Hersmann returned to Berlin at the end of his visit to England in the spring season, and the leaves were turning green. Compared to London, which was also ravaged by the Great Depression, the situation in the city looks better, with a few customers in the shops and restaurants and cafes not empty. But there is also more of the smell of gunpowder in the city than in London, and there are people in military uniforms everywhere. The expansion of the Wehrmacht seems to have eased unemployment in Germany, with more than 500,000 young German conscripts from January to the present, most of them unemployed.

However, not all of the men in uniforms on the streets of Berlin were Wehrmacht, and many were members of the Nazi stormtroopers. They were the elite of the National Socialist Waffen-SS project, which was agreed upon by Hitler and Hersmann, and was selected from among the scattered People's Stormtroopers. Some of them, along with other Wehrmacht recruits, were grouped in the Potsdam and Tsosen barracks, where they were trained by Wehrmacht officers. On the days off, they come to Berlin in droves. Spend some of your salary to bring some business to Berlin's sluggish retail and restaurant industries.

The combination of 500,000 Wehrmacht recruits and 100,000 Waffen-SS fighters reduced the number of unemployed people by about 600,000 and brought the number of unemployed troops in Germany to around 2 million.

But the salaries of these 600,000 recruits were the first problem that the newly inaugurated Nazi-Fatherland People's Party coalition government had to face.

In 1930, Germany's fiscal revenues were about 9.6 billion marks, which was much better than it was in history. But because the Keynes Plan left the German government with so much debt, the German government's finances are actually much stronger than historically.

By 1930, the Keynes Plan had not been completely stopped, and Germany was still paying reparations such as coal, steel, aircraft, automobiles, and machinery to France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Italy – with huge interest support from the government. The German government issued long-term bonds with a face value of more than $10 billion in order to purchase the reparations provided for in the Keynes Plan. By 1930 there was no need to repay the principal, but interest payments had to be made every year, and in 1930 alone, nearly 1 billion marks of interest was paid.

At the same time, the size of the German army, even before rearmament, was at least twice as large as in history. Naturally, the annual military expenditure has also increased by almost 500 million marks.

And many of Germany's secret combat readiness projects were carried out on the territory of the Baltic republics. This made the expenses of the Baltic defense forces extremely high and could not be afforded by the Baltic Republic. Thus, since 1925, the German government has provided at least 500 million marks a year to the Baltic Republic.

The "Strategic Material Reserve Program," which had been in force since 1923, gradually became a very expensive project -- the scale of Soviet-German cooperation was further expanded from 1928, when the Soviet Union implemented its first five-year plan.

The value of technology and equipment exported to the Soviet Union every year exceeded 1.5 billion marks, and the raw materials imported from the Soviet Union into Germany (mainly oil, crops, timber, manganese ore, copper ore, lead-zinc ore, furs, etc.) were also worth more than one billion marks due to the adoption of barter trade - since a large number of Soviet-German cooperation contracts were signed in 1928 (the first year of the First Five-Year Plan of the Soviet Union), the settlement price of barter between the two sides was also finalized before the Great Depression.

Therefore, the impact of the Great Depression on Soviet-German cooperation was not significant, and German technology and machinery were still sold to the USSR at the "high price" before the Great Depression. And the various resources that the Soviet Union used to pay the bills were also priced according to the pre-Great Depression prices. Theoretically, neither side suffered, but the German government became the "wronged leader".

Originally, the raw materials paid by the Soviet Union to Germany were first delivered to the Economic Promotion Company, and then part of the raw materials were delivered by the Economic Promotion Company to German domestic companies under long-term sales contracts, and the remaining part, no matter how small, was stored by the German government at a predetermined contract price as a "national strategic reserve".

However, after the Great Depression, the consumption of raw materials in Germany decreased year by year, and many companies that signed procurement contracts with economic promotion companies could not carry out their contracts. There was a large number of defaults. The German government had no choice but to come out and store a large amount of Soviet raw materials. To do this, it is necessary not only to pay a large amount of money to the economic promotion company, but also to pay additional money for the construction of warehouses.

In addition, the export of machinery and weapons by barter was not limited to the Soviets and Germans. There are also varying amounts of barter cooperation between Germany and countries such as Italy, Japan, Turkey, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China and Siam. It also generates a lot of "bad debts" that the government has to pay for.

Taken together, these "extra" expenditures amounted to 2.5 billion marks in 1930, and as a result, Germany's financial situation was not much better than it was in the early 1930s.

