similar to the historical "Scharnhorst" class. Because Germany has not designed or built a battleship for more than ten years, and the team has long since dispersed, it is naturally impossible to pick up this technology all at once. Therefore, we can only design a battleship with outstanding speed, acceptable defense, and mediocre firepower.

In any case, no one expected to use German battleships to defeat the British Navy in 1939 or 1940.

"You want us to join?" Stalin emphasized his tone when he said "join", obviously referring to "join the world war."

"Comrade Stalin, although there are differences between us, they are differences within the socialist camp and differences between comrades." Hersman walked from the M1930 artillery to Stalin, "But the conflict between us and Britain and the United States is a matter of life and death. The contradiction between ourselves and the enemy...The Second World War will be a struggle between British and American imperialism and Soviet and German socialism!”

Although he knew there was little hope, Hersman still tried hard to bring the Soviet Union into the Axis camp - or should it be called the socialist camp!

"If we win, all mankind will be liberated!" He said in a passionate tone, "If imperialism wins, all mankind will become slaves of capital!"

How noble! I don't know how much better than Hitler's theory of race war.

"Liberate all mankind..." Stalin said with a strange expression, "You want to use national socialism to liberate all mankind?"

"Use socialism! National socialism and Bolshevism are both socialisms, they just belong to different branches." Hersman emphasized, "The differences between us are not life-and-death."

"But Adolf Hitler is leaning towards capitalism!" Stalin pointed out while lighting his pipe, "He is a pro-British faction."

"But there is no real pro-German faction in the UK, and even if there were, it would be impossible to hold power." Hersman shrugged, "So his pro-Britishness is meaningless, and he will eventually return to the pro-Soviet line... and establish a socialist camp. It is an inevitable choice for our two countries to resist the hegemony of British and American imperialism.”

Hitler's pro-British ideology made Hersman very distressed! Later generations have disputes about the reasons for the "Dunkirk Miracle" and "Hess's Madness". In Hersman's view, these two events were caused by Hitler's pro-Britishness - Hitler really wanted to give the British Empire a leg up, but ended up hurting Germany.

The head of the German Empire led the German Empire to fight World War II without figuring out who the most sinister enemy was - and Hersman now believes that Hitler probably didn't want to fight World War II at all.

"Well, that's it." Stalin glanced at Hersman and was very distressed. He was different from Lenin and Trotsky, who were full of ideas to liberate all mankind. He was actually a "Soviet Union First" nationalist. He didn't care about all mankind at all, but only how much the Soviet Union could get.

But Marxism-Leninism and the liberation of all mankind are the political correctness of the Soviet Union, and even Stalin now does not have enough authority to violate this political correctness. And recognizing that national socialism is socialism is a violation of the Soviet Union's political correctness.

Therefore, the verbal agreement reached between Stalin and Hirschmann was "quarrel is quarrel, cooperation is cooperation" - but he knew very well that this quarrel on the political line might not cause any trouble to the National Socialists who put national interests above ideology (national interests are the political correctness of national socialism), but it would definitely have an impact on the ideological system of the Bolsheviks.

This determined that the Soviet-German cooperation could never reach the point of forming a socialist camp!

However, the current cooperation is still necessary and beneficial to the Soviet Union, and it is also the only way to strengthen the Red Navy. Stalin weighed the pros and cons and quickly made up his mind.

"I think we can sign a secret agreement on strengthening naval cooperation," Stalin smoked a cigarette, frowning slightly, "cooperative development of the navy will be the focus for some time to come. We should jointly design new battleships. I hope to see at least one new battleship appear in the sequence of the Red Navy fleet before 1937." The Soviet Union and Germany have been cooperating in the field of shipbuilding for the past decade. The Germans helped the Soviet Union build a "Karl Marx" class aircraft carrier - unlike what Hersman envisioned, the Soviet Union did not continue to build aircraft carriers after the first "Karl Marx" class was launched - and helped the Soviet Union repair and modify four old battleships (Gangut class), and helped the Soviet Union build many submarines and destroyers. However, the cooperation in building large surface ships completely stopped after the "Karl Marx" entered service. …

"Ludwig, I told you long ago that Stalin would not accept the heresy of National Socialism."

On the way back from the Kremlin to the German Embassy (Hessman stayed at the German Embassy this time), Natalie Lesinskaya, sitting side by side with him in a Mercedes-Benz W07 luxury car, looked at the scenery on the streets of Moscow and said with a somewhat sad tone.

"Just because he doesn't accept it doesn't mean we won't promote it," Hessman smiled coldly, "This visit to the Soviet Union was actually successful. We avoided a breakup, maintained a cooperative relationship with the Soviet Union, and kept the differences between the two sides at the level of debate."

"And we also reached the "Agreement on Deepening Naval Cooperation," Admiral Raeder, who was sitting in the co-pilot seat, interrupted with a smile. "This way we can spend half the research and development costs, and the money saved can be used to speed up the development of the 'Atlantic-type' aircraft carrier."

Hersman nodded, and then said: "The dispute over the socialist line does not mean that the socialist camp does not exist... The "Agreement on Deepening Naval Cooperation" and other cooperative relationships can be maintained, and even the line dispute itself can show the world that this camp exists, which will increase Germany's bargaining chips."

He turned his head and looked at Natalie Lesinskaya, "Natalie, you know the Bolsheviks very well. From now on, everything involving debate will be checked by you. You can set up a special line committee. I will approve whatever people are needed and how much budget. As for the scale of the debate, it is to fight but not break. You must think carefully about what can be debated and what cannot be debated."