Chapter 213: Massive War Dividends
After finalizing the matters related to being granted a nobility title and attending the military academy to gild his resume.
Duke Rupprecht also struck while the iron was hot and, on the same day, took advantage of the victory celebration banquet to hold Lelouch’s baron enfeoffment ceremony as well.
During wartime, everything was simplified, and many cumbersome formalities were skipped where possible.
The other attending generals of the 6th Army Group, upon hearing this good news, also came over one after another to congratulate Lelouch.
“From now on, we’ll have to call you Baron Lelouch. Congratulations, congratulations.”
Lelouch also humbly responded appropriately: “No matter the level of the nobility title, it’s all in service to the Empire.”
That evening was filled with toasts and banter, which goes without saying.
……
The next morning, Lelouch slept in heavily and didn’t go to headquarters to handle official duties until 9 o’clock.
The duke had also arranged free time in advance, specifically to discuss with Lelouch the follow-up occupation plans, industrial planning, and handling of spoils of war for the Kievan Rus’ region.
The large coal mines in Donbas had been back in production for two months, and the large iron ore mine in Krivoy Rog had started repair and reconstruction from late November last year, which was now a month and a half ago.
Except for some railway facilities for transporting iron ore from the mining area that hadn’t been repaired yet, the other excavation equipment and such had all been fixed. The large iron ore mine had recovered to over one million tons of ore output per month, but most of it was piled up there after extraction, temporarily unable to be transported out.
Moreover, even if transport capacity recovered, these iron ores currently had nowhere to go, because the Nikopol steel mill dozens of kilometers to the southeast hadn’t been repaired yet.
The Nikopol steel mill is a large steel mill with an annual output of 3 million tons of steel, accounting for nearly 60% of Lusha’s national steel output of 4.2 million tons in 1913（Germania’s pre-war steel capacity was 20 million tons, Ugly Country’s was 32 million tons, making these two the global top two at the time）.
When the Lushans retreated, they completely destroyed the steel mill. After the Germania Army occupied it, they immediately brought in Krupp’s experts to assess it, concluding that fully repairing the steel mill would take nearly a year.
If building a new large steel mill instead, it would take even longer, possibly two or three years.
This speed is reasonable upon scrutiny. On Earth, after Lusha perished, the USSR built the Zaporizhzhia coal-steel complex in 4 years within a five-year plan（Except for the Dnieper River hydroelectric power station which was greatly delayed, the other supporting projects were all completed）. And the Great Eastern Nation’s first three major steel projects were built and fired up in 2 years within a five-year plan, relying on external technical support.
In this plane, if Germania builds coal-steel industry in the Kievan Rus’ region with abundant resources and without being dragged down by war, it can definitely achieve it in 2 years, because the technology is their own; Krupp’s people just need to replicate it internally, avoiding many detours that the Lushans took.
But because they are at war, supporting resources will definitely be in short supply, so calculating generously at 3 years is reasonable.
To put it bluntly, it’s like playing《Hearts of Iron 4》, where others plant civilians before the war and must switch to military industry just before war starts. But now Germania is like having fought the war for a year and a half, and suddenly needing to plant civilians, which drags out the production recovery cycle very long.
If so many resources are poured into a new steelmaking plant, and the war ends within two years, the resources spent on building the plant won’t have broken even by the war’s end.
So, facing the choice of “whether to have Krupp’s people go all-out to explode new steel mill capacity, or simply transport the iron ore and coal lacking in the homeland back,” Duke Rupprecht couldn’t help but hesitate.
He wanted to hear Lelouch’s opinion.
After assessing, Lelouch believed it was entirely necessary to explode capacity.
“Your Highness, as I always say, peace through struggle ensures peace endures. If we decide ‘since the war will end in 2 years, we don’t need to make war of attrition layouts that only break even after 2 years,’ then the enemy will calculate this vital weakness of the Empire and drag the war on indefinitely, not ending even after 2 years.
If we make the related layouts and the war ends within 2 years in the end, that doesn’t mean the decision was wrong. On the contrary, it’s because we did these things that the enemy saw they couldn’t drag us to death, forcing them to end the war within 2 years. This series of issues absolutely cannot be reversed cause and effect.
As for your concerns about construction costs and whether it will occupy armament resources in the short term, I don’t think we need to worry too much. Although in monetary terms, building a large steel mill takes two or three years to produce steel and four or five years to break even. But in reality, the proportion of raw materials costs and equipment costs in construction costs is relatively low; the bulk is labor costs.
