Iron Sonata of World War II

Although the flight test data made the designers rejoice, after carefully inspecting the prototype that had just completed the maximum level flight speed test, the designers were all scared into a cold sweat.It turned out that the rivets on the tail of the aircraft were loose in many places, and several rivets even fell off completely.

Previously, Udet only cared about enjoying the pleasure of driving fast during the test flight, and he didn't know that he had walked through the gate of hell again.The reason for saying "again" is because this person has experienced too many dangerous situations in the air to count.Even Helena herself experienced it once with Ludwig Plant and von Karman.But Udet seems to be able to save the day every time.

After repeated investigations by the designers, it was finally determined that the reason for the loosening of the rivets was not that the rivets themselves were not strong enough, but because the flat tail vibrated at high speeds, and the frequency of the vibrations happened to be close to the operating frequency of the engine, which induced resonance .However, this problem is not difficult to solve. Ruzel added two reinforcing strips to each side of the inner side of the skin connecting the tail and the fuselage, and similar problems have never occurred in subsequent test flights.

2 chapters comprehensive improvement

Although Lieutenant Colonel Udet, who had just set a level flight speed record, was very satisfied with the high-speed performance of the BF-109 fighter jet, he even praised the designer Ruzel: "Thank you for letting me feel the meteor-like sprint." However, Having said that, Lieutenant Colonel Udet still has some complaints about the fully enclosed cockpit of this aircraft with a small space and poor visibility.

Although Udet has personally piloted the BF-108A fighter many times before, he is already familiar with this canopy composed of plate glass and metal brackets, but for this old pilot who participated in the last World War, it is still The wide open cockpit is more to his liking.

This idea of ​​Lieutenant Colonel Udet is actually the common feeling of many pilots at this stage.This happened to the BF-109 in the last plane in the bidding: Obviously most of the indicators are better than the competitors, but most test pilots prefer the He-112 with an open cockpit.If it hadn't been stimulated by the news that Britain was developing a "Spitfire" fighter jet, whether Messerschmidt's plane could have the last laugh still needs to be questioned.

For the sake of comprehensive performance considerations, the new fighter is not equipped with a bubble-shaped canopy with better omnidirectional vision like the Fw-190 or P-51D, but like the BF-109 on the previous plane, it uses Angular three-piece canopy, the rear of the cockpit is integrated with the spine of the aircraft without protruding from the fuselage.

The reason why Ruzel wants to adopt this relatively conservative canopy design is mainly because it can reduce manufacturing costs, facilitate the layout of the cockpit protection, and improve the space utilization rate at the rear of the fighter cockpit.Theoretically, this relatively low cockpit design also has the effect of reducing flight resistance, but the effect is not particularly obvious. It can probably increase the maximum level flight speed of the aircraft by a few kilometers per hour.

Helena also fully agrees with Ruzel's design idea. After all, Germany needs the last economical fighter with comprehensive performance. Even with the design concept and aerodynamic achievements beyond the times, the BF-109 fighter is also It is impossible to pursue perfection in all details.However, Helena still put forward some improvement suggestions for the cockpit cover of the fighter plane based on the experience of the previous plane while the general framework remained unchanged.

Helena's improvement suggestions actually came from the opinions of General Adolf Garland, the German ace pilot in the previous plane.This canopy, known as the "Garland hat", is composed of three pieces of glass and two slightly curved metal brackets. It is not only simple to manufacture and light in weight, but also partially improves the pilot's vision. After being equipped on the -109, it was well received by the Air Force (probably because this part of the pilots only flew the BF-5 series).

Now Helena has carried over Garland's idea in advance. After matching the three convex rearview mirrors distributed on the front frame of the canopy, the field of vision of the BF-109 on the original plane is not as good as those using the bubble cockpit. Although it is an advanced model, it can be considered to have reached a basic enough standard, at least it will not become a too fatal weakness in air combat.If you take into account the concise instrument panel designed by Dr. Tan Ke and the relatively friendly operating environment, the pilot's comprehensive driving experience is still acceptable.

The BF-109 on this plane has a total of three built-in fuel tanks, one body fuel tank and two wing fuel tanks. The body fuel tanks are located under and behind the pilot's seat, and the wing fuel tanks on both sides are located on the front and rear spars inside the wings. between.These three fuel tanks can carry a total of 560 kilograms of fuel, much more than the 109 kilograms of BF-304F on the previous plane, which is enough to support the aircraft to fly more than 1000 kilometers with only standard cannon ammunition.

