Starting with the smashing of Dunkirk

Chapter 90 Industrial Preparations Before Building Tanks

The celebratory banquet that evening ended with everyone enjoying themselves.

Before the gathering ended, Lelouch took the opportunity to briefly mention the distribution of spoils from the previous battle. In the days following the war, his trusted lieutenant, Captain Crozier, had already sold off some of the spoils for him, converting them into cash, which was now available for distribution.

Of course, not everything can be discussed in front of all colleagues. Some things can be said openly, while others need to be discussed one-on-one in private.

But regardless, the final result was good. All colleagues and subordinates were very satisfied with the reward distribution plan that Lelouch proposed.

He could earn merit, receive promotions in rank and position, and even share the spoils of victory with a large sum of money. Where else could you find such a good commander?

Lelouch's final distribution principle was this: he took out all the consumables such as cigarettes, alcohol, tea, and coffee, as well as high-end daily necessities such as cured meat and canned goods, and distributed them to all the soldiers, taking nothing more for himself.

The officers might take a few extra boxes of cigars and fine wines, but they would share everything else with the soldiers.

Over the past few days, Riklose has also helped sell the surplus goods to local Frankish merchants. In the end, approximately 4000 tons of various confectionery items and 1.3 tons of meat were sold, generating a total of 5200 million marks.

This money was used to pay 300 to 500 marks in combat allowances to each soldier who participated in the Dunkirk airborne, support, and defense operations, as well as those who participated in the Ypres decapitation operation. The total cost was more than 600 million marks (the allowance was doubled for those who participated in multiple operations).

Wounded soldiers generally receive a nutritional allowance of 800-2000 marks, while soldiers killed in action receive a minimum of 4000 marks, with flamethrower soldiers and paratroopers receiving double that amount.

Therefore, the allowances, compensation, and pensions totaled more than 1600 million yuan.

With the remaining money, Lelouch used over 1000 million marks to establish a medical support fund for wounded soldiers, which was used to subsidize patients suffering from the aftereffects and side effects of experimental wound drugs such as sulfonamides. This was because, to date, the pharmaceutical factory he was cooperating with Fabon Chemicals had not generated enough profit to cover this expense.

This suggestion was unanimously approved by all the officers, who felt that Commander Lelouch truly cared about the soldiers and that this was the right thing to do. Everyone was willing to accept a smaller share of the money.

Lelouch distributed the remaining half of the money, giving millions of marks to all his trusted officers and colleagues. Those with whom he had good relationships, especially the colonels, received hundreds of thousands of marks each. Even the captains he knew well received over ten thousand marks, enough for them to buy property back home and provide a good life for their families. This way, they could focus wholeheartedly on the war effort without any worries about their own future.

He ultimately kept 1200 million marks in his books, intending to invest them in industry and develop a military-industrial complex. He also spent some money to acquire a number of factories and warehouses in Dunkirk, taking advantage of the extremely low wartime real estate prices.

He still had 10 tons of grain, 2 tons of sugar, 1 tons of cables, and several thousand tons of cloth and rubber that he hadn't sold. These items were worth at least tens of millions of marks. He would share a small portion of the proceeds with his comrades when they were disposed of, but the specific accounts were unknown to others.

As for other weapons and ammunition, Lelouch handed them over to his superiors to handle, thus silencing any dissent. He also allocated at least several million marks to bribe his superiors.

Back when he first came into this world, fought his first battle, and returned home to handle military supplies, the Duke only gave him tens of thousands of marks for operating expenses, as well as a car and a plane.

After the Battle of Stenford, when they returned to the rear for the second time, thanks to the spoils from the Stenford railway station, they suddenly had several million marks, which enabled them to have the money to partner with Fabien Chemicals to establish a subsidiary pharmaceutical factory.

Now that they've taken over those smuggled goods from Dunkirk, their wealth has increased at least tenfold. It's just a pity that such a good opportunity is hard to come by again; after all, it's not often that you can find an enemy army of hundreds of thousands to surround and annihilate them, and swallow all their military supplies.

