Chapter 98:
April 8, 1940
Berlin, Northern Germany, Government Building This year, as we increased munitions production of items like the new model Panzer IV with reinforced armor and armor-piercing shells, our need for tungsten was rapidly increasing.
But Spain's Caudillo Franco notified us that he would invalidate the mining rights for the northern mines, which had been given to Hitler as a price for the dispatch of the Condor Legion during the Nazi Germany era.
On the pretext that the party to the deal was Nazi Germany, his excuse was that there was no need to provide the same concession to the Fourth Empire.
But they sold us rifles during the Civil War, and they've been supplying tungsten just fine even after the Civil War ended, and now they send us this notice? For us, it was a rather flustering situation.
Fortunately, we had prepared three months' worth of reserve supplies, but wasn't this too sudden? Thanks to this, the Ministers and Vice Ministers of the Chancellery and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs gathered for the first time in a while, the four of us holding a discussion.
"Hmm, we'll have to assume France had a hand in this, right?"
At my father Hjalmar's words, Minister of Foreign Affairs Weizsäcker nodded.
"That seems to be the case. I heard that Philippe Pétain, who has a special relationship with Franco, became the Minister of Defense in the La Rocque Government. I suspect his influence was at play."