这个变化主要还是托双翼梁的福增加的机翼油箱所带来的收益。虽然BF-109在本位面的航程水平相比上个位面的A6M（零式）、P-51D（野马）这类最大航程动辄在2000千米以上的长腿战机依旧相形见绌，但也可以勉强达到同时代的中游水准，至少可以鄙视一下上个位面在BF-109F那短得可笑的580千米航程，顺便摆脱“机场保卫者”的不雅称号。

Whether it is in the previous plane or in this plane, the BF-109 is not a heavy armored fighter, but the German designers are not so unscrupulous that they let this fighter go into battle shirtless.The protection standard of the required plane BF-109 is only slightly improved on the basis of the previous plane BF-109F. The protection target is within the range of 10 degrees from the rear hemisphere, up, down, left, and right, and the fuel tank must be able to withstand 12.7mm combustion shells, and the cockpit must be able to withstand 12.7mm armor-piercing shells.

Since the rearward protection of the BF-109F fighter jets on the previous plane, especially the rearward protection of the fuel tank, was well done, Helena believes that the successful experience can be used for reference to a large extent: 15 cm behind the fuel tank of the fuselage, a 30-layer The 22 mm thick protective partition made of superimposed thin aluminum sheets, and the newly added wing fuel tank uses the rear spar as a part-time protective structure. These structures are sufficient to withstand 12.7 mm incendiary bombs.The fuel tank itself also adopts a self-sealing design. Specifically, three layers of vulcanized rubber that are not easy to expand are sandwiched with two layers of ordinary rubber, so that when the fuel tank is broken down, the ordinary rubber will expand and block the bullet hole when it encounters gasoline, thereby preventing fuel leakage.

Compared with the copying of the fuel tank protection, the rear protection of the cockpit of the BF-109 on the original plane has been slightly strengthened: the thickness of the protective armor plate behind the seat is increased from 8 mm to 10 mm and directly participates in the body's structural load.

The main purpose of thickening the armor is because according to the experience of the previous plane, the penetrating power of the 12.7mm armor-piercing projectile is much stronger than that of the incendiary projectile. After breaking through the protective wall of the fuel tank, there is still about 30% probability of continuing to penetrate the BF The cockpit armor plate behind the driver of -109F is 8mm thick, and after Helena thickened the armor plate to 10mm, this possibility was completely eliminated.

It is worth mentioning that since this steel plate was originally designed and not added later, after integrating the armor plate into the overall load-bearing structure of the fighter body, the weight price paid is actually higher than that of the previous plane BF-109F The 8mm armor plate of the weapon is less, which can be regarded as one of the advantages brought by Helena's foresight.However, compared to the more complete rearward protection, the protection of other parts of the BF-109 on this plane is very poor. Except for the 12.7mm thick bulletproof glass directly in front of the cockpit, which can withstand 57mm machine gun bullets, there is almost no other armor too.

If you want to use academic performance as a metaphor, briefly summarize the improvement of BF-109 in this plane compared to the previous plane. It is roughly that some of the subjects that were able to pass the exam, such as climbing ability and acceleration ability, were improved to full marks by Helena. ;Subjects that were originally good, such as diving ability and rolling ability, were improved to an excellent level by Helena; subjects that could only pass the test, such as circling ability and defensive ability; were improved to a good level by Helena; originally Subjects that failed the exam, such as maximum range and driving experience, are now passing.

In addition, Helena also added some extra-curricular interests to the BF-109 on this plane, such as the high angle of attack stall performance that few people pay attention to now. With the support of the wings, the wings of the BF-109 on this plane have a stall critical angle of attack of more than 35 degrees, which is almost twice that of the "Mustang" series on the previous plane. These performances need to be gradually excavated by outstanding pilots come out and transform into usable tactical moves.

Friendly push book "Battleship and Sea Power"

Introduction: To get the approval of ten people, you just have to do the same as everyone else.

If you want to be admired by thousands of people, you have to be different.

And if you want to leave your name in history and be remembered by all mankind, you have to fight against the whole world.

2 Chapter [-] Labor Vouchers

In the past two years, the German government under Hitler has decisively adopted a dizzying series of anti-crisis measures in response to the severe economic situation and severe unemployment in the country.But the most critical and core part of these measures is to bypass the traditional commercial banking system and forcibly combine idle means of production and idle labor to combat the natural instability of the capitalist financial system. .

In the traditional capitalist financial system, commercial banks occupy the core position of money creation by issuing loans.When Party A borrows money from a commercial bank to purchase Party B's products, the money is transferred to Party B's bank account and becomes bank deposits.New money is thus created without going through a central bank or requiring new deposits.The activity of commercial banks has promoted the development of the economy, but commercial banks themselves are highly unstable under market economy conditions. This instability stems from the unique positive feedback tendency of commercial banks:

When the economic situation is good, commercial banks will expand the loan scale as much as possible, ask companies on the phone whether they want loans, and even compete viciously in order to compete for high-quality customers. This loose liquidity environment makes many companies with low competitiveness It is able to linger on, thus creating a large number of beautiful and illusory asset price bubbles.Encouraged by rising asset prices at this time, commercial banks will become more irrational in their lending behavior, thereby blowing up the economic bubble even more.

