In the seemingly endless desert Gobi on the land of the Middle East, there are actually rivers and lakes. The www.biquge.info rivers and lakes flowing on the land of the Middle East have given birth to one brilliant ancient civilization after another. Even in the 20th century, when Middle Eastern civilization was in decline for various reasons, there were still developed agriculture and prosperous towns on the banks of the Jordan, Litani, Assi, Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and some traces of modernization can still be seen from time to time, such as railways and oil fields.

Field Marshal Hersman was sitting in a spacious and comfortable Fokker F40, looking through the porthole of the plane at the rivers, railways, and towns beneath the wings.

"Marshal, the city below is Aleppo, the second largest city in Syria, very old, probably existed 10,000 years ago. In the information left by the ancient Greeks, they called the city Beloea, which was called Halep during the Ottoman Empire, and the current name was changed after the arrival of the French. ”

Hirsman was talking to Saddam's grandfather, Aflaq, whose Arab Ba'ath was in contact with other Arab parties in Syria to form a large party that could take over power (the Arab Social Baath Party). However, Affrak himself was more of a thinker than a doer, so the organization of the party and the establishment of the regime were left to his comrades, and he himself accompanied Hersman on his tours of Syria and Iraq.

Most of Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, and Iran were now under German protection. After the British retreated from the Suez Canal line, Rommel's Afrika Army stormed the Arabian Peninsula, then north along the Mediterranean coast into Syria, and then east along the Euphrates River to join up with another German division that had entered Iraq via Turkey. As a result, the German Afrika Army was upgraded to the German Middle East Army.

The war in the Mediterranean was almost over, and now only Tubruk, Crete, and Gibraltar were left unoccupied by the German-Italian coalition. With the exception of the Gibraltar Peninsula, which guards the western gateway to the Mediterranean, the other two are isolated Jedi, and it is only a matter of time before they are captured.

But the struggle around the Middle East is likely to continue for some time, and the oil here is of decisive significance for the outcome of the world war, and Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union will probably not ignore it and let Germany completely take the Middle East into its hands, right?

"Is there really 10,000 years?" Hersmann took his mind away from the war situation and began to talk to Afflak - the distance between the Middle East and Europe determined German European policy in a sense, and a Middle East that was too chaotic and had too many extremists was not in Germany's interests. And the secularized and Europeanized Middle East is what Hersman really wants to see. And among the Arabs, only the Arab Social Baath Party can accomplish the task of secularizing and Europeanizing the Arabian Peninsula.

Therefore, Adam's ancestor who believed in Christ was a figure that Hersman valued very much.

"My dear, this is one of the oldest gathering places of mankind, and the only place that can compare to Syria is Egypt." Chloe, Hersmann's wife, studied history at the University of Munich and knows how old Syria is.

"Oh," Hersman nodded, "it's old, but it still looks bustling." ”

"Syria and Iraq used to be the political, economic and cultural center of the Arabian Peninsula." Chloe laughed and gave her husband a history lesson, "For a long time, Damascus, Baghdad and Aleppo were more prosperous and wealthy than any European city. ”

"Now Syria is also the center of Arabia," Afraq proudly said, "Syria is close to the Mediterranean, very close to Europe, and has a much more diverse culture, not only the civilization of YSL, but also the civilization of Christianity, so Syria is far more advanced politically, economically and culturally than Iraq." As for the rest of the Arabian Peninsula, it is even less comparable to Syria. ”

It turns out that Syria, which is rich in refugees, was still a good place in the 40s of the 20th century! Hersman thought to himself.

In fact, in the era before the emergence of oil tycoons, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and so on in the Arabian Peninsula were all rural places where birds did not. Moreover, those places are not only poor but also very closed, there is no modern education at all, and they are completely a group of uncivilized semi-primitive tribes. How can it be compared to a rich and progressive Syria?

It is not for nothing that the Arab Social Baath Party, an idealistic and ambitious party, would be born in Syria.

Without the black gold of oil, which makes people rich, it is entirely possible for the Arab Social Baath Party, which has mastered Syria and Iraq, to unite the Arabian Peninsula, and the desert tribal states are no match for them, and the Arabs will have a strong, united, modern state.

Unfortunately, the discovery of oil in the Persian Gulf ended up hurting the Syrians and the Arab Social Baath Party, who did not have much oil.

