Richard Werner

Suddenly shipping was entirely cut off.

As a result, one million, it's estimated around one million Germans starved to death in the famine of 1919.

which was engineered by the British, just to illustrate the reality when you're beholden to a sea power that controls the seas for your inputs.

And so on the one hand, Germany had been aware of that risk and it was working on alternatives.

And on the other hand, Britain had adopted countermeasures.

What were the countermeasures?

Around a million Germans starved to death.

Yeah, in 1919.

And of course, Britain continued to fight on British cenotaphs of the First World War.

Often in the countryside, you see the First World War defined as 1914 to 1919.

Because, you know, dead bodies were still arriving in the villages.

You couldn't tell the pastor, no, write 1918 on the cenotaph.

Well, we were still, you know, our fallen coming, you know, and the villages recording the deaths in 1919.

So, now this...

What really changed things was around 1900, the German plan to improve its raw material resource access to avoid these issues that unfortunately could not be in the end avoided, but...

not to be beholden.

It was trying not to be in a situation where it's blackmailed by Britain through the seas, namely to have a continental transport system.

And this plan was developed on the investment side and the engineering side, Siemens, major German engineering company.

and funded by Deutsche Bank, namely the plan to build the Berlin-Baghdad-Basra railway.

via Istanbul, Ottoman Empire was already an ally.