However, once the economic situation reverses, commercial banks worried that they will not be able to collect their loans will scramble to tighten the loan scale, causing many enterprises that might have survived to have to close their doors, thus exacerbating the shrinking of the job market and the deterioration of the economic situation.The deterioration of the economic situation and the decline of asset prices will cause some commercial banks to fall into crisis or even go bankrupt. The remaining commercial banks will become scared and will naturally be more cautious when lending, thus forming a serious vicious circle.

Commercial banks' behavior of "borrowing umbrellas on sunny days and taking them away on rainy days" has aggravated the instability of the economic operation of capitalist countries.In order to prevent the economy from spiraling downward toward destruction, the main approach of the Americans is to engage in quantitative easing.President Hoover had carried out two rounds of quantitative easing during his term of office. Roosevelt passed the "Gold Reserve Act" in 1934 to depreciate the U.S. dollar against gold by 41% at one time, and at the same time suspended the freedom of the U.S. dollar and gold in the country. exchange.

However, Hitler would never dare to play like this when he came to power with the slogan of stable prices. After all, the Nazi Party was able to seize power smoothly, largely thanks to Mark’s repeated collapses, which drained the last confidence of the people in the Weimar Republic government.What's more, Germany's gold and foreign exchange reserves are not rich. Although Germany's foreign exchange and gold reserves have begun to rise in the past two years by sending low-level Jews to Palestine and prohibiting residents and companies from privately holding gold foreign exchange, these reserves It also needs to meet the needs of the balance of payments, which is far from enough to support the central bank's substantial increase in money supply.

The way the Germans came up with was mainly to create credit through the creation of various informal bills, and to establish a shadow financial system that was issued by the government but not included in the balance sheet.Among these unofficial bills, there are two kinds that play the most important role: the first one is the "Meifu coupon" we mentioned earlier, which is mainly issued for the production enterprises that undertake government procurement; the other one is designed by Helena. "Labor vouchers" issued mainly for laborers engaged in public works construction.

In order to provide employment opportunities for the large number of unemployed people, Germany has been building construction projects across the country in the past two years, but most of the remuneration received by these workers participating in public works construction is not cash, but a shopping voucher that can be used for a limited time: Labor vouchers issued by the "Labor Front" under the control of the Nazi Party, the only legal workers' organization in Germany, on behalf of the government.

After workers receive the labor coupons, they must consume the labor coupons before the date specified on the coupons.Unlike ordinary currency that can be reused, the use of labor vouchers is one-time, that is, after workers complete consumption activities with labor vouchers, such labor vouchers cannot be used for consumption again.So why are businesses still willing to accept workers using labor vouchers to buy goods?That's because Helena's regulations allow companies to use labor vouchers to deduct taxes, and they can also get a [-]% tax discount when paying taxes with labor vouchers, which is equivalent to directly linking labor vouchers to the government's tax reduction measures, and businesses are naturally willing to accept it Workers use labor vouchers to buy goods, and sometimes stores even give certain discounts to workers who pay with labor vouchers.

After the government returns the labor vouchers through taxation, it immediately cancels the labor vouchers that have been used, so that the labor vouchers form a complete closed loop.Through this cycle, Helena organically combined the five goals of expanding credit scale, building public works, reducing unemployment, stimulating commodity consumption, and reducing corporate tax burdens.Since each newly added labor voucher corresponds to the labor of newly added German workers, and this kind of labor voucher can only be consumed once, so when this kind of voucher is circulated in Germany, it will not bring additional labor. inflation.

The labor voucher invented by Helena is not strictly a currency, nor is it included in the balance sheet of the financial system, but the labor voucher does achieve credit expansion without the need for the central bank to increase base currencies such as gold and foreign exchange, making the These bills and Meifu bonds together constitute the "monetary basis" for Germany's economic recovery.

Although labor vouchers require the government to use part of the tax revenue to repurchase and cancel them, otherwise a complete cycle cannot be achieved, and the credit of labor vouchers will have problems.However, if there is no economic multiplier effect brought by labor vouchers, whether this part of the tax used to recover labor vouchers can still exist may require a big question mark.

What needs to be pointed out here is that the term "labor voucher" was not actually proposed by our protagonist Helena, but the British utopian socialist Robert Owen. Later, in the theoretical elaboration of this concept by Marx and Engels, Becoming a voucher for the distribution of consumer goods after the demise of money in a communist society.However, in Helena's design, the labor vouchers are not the same as the distribution vouchers for consumer goods in the communist society envisioned by Marx, although Helena admits that she did borrow some of Marx's ideas.

