Iron Sonata of World War II

Since July 1933, 7, the BF-18 trainer/sport aircraft of the Bavarian Aircraft Factory successfully flew for the first time, and chief designer Robert Ruzel has been perfecting the design of this aircraft day and night.As a shameful work after the M108 transport plane accident, BF-20 has been placed with high expectations by the Bavarian Aircraft Factory. score.

However, at this time, the news that Germany was preparing to rebuild its air power began to spread through various channels, which excited the major aviation manufacturing companies in Germany, and the Bavarian Aircraft Manufacturing Factory also saw a new possibility from it. .Therefore, while continuing to vigorously develop the BF-108 trainer/sports aircraft, the Bavarian Aircraft Factory decided to develop a single-seat combat type on the basis of the BF-108, and urgently put the development of a new generation of fighter jets on the agenda.

Bavarian Aircraft Works designated the single-seat combat version the BF-108A, and the two-seat trainer/sport version the BF-108B.Although the development sequence of developing the two-seater trainer type first, and then the single-seater combat type is a bit strange, and the practice of putting the numbers of the later-developed models in the front is also a bit abnormal, but thanks to the classic aerodynamic design of the BF-108 However, the BF-108A that jumped in temporarily did not cause too much trouble to the design team.

Compared with the BF-108B, which adopts a wide side-by-side two-seater layout, the BF-108A adopts a single-seater layout, and the front fuselage is greatly narrowed, which not only reduces the flight resistance to a large extent, but also frees up a considerable part of the structure. Weight, this part of the weight allows the BF-108A to install a more powerful engine.

Therefore, the BF-108A did not use the 108 horsepower inverted V-shaped 480-cylinder air-cooled engine used on the BF-8B, but was equipped with a BMW-750B 7-cylinder water-cooled engine with a power of 12 horsepower. The engine is the product of BMW adding a single-stage supercharger on the basis of BWM-7A, and it is also the last water-cooled engine developed by BMW on this plane before turning its research focus to air-cooled engines.It is worth mentioning that the BMW-7A engine had previously set a world record of 1932 kilometers around the world in a "whale" seaplane in 4.48, showing good reliability.

At the end of last year, Helena was quite surprised when she learned that the Bavarian Aircraft Factory had developed a single-seat fighter based on the BF-108. After all, the Bavarian Aircraft Factory in the previous plane had not developed any BF A single-seat combat version of the -108.In the last plane, Dr. Messerschmidt started to develop the BF-108 fighter directly after completing the development of the BF-109 trainer/sports aircraft.

However, after Helena inspected this BF-108A fighter, she immediately turned from surprise to joy, because this aircraft is from a certain point of view a miniature version of the previous plane BF-109, and there is no previous plane BF -109 The distance between the main landing gear is too small.In fact, such a result is not surprising at all. After all, there is a high level of technical inheritance between BF-109 and BF-108 in the previous plane. It can even be regarded as a single-seat enlarged version based on BF-108. .

Although the BF-108A, which was born out of a trainer aircraft, has a maximum take-off weight of only 2 tons and a maximum range of only 600 kilometers, and because the body is too small, there is basically no development potential at all. It is basically impossible to have it in the 40s. What a big deal.But in Helena's view, if this aircraft is positioned as a transitional model before the new generation of fighters enter service, it is still very competent.It is also highly competitive to export to the international arms market to earn foreign exchange.

Like the BF-108B as a coach/sports model, the BF-108A also adopts a fashionable all-metal semi-monocoque structure and a lower single-wing layout, plus automatic leading edge slats and trailing edge flaps, fully enclosed Type cockpit, retractable landing gear are all available.In terms of appearance alone, it far exceeds its domestic competitor: Heinkel's He51 fighter jet.

In the last plane, the He51 fighter jet was actually quite popular for a while. It was the first fighter jet equipped on a large scale after the reconstruction of the Luftwaffe in 1935.However, in terms of actual performance, the He51 fighter can only be said to be a mediocre work.Seeing the He51's double-wing layout with brackets, the open cockpit, and the non-retractable landing gear, you can hardly believe that such a thing with a strong style of World War I was first flown in 1933. It is only as good as Two of the most famous fighters in World War II: Germany's BF-109 series and the British "Spitfire" series were two years earlier!

Well, considering that in the last plane, the old enemy He51 fighter met in the Spanish Civil War, the Yi-15, which also adopts a biplane layout, non-retractable landing gear, and an open cockpit, also made its first flight in 1933. Yes, Helena will not criticize the designers of Henschel Company here.

