While Reinhard and Raeder were discussing the status quo of the development of the German Navy, far away in the Krem Palace in Moscow, Stalin also happened to bring up an old debt that Germany owed to the Soviet Navy.
Shaking his trademark beard, Stalin, who had passed the 14th National Congress of the Soviet Union and centralized power, held an exquisite pipe in his mouth and said: "Comrade Warevsky, I suddenly remembered a few days ago that the Germans still owe us 3
A new type of battleship. We delivered a large amount of metal resources for trade, and also provided enough iron ore to build six battleships in exchange for the cost."
As Stalin's newly appointed confidant, Walevsky accompanied Stalin to participate in the launching ceremony of the battleship "Moscow" and the battleship "Kharkov" two days ago. He naturally knew that Stalin was thinking of those three battleships at this moment.
The memory was probably awakened by the ceremony two days ago.
Even the Soviet Union, which lacked experience and relied on the blueprints provided by Germany to build aircraft carriers, has already launched the two battleships it originally planned. Germany, which has more experience and technology in this area than the Soviet Union, should not have built the three battleships ordered by the Soviet Union by now.
A battleship.
However, Warevsky did not dare to speculate on Stalin's current thoughts and how he viewed his German "friends".
Warevsky pretended to be stupid and said: "If you need me to do something, the general secretary just gives the order, and I will get it done." He got to where he is today by relying on this spirit of obedience to Stalin and his disobedience.
Get rid of the clever guesswork.
Seeing that Warevsky was unable to react flexibly, Stalin smiled and said to Warevsky warmly: "I have to talk about you, Comrade Warevsky. You need to use more brains when doing things.
Think more. There must be a reason why the Germans did not deliver our battleships. This reason is what I hope you will ask clearly."
Although Stalin seemed to be criticizing Walevsky for not using his brain, he was actually very happy to see this. In Stalin's view, if the people below were too smart, there would be challengers for his position.
.
"Understood, General Secretary." Warevsky replied, pretending to be suddenly enlightened: "I will leave as soon as possible and go to Germany to find out what happened."
"Be careful with your words then." Stalin reminded this dull but loyal subordinate: "Don't offend our German friends. We cannot terminate cooperation with them yet."
From Stalin's words, Warevsky had actually understood many meanings, but now he just pretended not to know clearly and asked Stalin, the wise and far-sighted general secretary, for detailed guidance.
Warevsky's humility and respect won the favor of Stalin, the actual dictator. The General Secretary of the Soviet Union, who had become increasingly obsessed with personality worship recently, explained to his cronies in a ostentatious manner: "Dear
Comrade Warevsky, a problem must be viewed from a comprehensive perspective. Although the Germans have not delivered battleships to us for a long time, there is nothing to blame for what they have done in other aspects. Maybe, in the case of battleships,
Yes, they did delay the progress for some reason?"
The play must be done well, but it must not be overdone. Stalin has already spoken to this point, and Warevsky naturally cannot continue to pretend to be ignorant. In that case, everyone will see that he is pretending to be stupid, and even more so
Not to mention escaping the eyes of old politicians like Stalin.
"That's what the General Secretary said." As a close confidant of Stalin, Warevsky actually knew very well what other things Stalin said. He said what he was sure of in a tentative tone: "The other things that the General Secretary said
On the one hand, it means that the Germans have designed and built the country’s main highway network for us, built a new railway network that meets high-level European standards, and have the support of tank technology. Are these aspects?”
"That's right." Regarding this confidant who was not very bright but had a good memory and had mastered a large number of documents and information recording work for him for a long time, Stalin nodded with satisfaction and said: "Thanks to the solid roads that the Germans built for us, domestic
The efficiency of material transportation between many regions has improved a lot. The European high-standard railway network connecting all the way to Berlin has simplified our transaction distance with Germany, and also promoted the development of various major regions in the country.
Transport capacity.”
Seeing Stalin's attitude towards Soviet-German cooperation, Warevsky thoughtfully took advantage of his memory and promptly reported to General Secretary Stalin: "General Secretary, the highway construction project you just mentioned has been completed so far.
We have reached 95% of the distance agreed with the German government. The railway progress is slightly behind, but it has also reached 77% of the planned progress."
"Very good, these data confirm the key points I want to mention." Stalin patted Walevsky on the shoulder with great satisfaction to show encouragement.
Under Walevsky's frightened and respectful eyes, Stalin took a puff on his pipe, blew out smoke rings and said slowly: "For so many years, we have not been able to complete all the planned projects with the help of German experts. What if
We had a falling out with the German government, which led to the withdrawal of German experts, so our road construction plan would have to be delayed even longer. If we want to get rich, we must first build roads, and we can’t afford to wait.”
"Okay, we understand what the General Secretary means." Warevsky looked stupid and assured: "I will never offend the German leader."
"That's good." Stalin took another puff of gas from his pipe and puffed out the smoke happily: "Don't worry too much. Judging from the attitude of the German head of state towards me, the German government will not be embarrassed.
Representative of the Soviet Union.”
After listening to Stalin's reassuring words, Warevsky showed a nod of approval, but secretly sighed in his heart.
The German head of state is quite capable of flattering people. He directly suggested the initial names of the three battleships in the Soviet-German cooperation construction project for the Soviet Navy. The two smaller tonnage ships were named after the great men of the Soviet Union.
Peter the Great" and "Mentor Lenin". The largest ship was naturally suggested to be called the "Stalin Leader".
Fortunately, the German head of state named Reinhard did something for Stalin that he wanted to do but was embarrassed to do. So Stalin, who did not have much power at the time, took this opportunity to accept the German suggestions and adopted this
Part naming.
Later, during the process of Stalin's centralization of power, Reinhard kept asking German representatives to come to congratulate him. Every year when Stalin passed away, the German representatives would send a lot of congratulatory gifts, including "Long Live Leader Stalin" engraved on it.
"Bilingual Golden Cane" "Nine hundred and ninety-nine bilingual congratulatory letters congratulating General Secretary Stalin of the Soviet Union on his eternal life" "One hundred exquisite pipes carved by German masters."...
If he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, Warevsky would never have believed that there were senior figures in Germany who knew how to give gifts and were good at catering to the people they wanted. If only the generals in the Soviet Union could learn one percent of this German head of state's skills
If you flatter me, you won’t be so disgusted by the General Secretary...