Helena's labor coupons can be recycled under market economy conditions, which is closer to the consumption coupons that Robert Mundell, the father of the euro, advocated vigorously. The biggest difference is that the consumption coupons that Mundell advocated It is equivalent to the government flying a helicopter to directly distribute money to the residents, and Helena's labor vouchers need to be exchanged by workers through labor.

This is because Helena firmly opposes all benefits that can be obtained without labor, except for people who are really unable to work.In Helena's eyes, even if the government hires someone to dig a hole today and fill it up tomorrow, it still has to adhere to the principle that those who don't work don't eat.

Chapter 211 Stealing the Poor and Giving the Rich

In the past two years, Germany's anti-crisis measures have achieved immediate results. As of the end of 1934, Germany's gross industrial production has surpassed the data in 1928 before the economic crisis and reached the highest level in history.In 1932, there were as many as 600 million unemployed people, but it was also reduced to 1935 in early 80.If this trend continues, there may even be a shortage of human resources in the German labor market next year.

In stark contrast to Germany's economic miracle, the United States across the Atlantic has done little to save the economy, especially the job market.Although on the surface, President Franklin Roosevelt, like the Germans, invested in the construction of many large-scale public projects, but a very strange phenomenon is that the industrial production in the United States is still in a downturn compared with before the crisis, while the unemployment rate in the United States The rate has never dropped below 20%.

Although Helena has to admit that before the economic crisis, she did dig a big pit for Uncle Sam's subprime loans, and this did aggravate the damage to the US economy caused by the crisis, and made the rescue work of the crisis more difficult than in the previous plane. tricky.However, Roosevelt's poor performance in rescuing the crisis cannot be entirely blamed on Helena's sabotage behind the scenes.After all, in the last plane, until 1938, the eve of the outbreak of World War II, the unemployment rate in the United States remained at an extremely high level of 17%.

A more convincing fact is that during the period from President Roosevelt's inauguration to the outbreak of World War II, the proportion of the industrial output value of the United States in the world's industrial output value was also in a downward trend.This indisputably shows that the economic performance of the United States under the administration of President Roosevelt was actually worse than the world average at that time.If it hadn't been for the influx of military orders from Europe after the outbreak of the World War in 1939, the U.S. economy might have experienced a third round of recession.

Helena believes that the most important reason why the United States' anti-crisis measures cannot achieve the expected results is that the United States mistakenly regards creating inflation as the purpose of bailing out the market.For this reason, the United States first lifted the regulations on the ratio of gold in the collateral issued by the US dollar, and then started the quantitative easing of the central bank printing money to buy treasury bonds. In 1934, it even devalued the official exchange rate between the US dollar and gold by 41% through legal means. as much.

But can creating inflation by printing money really bring about economic recovery?If developing the economy is really that simple, why did the economy of Weimar Germany collapse during the crazy devaluation of the mark?Why did Jiang Guangtou's reactionary regime collapse with a lot of gold coins?Why hasn't Zimbabwe become the world's largest economic power yet?While prices typically rise in response to strong demand during a boom, that's just a sign of a boom, not its cause.

From President Hoover to President Roosevelt, the United States has carried out three rounds of quantitative easing, and the scale of currency release has become larger and larger. What is the result of the fierce operation?Prices have been pushed up, asset prices have also been fired up, but look back at the most important job market?Before the outbreak of World War II, there were still 1000 million unemployed people in the United States!The economic crisis of capitalism is a crisis of insufficient effective demand. If the employment problem is not solved, workers will have no income. If workers have no income, how can there be effective demand?

However, the above is not the biggest absurdity of the US bailout measures. The greater absurdity of the US bailout new deal is that the rescue measures themselves will become the fuse of the next economic crisis!

First of all, the United States tried to purchase treasury bonds by issuing additional U.S. dollars to help Wall Street wash away its high debts.However, behind every dollar printed by the Federal Reserve using treasury bonds as collateral, there are all newly increased government debts!The result is that by 1938, the ratio of the balance of US government debt to GDP had reached 43%. You must know that Germany, which was doing its best to expand its arms and prepare for war at that time, had a government debt ratio of less than 30% of GDP!Since the national debt is ultimately repaid by taxpayers' money, the US's approach is tantamount to using taxpayers' money to help Wall Street repay its debts, which is a very typical policy of robbing the poor and giving to the rich.

Second, the United States is trying to stimulate asset price inflation through currency inflation, thereby helping the economy get back on track.However, ordinary people who are hungry will not hold a large amount of assets, and only asset holders can benefit from rising asset prices.So from this perspective, the "price reflation" that President Roosevelt strongly advocated can only bring about one effect: that is, to do everything possible to protect the assets in the hands of asset owners by devaluing the last bit of cash and deposits in the hands of the people. Asset prices, this is another more covert policy of robbing the poor and giving to the rich.