In any case, due to the old design, the He51 fighter jet is equipped with a BMW750 water-cooled engine with a power of up to 6 horsepower, but the maximum flight speed is only 330 kilometers per hour, which is simply impossible to look directly at!In addition, He51's appearance is too ugly, which makes it impossible for Helena to use this thing to cheat money internationally in the future.

In contrast to BF-108A, this product not only has a modern and stylish shape, but also can beat He51 in seconds without even scum in terms of performance.In a test flight at the Bavarian Aircraft Factory, the BF-108A with a large horse-drawn car once reached an astonishing speed of 4500 kilometers per hour at an altitude of 535 meters, which eclipsed most of the contemporary fighters.

If the world line of this plane does not change too much, Helena estimates that Germany and the United Kingdom will have fighter jets more advanced than the BF-108A for the first time in the next year or two. The "Spitfire" made its first flight in March 109.However, it will take a certain amount of time from the first flight to the equipment of the national army, and from the equipment of the national army to the international market.

Therefore, in the next four to five years, BF-108A may not find any particularly decent opponents in the international arms market. In Helena's view, it is necessary for BF-108A to make good use of this vacant window. Expect.After all, historical experience has repeatedly told us that how much a product can sell depends not only on your performance, but also on the accuracy of your time card. BF-108A has such a time difference!

The so-called smell of wine is also afraid of deep alleys. In order to promote BF-108A to the international market earlier and better, Helena is very much looking forward to the twin-engine sister aircraft of BF-108A: BF-108B trainer/sports aircraft, which will be launched in the second half of this year. The "Fourth International Tourist Aircraft Competition" held a stunning performance.

After all, this event called "Tourist Aircraft Competition", like various air shows in later generations, is a stage for the aviation industry of various countries to demonstrate their own strength, and observers from all countries attach great importance to it.In order to make the flight performance of the BF-108B trainer/sport aircraft more brilliant, Helena also prepared a little secret weapon for the BF-108B.

Chapter 164 Alkylated Oils

The so-called "secret weapon" that Helena is going to use BF-108B in the tourist aircraft competition is actually the 115/145 aviation gasoline used in later generations of aviation competitions.Due to the excellent anti-knock properties of this high-quality aviation gasoline, piston engines can operate at higher mean effective pressure without worrying about knocking after using this gasoline.

We know that under a certain engine compression ratio, a higher intake pressure means a higher average effective pressure, which in turn means that the engine can obtain greater output power when the displacement and speed remain unchanged. .Although excessive intake pressure will increase the burden on the engine and reduce the service life of the engine, in competitive flying, as long as the engine does not strike on the spot, not many people care about the life of the engine.

Here we must first explain the meaning of the label 115/145.What this label represents is the anti-knock performance of aviation gasoline.Since gasoline is actually a very complex mixture of components, to measure the anti-knock performance of gasoline, we need to make an easily quantifiable scale as a reference, and this scale is the so-called "standard fuel".

"Standard fuel" is also called "reference fuel". This fuel is made of isooctane with high anti-knock performance and n-heptane with low anti-knock performance according to a certain volume ratio.Next, we further stipulate: the fuel composed entirely of isooctane has an anti-knock performance of 100; the fuel composed entirely of n-heptane has an anti-knock performance of 0.

Next, we only need to test the gasoline sample and different proportions of "standard fuel" on a special knock test machine. If the knock intensity of this gasoline is equivalent to that of a certain proportion of "standard fuel", we can Use the volume fraction of isooctane (also known as "octane number") contained in this ratio of "standard fuel" to calibrate the anti-knock performance of this gasoline, and this volume fraction value is the gasoline's label.

It is not difficult to see that in the interval from 0 to 100, the higher the grade of gasoline, the closer its anti-knock performance is to that of 100% isooctane fuel.It is worth mentioning that the grade of gasoline can exceed 100. When the grade of gasoline exceeds 100, it means that the antiknock ability of this gasoline is stronger than that of pure isooctane!Please don't ask if the octane number can be negative, because although it is theoretically allowed, you can indeed use a negative octane number to calibrate fuel that has a worse anti-knock ability than pure n-heptane, but the engine does it wrong what?

