bookpower Chapter 1051
Chapter 1051
Few people notice that the Mississippi River, the largest river in the United States, actually flows through the Great Lakes region.
Originally, the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes were not connected, but the United States specially dug a canal to connect the Mississippi River, which connected the Great Lakes region to the Mississippi River.
Shipping in the Great Lakes region is very developed. After connecting the Mississippi River, several northern states have an additional water transport lane. They can choose to go down the Mississippi River and go out to sea from the southern estuary, or they can choose to enter the Great Lakes region through the canal and then go out to sea from the Great Lakes region. The
Great Lakes region is originally the busiest industrial base in the United States. A large number of ships come and go every day to transport a large amount of production materials, and a large number of ships transport the produced goods away and transport them to all parts of the country and even the world.
Originally, these waterways should be extremely busy golden waterways, but because of the war, the shipping here has been greatly affected. After losing the raw material supply bases in the south, the Eagle Sauce can only mine a small part of the resources from the territory it controls. Most of the remaining resources need to be purchased from the Maple Leaf Country in the north. The
Maple Leaf Country, under the tyranny of the Third Reich, dare not do business with the Eagle Sauce blatantly. They closed some major ports for export to the Eagle Sauce, pretending that they have banned business with the Eagle Sauce.
But in fact, this is just a pretense. The Maple Leaf Country has a long border with the Eagle Sauce. It is almost impossible to block all the borders, especially since the two countries jointly manage a large part of the Great Lakes, allowing both sides to conduct smuggling transactions on the lake. This kind of transaction is almost impossible to prohibit, unless the Maple Leaf Country sends all its navy into the Great Lakes area for inspection!
At present, the battle between the Eagle Sauce and the German army has reached the most critical moment.
They are in urgent need of materials.
Therefore, the trend trade on the Great Lakes has become more and more busy.
A large number of ships are loaded with various materials, traveling between the Maple Leaf Country and the Eagle Sauce, unloading a large number of production materials needed by the Eagle Sauce factory at the dock, paying the money and delivering the goods, and leaving after the delivery and the money!
Originally, when the US dollar was still the national currency, most of these merchants were willing to accept the US dollar as the payment currency, and a small number would require the use of the pound for settlement.
After all, the pound has existed as the world’s main currency for hundreds of years, and its position in people’s hearts has long been deeply rooted.
The US dollar, as an international currency that has only risen in the past decade, is not yet accepted enough in the world, and many people are still unwilling to accept it!
However, this situation has changed dramatically after the outbreak of the war!
At first, when the war was confined to Europe, the Eagle Sauce side had not been affected by the war, but the British side had been frequently hit by the war.
In this situation, people began to doubt the value of the British pound, because once the war situation was unfavorable, the British pound might be defeated and surrendered, and the value of the British pound would definitely shrink.
Although the British pound was based on the gold standard, the British pound could be freely exchanged with gold in name, but obviously, the amount of banknotes printed by the British government would definitely be greater than the amount of gold they held, so once there was a run on the bank, the British gold would not be enough to repay!
In this context, many people sold their pounds and exchanged them for the US dollar of the British pound.
Then, the British pound was attacked and completely fell. The remaining part of the British pound’s army and government fled to South Asia. The international status of the British pound plummeted and completely withdrew from the role of world currency!
During the period when the British pound fell, the status of the British pound rose, and together with the Third Reich’s mark, it became a candidate for the new international currency!
Because the currency of the Third Reich was legal tender and not linked to gold, people’s acceptance of the mark was obviously not as high as that of the US dollar, after all, the US dollar could be exchanged for gold.
As a result, the status of the US dollar has advanced by leaps and bounds, and it has become the world’s largest international currency! However
, the good times did not last long. As the Eagle Sauce joined the war and declared war on Germany, the Eagle Sauce’s homeland was also attacked.
During the war, the performance of the US military was quite anxious. It is not an exaggeration to say that it was defeated. In this case, investors’ attitudes towards the US dollar have also changed greatly. From the initial welcome to the current rejection, merchants have begun to refuse to use the US dollar when doing business with the Eagle Sauce government and require the Eagle Sauce government to use other currencies for payment!
However, the two major universal currencies in the world were originally the British pound and the US dollar. Now both the British pound and the US dollar have fallen, and the newly emerging universal currency has become the Mark of the Third Reich. Where can the Eagle Sauce find so many Marks to use?
So they had to use gold and silver for transactions!
At any time, gold and silver are hard currencies that are very recognized and accepted by people. So when they heard that the Eagle Sauce government was willing to use gold as a settlement currency, a large number of businessmen heard the news and ran to the Great Lakes region to start smuggling trade with the Eagle Sauce government.
The gold in the hands of the Eagle Sauce government was spent as fast as running water. If they had not obtained a large amount of gold from Europe in World War I, they might not be able to sustain such a rapid consumption rate. Fortunately, the war dividends from World War I can help them hold on for a while, but if this situation continues, the gold in the hands of the Eagle Sauce government will bottom out!
Putting aside the issue of the US dollar and gold, let’s just talk about the smuggling trade in the Great Lakes region.
Chicago, the current capital of the Eagle Sauce, is on the edge of the Great Lakes. A large number of Eagle Sauce factories are gathered around Lake Erie, Lake Michigan, and Lake Huron. Benefiting from the influence of convenient water transportation, these industrial bases located on the lakeside have good conditions for the development of industry, especially some heavy industrial factories, such as steel mills, etc.!
So this place has a very famous name in later generations-the Rust Belt!
For the German army, if the smuggling trade in the Great Lakes region can be cut off, it is equivalent to cutting off the source of materials for the Eagle Sauce, indirectly closing their factories, and putting their war machine into a state of shutdown!
This can be said to be an immediate destruction of the Eagle Sauce’s war potential!
Therefore, what Manstein said about attacking the enemy and rescuing them was to find such a place, take the initiative to attack, occupy this key position, force the Eagles to leave their tortoise shells, come out to fight the Germans, and then use the German armored combat advantages to defeat the enemy in the open battlefield!