บท 3: Chapter 82 The Spanish Campaign (1)
"Your Highness the Crown Prince."
As the first head of the Imperial Intelligence Department, Reinhard held many secret intelligence channels that were unknown to him, and at this moment he was standing in front of Wilhelm's desk, reporting the latest information. "As you expected, just yesterday, the Spanish colonial forces in Morocco and the Canary Islands launched a rebellion instigated by Franco, Emilio Mora and other generals."
"It's about time." Wilhelm couldn't help but mutter in a low voice, and the Spanish Civil War, known as the "Little World War II", broke out.
"Miss Anna, I'm going to call a military meeting." After ordering Wilhelm remembered something. "Reinhard, I remember asking you to keep an eye on the people beside Franco a few years ago, right? Any progress?"
Reinhard said respectfully. "Yes Your Highness, at that time you gave me full responsibility after giving the order, there is no need to report to you again, in fact, as early as two years ago we have successfully placed our people beside Franco, and now they are Franco's right hand man."
Wilhelm was instantly intrigued. "Oh, tell me about it?"
Reinhard reported in detail. "At the time, when I was investigating Franco's close associates, I noticed that one of them, Arias, resembled an agent of our Intelligence Service. Whether it was his demeanour or appearance, he was practically carved from the same mould. Our Intelligence Service secretly observed that Arias, trying to get as many small details as possible. In the end, our fake Arias even fooled the real Arias' mistress.
We then created a small car accident, switched Arias with our agent, tortured Arias, the guy was a softie, and soon confessed all the information he had. Together with the covert help from our Intelligence Service, the fake Arias has risen through the ranks in the past few years and has become Franco's right hand man."
Crap, there's this kind of operation? His original intention was to at most buy Franco's cronies, but he didn't expect the result to be far beyond his expectations, directly coming up with a civet, it's really too good to be true. "Since this is the case, then you guys keep up the good work, take advantage of this time to finish off Franco, so that the fake Arias can officially take the throne. However, you have to grasp the timing well, and never let people suspect that it was us who made the move, that would affect our feelings with the Spanish people."
The first impression Franco's man gave him was that he was a white-eyed wolf and an opportunist.
In the original time and space in World War II the Spain led by Franco was the wallflower. Because Spain had abundant tungsten ore resources, and tungsten ore was vital to military industry, Spain sold tungsten ore to both the Axis and the Allies and made a lot of money, until the Allies gained total superiority in the later period, only then did they stop supplying tungsten ore to Germany under the pressure of Britain and the United States.
Because Germany and Italy had supported Franco to fight the civil war, especially at the beginning when the Axis gained the overall advantage, Franco also let the Spanish soldiers put on German uniforms and took part in the Battle of Leningrad, which had 20,000 to 30,000 men, and the fighting strength was not bad, which was the famous Spanish "Blue Division". However, when the defeat of the Axis Powers became apparent, Franco recalled the "Blue Division", saying that these men were all volunteers and that the Spanish government was not responsible for their actions.
Of course, we cannot deny the contribution of Franco to the Spanish state, at least did not make his country involved in the scourge of war, and his diplomatic experience, after the end of the war, defected to the United States, laid the foundation for the economic take-off of Spain. Make their own regime became the world's longest existence of the Farsi regime, and finally achieved the peaceful transition of state power.
Nevertheless, the moustache is still this "little brother" very recognised, in 1941 on the eve of the Soviet-German war, he specially issued a decree: all foreign fighters in the service of Nazi should be considered as German citizens, and equally entitled to the right to German military pensions.
But it was the Spanish tungsten mines that concerned Janek most.
As mentioned before, Spain was selling tungsten ore to both the Axis and the Allies to make a fortune in the war. Spain is rich in tungsten ore, Britain and the United States in order to cut off the supply of tungsten ore from Spain to Germany, began to gradually buy out tungsten ore, the price of 70 U.S. dollars per tonne soared to 17,000 U.S. dollars, so that Spain made a huge profit. Britain even promised to supply Spain with food, oil and fertilisers at preferential prices in exchange for oranges, lemons and minerals.
Secretly, Britain put aside £10 million a year (the 1940 exchange rate, absolutely huge, a Joe V class battleship cost only £7,390,000) to bribe top Spanish military and political officials, as well as those officers who opposed Franco's union with Moustache. A later history professor at the University of Edinburgh in England, David Stafford, discovered this while researching Churchill's letters. By the end of 1940, he said, almost all the money had gone into the pockets of Spanish officers. General Antonio Aranda, then director of the Spanish Military Academy, got $2 million alone. Churchill argued that while this was no small sum for wartime Britain, it was well worth it to stabilise Spain.
When he had control of Spain, ostensibly have Spain declare neutrality. When Britain and the United States want to buy out Spain's tungsten mines they will ask for a roaring price and let them take gold in exchange! According to the current gold to dollar exchange ratio, a tonne of tungsten sand can be exchanged for 10 kilograms of gold!
When Britain and America find out the truth I wonder if they will make Roosevelt and Churchill angry and spit out blood?
"Understood."
"Erm, how is the production of goods in Andrew's factory going?" Last time, Reinhard reported that the imitation of the pound had been successful. And it has been taken to the Swiss bank for appraisal, and the reply was that "only 20% of the notes are counterfeit". However, Reinhard was still unsatisfied, and ordered those workers to continue to improve. After the second batch of counterfeit banknotes were made, they were sent directly to the head office of the British Empire for appraisal, and only one out of 100 counterfeit banknotes was detected by them.
"Reporting to Your Highness, production is going well. So far Andrew's factory has printed 10 tonnes of white pounds. 2 tonnes of them were taken by our intelligence department to the UK to develop intelligence officers." The so-called white pounds are watermarked on a large snow-white paper, then transferred to a copper plate to print the text, and then the image, denomination, signature, and date are printed separately. The banknotes were produced in single sheets and there was no such thing as a full-page banknote, as it is known in later times.
Counterfeiting is basically based on the watermark throughout, and only one side is printed, the other side is blank. So, the back as a grocery shopping grass counting paper, letterhead, note pads, memos of the situation is common, and even as a love letter ...
This design continued from 1860 until 1956. But there was the famous "Andrew", a large number of high quality white sterling banknotes counterfeited in Germany between 1934 and 1938. The first discovery of counterfeiting in the UK was made by a bank receptionist holding two of her own notes - both with the same serial number!
Ha! Wilhelm almost laughed out loud at the idea of producing pounds by the tonne, it seems that in the near future pounds will be no different to toilet paper.
Of course, the problem was not without, and it was not small. If Germany did manage to land in England and occupy it in the future, the danger of these fake coins would feed back to Germany.
But Wilhelm decided to ignore that for now, the most important thing was to crush and occupy Britain by any means necessary. As long as they could hold this bridgehead in Europe, it would be impossible for the US to cross the Atlantic to attack Germany, so it would be worth the cost.
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