After understanding the meaning of the gasoline label, we need to go to the specific label of aviation gasoline.Careful students can easily find that the label of aviation gasoline is somewhat different from our common vehicle gasoline label. It is composed of two values ​​before and after separated by a slash.The reason why two values ​​are used is mainly because the engine of the aircraft needs to face complex and changeable working conditions.When the aircraft is cruising at an economical speed, the engine only needs to maintain a low power; but during the stages of take-off, acceleration, and climb of the aircraft, the engine power must be increased or even topped up.The two parameters before and after the aviation gasoline label are just to provide a reference for the anti-knock performance of the fuel under different engine conditions.

Among them, the first parameter is the "motor octane number" of aviation gasoline, which calibrates the anti-knock performance of the aero-engine when it works under lean fuel mixture. Explosive performance;

The latter parameter is called the "quality value" of aviation gasoline, and what it calibrates is: the maximum power that the fuel emits when the fuel-rich mixture works without knocking and the maximum power that pure isooctane emits under the same state The ratio, grade value and octane number can be converted by the following formula: motor method grade value=100+3 (motor method octane number-100).This parameter is mainly used to measure the anti-knock performance of the fuel when the aircraft takes off, climbs, and accelerates.

So far, we can basically get the complete mathematical meaning of the 115/145 aviation gasoline label.The preceding 115 indicates that the anti-knock ability of the fuel has greatly exceeded that of pure isooctane (when 6 ml of tetraethyl lead is added to each gallon of pure isooctane, the label is 120.3).The latter 145 means that in the state of fuel-rich combustion, the fuel can emit 145% of the power equivalent to that of pure octane in the same state when it works without knocking.

To produce gasoline with high anti-knock ability like 115/145, it is definitely not enough to add anti-knock agent alone.In this time and space, the reason why 115/145 gasoline can appear in advance is of course inseparable from a certain little butterfly named Helena flapping its wings desperately there.You must know that in the last plane, 115/145 gasoline was produced in small batches in the United States in 1945, and World War II was about to end at that time.

Previously, Helena greatly promoted the progress of indirect coal liquefaction technology by improving the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis method, which made it possible for oil-poor Germany to use coal as a raw material to produce diesel on a large scale.Not only that, the quality of diesel produced by the indirect coal liquefaction method is surprisingly good: not only is it almost completely free of sulfur and aromatics, but it also has the outstanding advantages of short ignition delay period, uniform combustion, and good ignition performance.

What is even more commendable is that while the indirect liquefaction method produces diesel oil, it can also synthesize by-products such as olefins, paraffin, and lubricating oil.So far, Germany can use its own coal resources to solve almost all major petrochemical products.In order to save precious foreign exchange reserves to the greatest extent, Germany has invested at least 600 million tons of coal liquefaction capacity in recent years, more than half of which have adopted indirect liquefaction technology.

The energy industry has always been the top priority of Helena's attention. After solving the problem of diesel, the key field of aviation gasoline will naturally not be forgotten by Helena.So, while large and small coal liquefaction plants are being built in full swing in Germany, Helena has shifted her focus on the energy industry to another area that she considers quite important, which is the liquid sulfuric acid alkylation process.

Alkylated gasoline produced by this process has high octane number (even without adding a drop of tetraethyl lead, the octane number of gasoline produced by the alkylation process can reach 96-98), high calorific value, low sulfur, low The characteristics of aromatics and low olefins are the best raw materials for manufacturing high-grade aviation gasoline.In fact, the 108/115 aviation gasoline prepared for BF-145B this time was produced from the first experimental liquid sulfuric acid alkylation production equipment established by Helena after years of technical exploration. .

Chapter 165 Technical Communication

Helena's process of producing fuel oil with the sulfuric acid alkylation process, in the simplest terms, is to let isobutane react with alkanes under the catalysis of sulfuric acid to produce iso-alkanes mainly composed of isooctane.

As we mentioned before, isooctane is used as a benchmark to measure the antiknock performance of fuel because of its strong antiknock performance. When a certain gasoline is equivalent to pure isooctane, it can be marked as 100 Number.Since the main component of the fuel oil produced by the alkylation process is isooctane, its anti-knock performance is naturally quite outstanding!Due to the existence of a small amount of isoparaffins other than isooctane, the antiknock performance of alkylated oil is slightly weaker than that of pure isooctane, but the grade can reach 93 or even higher.

In addition to excellent anti-knock performance, compared with fuel oil produced by catalytic reforming and catalytic cracking processes, alkylate oil also has the following advantages when used as aviation gasoline:

First, the sulfur content of alkylated oil is very low, which is not only beneficial to reduce acid corrosion and improve the life of the engine, but also allows the fuel to burn without carbon deposition even under higher pressure.