Even if a greater annihilation battle is fought on the Eastern Front in the future, given the current miserable state of the Rusa army, which is unparalleled among the great powers, it is estimated that they will not be able to extract much profit.

Of all the enemy nations, only Bretonnia is the wealthiest, and only the Bretonnia army enjoys the best treatment and security.

……

After temporarily settling the issues of monetization and profit distribution, Lelouch couldn't help but start thinking about which industries to invest in and what kind of military industrial development to undertake.

We're about to head to the Eastern Front, and with more time and resources available, it's almost time to put the development of primitive armored weapons on the agenda.

He also recalled that the Britannians first used tanks during the Battle of the Somme in 1916, a historical moment so famous that they entered service in August and went to the battlefield in September—a moment he could never forget.

However, Britannia spent at least a year developing and testing the tank before it officially entered service. The earliest failed prototype appears to have been built by the end of 1915.

Therefore, working backwards, I want to deploy tanks in actual combat more than six months ahead of the enemy and gain the advantage of striking first.

We should start setting up the tank research institute around this summer. We can conduct research and trial production simultaneously, avoiding unnecessary detours, and ideally, have a real tank ready for the autumn and winter offensive.

Lelouch had a general idea of ​​what the future tanks should look like. With his guidance, unnecessary trial and error were reduced. A prototype could be produced in 2-3 months, and after 4-5 months of break-in and finalization, the first batch of mass-produced vehicles could roll off the production line in just over half a year. This was roughly a reasonable project cycle.

Having set this main goal, Lelouch naturally worked backward from the ultimate need to see what he needed to solve.

The tank needs an engine, which could be a tractor engine or another type of engine, but which they couldn't handle themselves, so they decided to buy a ready-made one. After briefly reviewing the available resources, Lelouch decided that the first tank should use an engine from BMW. He would instruct the engineers in a few days to provide the required power specifications and have them work on it.

BMW currently has a large amount of equity injected by the Bajau royal family and is highly cooperative with the Bajau military industry.

With the engine in place, weapon systems weren't a priority. The development cycles for these things were also too long; they could only use whatever they had available in the future. After all, the earliest tanks only had a few machine guns. Historically, the earliest Bretonnians' "Mark 1" did have a 6-pounder cannon, but it was very ineffective, making aiming impossible.

Other aspects with shorter development cycles, such as the mechanical structure of the vehicle body, the design of structural components like tracks and road wheels, and even the suspension (earliest tanks could operate without suspension, as the rigid connection would result in a bumpy ride), all had to be handled by Lelouch himself.
Since these things didn't exist before, we couldn't just use the chassis and track structure of a tractor directly; we had to design and optimize them a bit.

Finally, regarding the protection aspect of the tank's three key elements, the armor can also be improved. At least use some surface-carburized and hardened armor instead of ordinary homogeneous structural steel. This way, the thickness and weight of the steel plates can be greatly reduced while maintaining the same level of protection.

There are many companies that manufacture armor nowadays, such as Krupp, which are very strong, but they mainly manufacture armor for warships.

Unfortunately, Demania does not yet have a regular destroyer force. Demania's so-called destroyers currently only have 88mm guns, which would only be considered large torpedo boats in the country of Blagoveshchensk. They do not consider armor protection at all, and their surfaces are simply shipbuilding structural steel.

This resulted in Krupp's ship armor being designed primarily for cruisers; it would have been too thick to be used on early tanks.

Lelouch needs to find another way to get some lighter and thinner carburized armor plates.

Thinking about all the problems that needed to be dealt with, Lelouch felt that this whole situation was quite tiring.

Unless he gets the Duke to personally commission a company to conduct the research, and the technology for the tank is ultimately controlled by someone else while he only contributes ideas, there is no chance of catching up with the schedule.

However, he was unwilling to relinquish ownership of the tank technology, not solely for financial reasons, but also to prevent leaks and ensure future improvements and iterations. If the technology falls into the hands of others, as long as the current technology is not obviously obsolete and can still be sold for profit, the engineers and managers will have less motivation to improve it and are prone to slacking off.

