Chapter 14 The Powerful Red Army
After the bloodbath in Petrograd in January, every time Hessman arrived at the Smolny Palace, he would find that the security here was even tighter than last time. If he wanted to go in and see the leaders of the Bolsheviks, he had to pass through one check after another. Moreover, most of the soldiers responsible for guarding the Russian rulers were not Russians.
"Is Vasily here? I am Hessman from the Russian-German Company. Comrade Lenin invited me here." Outside the gate of the Smolny Palace, Hessman got out of his Mercedes-Benz car (this car was not shipped from Germany, but was given to Hessman by Gusinsky, the purchasing manager of the Russian-German Company, a Russian antique dealer) and spoke fluent Mandarin to the soldiers on guard!
The reason why he spoke Chinese was because the people who were guarding the gate for Lenin were actually a group of Chinese people - Chinese and Latvians, who were now the main force defending the Smolny Palace. According to Hersman's observation, most of the Chinese in the Smolny Palace came from the Northeast and Shandong, with a number of about 100 people. They all fought for the Russians (the Tsarist Russian army incorporated some Chinese laborers into the combat troops as cannon fodder). The leader was a Shandong man named Huang, who was very tall and had a square face that looked very majestic. Hersman didn't know his Chinese name, but only knew that his Russian name was Vasily.
"Mr. He, you are here." The Shandong man named Vasily in Russian was on duty at the gate of the Smolny Palace. When Hersman arrived, he was talking to Spiridon, the chef of the Smolny Palace. Hersman was very impressed by this chef, not because his Russian food was delicious, but because he looked like a certain Russian emperor in later generations, and his surname was also Putin...
Hersman nodded to Chef Putin who was pulling a cart of food from a distance, and then he and Chloe passed He handed the certificate to Vasily Huang and said in Russian: "Is Comrade Lenin here?"
"The certificate is correct," Vasily Huang nodded and spoke Russian. He spoke Russian well. After returning the certificate to Hersman, he said: "Mr. Hersman, Ms. Heinsberg, please follow me. Comrade Lenin is waiting to see you."
"Okay, Chloe, let's go see Lenin." Hersman waved to Chloe who was still standing next to the car, and then the two walked quickly to Lenin's office together.
In an office on the second floor of the Smolny Palace, Lenin waved to Hersman and Chloe from behind his desk. "Ludwig, hello!" His voice sounded high-pitched and imposing, and he seemed to be in a good mood.
The dramatic changes a week ago made him a winner again. He didn't need to hand over power and be labeled a Russian traitor and be infamous for eternity - he is now a winner who can write his own history!
Trotsky, wearing a yellow-green military coat, stood up from a reclining chair, walked over to Hessman, shook hands and hugged him, and then kissed Chloe's hand. After signing the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, Trotsky devoted himself to the formation of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army.
"Ludwig, you're here just in time. I have something important to tell you." Trotsky saw Hessman and Chloe sitting down on a sofa, and said straight to the point, "Russia is facing a war, and internal enemies and external enemies are colluding. Just a few hours ago, foreign intervention forces have occupied Murmansk. It seems that they are preparing to support the ** rebellion through this port. The current situation is very dangerous."
"Is it the British and French army?" Hessman asked. He didn't know much about the history of the Soviet-Russian Civil War. He only knew that there were foreign intervention forces and that there was a Siberian intervention.
"And the US military!" Lenin said coldly, "We just want to withdraw from the war, but they want to impose war on the Russian people!"
He said this without blushing, as if it was not the Bolshevik army that dispersed the Constituent Assembly and opened fire on the streets of Petrograd to suppress the masses...
Hersman nodded and said solemnly: "That's because the social system chosen by the Bolsheviks is not tolerated by Britain and the United States! Vladimir Ilyich, Germany dominated by nationalism and Russia dominated by GCism are both enemies that Britain and the United States must eradicate. I think a larger-scale intervention is already in the works."