Second, alkylated oil contains almost no olefins, and olefins are easily oxidized into colloids that deposit on the cylinders, intake valves, fuel injectors, etc. of the engine, which may reduce engine performance in the slightest, or cause the engine to stall in severe cases.

Third, alkylated oil contains almost no aromatics. The harm of aromatics is not only unfriendly to the environment. Excessive content of aromatics in gasoline will cause serious carbon deposition problems. In addition, aromatics will seriously erode the engine and supply Rubber parts in oil systems.In the slightest, the service life will be shortened, and in the worst case, it will cause the failure of the machine to destroy the human body.

In the last plane, the United States was once pitted by high-aromatic gasoline.Since the early high-grade gasoline in the United States is mainly high-aromatic gasoline produced by catalytic reforming process.Although the presence of aromatics increased the grade of gasoline, it also caused the rubber parts on American fighter planes to fail prematurely, especially the fuel tank, which was often damaged due to rubber swelling.The United States later adopted a plasticizing process for the fuel tank, but it still failed to completely solve the problem of rubber swelling.

Although in terms of the performance of alkylate itself, it can be said that it is almost the most perfect fuel and oil adjustment component, but the production process of alkylate is not easy to master.

For example, the experimental production equipment set up by Helena has never been operated continuously for more than a month since it was put into trial production. The reason is that the sulfuric acid used as a catalyst always corrodes the production equipment.From the impeller to the condenser, from the pickling tank to various pipelines, there have been problems almost everywhere that technicians can think of and unexpected places.

Due to the need to shut down for maintenance almost every two weeks, and the replacement of large pieces of equipment is commonplace, the current production of alkylated oil is not only expensive, but also very low in output.However, Helena doesn't care much about this, because the problems that arise now are all that must be experienced on the road of technological development. The petrochemical industry in later generations has struggled with equipment corrosion problems for decades, and many problems are solved by nothing. Specific medicine, but the gradual accumulation of experience.

What's more, Helena didn't intend to allow Germany's future fighter planes to directly use alkylated oil. It would be too extravagant to do so, and even a local tycoon like the United States would not be able to do it.After all, war is not a competitive game. If you can’t provide enough quantity, no matter how good the quality of fuel is, it’s useless.

Therefore, in Helena's view, the best place for alkylated oil is to use it as a high-quality oil adjustment component. Only a small amount of alkylated oil is needed to be blended with fuel oil produced by catalytic cracking and catalytic reforming methods, and then With various fuel additives including anti-knock agents, you can get a lot of higher-grade (100/130) fuel.In terms of cost, it is much more acceptable than directly burning alkylate.

As for high-end products such as 115/145, due to the need to use more alkylate oil and anti-knock agents in production, Helena believes that they can be produced in small quantities as the trump card of the air force, and they will only be used in the most critical battles. go out.After all, although some battles seem to be partial, they have huge energy that affects the overall situation. At this time, the cost of the battle cannot be cherished, and all the cards that can be played must be played at once.

……

Through the vigorous development of coal indirect liquefaction technology and alkylation fuel technology, Helena has helped German industry, especially the energy industry, to fill up many loopholes.However, there are so many branch fields in the modern industrial system, even if Helena has supernatural abilities, it is impossible to fill all the loopholes in the German industrial system.

Under such circumstances, moderate foreign technical exchanges are very necessary. As long as the price is fair and reasonable, Helena has no objection to Germany introducing stones from other mountains to make up for its own shortcomings.Interacting with other countries in certain technologies can help Germany save a lot of research and development time and research funds, and Helena can invest these vacated funds in more forward-looking fields.Although other countries can also save time and money from such technical exchanges, Helena has reason to believe that the R&D efficiency of other countries can never catch up with her own.

In fact, before World War II in the last plane, the United States and Germany, two chemical powerhouses, had very extensive technical exchanges in the field of petrochemicals.For example, the Germans obtained gasoline antiknock additive technology from the United States, and the Americans also obtained oil hydrogenation technology from Germany.

Through such technical exchanges, both the United States and Germany made up for many of their own technical shortcomings, and these technologies were inevitably used in the Second World War that occurred later.Therefore, some conspiracy theorists in later generations believed that this was the United States secretly helping Germany prepare for war. Colonial empires, thus allowing themselves to extend their strategic tentacles into the Old World.