Now suddenly there are 600,000 more recruits. Every year, "personnel costs" alone cost at least six or seven billion marks. If we take into account the huge expenses of equipping, training, and rebuilding the navy and air force, the German government will probably not be able to cope with the financial smashing of the pot and the sale of iron.

Therefore, in the days after Hitler came to power, all kinds of calls for reducing spending, especially military spending, became more common in parliament and in the newspapers.

The Bolshevik Party and the Social Democrats, now almost two months into power, have been slow to deal with these two "November sinners." As a result, Germany is still a largely democratic country - and even more so active, not only in the parliament but also in the parliament to put forward disarmament bills. And several anti-fascist demonstrations are also being organized. Demand the immediate resignation of the fascist chiefs of the military, Schleicher and Hersmann!

The Nazi Party, on the other hand, seemed to have little interest in anything other than "anti-Semitism", but only went all out to fight against the Jewish financial oligarchy, forcing many German Jewish tycoons to withdraw from the banking industry and many large German companies, and transfer their shares to capitalists who were close to the Nazi Party.

At this time, the situation in Germany seemed a little incomprehensible to Hersmann, a "traverser".

As soon as he returned to his home in Charlottenburg, Hermann, one of Hitler's cabinet ministers (in fact, he had to take care of everything, similar to the existence of a vice chancellor). Goering immediately dragged his fat body and brought a bottle of Hinkel champagne, invited the Hersmanns to have a drink with them, and talked about the New Deal in the "difficult advance".

After cracking down on the Jewish power in the banking sector in Germany with the Law on the Restriction of Jews, the Nazi Party and the People's Party of the Fatherland began to amend the Banking Act, stipulating that the independence of the Board of Directors of the Reichsbank would be abolished, and the power to appoint the President and members of the Board of Directors of the Reichsbank would be transferred to the Head of State (i.e., the President, but the Chancellor would be the right to nominate them); empowering Imperial Bank to implement open market policies; The Imperial Bank can discount the "Job Creation Bill" so that the new government can fund job creation.

This "job creation bill" was proposed by Hitler's trusted economist Fidel, also known as "Fidel's currency", which was mainly used to pay for special technical engineering projects in order to create jobs with engineering construction - in fact, it was to print money to start projects, which was not much different from the most commonly used economic stimulus in later generations.

In 1931, however, it was not universally accepted, and it was met with much opposition, even from Hitler's Minister of Economics, Dr. Schacht, who was not opposed to the "job creation bills", but feared a repeat of the indiscriminate issuance of paper money in the early 20s when the Reichsbank lost its independence.

Therefore, several opposition parties are preparing to join hands in the Diet to veto the amendment of the "Banking Act." The Bolshevik Party also threatened to organise protests - once the Banking Act was amended, they would tell the workers the "truth" and call on them to oppose it with a general strike.

Since the great inflation of the early 20s was too impressive, it is quite possible that the Bolshevik Party's struggle will succeed. Even if the protests are suppressed, the people will still know that the government is going to start the printing press again.

And if the people lose faith in Mark again, then Hitler's New Deal will probably fail!

"Lieutenant General, you know the economy better than I do, and you must know that the basis of paper money is not gold at all, but people's confidence!" Goering, who looked clumsy because he was fat, drank heavily and lobbied Hersmann in a flattering tone.

"If the Bolshevik Party is allowed to tell the truth, then we are finished." "And then the whole of Germany is finished," he said in a heavy tone, because no one will trust Mark anymore...... The nightmare of 1922 and 1923 is about to be repeated. ”

The "job creation bill" is a careful packaging of the fact of swiping the mark, but the essence has not changed, it is still printing money!

But the printing of stamps is very different from that of 1918 to 1923. Now that the whole world is deflationary, and Germany is no exception, paper money has become a "scarce resource" - to put it bluntly, the supply of products is far more than the quantity of paper money, so there is no problem in swiping more marks.

Moreover, Germany has almost gotten rid of the "Treaty of Versailles" now, and the reparations of more than 4 billion pounds can be completely relied on and not paid, and Britain and France have no way to deal with the current Germany. Mark's "margin" is not a negative number in theory.

However, after all, Germany has a "criminal record" that sells hundreds of millions of dollars of bread, so those who hold mark cash are relatively weak-minded, and once there is information that "the government is swiping the mark and indiscriminately issuing paper money", it is very likely to cause a major collapse. (To be continued.) )