The larger-scale intervention, of course, refers to the "Siberian intervention". Not only will Britain and the United States send troops, but even Japan will join in and send a large number of troops to fight the Red Army.
"Well, you can imagine!" Lenin said, "Since they are going to start, they will definitely put in more effort. There may be hundreds of thousands of foreign intervention troops and millions of Communist troops! We are really facing an unprecedented crisis! For this reason, we will form an army that temporarily obeys the leadership of the Bolshevik Party-the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army!"
The Red Army that makes capitalism all over the world tremble is finally coming! But how long will the Red Army obey the leadership of the Bolsheviks? 70 years?
Hessman suppressed this question and nodded: "Vladimir Ilyich, we will defeat them! No matter how many interventionist and anti-Japanese troops there are, we can defeat them!"
He spoke with full confidence, as if to give Lenin and Trotsky a reassurance.
"But how are we going to defeat them?" Trotsky shook his head and hesitated. Although he was the chairman of the Military Revolutionary Committee, he didn't know much about military affairs.
"It's very simple!" Hessman said, "No matter how many enemies there are, the revolutionary army must be twice as many as them!"
"Twice as many?" Lenin laughed. "This is the advice of military experts! Lev Davidovich, what do you think?"
"This is impossible. We don't have that many officers, and it's hard to recruit that many people. We don't have enough weapons and equipment."
Lenin looked at Hersman again - Hersman was actually a military adviser to the Bolsheviks.
"The problem now is not whether there are officers, but whether we can pull so many people into the army. How many people are there on the Communist side now? How many people can they mobilize? If they can pull 1 million people, then we must have 3 million people! This way we can win for sure. As for officers... We can recruit officers from the Tsar or promote them from the soldiers. This is not a problem. Five years of battlefield training is more useful than ten years of military school education. Weapons and equipment are also easy to deal with. Now we are not fighting against the German army that is armed to the teeth. We are fighting against the Russian Communist army that also has no good equipment. We don't need much good equipment."
As Hersman spoke, he looked at Lenin and Trotsky. The two revolutionary leaders had expressionless faces and seemed dissatisfied with Hersman's answer. He paused and began to throw out the hard stuff.
"We still have a lot of Mosin-Nagant rifles, Japanese-made rifles and Maxim machine guns, as well as bullets (all of which were captured from the Tsarist Russian army. The Tsar lost millions of troops in a few years). All of them can be provided to you! In addition, the speed of handing over prisoners of war can be accelerated. All captured officers can be handed over to you immediately... Of course, you must also hand over 500,000 Russian Germans and the Tsar's family to us as soon as possible."
During this period, under the operation of the Russian-German Economic Promotion Company, the railway traffic from Petrograd to Riga via Pskov was not only fully restored, but also extremely busy - Major Halder (who had just been promoted) set up a transit station in Riga, where prisoners of war, weapons and equipment transported from the west and food, coal and a much smaller number of prisoners of war (German and Austrian prisoners of war) transported from the east all met here. In addition, according to the plan of the General Staff, the Gulf of Riga will also be the center of the future Baltic Principality.
Lenin and Trotsky looked at each other, and Hersman helped them solve two major problems. With the guns, ammunition and officers (captured Russian officers) provided by the Germans, the progress of organizing the Red Army can be greatly accelerated!
It’s just that the Germans insist on asking for Tsar Nicholas II, which is still a bit worrying, but it’s probably not okay not to give it to them...
"Ludwig, what if the Tsar himself doesn’t want to leave Russia?" Lenin said tentatively, "I think even the Bolsheviks can’t force the Tsar to leave, right?"
But can the Tsar be forced to die? Hersman complained in his heart, and then said seriously: "Then use a closed train to escort the Tsar’s family to Berlin! Vladimir Ilyich, this is the request of His Majesty the German Emperor, please don’t refuse. But please rest assured that Germany will not hand over Nicholas II to the Bolshevik opposition, because those people are running dogs of Britain, the United States and France, and we in Germany undoubtedly support the Bolsheviks!"
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