Chapter 933: The Tilt

Humanity would one day have to pay the price for its unrestrained development. In a canal in Germany’s Ruhr district, black water churned and flowed. Nearby, numerous drainage pipes discharged liquids of all colors into the canal, and the canal’s water would eventually merge into larger rivers, polluting the land for hundreds of kilometers around.

A transport ship sailed on the canal, its old captain puffing on a pipe that marked his station. No one knew why captains were so fond of pipes; it was a classic image, passed down through the ages, as fixed as the notion that a villain always wore a plaster on his face.

Germany’s industrialization was the most thorough, pulling France, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and parts of Poland along in its wake. These regions were all expanding production by any means necessary, surpassing their historical counterparts. Every company was desperately trying to produce more.

The Third Reich was like a wailing, hungry infant. It lacked everything, needed everything. It voraciously consumed all the goods produced and desperately absorbed more nutrients from the rest of the world. Rubber from Africa, oil from Romania, coal from the Ruhr, iron ingots from Norway… copper, tungsten, manganese, molybdenum, even uranium. The entire Third Reich was consuming countless resources and creating staggering pollution.

The smoke from the smelters shrouded even Berlin in smog. The towering chimneys and countless factories, while bringing Germany to near-full employment, also brought with them a world-ending catastrophe. Rivers were polluted, forests were felled, mineral deposits were plundered without restraint, and all the wealth created was sent to the front to be used for the slaughter of mankind.

On the banks of the Rhine stood the massive Rheinmetall steel company. This subsidiary, originally a munitions firm under the White Orchid Group, had been transferred to super-conglomerates like Krupp during the last feeding frenzy, becoming a leader in Germany’s metal smelting and processing industry.

Giant steel machines worked day and night, providing the most fundamental resource for Germany’s armored forces: armor! Plate after plate of armor was manufactured here, then quenched and surface-hardened—a process commonly known as carburization. After many more steps, they became the various armor plates used on the German King Tiger tank.

This specialized steel plate had a complex treatment process, requiring the use of rare metals like manganese and molybdenum during casting. This was the main reason Germany had stockpiled these metals before the war and continued to plunder them during it.

The workers toiled day and night. The unions, under the high-pressure supervision of the SS, dared not make a peep. The supply of food like canned goods and buttered bread was becoming more and more abundant. Although the workers were exhausted, their enthusiasm for work remained within an acceptable range.

The Führer had sold 500,000 cars in the occupied territories. Although these were low-quality vehicles, they were at least fulfilling his promise that every German family would have a car. And though the fuel supply was sporadic, life was still moving in a better direction.

The earlier food shortages had been alleviated with the continuous expansion of occupied territory. Margarine was still a regular on the dinner table, but the meals they had once envied were no longer an unattainable dream. The good days for the German people were coming. As for whether the people in the other occupied territories were living well, that was a problem for the Führer alone to worry about.

The irony was that the battles being fought thousands of kilometers away were being decided by these workers and engineers who had never killed a soul. The deciding factors were how many tanks they produced, how many planes, how much gasoline and diesel they refined… In modern warfare, it seemed everyone was an executioner; no one could remain untainted.

Inside a roaring factory, a technical engineer was pointing at a newly built production line. Behind him, a large group of students from all over the world were diligently taking notes on the industrial expert’s opinions. These students came from France, Belgium, and some from the distant Ukraine and Belarus. Now they were all workers of the Third Reich, destined to become the backbone of its industry in the coming wave of industrial integration.

“I’ve sent people to look at the factories over in Kiev, the provincial capital of Ukraine. You’ll need four large rolling mills, along with some precision machine tools,” the engineer said to several Ukrainian engineers who had come all this way to learn. “First, achieve mass production of qualified steel and rails. After you’ve integrated into the Reich’s industrial system, then you can seek new development.”

The problems in France were more severe. First, French artillery production had entered a new phase. The 150mm howitzer production line had been in operation for about a month, but it still couldn’t maintain stable production. This was mainly due to problems with steel allocation; after all, many things were being adjusted on the fly according to the war situation.

