Chapter 18 4. The Elevator Revolution

Let's talk about the major capitalist countries, Britain, France, the United States, Russia, Germany, and Japan. These six countries have embarked on the road of capitalist development. There are two models: one is top-down reform, and the other is bottom-up. revolution.Britain, France, and the United States are bottom-up revolutions, while Russia, Germany, and Japan are top-down reforms.You may have doubts, saying that Germany is not the way of dynastic wars?How can it be considered a reform?As long as it is led by the ruling class and led by the old ruling class, it is considered a reform.

During the American Civil War, was Lincoln the ruled class?Isn't he also the ruling class?Why is he considered a revolution?It was the plantation owner he felled, that's what he meant.When the ruling class is overthrown, it is over. To overthrow the old ruling class is revolution, and what the old ruling class leads is reform. Therefore, Britain, France and the United States are one way, and Russia, Germany and Japan are one way. First of all, let’s look at Russia, Russia’s reform in 1861. The fundamental reason for the abolition of serfdom was that it hindered the development of capitalism. The fundamental reason was this, nothing else. The problem of the market and free labor. The serfdom caused a narrow domestic market. There is a severe shortage of free labor and capitalism cannot move forward any further.The fuse was the Crimean War. This war is a bit like the Opium War in China. 300,000 Russian troops fought on the mainland, and 60,000 British and French allied troops came from afar. When they arrived in the Crimean Peninsula, more than 20,000 people were infected with cholera and lost their combat effectiveness. The number of troops actually engaged in combat may be equivalent to 1/10 of Russia's. From 1853 to 1855, after two or three years of fighting, Sevastopol fell, Admiral Nasilov was killed, and Tsar Nicholas I died in despair. The textbook said it was suicide, but it was actually a heart attack.

When I went to Russia, I asked my tour guide about the cause of Tsar Nicholas I's death. The tour guide said that you Chinese dare to talk nonsense. Orthodox Christians cannot commit suicide.Unlike our emperor, after the Opium War, his health was improved, he ate well, and lived for another 10 years.With this death, Russia's expansion into Europe was curbed.Russia is clearly aware of the gap between itself and the Western powers: the contest between sailboats and ships, and the contest between horse-drawn carriages and trains.Western countries use ships to transport troops, and you use sailboats. After they landed, they laid 8 miles of railroad tracks, transported shells and other things from the ships, and transported them to the fortress of Sevastopol, where they bombarded the fortress.Every piece of military supplies in Russia has to be transported by cart or horse-drawn cart. When it rains and the ground is muddy, the cart will be stuck in it and will not move.No matter how many people there are, it is useless if the military supplies cannot be delivered.Humans are a pile of flesh, and soldiers are armed with steel, so Russia learned from the pain, why did we lose so badly in this war?Because our economy is too backward, why are we backward?Because we had serfdom, reforms started.Tsar Alexander II was in Moscow and St. Petersburg. This Alexander II has the most statues of successive Tsars. He liberated the serfs.

The first reform in 1861 was freedom. Serfs legally became freemen. Freeman means that you are no longer attached to a certain landlord. If you want to leave the land, you can move freely.The second is the land.Not only are you free, but you can also get a piece of land from the day you are free, but you have to pay for the land and buy it at a high price. Think about it, the land allocated to farmers by the government originally belonged to the landlord. If you were a landlord and your serfs were freed, what land would you sell to him?The most time.If you don’t let him go free, he will rebel, and it’s useless to keep the land. You can get a lot of money by selling this land to him, which is very useful for the landlord.

So in Russia, why do we say that it has established a capitalist small-scale peasant economy, and farmers are bound to the land, guarding their one-acre three-point land.Of course Russia is sparsely populated, and its small peasant economy may occupy a lot of land, but it is not enough to support his family's life, so his industrial development speed is still slow, and you are tied to the land, so he cannot enter Because of this, the pace of industrial development is still relatively slow.It is enough for them to understand this truth.This is what we call Russia's reform. German unification.This is also a top-down reform, that is, the reform was completed in the form of dynastic wars.Then the unification of Germany, in addition to the factors of the domestic market, there is also a factor of international competition. If you do not have a unified domestic market, you cannot develop; you do not have the backing of a powerful country. But others.So it is two factors that make it necessary for Germany to complete the unification.The second reason is core states.The core state that completed the unification of Germany was the Kingdom of Prussia.At that time, within the territory of the German Confederation, Prussia and Austria were qualified to complete the unification, but Prussia had more advantages, saying that it had a developed economy. Later, the British said that the unification of Germany was not so much built on iron and blood. on coal and steel.Furthermore, the whole nation is martial, militaristic, and the ruling class is ambitious.The Prussians were the first Germanic peoples, who destroyed the Roman Empire by force, and then they established themselves in Central Europe. Many military nobles who lived on the banks of the Rhine River went to eastern Poland and Lithuania to establish their own territories. In the process, , Constantly fighting with the eastern peoples, including fighting with the Mongols who conquered the west, so these warriors, their military quality is very good.If you look at the nobles in Germany, there are such letters in their names, VON, translated into "Von". If you look at the names of Austrians, as long as they have VON, they must be nobles. Spain is Don, and Don Quixote is noble. During the First World War in Germany, look at the generals and marshals, everyone without VON, that VON is equivalent to FROM in English, where did I come from.So the names of Germans and nobles generally come from where I come from, and they all mean this.Otto Bismarck, Otto came to East Prussia from Bismarck.So they established the Kingdom of Prussia during their perennial battles.Some people describe it this way, saying that other countries are countries with armies, but Prussia is an army with a country. The whole of Prussia is a large barracks. There is one soldier in 28 adult men and women. This ratio is the highest around.France has one soldier in more than 70 people, Britain has more than 80 people, Russia has one soldier in 130 people, and Prussia has one soldier in 28 people.The King of Prussia, Friedrich the Great, was Hitler's most admired Fitter I. He only wore military uniforms throughout the year, and he had never been seen wearing casual clothes. Various military uniforms.Unless there are state guests, he sleeps in a tent on the lawn of the Potsdam Palace. A thin military blanket is worn all year round, no matter it is snowing heavily or the sun is scorching hot, it is just a thin military blanket. With a piece of wood, why sleep on wood?It is the posture of pulling out the army.When I was sleeping, as soon as I slackened and the posture was incorrect, the log would roll. When I woke up, the posture was incorrect and I had to pull it out again.The king practiced himself according to the standard of the captain of the guard of honor.The entire Prussian people are martial, which is very different from the weak in China.Let's look at today's men's uniforms, which have a row of buttons on the sleeves. These buttons are of no use but for decoration.It doesn't work, why not put it on top?It turned out that it was on the top. Emperor Fitley found that the soldier's cuffs were dirty during the military parade. He thought about it, you must have nothing to do with wiping your sweat, so I installed a row of shiny brass buttons on you, and you just need to wipe it again. half.Later, because of this thing, once the gun was taken off, the gun bag was hung there, which was inconvenient, and it was said to be moved to the bottom.But you see, the buttons of the uniforms of the armies of all European countries are still here today. The brass buttons are shiny and can reflect the shadows of the people, and the leather shoes can also reflect the shadows of the people. tidy.Soldiers cannot be as free and undisciplined as ordinary people, and their trouser legs can hold a hundred catties of rice.