Many of Lelouch's forward-thinking ideas could not be realized or implemented in a timely manner.

"What should I do? I don't have any industrial enterprises that can manufacture cars or tanks. If I just throw money at it, asking other companies for personnel, equipment, and early-stage technology, they might not be cooperative enough. Even if I put up ten million marks to cooperate with Krupp, would Krupp be willing to wholeheartedly open a new factory with me?"
Both sides need to have something to offer. I can also contribute some technology that Krupp would envy, and then we can exchange them. Only in this way can we make things last and keep the situation dynamic.

Lelouch spent a long time burying himself in his office, studying a lot of industry and technical data, and finally came to this conclusion.

After careful consideration, he became increasingly convinced that this idea was the most reliable.

I also need to tackle a core technology point myself, and then make Krupp also want something from me on a technical level. Then we can exchange technologies and I can use this one trick to make a fortune and build up my business.

It's best to develop things ourselves, as Krupp will need them not only for tanks but also for warships and artillery, making it easier to use them as bargaining chips.

By offering one valuable asset, one can acquire many smaller, more trivial assets. If any minor problems arise during the research and development process, one can readily request engineers from Krupp to assist, or have them assign personnel to one's management.

But what exactly should I do?

……

Lelouch thought about it all night long, coming up with many wild ideas, which he then rejected one by one.

Finally, unable to make up his mind, he left his post late at night and went for a walk around the Dunkirk port area to clear his head with the sea breeze.

Suddenly, Lelouch's eyes lit up when he saw several tugboats equipped with large cranes and airbags working in the port area, attempting to lift equipment from a sunken ship.

He was now the commander of the occupying forces in the port area, so he naturally had the right to inquire about all matters. He immediately summoned a patrol officer to ask who was working.

Soon a manager from the construction company was brought over, bowing and offering cigarettes in greeting: "Sir, we are from Krupp Company, commissioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of the Navy to salvage the Ukrainian turrets from the shallow-draft heavy gunboat that was sunk by the Britannians in the previous war."

The Navy wants us to study the U.S. Navy's 14-inch naval guns, and the diplomatic corps wants us to help find irrefutable evidence that Bethlehem Steel violated the Neutrality Act. These are our paperwork..." Lelouch glanced at the sunken warships in the distance and immediately remembered that these were the "Admiral Farragut" and "Stonewall Jackson" that had been precisely targeted and destroyed by 140mm coastal defense guns after being airdropped into Dunkirk and stuck in their berths!

The USS Grant and USS Robert E. Lee, which came before them, were sunk while trying to escape from port, so their deaths were more irregular.

These two ships died very gracefully, sinking steadily. Only a few days after the battle ended, they are already ready for complete salvage.

Lelouch suddenly had a thought: "These ships are considered spoils of war for the occupying forces. Krupp can have the 14-inch twin-gun turrets, but the permit doesn't say that the wreckage of the warships belongs to you. We sank them with great effort."

Upon hearing this, the engineer in charge and the project supervisor exchanged bewildered glances, and after a moment of hesitation, asked, "So, if the ship is salvaged, what should we do with it?"

Lelouch thought for a moment: "Let's push it to an empty, shallow beach and let it run aground."

Engineers and project managers are still hesitant, seemingly calculating how much more work and budget they would incur by tugboats pushing the wreckage aside.

But Lelouch's casual remark later dispelled their concerns.

“You Krupp guys are really not being fair. Mr. Gustav even treated me to a meal, and I was the one who gave him the railway gun project. You took it over to my territory without even saying hello.”

When the Krupp employees heard that the young colonel before them was actually a guest and major client of the big boss Gustav, they immediately became respectful.

Then, I naturally thought: Could someone who can become a colonel at such a young age be an ordinary person?
The engineers immediately became very respectful to him, handing him their business cards and saying flattering things.

Lelouch didn't want to be aloof, so he casually accepted the business cards from a few people.

He noticed that one of the business cards read "Karl Helius" and the other "William Rossilin," and his brow furrowed slightly as he vaguely recognized the name.