For the above argument, Helena actually does not fully agree with it. There are three main reasons: first, the technical exchange between virtues is two-way, not one-way; This kind of technology exchange has been very frequent; third, this kind of technology exchange did not only occur between the United States and Germany, but also between the major industrial countries at that time, but the scale of technology exchange between the United States and Germany in the chemical industry is larger Some.

In fact, it is not surprising that the United States and Germany have a large scale of technological exchanges in the chemical industry. After all, the United States and Germany are both traditional chemical powerhouses.In fact, in the 21st century before Helena crossed, the company with the largest chemical sales in the world was BASF in Germany, while the No. 2 was DowDuPont in the United States. The background can be seen (the gap between No.4 and the top three is huge, but you can guess who No.3 is).

At this time, if there is no large-scale technical exchange, it would be a strange thing. After all, it is the norm in this world for industry giants to communicate with each other in terms of technology while competing fiercely.Regarding the frequent technological exchanges between countries after the 30s, Helena is more inclined to believe that the main driving factor is the rising trade barriers of various countries after the economic crisis.

When it is difficult for commodities to enter the other country's market on a large scale, how should companies in one country obtain profits from other countries' markets?An effective method is technology licensing and technology exchange. The former can directly obtain licensing fees from other countries, and the latter can exchange for the technology they need to enhance the competitiveness of enterprises in the market.

However, what Helena is more concerned about is not the specific motivation for the technical exchange, but what she is more concerned about is how Germany can gain the initiative in this kind of international technology exchange.

Chapter 166 The Acquired Advantage

Although Helena firmly believes that moderate technical exchanges are very important to make up for the technical shortcomings in the German industrial system, especially the exchange with the United States in the petrochemical field is the most important thing.But how to exchange Germany for the most valuable technology at the least cost is a question that Helena must seriously consider.Unfortunately, when it comes to technological exchanges with the United States in the chemical industry, the Germans are inherently in a relatively disadvantaged position.

This is not because Germany cannot produce equivalent technology to exchange with the United States, but because Germany's local resources cannot be compared with the United States in terms of types and reserves, and its ability to obtain resources from the world is also worse than that of the United States. As a result, Germany's dependence on chemical synthetic raw materials is much higher than that of the United States.

The field of synthetic rubber is a typical example. Don’t be surprised why Germany, the country that invented synthetic rubber, still needs American synthetic rubber technology. There are at least eight or nine kinds of synthetic rubber in common use, but Germany is not the only manufacturer of synthetic rubber. The manufacturing process is mastered.

For example, Farben in Germany has the patents of sodium-butadiene rubber and styrene-butadiene rubber, while Bayer in Germany (actually under the control of the Farben consortium during this period) has the patent of nitrile rubber in its hands, but another More important synthetic rubber: the patent and technology of neoprene has been in the hands of DuPont in the United States.

Since most synthetic rubber products are a combination of various synthetic rubbers in a certain proportion, the lack of any synthetic rubber will seriously affect the overall performance of the rubber product, which gives American companies the capital to demand extravagant prices from Germany.At this time, someone may ask, don't German companies also have many patents and technologies for synthetic rubber?Why is it still at a disadvantage in technology exchange?

The problem is that Americans can import large quantities of natural rubber from Latin America and the Philippines at any time. It is not necessary for American rubber products to use synthetic rubber.The situation in Germany is just the opposite. Once there is a conflict with countries such as Britain and France, the supply of natural rubber in Germany will inevitably be greatly reduced or even completely cut off. At this time, synthetic rubber will become the only life-saving straw.

In short, many technologies that are tonics for the United States are necessary for Germany.The urgency of the two countries to acquire each other's technology is completely different.During the transaction process, if Party A is very eager to conclude a transaction, and Party B also knows the urgency of Party A, Party B will definitely make good use of this unequal urgency to seek benefits for itself, and Party A is also likely to accept Party B's request, although it will lose some benefits.

This advantage of the United States is based on its natural endowment and geographical location. It is an innate advantage, and this advantage cannot be reversed by Helena.The only thing Helena can do for Germany is to help Germany establish an acquired advantage, so as to offset or even reverse the innate advantage of the United States in technology transactions.Helena's specific measures for Germany to gain the initiative in technology exchange can be roughly divided into three steps:

The first step for Helena is to directly order the government to prohibit any chemical company in Germany from negotiating with an American company independently after stating the stakes to Mustache.This step seems difficult to carry out, but it is not very difficult in Germany's national conditions.This is because most of the large chemical companies in Germany at this time, including well-known companies such as BASF, Bayer, Akfa, Meister (later Hearst), were actually under the control of the Farben consortium.