At the heart of German reform was Bismarck, then Prime Minister of Prussia Otto von Bismarck.His policy is iron and blood policy, iron and blood means war.During World War II, if one German soldier was killed on the Eastern Front, 10 Soviet soldiers would be killed. On the Western Front, if one German soldier was killed, three Allied soldiers would be killed. So the British reporter at the time asked Marshal Montgomery, what do we have? With such a powerful material force, why is it so hard to fight Germany?Montgomery said, there is no way, we fight because the country makes us fight, and they fight because they love to fight by nature, so he will do it.We Chinese generally say that our family has been in the army for three generations. My father, Mr. Yang Laoling, me, my son, General Yang, are amazing, right?You think it’s great that our family has been in the army for three generations. You ask the Germans, how many generations have you joined the army? 25 generations.Our family has been a soldier since the Song Dynasty, 850 years of military history, so these German officers are said to be born with swords in their mouths, and every molecule in their bodies was born for fighting. Don’t you want to die when you fight these people?So you look at little Germany, unlike Japan, which always cuts its own stomach, that's boring, who are you scaring?The Germans are amazing, he really has a military history of more than 800 years.

American military officer, what did you ask him to do before enlisting in the army?postman.Ask the Germans, what did you do before joining the army?Nothing to do.The Germans are so powerful, they have the feeling of being a military officer from birth, and they are professional military officers, so his way of solving problems is very simple, just fight if he can't.Three dynastic wars, Pudan, Puao, and Pufa.The first time was when Prussia united with Austria to attack Denmark and occupied two small German states in the south of Denmark, Schleswig and Holstein. People told Austria that we were two brothers, and Austria went there foolishly. I don't want to be separated from Prussia, why do you have one for each person?Then, as soon as the Pudan War was over, Prussia immediately attacked Austria.In the war, Prussia was able to achieve such a great victory because of three inventions: the railway, the general staff and the breech gun.Passenger railway transport enabled his army to move quickly from east to west, north to south, on the land; the General Staff was the first army to establish the General Staff in the world, so its army’s combat plan was very careful; They are all front-loading guns, and the bullets have to be loaded from the muzzle. With the front-loading guns, it is impossible to shoot in a prone position. However, the Prussian army adopted breech-loading guns. They fought in Austria in one morning, and more than 4,600 people were killed in Austria. The Austrian army There is no way to hide, you have to stop when you want to reload, and as soon as you stop, Prussia will shoot.Let's look at the Napoleonic Wars. How long did it take to kill so many people?Napoleon was smart. The Italian revolution immediately withdrew from the war when he saw that it would endanger the interests of the country.Therefore, the cruelty of industrialized warfare is very obvious at once.The last time was the Franco-Prussian War.After three dynastic wars, Prussia completed the unification of the country.

The role of Germany in completing the unification is very obvious. Most importantly, it has changed the pattern of Europe and the entire world.It turns out that when it comes to the powerful and big countries in Europe, they are Britain, France, Russia and Austria. Now no one can avoid Germany. He provoked the two world wars, so he changed the pattern of state relations in Europe.In addition, a country like Germany, as a rising star, needs overseas colonies even more, and colonies are generally divided up by these old European countries, so Germany is called a problem child in Europe, often hitting other people's windows, stepping on other people's doors, provocative.In addition, it has a militaristic tradition, is brave and good at fighting, and knows how to fight.You see, it has been so many years since Germany's "Peace Constitution" was promulgated today, and more than 60 years have passed since the end of World War II, and the Bundeswehr is still the most powerful armed force in Europe.This nation is really amazing. When World War I was provoked, it was beaten like that. Twenty years later, World War II broke out. To make matters worse, Germany was split apart. Now it is the third in the world and the first in Europe.And in terms of military strength, it is the number one military power in Europe. Compared with Britain and France, it has no nuclear weapons. Its tanks, aircraft, and warships are sold to all countries in the world.