Now we can clearly know why President Roosevelt has been busy for a long time, and the unemployment problem in the United States has not been alleviated until the outbreak of World War II. Here comes the second wave of recession.The reason why capitalist countries repeatedly experience insufficient effective demand, which induces periodic economic crises, lies in the unbalanced distribution of wealth.However, the anti-crisis policy implemented by President Roosevelt was aimed at further exacerbating the imbalance of wealth distribution.

Helena can even say unabashedly: It was in the hands of President Roosevelt that the United States changed from a traditional industrial-led capitalist country to a financial-led capitalist country.Since President Roosevelt took office, maintaining asset prices has become the overriding political task of successive US governments, and it remained so until the 21st century before Helena crossed.

What made Helena even more puzzled was that President Roosevelt was generally regarded as a left-wing political leader by later generations!Helena also didn't know which plane or which country's left-wing standard was in line with President Roosevelt's use of the state machinery to help capital owners complete the great cause of robbing the poor and helping the rich.So to evaluate the essence of a political figure, don't look at what he said, but look at what he did, and what effect it can bring about.

In fact, among the many policies of President Roosevelt, the only one that has substantial benefits for the working class is the construction of large-scale projects with labor relief, but this is just something that even the emperors of feudal dynasties would do, and this It was still what President Roosevelt's predecessor, President Hoover, was already doing. During Hoover's term of office, he had expanded public finance expenditure sixfold. President Roosevelt just didn't reverse President Hoover's policy.

Although Helena didn't have much affection for President Roosevelt, in view of the face of the vain money, Helena still wanted to thank the president who robbed the poor and gave to the rich. After all, under Helena's operation, President Roosevelt's economic policy was It has greatly promoted the expansion of German assets in the United States.From this point of view, President Roosevelt is indeed the savior of the city, but what he saved was the city of the rich Americans, and of course the city of the Germans.

Chapter 212 Debt Cleansing

"If a prophet told me two years ago that I would worry about the imminent labor shortage, I would think that person was either a liar or a lunatic." Hitler expressed some emotion to the visiting Helena. He said that he had just learned from the report of Schacht, the head of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, that as a large number of unemployed people are absorbed by the jobs created by the government, Germany will basically achieve full employment by the end of this year, and there may even be a labor force next year. Insufficient problem.

"This is also expected, Your Excellency the Führer." Helena was not surprised that there was a labor shortage in Germany. After all, after the economic recovery in Germany on the previous plane, there was also a relatively serious labor shortage problem.However, due to the faster recovery of the German economy in this plane, the time of the phenomenon has been brought forward from 1938 to next year.It's a sweet annoyance to say that while other capitalist countries face severe worker unemployment, Germany is creating so many new jobs that it's running out of workers.

However, although Germany's industrial output value has exceeded the highest level in history, and the phenomenon of mass unemployment of workers is about to disappear, this does not mean that the German economy can now be declared cured.In Helena's eyes, the real secret to the rapid recovery of the German economy can be summed up in two: the first is the short circuit of the currency, and the second is the cleansing of debts.

The first currency short circuit is to bypass the traditional trading medium of currency, directly combine redundant labor and production materials, and complete the realization of commodity value through methods such as expanding government procurement and compulsory consumption within a limited time. Shah Tet's Mayfly notes and Helena's labor notes are for this purpose.

This is equivalent to the fact that the power distribution box in the workshop is broken, and it cannot be repaired for a while. In order to prevent the factory from shutting down and workers losing their jobs, Helena had to connect a wire directly from the outside wire to the machine. In any case, the national industrial machinery must be turned on first. As for the distribution box of the currency system, we can slowly repair it.

As for the second debt cleansing, in fact, it is to forcibly dissolve the debt relationship, so as to reduce the overall leverage ratio of the whole society.

For example, an industrial enterprise expanded its production with a bank loan before the economic crisis. As a result, the economic crisis caused the poor sales of its products and the loan could not be repaid.If the normal logic of the capitalist market economy continues, the only possible result is the bankruptcy of enterprises and the unemployment of workers.However, if the lending companies go bankrupt, the bank's loans will not be recovered.Only collateral such as machine workshops can be taken back.

However, these collaterals simply cannot be sold at a high price during the economic crisis, so the bank's own cash flow is also in crisis.In order to protect themselves, the banks had to tighten their lending on a large scale, and more companies that had relied on the bank's loan rescue were also forced to death, so the bank had more loans that could not be recovered.In this way, more and more unemployed workers, more and more bankrupt enterprises, and eventually the banks themselves could not escape.The entire economy spiraled into an abyss like this.

In every crisis, the United States has helped Wall Street unleverage by printing U.S. dollars to buy treasury bonds, but printing U.S. dollars itself means debt expansion.Therefore, the US approach only transfers the leverage pressure from Wall Street to ordinary taxpayers, and cannot really reduce the total leverage ratio of the whole society. Therefore, the debt bomb that detonated the crisis has not actually been dismantled.