Although the shareholding structure of the Farben Consortium is relatively dispersed, and several large enterprises under it also maintain an independent legal status.However, through the monopoly organization form of "Concern", the enterprises under the Farben Consortium have a relatively solid coordination mechanism. They jointly control the supply of raw materials, commodity production and commodity sales to ensure the maximum benefit of the consortium.This time, however, it was only the state that took the lead to make this mechanism more stable.

Through this step, when conducting technology exchange negotiations, American chemical companies can only find one negotiating partner in Germany, while Germany has multiple negotiating partners to choose from, such as DuPont, Dow, and Standard Oil of New Jersey. Wait (later Exxon).That is to say, in the negotiation, there is no internal competition among the large German chemical companies, but there is competition among several major chemical companies in the United States.

The second step for Helena is to classify and package the technical shortcomings that she thinks Germany needs to make up.In this way, when negotiating technology exchange, Germany does not need to negotiate technology-by-technology with several American companies. If it wants to negotiate, it will directly reach a package of technology exchange plans.Once this approach is implemented, it will lead to a situation where many American companies negotiate with Germany, and those who reach the agreement can get almost all the benefits of technology exchange, while other companies get nothing (unless you have other Several unique technologies that are not available).

This "winner takes all" centralized negotiation can virtually increase the distrust among those few American companies, making it difficult for these companies to reach a truly unified coordination mechanism.Because if any company has compromised with the Germans in private, after completing the technical exchange with the Germans, the company's technical level will be greatly improved.

The third step for Helena is to make full use of and even create the information asymmetry between the two parties in the technology exchange negotiation. This is also the biggest golden finger of Helena, a traverser.This asymmetry is mainly manifested in the following: for American companies, they are not very clear about the specific research progress of Germany in various fields of the chemical industry, but on the German side, thanks to the system, Helena can roughly guess the research progress of various fields in the United States. research progress.

This is equivalent to when playing poker, Party A directly sees the cards in Party B's hand, but Party B knows nothing about the cards in Party A's hand.Since the American company cannot accurately estimate the progress of German research, it is not sure how much the technology at hand is worth to the Germans.Germany is different here, because Helena can look up the historical data of the previous plane, she knows which American technologies are useful to Germany, which are not useful, and which are not very useful in the short term but will definitely be used in the future. will shine...

Since Helena has much more information than the Americans, and has even reached the point of knowing herself and her enemy, this allows the Germans to perform many tricks in the negotiations.For example, when Germany very much wants to obtain a certain technology in the hands of the United States, the German negotiators can completely bluff and signal that the development of corresponding equipment in Germany has reached the final stage.And this will make Americans realize that the technology in their hands must be realized immediately. If it is not realized now, there may be no chance of realizing it after the development of the corresponding equipment in Germany...

To sum up, in technology exchange negotiations, Helena can tap into three acquired advantages for Germany: the only negotiator, concentrated negotiation projects, and information asymmetry.

Chapter 167 Tactical Deception

Helena's measures gave Germany an advantage in technical exchanges with the United States. The Americans did not know the progress of the Germans' research in many fields, but Helena had already guessed the details of the Americans' own technology. Eighty-eight, this allows Helena to display her micro-manipulations very calmly, providing a god assist for the technical negotiations between Germany and the United States.

According to our daily life experience, in the process of commodity transactions, in order to maximize their own profits, even if both parties have the willingness to conclude a transaction, the seller will try his best to convince the buyer that his commodity is of extraordinary value, while the buyer will try his best Convince the seller that his product is not worth the price to him.When American and German companies trade technology as a special kind of commodity, they naturally also obey this principle.

There are actually many technologies that Helena hopes to obtain from the United States. In addition to the neoprene technology, the technology of adding anti-knock agents to fuel is also what Helena is determined to obtain.Although the Germans took the lead in synthesizing tetraethyl lead as early as 1854, the manufacture of anti-knock gasoline is by no means just adding tetraethyl lead to gasoline.