Just over ten days ago, the German armored forces, which had not suffered heavy losses for a long time, began to experience a gusher-like consumption. Hundreds of Panther tanks were destroyed by Germany’s opponents in every corner of the world. The Tiger tank, once rarely lost, was now frequently being taken out. Even the newly mass-produced King Tiger had already recorded over a dozen destroyed.

Such huge losses had made the frontline commanders start to worry about the tanks in their hands. The earlier clamor for large-caliber artillery had grown fainter, replaced by countless deadline-pushing letters urging the rear to provide a large number of replacement tanks.

How urgent was this demand to expand tank production? It was so urgent that General Model, the nominal commander-in-chief of the southern theater, had personally rushed back from the front to the Wolf’s Lair to meet with the staff of the German High Command and Field Marshal von Brauchitsch of the General Staff.

Guderian, who was fighting a hard battle at the front, had put forth a price that was almost a joke: his troops needed a supplement of 200 King Tiger tanks, preferably with another 100 Panthers and 300 Panther assault guns. A year ago, this amount of equipment would have been the entire arsenal of a panzer corps. Now, Guderian, with only the 1st Panzer Corps under his command, was asking for another one…

In normal times, this demand would have been cursed by all the army group commanders as “eating alone,” but at this moment, it did not cause a single ripple. Because everyone knew that what Guderian was asking for was not much at all; on the contrary, it was a very fair “conscientious demand.”

It should be known that these hundreds of tanks would not be replaced all at once. The crews had to be trained, and then the tanks had to be transported by rail to a place near the front. To be able to replace a few dozen at a time was already the result of the personnel replacement department giving their all.

This, from another perspective, reflected just how huge the losses of G Army Group at the front were. This main force of the German army, which had been world-famous since the invasion of Poland, was finally, on the battlefield that tested them the most, fighting the most difficult and cruel armored battle for Germany.

G Army Group had reached the point where, if they didn’t have enough tanks, they would make do with assault guns. If they didn’t have enough assault guns, they would make do with anti-tank guns. If they didn’t have enough anti-tank guns, they would make do with the 88mm anti-aircraft guns. And even after losing more than a third of their tanks, this army group, which had the letter “G” as its symbol, had not yet made a single request to retreat.

One thing that no one knew was that just the day before, the newly replenished SS Das Reich Division, on the position they had been ordered to defend, had lost a full half of its establishment but had not retreated a single step. When the division commander was killed, the deputy division commander took command. When the deputy division commander was killed, a regimental commander took command. In the end, the highest-ranking officer left in the entire division was a deputy regimental commander, and what he shouted into the radio was, “Send ammunition, quick!”, not “Requesting permission to withdraw.”

Therefore, the newly built French heavy artillery factory could only operate at twenty percent of its own capacity each day. The reason was that all the original steel had been requisitioned by the tank manufacturers. They had to rush to complete the production task of 400 King Tiger tanks in a short period of time.

While the Soviets were frantically mass-producing T-34s and Stalin tanks in their Chelyabinsk tank factory, the Germans were certainly not resting on their laurels. On the automated production lines, one King Tiger after another was rolling out of the workshops. The Germans were replenishing their tank losses at the front with a speed that was no less impressive.

To accelerate the production of the King Tiger, the Panzer III chassis was now only being supplied for the production of the 150mm open-topped self-propelled howitzer. The production of the Panther tank was halted, and its chassis was only being supplied for the production of the Panther assault gun. The production of the Tiger tank was completely halted, and the saved production capacity was fully diverted to the King Tiger.

In his office at the Führer’s residence in Berlin, Speer was reporting to the Führer on his industrial integration plan for the next three months. “My Führer, in the next three months, the production of the King Tiger tank will reach an unprecedented peak. We will replenish the front line with 500 King Tiger tanks.”

“I’m not concerned with how many are replaced in three months. I’m concerned with how many can be replaced for General Guderian’s G Army Group right now!” Akado said with a sigh. “Even now, to trade Panthers for the Soviet T-34s in a war of attrition, it still hurts us more.”

“Therefore, in the future, we will only mass-produce the King Tiger. The production line, Vice Chairman Krupp on that side, is already preparing,” Speer replied with full confidence. “The second phase of industrial integration, we have already successfully completed.”

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