The Germans' means of unleveraging are much simpler and cruder in comparison.The Nazi government directly announced that the country's debts would stop continuing to be paid off, and then let the debtors and creditors share the losses in proportion after negotiating.It was through this method of cutting the mess with a sharp knife that Germany successfully lifted the lever shackles around the neck of the economy, which is equivalent to kicking over the chaotic card table in the capital market, and then calling everyone to change the table to shuffle the cards, and we start again. come again.

In Helena's view, in such an extreme situation as the Great Depression, whether it is to wait for the market economy to adjust itself or rely on debt currency floods to wash away debts, it is difficult to achieve the goal of economic recovery.The former is like waiting for a rabbit, while the latter is like fighting a fire with a salary. On the contrary, relying on the coercive power of the government to directly dissolve the debt relationship and re-allocate social resources can achieve immediate results, as in Nazi Germany in history.

Here is a digression. When later generations of experts and scholars compare the various economic phenomena of the Republic and the United States, they often unconsciously forget an obvious fact: when the total leverage ratio of society is so high that it seriously threatens social stability, the Republic The government can rely on administrative coercion to directly dissolve the debt relationship, but the US government does not have such ability. Behind the complicated debt relationship is the interests of capital owners. In protecting employment and asset prices, the US government will inevitably choose the latter. By.

Some people may ask here, why can Germany directly cancel the debt relationship?Helena said that Germany at this time was not yet a capitalist country with financial monopoly.The government's compulsory debt cleansing is beneficial to industrial capitalists, Junker landlords, and the urban petty bourgeoisie.The combined power of these parties has far surpassed the financial bourgeoisie whose interests have been damaged to a certain extent during the debt cleansing process.

Especially the Junker landlord class, because the feudal farms did not meet the needs of large-scale agricultural production and the impact of the economic crisis, before the Nazi Party came to power, the Junker landlords had nearly 10 billion marks in loan interest payments each year, and many Junker landlords On the verge of bankruptcy, this is one of the reasons why Helena was able to complete the reform of rural land intensification relatively smoothly.

Knowing that Mustache is planning to clean up the debts to reduce their burden, the Junker landlords all expressed their support for this policy, including Helena's father, General Sekt, although he was concerned that Helena would not discuss with him. It is quite a criticism to exchange the family's ancestral manor for a pile of stocks.As for whether the few financial bourgeoisie whose interests have been damaged will jump because of this, the Junker landlords supported by the government said that regardless of whether the creditors are satisfied or not, the guns in the hands of the soldiers are willing to support the government.

Although in the eyes of many orthodox economists, most of these anti-crisis measures taken by Germany are wild ways that cannot be considered elegant, so that they have caused a lot of controversy, but these seem rustic and even a bit rustic Brutal policies are immediately effective.According to Helena's own words: "No matter what I say, I caught five mice (referring to expanding credit scale, public works construction, reducing unemployment, stimulating commodity consumption, reducing corporate tax burden), and they talked It took a long time, but not a single mouse was caught."

Chapter 213 Four Paths

"His Excellency, if you want to alleviate the labor shortage problem facing Germany, you can try the following four paths: the first path is to increase the number of working-age population, the second path is to increase the labor force participation rate, and the third path is to increase labor force Productivity, the fourth path is to increase the average labor time." Helena easily stretched out four fingers and said.As early as when she helped the German government plan anti-crisis measures, the shortage of labor force in Germany was already expected by Helena.

"Let's talk about increasing the number of working-age population first. If you want to increase the number of working-age population, you can only increase the birth rate of the country or introduce immigrants from abroad. I know that the country is currently adopting a policy of encouraging births, and the effect is quite remarkable, but these The newly-increased birth population is still a baby, and it will take many years to grow up before they can go to work. For our imminent labor shortage problem, it can be said that the long-distance water is hard to quench our thirst. Therefore, if we want to increase the working-age population in the short term, we can only choose Bring in ready-made human resources from other countries."

Helena went on to say: "Germany's domestic labor supply is turning from a surplus to a shortage, and the large-scale unemployment problem in other industrial countries cannot be effectively solved in the short term, which puts Germany in a very favorable position in attracting international immigrants. In fact, the government only needs to lower the entry threshold for immigrants in a targeted manner, and a large number of international immigrants will scramble to fill the gap in our labor force, so we also have the conditions to carry out the necessary screening work on these potential immigrants.”

"There are only about 6800 million people in our country now, but there are still a considerable number of Germans scattered overseas. If we can attract some overseas Germans to return, it will probably be of great help to enrich our country's labor supply." Helena I have done a lot of homework in research: "Among these overseas Germans, the number of Germans in the United States is the largest. According to the survey data, about 17% of the total population of the United States are Germans, and the total number of these people exceeds 3000. They have a relatively high average education level, and many of them are skilled workers and engineers, so they are very ideal candidates for introduction.”

