Switzerland is located in the center of Europe, atop the mountains. Since ancient times, it has been a poor place. Surrounding great powers moved in and out of Switzerland, and what Switzerland was most famous for before 1900 was not Swiss watches, but Swiss mercenaries, who prospered for 500 years and were known for their savagery, toughness, and loyalty to their employers.

In 1572, the Holy Roman Emperor dispatched 20,000 troops to attack Rome. The Swiss Guard of the time fought to the death to protect the Pope. Of the 189 men, only 42 survived the battle. This Guard’s fight to the death won time for the Pope to successfully escape. Therefore, even now, the Vatican Pope's Guard is still a mercenary unit composed entirely of Catholic Swiss.

Due to Switzerland's geographical location, becoming a permanent neutral country was in the interests of the surrounding countries, especially the various great powers. Thus, Switzerland became a permanent neutral country at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, which established the new order after the European countries defeated Napoleon.

Foreign Minister Li Shiguang had been to Switzerland twice and his impression of the country was passable. So occasionally, when he recalled He Rui's private evaluation of Switzerland, Li Shiguang always felt that He Rui's remark that "Switzerland is a country that eats off the graves of the heirless" seemed a bit harsh.

Li Shiguang had just checked into the hotel when an old acquaintance came to visit. Li Shiguang welcomed the guest in the parlor. Upon meeting, the other party spoke with a thick German-flavored Northeast accent: "Hello, my dear friend."

Li Shiguang also stepped forward to shake hands with Professor Karl Haushofer. "Hello, Professor Karl." Karl Haushofer had once been invited by He Rui to the Northeast Government to teach geopolitics. During the one-year course, Li Shiguang was deeply impressed by this Professor Karl, a former Major General of the German Empire.

Professor Karl had no airs about him. After greeting Li Shiguang, he called over the square-faced German middle-aged man beside him and introduced him to Li Shiguang: "This is Rudolf Hess, my student."

When Li Shiguang shook hands with Hess, he noticed that Hess had a round badge pinned to his chest. The badge had a red background with a white center, and the symbol in the center was a black swastika. That was the party emblem of the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers' Party), which was currently gaining momentum in Germany. According to information from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rudolf Hess was a confidant and secretary to the Nazi Party leader, Adolf Hitler. The two were imprisoned in the same prison after the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler's book *Mein Kampf* was dictated by Hitler and typed by Rudolf Hess.

In the German federal election on September 14, 1930, the Nazi Party won 6.4 million votes, accounting for 18.3% of the total votes, and secured 107 seats in the Reichstag.

Nearly three years had passed since the Great Depression began in the United States. The German economy had collapsed, and the unemployment rate was as high as 40%. Now that the Nazi Party was gaining momentum in the German elections, it should be able to become the largest party in the German Reichstag. Rudolf Hess was bound to become a new dignitary in Germany.

But Li Shiguang did not have any good feelings towards Hess just because he was about to rise to power. If Hess were not Professor Karl's student, Li Shiguang would not even want to pay attention to him. So he just nodded to Hess, said "Hello," and invited Professor Karl to take a seat.

"The great success Chairman He has achieved in the last four years is a classic case study in my broadcasts," Professor Karl said after sitting down. His tone contained neither flattery towards He Rui nor boasting about his own academic ability; it was merely the plain tone of discussing academic research.

Li Shiguang had seen materials in this regard. Professor Karl Haushofer founded the *Zeitschrift für Geopolitik* (Journal of Geopolitics) in 1924 and had great influence in German academic circles. This professor did not just use China's strategy over the past four years as a research case; since 1924, He Rui's various decisions had been Professor Karl's cases. In the few articles Li Shiguang had read, although the analysis inevitably suffered from a European perspective and was inevitably a bit of "hindsight" over-interpretation, on the whole, it was not far off and could be considered quite insightful.

Li Shiguang smiled: "I respect Professor Karl's academic research ability very much. If Professor Karl is interested in returning to China, there will definitely be many top invitations from China for the Professor."

Professor Karl nodded. "If I have time, I will definitely go to China. However, at this stage, I still have very many topics that need to be researched. For example, in order to gain the same influence in China as France, Britain will likely quickly execute the previously mentioned £300 million loan. And although the United States has verbally said it will provide $1 billion, I think the new U.S. government, out of geopolitical needs, will reduce the amount in this regard."

Li Shiguang did not answer immediately. As a scholar, Li Shiguang wanted to have a deep discussion with Professor Karl. But as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of China, Li Shiguang had to protect national interests first. Many things could not be said.

