Chapter 90: Industrial Preparations Before Building Tanks
That evening’s celebratory banquet ended with host and guests thoroughly pleased.
Before the banquet dispersed, Lelouch also took the opportunity to briefly mention the distribution of spoils from the previous campaign, because in the days after the war ended, his confidant Captain Klose had already helped him dispose of some of the spoils, converting them into cash, so a portion could now be distributed—
Of course, not all matters can be discussed in front of all colleagues. Some things can be said openly, while others require one-on-one private chats.
But in any case, the final outcome was good. All colleagues and subordinates were very satisfied with Lelouch’s reward distribution plan.
They had earned merits, promotions in military rank and position were possible, winning the battle brought substantial captures that could be shared as cash—where else could one find such a good officer.
And Lelouch’s final distribution principle was this: all tobacco, alcohol, tea, coffee, and other luxury consumables like cured meat and canned meat, he took them all out and distributed them to all soldiers, not keeping any extra for himself.
Officers got at most a few extra boxes of cigars or fine wines, but everything else was shared equally with the soldiers.
The portions he couldn’t use himself, Captain Klose had helped find local Frankish businessmen to sell in the past few days. In the end, various luxury goods sold totaled over 4,000 tons, meat products 13,000 tons. Altogether, they fetched 52 million marks.
This money was used to give combat allowances of 300~500 marks per participation to soldiers who took part in the Dunkirk airborne drop, reception, and defense operations, as well as those in the subsequent Ypres decapitation strike—nearly 6 million marks were spent（ for those who participated in multiple operations, it was doubled）
Wounded soldiers generally received additional nutritional subsidies of 800-2,000 marks, fallen soldiers got at least 4,000 marks, and flamethrower soldiers and paratroopers started at double that.
So including allowances, compensation, and pensions, a total of over 16 million was spent.
Of the remaining money, Lelouch also allocated over 10 million marks to establish a wounded soldiers’ medical assurance foundation, to provide subsidies for patients suffering aftereffects or side effects from experimental wound medicines like sulfonamide, because up to now, the pharmaceutical plant he cooperated on with IG Farben had not yet generated enough profit to cover this expense.
This proposal also received unanimous approval from all officers, who felt that Officer Lelouch truly cared for the soldiers and that this was the right thing to do—even if it meant taking a smaller share of the money themselves.
The remaining half of the money, Lelouch distributed millions of marks to all his confidant officers and colleagues; those close field grade officers each pocketed hundreds of thousands of marks. Even familiar captains got over 100,000 marks, enough for them to buy property back home and let their families live well. Only then could they serve the country wholeheartedly without worries, focusing on the war.
He himself ultimately kept 12 million marks on the books, preparing to invest in industry later for military industry layout. He also spent some small money to acquire a batch of factories and warehouses in Dunkirk City while wartime real estate prices were extremely low.
He still had 100,000 tons of grain, 20,000 tons of white sugar, 10,000 tons of cable, and thousands of tons of cloth and rubber unsold. The value of these was at least tens of millions of marks; when dealt with later, he would share a small portion with his comrades, though the specific accounts would not be known to others.
As for other weapons and ammunition, Lelouch turned them all over to superiors for handling, to keep them quiet. On the money side, he also allocated at least millions of marks to placate higher-ups.
Back when he first arrived in this world and finished the first campaign, returning home to handle military supplies, the Duke had only given him a few tens of thousands of marks in activity funds, plus a dedicated car and airplane.
Later, after the Stenford campaign and the second return to the rear, thanks to the captures at Stenford Train Station, he suddenly had millions of marks, which allowed him to partner with IG Farben on a subsidiary pharmaceutical plant.
Now, swallowing up those black market goods in Dunkirk Port meant at least another tenfold expansion. It was just a pity such great opportunities wouldn’t come again—after all, it’s not often one finds an enemy army of hundreds of thousands to encircle and annihilate, devouring all their military supplies.
Even if the Eastern Front later achieved even larger annihilation battles, given the Lusha Army’s peerless misery among great powers, there probably wouldn’t be much profit to squeeze out.
Among all enemy nations currently, only Britannia was the richest, and only the Britannia Army had the best treatment and assurance.
……
After temporarily settling the liquidation and distribution of money, Lelouch couldn’t help but start pondering which industries to invest in and what military industry layout to pursue.
He was about to head to the Eastern Front soon, with time and resources becoming more abundant, so it was about time to put primitive armored weapon research and development on the agenda.
