My German Empire - Chapter 44:

When Wilhelm proudly placed the 200 million pound promissory note with interest on William II’s desk, William II’s expression was very wonderful. His mouth was wide open and after a long time he asked. “how did you do it?”

Wilhelm shrugged. “This is not a difficult task. As long as you read economic history well, you will find that the economic crisis erupts every few years. It is an economic phenomenon that repeats itself in cycles. I just happened to grasp the eruption point of this crisis.” Of course, these are all nonsense. If it weren’t for the knowledge of later generations, maybe only god knew that this financial crisis would erupt so suddenly and violently.

“…” William II couldn’t help regretting it a little. If he had known about this opportunity when Wilhelm borrowed money from him, he would have taken out much more money.

“Then what will happen after this stock crisis?”

Wilhelm replied after pretending to have thought about it. “If I’m not mistaken, the current US stock crisis will evolve into a global economic crisis. This will be an inevitable disaster.”

According to the original time-space data, the number of companies that went bankrupt during the great depression is 140,000 in the United States including nearly 10,000 banks, 60,000 in Germany and 32,000 in the United Kingdom. There were more than 30 million fully unemployed workers in the capitalist world, and 40 to 45 million people were considered as half unemployed!

The economic crisis quickly spread from the United States to other industrial countries. For millions of people, life has become a struggle to eat, wear, and live. In order to safeguard their own interests, various countries have strengthened trade protection measures and means, further exacerbating the deterioration of the world economic situation, which was an important source of the outbreak of the Second World War. The Great Depression also caused serious social problems: during the Great Depression, about 2 to 4 million students dropped out of school; many people could not bear the physical and psychological pain and committed suicide; social security was deteriorating.

The most important issue was unemployment. In the United States, the total number of unemployed people had reached 8.3 million. In all cities in the United States, the poor lined up to receive food went on several blocks. In the United Kingdom, 5-7 million people were unemployed, and they had to wait in long lines in the labor market. The disaster caused by the Great Depression in the United States is unprecedented in human history. It is even worse than the so-called “three-year famine” during China’s three-year difficult period from 1959 to 1961. There was a great famine and general malnutrition throughout the United States, resulting in the abnormal death of a large number of people. The most conservative estimate is that at least 7 million people died, accounting for about 7% of the United States at the time. The Great Depression in the 1930s in the United States: Millions of people lived like beasts.

William II asked tentatively. “Then you have solutions to deal with this economic crisis?”

Wilhelm shook his head very simply. “No, unless Germany becomes a so-and-so country like the Soviet Union and changes its economic system.” The cause of the capitalist economic crisis is the contradiction between the socialization of production and the private ownership of capitalist means of production. The Soviet public ownership will not trigger such an economic crisis. The only beneficiary of this world economic crisis is the Soviet Union, because the Soviet Union did not integrate with the capitalist world economy and was not implicated in the crisis. On the contrary, it developed itself through the crisis. “And even if there is a way, I will not implement it.”

The last sentence could not help but stun William II. “Why?” Germany will be his empire in the future, isn’t it difficult for him to watch his empire fall into dire straits?

“I am also thinking about the interests of the imperial power.” After the end of the First World War, the German government was forced to switch from a monarchy to a parliamentary monarchy. Although William II has regained a lot of power little by little in the past ten years, the parliament still holds the most power.

Therefore, he has to use the opportunity of this global economic crisis to change the political system back to a dual monarchy! !

American writer John Tolan once described in a book: In Germany, hatred spread across the country like a plague; the victims of the economic crisis are targeting those lucky than them. The small shop owners who were forced to close, cursed the big department stores; the millions of unemployed people hated workers and “bosses”; tens of thousands of college graduates found their future blocked and vented their despair. The economic crisis hit almost every class. The tax burden of farmers, such as the burden of cattle, and the low prices of agricultural products, made them despise the people in the city; and the huge number of unemployed white-collar workers were jealous of the farmers,because they had crops to harvest.

Erich Karel believed that “the economic crisis has hit the lower middle class extremely severely, and gradually degraded the morality of the entire nation and destroyed its rational thinking ability”, ” For Germans, they have been educated as a nation that regards work as the purpose of life. Therefore, unemployment forces them to do nothing, which means the breakdown of morality”.

The Weimar Republic, in the original time and space, was helpless in the face of the domestic economic collapse and social turmoil after the war. They did not take effective measures to deal with the existing difficulties. During the crisis, the government promoted a policy that harmed the middle and lower classes of society and safeguarded the interests of the upper classes. The middle and lower classes lost their economic security. Their hopes of the government were completely shattered. They felt that the Weimar government did not represent their own interests, and they were the spokesperson of monopoly capital. The Weimar Republic became synonymous with social instability and “national shame.”

Although the current government is not the Weimar Republic of the original time and space, it is the same in terms of ruling incompetence. Wilhelm believes that the government will still be at a loss for the upcoming economic crisis. As long as he does something in the middle, it is not difficult to force the existing government assembly to resign collectively. When he has returned all the rights to the royal family, he will come forward to turn the tide.

After hearing Wilhelm’s plan, William II nodded and sighed. “Why didn’t Grandpa find you so talented before?”

He used to be a playboy. “Grandpa, in fact, I have always been talented, but I had an older brother and a younger brother, so I didn’t have to do anything. At that time, I wanted to learn from my father and be free. A explorer or something. Now that I am the only one left, can I stay free and do nothing? Can I let the empire go to destruction?

William II put down the file in his hand and praised Wilhelm from the bottom of his heart. “Thanks for your hard work, boy.”