And now we have captured 1 million Lusha prisoners of war, plus 200,000 enemy coalition prisoners of war; these 1.2 million people are idle during the winter farming off-season anyway, so since we’re feeding them, let them do some work.
We can cooperate well with the prisoners of war and the Occupied Area Affairs Department’s Minister Baden to make use of over 1 million strong laborers to vigorously develop coal and steel infrastructure. During the planting busy season, let them do farm work; after harvesting this year’s planted winter wheat next summer, let them plant short-cycle summer corn, and harvest another wave at the end of autumn.
The black soil of the Kievan Rus’ Great Plain is very fertile and can withstand short-term double-cropping of winter wheat plus summer corn in one year. Later, when fertility declines and labor is insufficient, it can be adjusted to three crops in two years as appropriate.
That is, winter wheat in year 1, summer corn in year 2, spring corn in year 3, followed by winter wheat in year 3. Thus, from winter of year 1 to winter of year 3, in 2 years, they plant 1 season of wheat and 2 seasons of corn, totaling 3 seasons of grain.
Then during farming off-seasons, transfer these captives to vigorously develop coal and steel infrastructure and repair railways; in short, don’t let them eat free rice. We can also screen these people for cooperation tendencies; for extreme Lusha ethnic interest fanatics, let them be prisoners for life and work hard until death, doing the most dangerous and heavy labor.
For those with little attachment to Lusha ethnic interests, like Cossacks or others traditionally ‘taking the Tsar’s pay and fighting for the Tsar,’ they can be gradually reformed and later absorbed into the Empire, or made citizens of a future buffer state.”
“Buffer state? You think the Empire needs to establish a buffer state in the Kievan Rus’ region in the future?” Hearing this, the duke couldn’t help but perk up, eager to know the answer.
Of course, he harbored ambitions for direct rule in his heart, though not ruled directly by him, but by the Empire.
But the duke was also aware that Lusha civilian resistance had been gradually strengthening recently, especially after the Kyiv campaign, as troops continued to advance east and north, the sense of resistance became more pronounced.
When reaching Belgorod, the situation was still manageable, with few resisters.
But upon reaching Kursk and Voronezh, Lusha ordinary civilians spontaneously started sabotaging railways, derailing trains, and probing sentries more frequently. During the battle to capture Voronezh City, losses caused by Lusha civilian resistance even exceeded those from the Lusha regular army. These incidents all occurred from late December to early January.
The duke had to admit that the Lusha nation’s will to fight and resistance spirit was still very troublesome; when they fought not for the tyrant Tsar but for themselves, the situation was completely different, and this could not be underestimated.
So Lelouch took the opportunity to candidly explain to the duke: “That’s why I initially suggested the Empire adopt a two-wing advance along the coastlines, rather than Marshal Hindenburg’s desired big pincer between Poland and Belarus.
On one hand, advancing along the coastlines, we don’t rely too much on railway logistics and can use water transport after seizing sea control. On the other hand, it’s because Lusha Empire’s coastal areas have large territories inhabited by non-core ethnic groups.
The Baltic Sea Germanians go without saying; in those places, basically no people will resist us. On the southern Kievan Rus’ side, although Kievan Rus’ and Lusha have been in union for nearly two centuries, going back two more centuries, they were originally autonomous vassals of Poland.
Especially the Cossacks here in Kievan Rus’; their status is transcendent, basically taking pay from whoever they want to fight for. When Lusha and Poland last signed a spoils-sharing treaty in the Kievan Rus’ region two hundred years ago, it was conventionally divided by the Dnieper River: west of the Dnieper River were pro-Poland Kievan Rus’ people, east were pro-Lusha Kievan Rus’ people.
So I think the best way for the Empire to stably rule and ensure no trouble on the eastern front is to use the Dnieper River as the boundary: direct rule west of the Dnieper River, and allow some ethnic groups east of the Dnieper River friendly to Germania to relocate here, while dispersing anti-Empire ethnic groups eastward.
Of course, the Donbas coal mines are very important; the Empire can require the future autonomous state east of the Dnieper River to authorize a 50- or 100-year lease of Donbas region mining rights to the Empire. Giving them 25% of the profits is enough.
The hydraulic engineering on the Dnieper River should also be constructed and operated by the Empire for profit; they can get free navigation rights, and even after large hydroelectric power stations and dams are built in the future, their ships can use the ship locks for free.