After a struggle in his heart, Li Shiguang said: "Professor Karl, this is just a private meeting between us. Even so, I would prefer to hear Professor Karl's analysis of the current situation."

Professor Karl nodded; he could understand Li Shiguang's difficulty. As early as the period of the Northeast Government led by He Rui, Professor Karl had observed the uniqueness of the He Rui regime. In European and American governments, bureaucrats were scholars or people who passed exams. In the Chinese government, bureaucrats had to learn to become scholars and experts.

This directly led to high-ranking officials of the Chinese government having a far greater understanding of the core layer than those in Europe and America. Because when formulating policies, these departments all had to participate. Therefore, what Li Shiguang knew now was not just the professional field of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but the various specific plans of the central leadership. Especially since China's central government was a highly centralized regime, and each department was an executor within a huge system, those plans had been refined down to each department. This led to the situation where, to avoid suspicion, Li Shiguang could say nothing.

Professor Karl could only pretend not to mind this matter, because no special deception could be pulled off at the strategic level, especially between high-level strategists. He said: "At this stage, Germany is no longer prepared to bear the debts stipulated by the Versailles system. Even France, due to the change in the stance of Britain and the United States, has to accept such a choice. The future world will enter a stage of full-force development, and the challenges facing each country are very difficult. I think Mr. He Rui is already prepared for this."

Li Shiguang appreciated Professor Karl's view in his heart. Because it was not until 1931, when the rest of the world was deeply mired in the economic crisis, that Li Shiguang fully accepted a view: He Rui had begun preparing to face the world economic crisis as early as 1928.

Accepting this conclusion was not easy for Li Shiguang. Because after 1928, China's economy developed at high speed, while foreign countries fell into economic crisis, which had a minimal impact on China. So looking purely at what happened in China, it was easy to think that China had just entered its own stage of high-speed development. It was just that during this stage of China's high-speed development, foreign countries fell into an economic crisis.

Looking back now, He Rui had chosen the most favorable path based on his prediction of the world economic crisis, avoiding various unfavorable factors that might affect China. Without the judgment of the economic crisis, China might very well have fallen into the impact brought about by various crises.

Hearing Professor Karl speak like this, Li Shiguang felt that Professor Karl might not be purely talking about China. Germany was currently deep in crisis, but in Li Shiguang's view, Germany was not without good news at this stage. In the 12 years from 1919 to the present, Germany had been tortured to the brink of death by the economic crisis triggered by World War I and the reparations under the Treaty of Versailles. And the content of the discussion at this Lausanne Conference in Switzerland was whether to accept Germany's request made in January 1932 to stop paying reparations.

At least in the orders Li Shiguang received, there was absolutely no content refusing Germany's request. The Central Committee's view, or rather He Rui's view, was that China did not need to make reparation requests to Germany. Nor should it support France's requests. After all, France's attitude towards Germany was well known. Unless Germany was crushed, France would not be fully satisfied.

But China's attitude towards Germany next could not be called friendly either; this was based on China's judgment of the Nazis.

The Nazi concept of nation advocates the absolute centralization of state power, that is, totalitarianism, but it is not completely equivalent to fascism in the traditional sense, though the Nazis and the Italian Fascist ruler Mussolini eventually became clear allies.

Nazism is not a strictly defined ideology, but the state control policies and concepts pursued by the Nazi Party, including some political views and extreme thoughts with religious colors: racism, anti-communism, totalitarianism, theologicalism, anti-semitism, extreme nationalism, anti-homosexuality, anti-laissez-faire capitalism, and limiting religious freedom contrary to its ideology. It emphasizes the "Führer" principle in all fields, declaring that the "Führer" is the representative of the will of the nation as a whole, and state power should be held by him alone. A government managed from top to bottom by a huge bureaucratic system according to the Führer principle, promoting racism and anti-semitism as the ideological thought of Germany's National Socialist movement, emphasizing the collective and revering authority and military force.

National Socialism advocates "nation" as the "basic unit" of human group life, promotes racial superiority, and believes that the Aryan race is the best race and the only one that has contributed to human progress. It believes that the "master race" has the right to enslave or even exterminate "inferior races" as the ideological basis for shaping specific cultural and political propositions. In terms of ideology, it defines the nation based on clear criteria to distinguish it from other nations, advocates Social Darwinism, and discriminates against nations different from it. It claims that the Aryan-Nordic Germanic people are a race endowed with "dominating power" by God, advocates that the world is a jungle where the weak are the prey of the strong and the fittest survive, and that all nations must seek victory in fierce survival competition. It implements external aggression and expansion, and strongly advocates using war as a means to seize living space and establish global hegemony for the nation.