He still remembered that historically, Britannians first used tanks during the 1916 Somme campaign—that historical node was too famous, entering service in August and seeing battle in September; he couldn’t forget it even if he tried.
However, before tanks officially entered service, Britannia had spent at least a year on research and validation. The earliest failed prototype seemed to have been built by late 1915.
So working backward, if he wanted to deploy tanks into combat more than half a year ahead of the British Army and seize the first-mover advantage.
Then he needed to start a tank research institute around this summer. Research and trial production simultaneously, avoiding some detours, and ideally have real tanks ready by the autumn-winter offensive.
Lelouch roughly knew what future tanks should look like; with his guidance to reduce pointless trial and error, 2~3 months for a prototype, 4~5 months for break-in and finalization, over half a year for the first batch off the line—that was a reasonable project cycle.
After setting this main goal, Lelouch naturally worked backward from the end requirements to see what he needed to solve.
For the tank’s engine, he could directly use a tractor engine or something else—he couldn’t handle that himself, so buy ready-made ones. After sorting through existing resources, Lelouch decided the first tank would use BMW Company’s engine; in a few days, he’d instruct the engineers with power specs and have them handle it.
BMW currently had substantial share capital injected by the Baria Royal Family, so their cooperation with Baria Faction military industry was very high.
With the engine sorted, the weapons system could wait for now—those had long development cycles too, so use whatever was available later. Anyway, the earliest tanks just had a few machine guns; historically, the Britannians’ earliest “Mark 1” mounted a 6-pounder gun, but it performed poorly, impossible to aim properly.
Other shorter-cycle developments, like the vehicle’s mechanical structure, tracks, road wheels, and even suspension（ the earliest tanks could do without suspension, just rigid connections, though it would be a hard ride）, all had to be handled by Lelouch himself.
Because nothing like these existed in the previous world; he couldn’t just take a tractor’s chassis and tracks directly—still needed some design optimization.
Finally, for the tank’s three key elements, the protection part—armor—he could also handle himself, at least making surface carburized hardened armor, not plain homogeneous structural steel, which would save greatly on steel plate thickness and weight at the same protection level.
There were plenty of companies making armor now, Krupp and others were very strong, but they made it for warships.
Yet Germania still had no proper destroyer force—Germania’s current so-called destroyers only had 88 mm guns; in Britain, they’d just be large torpedo boats, not even considering armor protection, using plain shipbuilding structural steel on the surface.
This led to Krupp’s ship armor being at least for cruisers; repurposed for early tanks, it’d be too thick.
Lelouch needed another way to get lighter, thinner carburized armor plates.
Thinking of all the problems to handle, Lelouch felt this setup was quite tiring.
Unless he had the Duke step in to directly commission a company for research, letting them master tank technology while he just contributed ideas—then maybe he could catch up.
But he wasn’t willing to let tank technology ownership slip from his hands—not purely for money, but to prevent leaks and enable ongoing improvements. If the technology fell to others, as long as the current version wasn’t obviously obsolete and still profitable, engineers and managers would lack motivation to improve, prone to slacking.
Many of Lelouch’s advanced ideas wouldn’t be realized or implemented in time.
“What to do? I have no vehicle or tank manufacturing industrial enterprises on hand. Just throwing money at it and asking friendly companies for people, equipment, and preliminary tech— they might not cooperate fully. Even if I offer 10 million marks to partner with Krupp, would Krupp wholeheartedly open a new factory with me?
We still need mutual needs; I provide some tech that makes Krupp envious, then exchange, to make things long-term and activate the setup.”
Lelouch pondered deeply alone in his office for a long time, reviewing lots of industry data and technical materials, finally reaching this conclusion.
After repeated deliberation, he increasingly felt this idea was the most reliable.
He too needed to tackle and master a core technical point, making Krupp dependent on him technically too, then mutual tech exchange—his one killer move would set up the whole bureau.
Best if what he mastered was useful not just for tanks at Krupp, but also for warships and cannons, making exchange chips more convenient.
As long as he offered a very valuable big chip, he could trade for many small miscellaneous ones; during development, for any small issues, he could call Krupp to send engineers or assign them under him.
But what exactly should he tackle?
……
Lelouch thought for a whole evening, coming up with many wild ideas and discarding them one by one.
Finally unable to decide, in the dead of night he left the garrison, wandered around the Dunkirk Port Area, blowing sea wind to clear his mind.
Suddenly, seeing several tugboats with large cranes and airbag groups in the port area under construction, trying to salvage equipment from a scuttled ship, Lelouch’s eyes lit up.