Seeing Mustache’s expression of approval, Helena continued: “In fact, attracting the return of the German population in the United States, in addition to expanding the labor supply, has a potential benefit. We can use the US dollar assets held by the returning Germans to Settle foreign exchange to obtain foreign exchange reserves that can only be obtained through foreign trade. If the German population in the United States wants to return to live in Germany, they always need to convert their dollar assets into marks.”

"Let's talk about increasing the labor force participation rate. Our country has actually done a good job in this regard." Helena didn't talk too much about attracting immigrants, and quickly moved on to the next question: "Now the vast majority of adults in our country Men have jobs, so there is still some potential to expand women's employment, but the proportion of female employees in our enterprises has accounted for nearly 40%, which is already a fairly high employment rate for women in industrialized countries."

Due to Helena's efforts to prevent it, Nazi Germany on this plane did not adopt the policy of stuffing women back into the family in order to reduce the apparent unemployment rate.Therefore, the proportion of women in the employed population did not decrease from 1933% in 37 to 1937% in 33 as in history.

Historically, Nazi Germany later discovered that it was easy to bring working women back to their homes, but it was more difficult to bring housewives back to work. After the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Germany's labor shortage problem became more and more serious, but the employment rate of women only increased slightly to 33%, and did not return to the high level in 1933.

“Therefore, we don’t need to make too many policy adjustments in terms of increasing the labor force participation rate. We just need to continue to adhere to the principle of social assistance that those who don’t work don’t get food, except for those who are really unable to work, and further encourage women to go Just get a job." Helena said helplessly, spreading her hands, and Germany really didn't have much potential to tap in this way, so she didn't give any new suggestions, and Hitler also expressed his understanding.

"The third path is to improve labor productivity. Now Germany's labor productivity is not low among industrial countries, but I think there is still room for improvement. From the current point of view, there are three main driving forces driving the increase of labor productivity in Germany. The first The first is that my country's technological progress has been rapid in recent years. The second is that the large-scale renewal of my country's fixed capital is still ongoing. The third is that the process of agricultural intensification is in full swing. , shifted to industrial and service sectors with higher average labor productivity."

"Corresponding to the above three driving forces, the efforts to further improve my country's labor productivity should also focus on three points: the first is to vigorously promote the progress of science and technology, and the second is to strive to help production enterprises complete the renewal of fixed capital. The third and most important point is to speed up the intensification of agriculture and improve the production efficiency of the agricultural sector, thereby guiding more rural surplus labor to flow to cities and to the industrial sector.”

"However, in the process of accelerating the construction of agricultural intensification, we must go out of Germany's own characteristics. We must take the construction of rural electrification as the core of improving the level of agricultural intensification, instead of "oil agriculture" in the United Kingdom and the United States regardless of national conditions. Copying it over and over will greatly increase the pressure on our country's fuel supply."

"We must make full use of the characteristics of numerous streams in the south of our country and the rich coal resources in the north to establish a distributed power system in small and medium-sized towns and towns, which will be used as part of the urban ring grid. In the short term, this may increase some construction costs and even reduce some Transmission efficiency, but it is crucial to our future food security, power security and even national defense security." Helena spoke eloquently, and Hitler listened with gusto.When Helena finally stopped talking and was about to take a break with a cup of tea, Hitler seemed to be still deep in thought.

"By the way, Miss Helena. Didn't you just say that there is a fourth path? Your factory is talking about extending the working hours of workers, right?" Hitler, who had just sorted out his thoughts, suddenly said: "This is what we I’m afraid it’s very hard to do now. If it’s just to extend the working hours of the workers without giving them enough returns, the workers will definitely not be willing. But if the entrepreneurs are required to pay more for the increased working hours of the workers As for wages, Miss Helena, you also know that entrepreneurs are still busy updating fixed capital, and I am afraid they are unwilling to spend more capital to pay workers."

"What you said just now, Head of State, is the crux of our problem. The eight-hour work system is actually a good system. Working eight hours a day is the right and obligation of workers. But if there are workers who are willing to work two more hours a day in exchange for a higher wage The country should also give them this opportunity. In fact, as long as they can get enough money, not to mention increasing the working hours of workers to [-] hours a day, or to [-] hours a day, I think some people will be willing Do it." Helena said with a smile.

"So the question now is how to give our workers the opportunity to choose to work overtime to increase their income level outside the eight-hour working system without occupying the funds used by entrepreneurs to renew fixed capital." See Small Beard nodded, and Helena further summed up the question.