As mentioned earlier, Lelouch was studying electrical engineering and automation before his time travel, and was also a history enthusiast and military fan.

But he definitely didn't see these two names in history books; he had a vague recollection of them from his professional course textbooks, but he just couldn't quite remember them right now.

As Lelouch recalled, he casually struck up a conversation: "What exactly were you responsible for at Krupp? Were you researching large-caliber artillery? Otherwise, why would we have sent you here?"

The engineer, Rossellin, quickly denied it: "No, no, no, we are just metallurgical experts. We came to assist in the salvage operation for two reasons: first, to see the quality of the gun steel produced by our American counterparts in Bethlehem, and second, to see the value of the steel recovered from the enemy's warships."

As Lelouch overheard the conversation about "steel recycling," a sudden thought flashed through his mind, and he remembered it.

He had seen these two people in his electrical engineering textbook in his previous life!

When I was studying electrical engineering in my previous life, my teacher mentioned "single-phase electric furnaces" as a negative example of impacting the power grid when talking about "the impact of unbalanced loads on the power grid".

Of course, the "single-phase electric furnace" metallurgical furnace did not exist in the previous era. It was a patent applied for by a Frankish engineer in 1900. Precisely because this technology had a great negative impact on the power grid and was very wasteful, it hardly developed in the first 20 years after the emergence of electric furnace steelmaking technology.

Throughout World War I, even an industrially powerful country like the United States only produced about 10 tons of electric arc furnace steel per year, and that was the peak production year before the end of the war.

However, in the 1920s, electric arc furnace steelmaking finally ushered in a small wave of development. This was mainly because in 1920, the 20-year patent for the early single-phase furnace steelmaking invention expired, and then two Krupp engineers proposed the more advanced "three-phase furnace" technology based on the "existing technology" of the single-phase furnace.

From then on, electric arc furnace steelmaking gradually became popular. Although the production cost was still two or three times that of ordinary open-hearth furnace and converter steelmaking, it was at least more than half that of single-phase electric arc furnaces, and it also greatly reduced the impact on the power grid.

The inventors of the "three-phase electric furnace" mentioned in textbooks seem to be William Rossilin and Karl Heinrich, the two Krupp engineers standing before us...

Upon realizing this, Lelouch immediately understood that everything made sense.

No wonder these two volunteered to come and study the products of their American counterparts in Bethlehem, and also to take a look at recycling decommissioned ships and scrap steel.

Even with the advent of three-phase furnaces, electric arc furnace steelmaking still consumes two to three times more energy and costs than traditional steelmaking methods. However, electric arc furnace steelmaking has two main advantages:
First, the steel produced is indeed of better quality, as it can completely remove sulfur and phosphorus, which is unmatched by other steelmaking methods.

Secondly, in conventional steelmaking, the cost difference between using iron ore and scrap steel is not that significant. However, in electric arc furnace steelmaking, using scrap steel can significantly reduce energy costs!
Electric arc furnaces have a natural advantage when recycling low-impurity scrap steel. However, in peacetime, there isn't much high-quality scrap steel available for recycling; most scrap steel is heavily rusted and its chemical composition has changed significantly.

Where can you find scrap steel from wartime that, apart from having a few holes and structural damage, is still very pure in composition for you to recycle? For electric arc furnace steelmaking, the best raw material is scrap steel that has only physical damage and no chemical corrosion or impurities.

Today, this beach near Dunkirk has become known as "Iron Bottom Beach"!

It's no wonder that William Rossilin and Karl Hellius wanted to come here to investigate and see if there was an opportunity to put their skills to use.

More than 20 battleships (all pre-dreadnoughts) and a large number of other ships from both sides sank here. The scrap steel from this part alone amounted to hundreds of thousands of tons, and it was high-quality shipbuilding steel that had just been sunk and could be used directly from the beach.

Except for armor plates with added nickel and chromium, which may be unsuitable for electric arc furnace recycling and need to be removed separately, other homogeneous steels, carburized steels, and high-modulus shipbuilding steels are the highest quality recycled raw materials.