He was currently the occupation forces commander of the port area, of course with authority over all matters, so he immediately called over a patrolling officer to ask who was working.
Soon, a construction side manager was brought over, nodding and bowing, offering a cigarette and greetings: “Officer, we are from Krupp Company, commissioned by the Foreign Ministry and Navy to salvage the Ugly Country turret from the shallow-water heavy cannon ship scuttled by the Britannians earlier.
The Navy hopes we study the Ugly Country’s 14-inch naval gun; the Foreign Ministry hopes we help seize ironclad proof of Bethlehem Steel Company violating the Neutrality Law. Here are our documents…”
Lelouch glanced at the distant sunken warship and immediately remembered: weren’t these the “Admiral Farragut” and “Stonewall Jackson” pinned in their berths and precisely killed by 140 Coastal Defense Guns right after the airborne Dunkirk Fortress!
The earlier “Grant” and “Robert Lee” were sunk irregularly while trying to escape the port.
These two sank very elegantly, settling evenly. Now just days after the campaign, they could already be salvaged intact.
Lelouch suddenly had an idea: “These ships count as occupation forces’ spoils of war; you Krupp can have the 14-inch twin main turrets, but the documents don’t say the warship wreckage is yours too. We worked hard to sink them.”
The responsible engineer and project manager personnel exchanged glances, stunned for a moment before asking: “If we salvage the hulls, how should they be disposed of?”
Lelouch thought: “Push them to an empty shallow beach nearby and beach them.”
The engineer and project manager hesitated, seemingly calculating the extra workload and budget from towing the wreckage aside with tugboats.
But Lelouch’s next casual remark dispelled their concerns on that front.
“You Krupp are too unkind; Mister Gustav even invited me to dinner—the railway gun project was mine for him. Salvaging on my turf without a heads-up.”
Hearing this young colonel was the big boss Gustav’s guest and major client, the Krupp people immediately showed respect.
They naturally thought next: how could someone this young as a colonel be ordinary?
The engineers immediately became deferential, handing over business cards and saying flattering things.
Lelouch didn’t want to push them away, so he casually took a few business cards.
He saw one reading “Karl Heilong,” another “William Rochlin,” and faintly frowned, feeling vaguely familiar.
As mentioned before, Lelouch was an electrical engineering automation major before transmigrating, also a military enthusiast fond of history.
But these two names weren’t from history books; rather, he had some impression from professional textbooks, just couldn’t recall immediately.
While recalling, Lelouch chatted casually: “What do you handle specifically at Krupp? Research large-caliber cannons? Why else send you?”
That Rochlin engineer quickly denied: “No no no, we are just metallurgy experts, here to assist salvage: first, to check Bethlehem’s gun steel quality level; second, to assess the scrap value of the enemy’s warship steel.”
Hearing them mention “steel recycling,” Lelouch suddenly had a flash of insight and remembered.
These two were from his previous life’s electrical engineering textbooks!
In his previous life studying electrical engineering, when the teacher lectured on “impact of unbalanced loads on the grid,” he mentioned “single-phase electric furnace” as a classic negative example.
Of course, “single-phase electric furnace” metallurgy furnaces no longer existed in his previous life. It was a patent filed by a Frankish engineer in 1900, and due to its severe negative impact and waste on the grid, it saw almost no development in the first 20 years after electric furnace steelmaking appeared.
Throughout the entire Great War, even an industrial powerhouse like the Ugly Country produced only about 100,000 tons of electric furnace steel annually, and that was the peak year before war’s end.
But entering the 1920s, electric furnace steelmaking finally saw a small development boom, mainly because the 20-year patent for early single-phase furnace steelmaking expired in 1920, then two Krupp engineers proposed the more advanced “three-phase furnace” based on this “prior art.”
From then on, electric furnace steelmaking gradually spread; though production cost was still two or three times that of ordinary open-hearth or converter steelmaking, it was over half less than single-phase electric furnaces, and greatly reduced grid impact.
The textbook’s “three-phase electric furnace” inventors seemed to be precisely William Rochlin and Karl Heilong, the two Krupp engineers before him…
Recalling this, Lelouch immediately realized everything made sense.
No wonder these two volunteered to study Ugly Country peer Bethlehem’s products and check scrapped old ship steel recycling.
Because even with three-phase furnaces, electric furnace steelmaking’s energy consumption and cost were still two or three times traditional methods. But electric furnace steelmaking had two advantages:
First, the steel quality was indeed better, thoroughly removing sulfur and phosphorus—unmatched by other methods.
