Chapter 509: Devil or Angel?

Akado leaned against the wall of Berlin’s most exclusive sanatorium, looking at the still-unconscious Dr. Einstein. This scientist, who had always been uncooperative, now lay quietly in his hospital bed, as if asleep, no longer troubled by the turmoil of war.

The gunshot wound to his chest had left him in a very bad state. To save his life, much of his food now had to be made into a paste and pumped into his stomach with a device. He looked much older, as if he had aged ten years in an instant.

In recent days, all sorts of bad news had come from all directions, making Akado feel that he was truly out of his depth. Rommel had fought a battle with Patton in Africa, losing nearly 200 tanks of various types. And these were not just simple tanks.

One must know that to transport this equipment to the distant North Africa, it had to be loaded onto trains right after being produced in the factory, travel all the way south to the southern ports of Italy, and then cross the Mediterranean to be delivered into the hands of the Afrika Korps. The journey required trains and ships, as well as the corresponding escort vessels. The cost of one tank, by the time it reached Africa, could become the cost of two or even three.

And for this one tank to operate, there also had to be the corresponding desert modification parts, spare parts for the tank, the engine and its matching gearbox, worn-out gears and tracks, and the corresponding maintenance technicians, as well as the fuel to get to the front. The price the German army had to pay to get one tank to the front in North Africa was immense.

And the result was that Rommel had lost these 200 painstakingly accumulated tanks in a single battle. How could it not be heartbreaking? This was not just 200 tanks, but also nearly 1,000 highly trained tank crew members. This loss was enormous for Germany.

On the other hand, a discordant note had appeared in the skies of the Eastern Front. The Soviet Air Force had begun to put a new type of fighter into service on a large scale. This fighter had appeared in the skies of various regions at almost the same time. The Air Force General Staff estimated that the Soviet Union had at least 100 of these new aircraft, which were more advanced than the improved I-16.

Although the performance of this new weapon, called the MiG-1, was still not as good as the German army’s existing Fw-190D, like the American P-40 in North Africa, it had successfully shortened the generational gap in air force equipment. This made it more costly for the German Air Force to fight for air superiority, and it also dragged on for a longer time.

Although, after a series of air strikes and counter-attacks, the German Air Force claimed to have destroyed 7,000 Soviet aircraft of various types, everyone knew that most of these planes were actually old biplanes that could not compete with the German Air Force. And the number of improved I-16s and the new MiG-1 fighters, which were actually used to fight the German Air Force, was slowly increasing.

To counter the various weapons and equipment of the German army, the Soviet Union had put the new KV-2 tank and the MiG-1 fighter into service. The United States had also put the M4 Sherman tank and the more advanced P-40 fighter into production. The war was like the best teacher, allowing all the students in the world to master and skillfully apply the various scientific technologies they had in the shortest possible time.

Akado knew in his heart that soon, the more advanced T-34 tank would appear on the Soviet battlefield. And with the help of British engineers, the American fighter planes would also become more advanced and mature. The cruelty of war made people bravely try the changes brought about by advanced technology and then use them in the war to seize the initiative and advantage.

The days of tanks fighting cavalry would become rarer and rarer in the future. More often, it would be a cruel clash of equal strengths. The number of casualties would rise sharply, and the war would be difficult to end in the short term. All of this pointed to a simple truth: the technological gap between the world and Germany was getting smaller and smaller.

It wasn’t that Germany was progressing too slowly, but that after World War II, there would be a technological bottleneck period. During this period, there would be no fundamental technological leaps until the maturation and development of the computer, when a new period of development would arrive. Unfortunately, Akado and his Germany did not have the time to wait for decades of development. They could only bite the bullet and take exploratory steps forward.

Fortunately, with Akado, a person familiar with the future, Germany only needed to bravely take its own exploratory steps, because they did not need to worry about going in the wrong direction. They would not take detours, nor would they take the long road.

However, the development of technology is a systematic and complex system. It is not that the progress of a single technology can drive the leap of the entire system. The plots of mass-producing firearms and ammunition in ancient times can only appear in novels, because in real life, if you could produce firearms with metallurgy alone, then all steel mills would be considered military-industrial enterprises.

For example, a gun barrel is made of steel. So, can an improvement in steelmaking technology improve the quality of the gun? In fact, no, because a gun barrel is not solid, so its production also involves casting technology. And after casting technology? Do you use a matchlock or a flintlock? Only then do you realize that it also involves the processing of moving parts like the trigger and the spring. And what do you get at this point? A musket that can’t even hit a person at 50 paces, because you don’t have the rifling process yet. By the time you can truly arm a musket team of the Napoleonic era, you have more or less improved the entire production technology of the ancient era.