Finally, to make this new state grateful to the Empire and to accommodate their national sentiments, among the lands west of the Dnieper River, Kyiv City can exceptionally be fully assigned to the future new state（Kyiv straddles the Dnieper River, with urban areas on both east and west banks）.
This way, after the future war ends, with such a new state as a buffer, the vast territories the Empire has taken in the east can be held securely, without constant rebellions.
Based on this long-term plan, I believe the Empire’s future industrial construction in the Kievan Rus’ region, except for projects like Dnieper River hydroelectric power stations and dams that must span both banks, all other projects should be built on the west bank. Steel mills, thermal power plants, chemical industry, machinery, shipbuilding—all should be on the west bank, and this won’t significantly increase costs.
Because the large iron ore mine is on the west bank, the large coal mine on the east bank; each side has a large mine, so placing it on either is justifiable. The future coal-steel center can still be set in Krivoy Rog and Nikopol, at most extending benefits to Kherson and Mykolaiv near the downstream estuary.”
On the Earth plane, when the USSR later developed heavy industry in the Kievan Rus’ region, most was placed east of the Dnieper River, mainly between Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv.
But Lelouch had observed the local mineral resource endowments and knew placing it on either the east or west bank was scientific.
The USSR placed it on the east bank for military considerations, hoping the core heavy industrial zone would have greater strategic depth, pushed as far inland as possible. One more Dnieper River defense line would make the industrial zone safer.
Since that’s the case, now it’s Germania’s turn to build, so naturally do the opposite and place it on the west bank.
Lelouch had just told the duke so much about “possibly releasing some puppets in the future for stability” to explain the reasons for this east-west locational layout choice.
Anyone who’s played Hearts of Iron knows that after capturing new territories, direct rule alone leads to very low “resources/factory” utilization in occupied provinces; local resistance and non-cooperation cause huge losses. Better to release “puppet states/autonomous territories/colonies/commissioner jurisdictions” to reduce resistance, while also giving surrounding provinces’ resistance impulses an outlet to vent pressure, guiding with the momentum.
……
After Lelouch expounded this grand reasoning, the duke already had a concept of the Empire’s general governance approach in the Kievan Rus’ region in the future and knew how to advise on the layouts.
Of course, he couldn’t decide this; Lelouch couldn’t either; it depended on the prisoners of war and Occupied Area Affairs Department’s Minister Baden to operate and persuade the Federal Parliament and Emperor. What they could do was first reconstruct local industry and military industry according to this preliminary plan.
Because this plan involved at least over 1 million prisoners of war being forced into heavy physical construction, the duke also had to additionally consider the issue of retained grain.
He currently wasn’t short of grain, because when Kyiv and Kharkiv surrendered, the warehouses had massive amounts of grain that couldn’t be transported north in time, all forcibly collected by the Tsar’s administrative forces through exhaustive levies in the local area this autumn and just as winter began.
Unfortunately, after collection, they didn’t wait for northern transport before the Germanians struck. From this angle, the Tsar’s grain collection officials had helped Duke Rupprecht play the villain.
They had domineeringly gone everywhere to forcibly collect grain taxes, and all that ended up in the duke’s pocket.
The duke certainly wouldn’t hide it from Lelouch and said it very straightforwardly: “There’s another piece of good news: when Kyiv City surrendered, our army seized a total of 7.5 million tons of new wheat in grain warehouses in Kyiv and surrounding areas, all surplus grain taxes collected this year from the black soil great plain west of the Dnieper River.
Previously, when Kharkiv surrendered, we also seized 2.2 million tons of new grain in the warehouses, same situation. How much of these grains do you think we should report to the Empire? Don’t worry about one thing—even if we report it all, the Empire won’t take the spoils for free but will exchange for other military resources. At most, it just means no more military rations allocations to our few army groups next year.”
Without thinking, Lelouch said: “I think we should at least pocket the bulk! Anyway, it’s war spoils, hard to verify. Just say that when we took Kyiv, most of this year’s tax grain had already been transported north by Nicholas II, and no one can refute it.”
The duke: “Why? Don’t you want to exchange grain for other resources?”
Lelouch: “We must prevent the Empire from learning of the bumper grain harvest on the eastern front this year and becoming even more ambitious to expand the war. More importantly, avoid the war maniacs in the Armament Department who want to tilt all chemical resources toward military industry, completely leaving no ammonia production capacity for the domestic fertilizer industry.
This year’s domestic famine isn’t severe yet; we need to secretly stash away sufficient shares, to bring out at the most critical moment, which might save the Empire. Bringing it out too early will only let those maniacs squander it.”