In the previous plane, the average working hours in Germany in 1941 was only 49.5 hours per week, but dropped to 1943 hours per week in 49.1, and further reduced to 1944 hours per week in 48.3.That is to say, during the world war, Germany still stubbornly adhered to the eight-hour work system, and Sunday was still a holiday as usual, even after Speer presided over the so-called "general mobilization".

What is even more puzzling is that as the war becomes more and more tense, the average working hours of German workers is actually declining. This kind of weak ability to mobilize the country's labor force is simply speechless.And as the price of doing nothing to increase the working hours of domestic workers, Nazi Germany brutally squeezed millions of prisoners of war and Jews during the war. However, the super-intensive labor of prisoners of war and Jews cannot actually make up for Germany’s mobilization of its own labor force. Weakness of ability.

Therefore, Helena hopes that workers can earn extra income by working overtime. This not only has the consideration of further promoting the development of the German economy at this stage, but also has the intention of improving Germany's ability to mobilize its own labor force during the war, and even alleviates Germany's excessive and cruel oppression in the future. purpose of prisoners of war.But the biggest problem now is that capitalists are not willing to give workers a higher return for work beyond eight hours.

Chapter 214 Capital Increase and Share Expansion

"I have a bold idea, Your Excellency the Führer." Helena lightly sipped her tea and moistened her throat. Since she was often invited to the Führer's Palace for consultation, and each conversation usually lasted several hours, she Huzi specially prepared a set of exquisite tea sets imported from China for Helena in his office, which made Helena who came from time travel feel kind.

"Now the vast majority of workers in our country have joined the labor front organization, which is equivalent to putting most of the country's labor force into the reservoir controlled by the government. And it is the wealth created by the labor of these workers, It is driving the operation of the entire German industrial machine." Helena put down her cup and said without haste.

Since the establishment of the Labor Front in May 1933, the Nazi government has gradually banned other workers' organizations, eventually turning this organization into the only legal workers' organization in Germany.Since the labor front of this plane holds the power to issue labor vouchers on behalf of the government, the speed of organizational expansion is even faster than that of the previous plane.

Although joining the Labor Front requires paying 1.5% of wage income as a membership fee, since the Nazi Party does not allow companies to dismiss members of the Labor Front or withhold their salaries at will, workers are of course not allowed to strike casually or demand a salary increase.As long as you join the labor front, you can avoid the threat of unemployment. Even if the company goes bankrupt, you can still receive labor vouchers by participating in public works.Therefore, the workers' enthusiasm for joining the union is still quite high, and now most workers in Germany have become members of the Labor Front.

"Although as far as each specific worker is concerned, their labor capacity is different, but because our government has actually mastered the supply side of the labor market. Therefore, we can easily abstract the labor of workers , and then use the medium of the labor front to standardize the labor of workers and convert it into assets that can be traded in the capital market." When it came to the key point, Helena consciously slowed down her speech in order to pronounce the words more clearly .

"This process is a bit like the land rent mark issued by Schacht's department back then, isn't it?" Although Mustache has no professional economics training, it has to be said that this guy's economic intuition is still very keen.When Helena mentioned it a little bit, Mustache immediately thought of Schacht's new currency called "Ground Rent Mark" issued by the country's land rent as collateral to combat hyperinflation when he was the director of the National Bank in 1923.

"Your Excellency the Head of State is right!" Helena secretly gave Mustache a thumbs up in her heart: "Although each piece of land is affected by factors such as irrigation conditions, fertility level, and flatness, the actual rent is different. But as long as Putting these rents in a big basket has become a fairly reliable standardized asset, and you can even issue currency based on it! Now that most of the labor force in the country is in the basket of the labor front, we can also turn it into a standardized assets."

Seeing the clear expression on the mustache, Helena went on to say: "Currently, the standard working hours for workers in our country is six days a week, eight hours a day. If we let workers still work six days a week, but every day By working two hours of overtime on a working day, the weekly working hours of workers have been extended by 25%. We can use these extra labor hours as capital to make large-scale investments in enterprises across the country.”

"Stop for a moment, Miss Helena." Hitler, who had been listening attentively, suddenly raised his right hand, gestured for Helena to pause the narration, and then asked word by word: "Miss Helena just said Workers’ overtime hours as capital to make large-scale investments in businesses across the country?”

"That's right! That's it!" Helena tapped her finger on the table and answered very simply: "We want to extend the working hours of the workers, but this time, instead of letting the bosses spend money to buy the overtime hours of the workers, we let the workers All workers who join the labor front use their future overtime hours as capital, which in turn invests in their bosses' businesses!"

"The specific measure is to let the labor front increase the capital and share of all companies that are willing to accept investment. All companies that accept the share expansion will not need to pay workers any overtime wages for a period of time in the future. Workers can work two more hours a day. hours, which means that the enterprise can buy ten hours of labor for workers in the future with the original eight hours of wages per day."