And why did China, this ancient country of invention, gradually fall behind? The reason is that the closer one gets to modern science and technology, the more an innovation requires cross-disciplinary collaboration and progress. The invention of gunpowder could be gradually improved by continuously experimenting and improving the formula, but to develop nitroglycerin is not something that can be chanced upon by throwing ore into a furnace and refining elixirs.

Do not underestimate any branch of science and technology. These are not superficial experimental principles that can be figured out by searching on Baidu. Everyone knows that a ship with a propeller runs faster, but how many blades should the propeller have for the best effect? Why were airplanes originally made of wood and only later developed into metal? What is the advantage of a metal plane over a wooden one?

One person cannot change the technological environment, not even a Ph.D. in engineering. So a transmigrator like Akado cannot change the speed of Germany’s technological development by himself. What he can do is to let Germany take fewer detours and reach the goals that have been proven correct by later generations at the fastest speed.

He would not go and improve the Tiger tank. He just chose a simple and feasible running gear for Germany’s tanks, then simplified some of the complex designs of the German engineers, and finally turned the technologically complex Tiger into a simple and easy-to-produce alternative product. But to ask him to give guidance on how to develop and research a computer, his level was the same as most people’s—a complete layman with no foundation.

Fortunately, Germany’s technological accumulation had always been very solid, and the technical level of its workers was also world-class. Akado did not have to worry about the minor details of the craftsmanship. In this way, a transmigrator and a country that lacked guidance had a good basis for mutual cooperation. Akado did not understand the technology, but Germany had the technology. Germany had taken too many detours in its technological development, and it just so happened that Akado knew how to take a shortcut.

In other words, if a transmigrator like Akado were to be thrown into China, apart from being able to write a sensational article titled “The Eight-Year War of Resistance is About to End in Victory” to encourage everyone to grit their teeth and hold on, he probably would have no better way to change the course of the war. Who do you think could lead a country with an annual steel production of 50,000 tons to counter-kill an enemy with an annual steel production of over 6 million tons?

The strength of the German military was because the Wehrmacht used nearly a hundred million rounds of ammunition for training every year, and after the expansion of the army, it was several hundred million. Such a large amount of live-fire training had earned the German Wehrmacht its formidable reputation on the battlefield. The most elite of the German grenadiers carried about 200 rounds of ammunition per person, which was why Akado dared to boast that the German land army was invincible.

At the same time, the Chinese army was issued an average of 4 rounds of ammunition per person per year. In other words, if a Chinese soldier fired one shot in training, he would have no more ammunition for a quarter… If it were anyone, who would dare to lead such an army, where each person can only fire 4 shots a year, into battle? Was Rommel formidable? Let him try! Was Patton a badass? Let him try!

So Akado could only wait now, wait for the German industrial technology to accumulate and flourish, wait for the new industrial revolution he had carefully planned to bloom into beautiful flowers. At that time, Germany’s weapons would have a new leap, and after this leap, Germany’s war weapons would be a solid ten years ahead of its rivals, an insurmountable decade.

Akado looked at Einstein lying on the bed, his heart filled with sighs. In the original script, the golden decade after the takeoff of German industrial technology was supposed to be a decade of development led by Einstein. Germany’s nuclear industry and new materials industry, once completed, would have pushed the world into an even more brilliant stage of development.

Unfortunately, this former friend was now lying on his sickbed, relying on the nurses’ massages every day to ensure that his muscles did not rot and develop sores. This star, who should have been standing at the pinnacle of world science and technology, was now struggling even to breathe. Akado really wanted to help Einstein, to let him die peacefully, but after thinking it over and over, he ultimately could not bring himself to do it.

Einstein was not Hitler, after all. Even if he had done something to betray Akado’s friendship, his crime was not punishable by death. Every time Akado thought back to the afternoons he had spent drinking tea with Einstein and laughing as they discussed atomic knowledge, he felt that Einstein should not die at his own hands.

Why? Why have so many people left me, and why do so many people follow me, chanting my name? In the end, am I a devil, or a gift from God to the German people?

Published: 2025-08-31T02:26:14.000+00:00
Last Edited: 2025-12-05T14:56:52.000+00:00
URL: https://www.patreon.com/caleredhair/posts/mtr-c509-devil-137750579

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