In order to prevent the lead oxide generated after combustion from depositing in the engine, it is also necessary to add halides as an extraction agent; in order to prevent the decomposition and precipitation of tetraethyl lead under light conditions, it is necessary to add antioxidants and filter dyes, etc.For different fuels, how to add these additives and how much to add is knowledge.In these aspects, the Americans not only started earlier, but also established relatively standardized fuel testing standards and accumulated considerable engineering experience, which has now left Germany far behind.

In a specific research field, the amount of scientific research funds that Helena can mobilize is not unlimited. In addition to the development of the alkylation process, which requires a lot of money, the development of the butadiene rubber production process has already been spent. Germany invests most of the mobile R&D funds in the petrochemical industry.

Although in the previous plane, the industrial production technology of butadiene rubber was completed after the 50s, it is very difficult to achieve success in the 30s in this plane, but Helenna is going to make a breakthrough on this subject no matter the cost. .After all, after breaking through the production technology of butadiene rubber, synthetic rubber will no longer be just a poor substitute for natural rubber, but will transform into an existence with superior performance than natural rubber!

We must know that during World War II on the previous plane, the synthetic rubber produced by various countries generally had the problem of not being able to withstand low temperatures, but the butadiene rubber could withstand the severe cold of minus 55 degrees.If Helena can light up butadiene rubber in advance and use it with styrene-butadiene and neoprene, then the problem of synthetic rubber not being cold-resistant will become history forever.

All in all, because Helena has too many important research projects at hand, in the field of gasoline anti-knock agent addition technology, which is time-consuming, laborious and expensive, for the sake of saving time and money, Helena hopes to use the method of technology exchange , to obtain the engineering experience accumulated in the United States over the years.However, in order to reduce the cost for Germany to obtain these technologies, Helena must cast some smoke bombs to confuse the Americans, with the purpose of making the United States underestimate the value of these technologies to Germany.

Whenever two countries or two companies can reach a technology exchange, it must be based on their respective strengths in different branches of the technology tree.In this case, the exchange value of a specific technology depends to a large extent on the understanding of the technological gap between the two parties.

If one party judges that it has a huge advantage over the opponent in a certain field, it will naturally have a rare commodity to live in. Unless the other party has enough chips, it will never let go of the exchange easily.Conversely, if one party judges that the gap between the opponent and itself in this field is very small, even as small as only one to two years, then the weight of this technology on the exchange table is obviously much smaller.

Therefore, in order to exchange for the technology needed by Germany at the lowest cost, Helena had to give Americans the illusion that although Germany's research in these fields lags behind that of the United States, the gap is only Between siblings.At this time, the Americans will calculate: If these technologies are transferred to Germany now, some of the technology or funds can be exchanged; if these technologies are not exchanged now, the Germans themselves will be able to break through the technological bottleneck in a few years At that time, even if the United States wants to change, the Germans probably don't want it anymore.

Driven by this mentality, it is impossible for the Americans to bid too high a price, not to mention that the domestic chemical industry companies in the United States have not yet completed the internal integration work like Germany, and several large enterprises belong to different trust monopoly groups , and these trust groups still have fierce competition among each other.Therefore, American chemical companies will have such worries: If their competitors reach a package technology deal with the Germans, the opponents will be able to withdraw part of the funds while greatly enhancing their production technology. But it was passive.

In order to convince Americans that Germany is indeed only one step away from Germany in terms of gasoline anti-knock agent addition technology and neoprene production technology (in fact, the gap is not small), Helena combined the information provided by the system with her previous life. Based on their memories, they screened out a batch of research topics that do not involve industrial secrets, but generally need to have a fairly deep technical accumulation in these fields before they start to get involved.

After Helena's "face-to-face teaching opportunity", at a reception organized by DuPont called welcoming German negotiators, but actually testing each other, a German representative inadvertently mentioned his research topic to DuPont colleagues.

As the saying goes, the speaker is unintentional but the listener is interested. After the reception, the representative of DuPont quickly reported this clue. It is quite deep, and its own advantages are not as great as previously imagined.

In the next few days, the performance of the German representatives seemed to confirm this point. Although the German negotiators showed some interest in the fields of gasoline anti-knock agent addition technology, they did not show much enthusiasm.

The attitude of the German representative made DuPont's top management more convinced that their judgment was correct.After all, in the cognition of DuPont technicians, the technological tree of gasoline antiknock agent addition technology can only develop layer by layer from the root to the trunk to the branches and leaves.When Helena showed them a leaf, they subconsciously assumed that Germany already had a large tree, only slightly smaller than the American one.