Historically, even with the scale of the United States' industry, its annual production in 1918 was less than 10 tons of electric arc furnace steel. If Lelouch had built a small steel mill of the same size, specializing in high-end, high-quality gun steel, the shipwrecks here would have been enough to power him for several years.

With this in mind, Lelouch finally understood how to handle Krupp and how to cooperate with Krupp on technology in the future.

He carefully put the two engineers' business cards away, then leisurely probed, "Doesn't Krupp have any interest in scrap steel recycling?"

William Rossillin paused for a moment, then cautiously replied, "I am indeed interested, but it is also quite difficult, and the cost may not be much lower than refining directly from iron ore."

Lelouch glanced at them with amusement: "What if we used an electric furnace? I have some knowledge of metallurgy, and I've heard that current electric furnaces have a significant impact on the power grid. Would it be better if there were a furnace that could utilize electrical energy more efficiently and balance the three-phase load of the power grid?"

As soon as Lelouch said this, William Rossellin and Karl Herius's expressions changed immediately, showing a mixture of awe and astonishment.

"Sir, do you even know a little about this? Actually... when we were at Krupp, we also pondered this issue in our spare time. But the Franks' prior patents wouldn't expire until 1920. If we were to make improvements before the Franks' inventions expired, it might involve patent fee disputes."

Lelouch burst into laughter upon hearing this: "Patent disputes? Are you kidding me? The Franks are at war with us and are about to be beaten to a pulp by the Empire. You're worried about protecting the inventions of the French? As long as you can develop new technologies, just keep them completely secret as trade secrets, don't apply for patents, and use them directly, isn't that enough? Why worry about these things when there's a war!"

Rossilin and Helios exchanged glances, then lowered their voices and said, "That's certainly possible, but if it's used as a trade secret, as long as others in the country know about it, or others internationally discover the relevant technology, they can use it for free. We also won't be able to charge patent fees for our improvements."

Lelouch interrupted loudly, "If you're afraid of everything, how can you accomplish anything great! Let's get the product made first, and things will work themselves out! If you're worried about leaking secrets and not receiving patent fees, then don't leak them! In other people's factories, workers can go home freely, but technicians can't be searched. Then let's build a factory with military-style management, directly protected and kept secret by the military!"
Krupp was unwilling to take the risk, believing that improving the electric furnace technology was pointless, so I took the plunge. I have the support of the royal families of the Kingdom of Balria and the Duchy of Baden, and the future commanders of the occupied territories here will certainly be familiar with me. As long as you come here, I can give you everything you want.

You needn't worry about the infamy of betraying your former master. I have a very good personal relationship with Mr. Gustav, and if we make anything in the future, I will prioritize using these groundbreaking high-quality steels in our cooperation with Krupp. I will handle everything—I can invest ten million marks right now in the research and development of a new type of electric furnace, as well as in the future production of a small-scale, high-quality steel plant.”

The two tech gurus were also taken aback by this sudden and bizarre encounter.

Lelouch didn't rush them. How could such an important decision be made just by meeting a patrolling officer at the dock?

So Lelouch politely invited them to sit at the occupation headquarters.

Once they get there, they will find out that Lelouch is currently the supreme commander of the occupying forces in the Dunkirk region.

Since His Highness the Duke trusted him, and he was the one who managed to conquer this place, it was natural that he should be entrusted with its temporary administration.

Everything here, even the wreckage on the nearby beaches, is under his control; no one can refuse to cooperate.

Moreover, as the temporary commander of the occupying forces, Lelouch has plenty of resources at his disposal. For example, he can control the distribution of electricity supply to the cities surrounding Dunkirk.

During the military control period, he could control whichever district he wanted, and he could cut off the coal supply to the existing local power plants. With such advantages, building a super-power-consuming factory was much easier for him than for others.

The only thing to worry about is that after he leaves and the temporary occupation ends, the civil officials who take over local governance must also be Lelouch's men, capable of consistently protecting Lelouch's interests.

But this problem is not difficult. Lelouch has the support of the Duke and the Grand Duke of Baden, so these are minor issues.

(End of this chapter)