"Which river down there is the Euphrates?" At this point, Hersman noticed that the plane was passing over a very wide river.

"Yes, it's the Euphrates." Afraq replied, "It originates from the territory of Turkey and goes eastward, and in the territory of Iraq it joins the Tigris River and becomes the Shatai. The Shatt al-Arab River and finally its confluence into the Persian Gulf. ”

"Is water transport developed in the Euphrates?" Hersman asked.

Germany, which controlled the Middle East, already had many large oil fields that could be developed, and although they were all destroyed by the British, it was not difficult to repair them. The big oil fields in the Middle East are shallow and easy to develop, so it is not difficult to re-drill wells. So now the headache for Hersman is not how to dig up the oil, but how to get the oil back to Europe.

Although the sea control of the Mediterranean was won by Germany and Italy. But Britain did not abandon resistance in the Gulf of Aden and the Persian Gulf. The British first blocked the Suez Canal with shipwrecks, and then built large airfields on Socotra and Muscat, clearly blocking the Gulf of Aden and the Persian Gulf.

Moreover, the Foreign Intelligence Service of the General Security Bureau of the Central Security Bureau recently discovered that two British aircraft carriers (HMS Cyclops and HMS Athletic) had bypassed South Africa for India. If you count the existing aircraft carriers of the Eastern Fleet, the number of British aircraft carriers in the Indian Ocean reaches three, while Germany and Italy cannot send one.

Obviously, the opening of the Red Sea-Gulf of Aden-Arabian Sea-Gulf of Oman-Persian Gulf oil route cannot be counted on for the time being.

So Hersman had to think of another way to transport the oil. The other way is nothing more than rail, pipeline and inland waterway transportation.

"The water transport of the Euphrates River is not very developed, because the water level is unstable, and only in winter and spring there is more water, which can support large-scale inland river transport."

Afflack's answer disappointed Hersmann, but he still planned to ask the navy and the engineers to study the possibility of using the Euphrates River to transport oil, even if it could only be a few hundred thousand tons a year, which was better than nothing.

By this time, the plane had already skimmed the Euphrates, and beneath the wings was a very desolate land. Desertification in the Middle East is so severe that there is only a lot of green on the banks of rivers close to water sources. A little further away is the desert Gobi.

However, in the desert Gobi that appeared in Hersman's eyes, there was something that was incompatible with the surrounding environment - the railway!

"Your Excellency Marshal, below is the Aleppo to Mosul railway, which is part of the British-French Great Middle East Railway plan, with a total length of 520 kilometers, which was completed last year." "However, the British did some damage to the railway before they retreated, and it is currently unopen." ”

"I know the railway," Hersman said, "and the British built it to get the oil out of Kirkuk." ”

The Kirkuk oil field is a famous large oil field in later generations, ranking 6th in the world, and if it can be fully developed, it can meet the needs of Germany in World War II.

Therefore, before the start of the Mediterranean campaign, Hersman ordered the General Directorate of Armaments and the engineers of the Wehrmacht to draw up a plan for repairing the Aleppo-Mosul railway and developing the Kirkuk oil field. In addition, a German-Iranian oil company was organized in advance, and the deputy director of the General Directorate of Armaments, Albert Murphy, was appointed. Speer is the Managing Director of Deutsche Petroleum and is responsible for the development of the Kirkuk oil field.

In addition, Syria in this era was also a small oil-producing country. There are oil fields exploited by the French in Deir ez-Zor on the banks of the Euphrates, and although the output cannot be compared with the oil fields of Iraq and Iran, the good thing is that it is easier to transport, there are ready-made pipelines to use, and the damage is not serious. The French engineers who worked there did not run away like the British, and it was a surprise that they could not only be used to restore the extraction of the Deir ez-Zor fields, but also to send them to Kirkuk.

The plane flew along the Aleppo-Mosul railway for about an hour and a half, and the railway finally disappeared into a town that looked a little cluttered from the air.

"Marshal, this is Mosul." "Mosul was originally a very small city, but Kirkuk discovered the oil fields and it quickly prospered. The British also built an airfield here, and we now don't land at the airport in Mosul and then take a car to the Kirkuk oil field. ”

"No," Hirschman shook his head, "we're going to fly in the sky for a while, and I'm going to see with my own eyes what the oil fields of Kirkuk have been destroyed by the British." (To be continued.) )