Chapter 168 The Night of the Long Knife

Under the guidance of Helena with ulterior motives, the Americans really seriously underestimated their technical advantages over the Germans in certain fields, and then underestimated the potential value of the technology in their hands to Germany.This makes American companies seriously lack confidence in the negotiations. The competition and dismantling among the major trust oligarchs in the United States has even increased the bargaining chip for the Germans out of thin air. After all, there is only Farben Chemicals in Germany. .

This allowed the Germans to exchange a large amount of vital industrial technology from the United States at a relatively small cost, especially the production technology of neoprene rubber and the technology of adding fuel antiknock agents, which made Germany's petrochemical industry The industry is even more powerful, which allows Helena to devote more resources to the research and development of forward-looking technologies.However, at the same time that Germany won a big victory in the technology exchange negotiations with the United States, a short and violent political storm suddenly broke out in Germany.

On June 1934, 6, with the assistance of the Wehrmacht, Hitler suddenly attacked the SA. This paramilitary organization with more than 30 million members at its peak was severely suppressed by surprise, including the General Staff of the SA. More than 400 SA leaders, including Nazi party veteran Ernst Rohm, were arrested and executed.For the next two days, the firing squad could be heard firing one after another outside the Stutfeld barracks.

However, the bloodbath of the top stormtroopers did not surprise Helena too much. After all, in the history of the last plane, this event called "Night of the Long Knives" also happened in the world, and Helena has full understanding of it. psychological preparation.What's more, although the "Night of the Long Knives" happened quite suddenly, it also experienced a long period of brewing before the outbreak. From a certain perspective, it was the inevitable result of the game of political power in Germany.

As we all know, the origin of the stormtroopers was a tool used by the Nazi party to expand its momentum through a series of means such as street violence before gaining the status of the ruling party. The famous "beer hall riots" had the participation of the stormtroopers. After the beer hall riots in 1923, the SA was banned for a while, but it was re-established after Hitler was released from prison in 1924.

In 1931, at the invitation of Hitler, Ernst Rohm, who served as a military adviser in Romania, returned to Germany to serve as the chief of staff of the SA.In the following two years, with the rapid rise of the Nazi Party, the size of the stormtroopers also expanded dramatically. They organized large-scale political demonstrations, violently attacked political opponents' election rallies, and coerced and lured candidates from other parties to withdraw from the election. way, paving the way for Hitler's eventual rise to power.

However, after Hitler successfully became the general manager, the Nazi Party has transformed from an opposition party engaged in street politics to a ruling party above the temple.The Stormtroopers, who were born as street thugs, actually faced two choices at this time, either disappearing from the political arena, or speeding up their role transformation, but the leader of the Stormtroopers, Rohm, lacked such political sensitivity.

During the development of the Nazi Party in its early years, many radical left-wing political slogans were put forward, as if it was a defender of the interests of the working class. These slogans did expand the influence of the Nazi Party among the working class and urban petty bourgeoisie. Helped the Nazi Party gain a place on the German political spectrum.

However, with the expansion of the power of the Nazi Party, the top leaders of the Nazi Party, including Hitler, soon realized that if the support of the Junkers and the bourgeoisie could not be obtained, the Nazi Party would not be able to gain a stable ruling position in Germany.As a result, the Nazi Party began to seek compromise and balance among the major classes, both in terms of election strategy and actual governance.

This balancing act of the Nazi party is very typical in labor relations: on the one hand, the Nazi party denied capitalists the right to fire workers, and established a broad social security system, which could protect workers from unemployment and maintain a basic life ; But on the other hand, the Nazi Party also deprived workers of the right to strike, and compressed workers' basic wages at a lower level, with the purpose of appeasing the bourgeoisie's fear of the labor movement and strengthening capital accumulation.

It is not difficult to see that after gaining the position of power, the Nazi Party quickly completed its role transformation, but Ernst Rohm, Chief of the General Staff of the SA, did not realize this.In the view of Rohm, who advocated the use of violence to eradicate the existing mechanism, the Nazi Party's compromise with the Junkers and the bourgeoisie was undoubtedly a serious betrayal. The "reactionaries" carry out a second revolution.

Rohm’s appeal for the “Second Revolution” actually comes from the “25-Point Program” put forward by Hitler in the early years (Hitler said that it was used by me to cheat votes, why do you take it seriously?), there are almost three specific points:

The first is the nationalization of industrial enterprises and the expansion of workers' control;

The second is to confiscate the land of the Junker landlords for redistribution;