Second, traditional steelmaking cost little difference between iron ore or scrap; but for electric furnaces, using scrap significantly lowered energy costs!
Electric furnaces had innate advantages recycling low-impurity scrap. But in peacetime, there wasn’t much high-quality scrap; most was heavily rusted, chemically altered.
Where else in wartime to find scrap with just a few blast holes and structural damage, but still pure composition? For electric furnace steelmaking, the best raw material was physically damaged but chemically uncorroded scrap.
And now the beach near Dunkirk had become an “iron-bottom beach”!
No wonder William Rochlin and Karl Heilong wanted to inspect here for chances to apply their expertise.
Over 20 battleships（ all pre-dreadnoughts） and heaps of other ships sunk here; just this scrap was hundreds of thousands of tons, fresh high-quality shipbuilding steel that could be dragged straight from the beach.
Except nickel-chromium armor plates perhaps unsuitable for electric furnace recycling, needing separate removal. Other homogeneous steel, carburized steel, high-elasticity shipbuilding steel—all top recycling raw materials.
Historically, with Ugly Country’s industrial scale, 1918 saw under 100,000 tons annual electric furnace steel. If Lelouch built a similar small steel mill specializing in high-end premium gun steel, the wrecks here would fuel it for years.
Thinking this, Lelouch finally knew how to handle Krupp and subsequent technical cooperation.
He pocketed the two engineers’ business cards, then probed leisurely: “Doesn’t Krupp Company have interest in scrap steel recycling?”
William Rochlin paused slightly, cautiously replying: “Indeed interested, but with certain difficulties; perhaps the cost isn’t much lower than direct iron ore smelting.”
Lelouch eyed them playfully: “What if using electric furnaces? I know a bit about metallurgy; current ones impact the grid heavily. If there’s a furnace more efficiently using electricity, balancing three-phase grid load, wouldn’t that be better?”
At these words, William Rochlin and Karl Heilong’s expressions changed to awe and shock.
“Officer, you even know this? Actually… in our spare time at Krupp, we’ve pondered this too. But the Frankish prior patent expires only in 1920; improving before it expires might involve patent fee disputes.”
Lelouch laughed heartily: “Patent disputes? You’re joking? The Franks are at war with us, about to be beaten down by the Empire—still worried about protecting Frankish inventions? Just develop the new tech, keep it as trade secret, no patent filing, use directly! Who cares about that in wartime!”
Rochlin and Heilong exchanged glances, then lowered voices: “That works, but as a trade secret, if others domestically learn it or foreigners spy it, they can use it for free. We couldn’t collect patent fees on our improvements either.”
Lelouch cut them off loudly: “Fearing every wolf and tiger—what big things can you accomplish! Make the thing first, cross that bridge when you come to it! Afraid of leaks and no patent fees? Then don’t leak! Others’ factories let workers go home freely, can’t body-search tech personnel—so build a militarized management factory, directly guarded and secured by the military!
If Krupp won’t risk it, thinks improving electric furnace tech has no future, then I’ll invest. I have backing from Baria Kingdom and Duchy of Baden royal families; future occupation zone officers here will know me too—as long as you come, I can give you everything you want.
No need to worry about betraying your old master; I have good private ties with Mister Gustav—if we succeed, I’ll prioritize cooperating with Krupp on these epoch-making premium steels. I’ll handle all mediation—right now, I can invest 10 million marks for new electric furnace R&D, and later build a small-scale high-quality steel mill.”
The two technical experts were stunned by this bizarre chance encounter.
Lelouch didn’t press them; such a major decision couldn’t be made just meeting a patrolling officer on the dock.
So Lelouch politely invited them to the occupation forces headquarters.
There, they’d learn Lelouch was currently the supreme commander of Dunkirk region’s occupation forces.
Who let His Highness the Duke trust him; he devised the way to take it down, so naturally it was handed to him for temporary governance.
Everything here, even the wreckage on nearby beaches, was his to decide—no one could refuse cooperation.
Moreover, as temporary occupation forces commander, Lelouch controlled substantial actual resources, like allocating power supply to Dunkirk surrounding city clusters.
In military administration period, he could cut whichever district’s power he wanted, choke local power plants’ power coal supply. With such convenience, building a super power-hungry factory was far easier than for others.
The only concern was after he left and temporary occupation ended, the succeeding civilian governor had to be his man, to continuously protect his interests.
But that wasn’t hard; with Duke and Grand Duke of Baden support, these were trivial matters.
