Chapter 397 Searching for People

"Found her?" Wilhelm's heart leapt with joy. "It seems a lot of effort was put into this."

Reinhard bowed his head in shame. "Her family originally lived in Brussels, Belgium. In '35, they moved to England to attend a noble school in London, and in '38, they moved to the Netherlands, where her mother even changed her name to a Dutch one; we only found her recently, please punish me, Your Highness."

"What punishment?" Wilhelm said with a smile. "To be able to find her like this shows that the intelligence department is competent. Ah, it was a bit whimsical of me to use such valuable intelligence resources on this matter. Arrange the plane, I'll go there now."

Seeing Wilhelm's excited demeanor, Reinhard spoke with a strange look on his face. "Uh, Your Highness, we've discovered that she works for the local resistance organization."

"Pfft!" Wilhelm spat out the tea he had just sipped, staring at Reinhard in disbelief. "How old is she? What can she do?!"

"I think she must have been misled. Since they are children, we tend not to pay too much attention. These resistance organizations often stuff intelligence messages into the children's shoes, letting them pass it on to other members of the resistance."

"Ha, these damned guys." A flash of anger crossed Wilhelm's face. These fools, don't they fear these children getting caught?

Seeing Wilhelm's displeased expression, Reinhard quickly reported. "Fortunately, when we investigated her, we discovered this situation and followed the trail to crack down on the largest local resistance organization, capturing dozens of people. How do you wish to deal with them, Your Highness?"

"How else to deal with them?" Wilhelm waved his hand decisively. "Throw all those bastards into the C-level POW camp, let them work themselves to death!"

"Yes!"

Angry as he was, "business" was important; Wilhelm boarded the plane and headed straight for Rotterdam, Netherlands.

In the original timeline of World War II, when German troops approached Rotterdam, the citizens of Rotterdam refused to surrender without hesitation, facing the powerful German army without bowing their heads.

The German high command did not anticipate such fierce resistance from the Dutch, and at that time, the battle in Belgium was clearly more important. The German army urgently needed to gather troops in southern Belgium to accelerate their entry into France. As the battle of Rotterdam stalemated, the German high command had to change strategy, issuing a temporary order to use air bombing to resolve the fight, which was originally intended for use against France, but was now prematurely used on the Netherlands.

On May 14th, under the command of Göring, the German Air Force carried out a massive carpet bombing on Rotterdam, turning the entire city center into ruins, with thousands dead or injured, and nearly eighty thousand people left homeless; Rotterdam was forced to surrender.

However, in this timeline, Germany "peacefully" occupied the Netherlands, so this port city remained largely unchanged from before the war, essentially intact.

"Where is she?" Wilhelm asked casually as he drove from the airport to the city center.

Reinhard replied, "She usually sells newspapers next to the KFC at the corner up ahead."

"Selling newspapers? Is her family not well-off?" Wilhelm raised an eyebrow slightly.

"Her father was a banker before, but after bankruptcy, he disappeared, and their family's fortunes gradually declined."

Wilhelm nodded and instructed, "Pull over, I'll take a walk."

Reinhard quickly cautioned, "Your Highness, your safety..."

"What could go wrong?" He was now wearing sunglasses and a fake beard, and it wasn't the era of high-definition photos all over the internet in the future. Even if there were photos of him, who knows how many times they had been copied by the time they got here, how many ordinary people could recognize him?

Stepping out of the car, several plainclothes guards were on alert around him. Wilhelm walked forward for a while, stopped in front of a shop, looked around, and pushed open the door to enter. Reinhard gestured to the surroundings and followed closely with two guards on either side. If it weren't for His Highness's strict orders not to be too ostentatious, he would have wished for everyone to go in and occupy every corner, watching every move in the store.

Wilhelm walked around the store and, passing a food shelf, heard two Dutch women selecting canned goods.

"What kind of meat are you holding?"

"Carp meat."

"Is it good?"

"I don't know, it's my first time choosing carp meat, I wanted to try a different taste."

After the two women left, Wilhelm approached the shelf and saw many cans of meat: "carp meat," "muskrat meat," "rabbit meat," "pigeon meat," "bamboo rat meat," and so on.

These products were all transported from Germany. Wilhelm heard that many Dutch people, although they did not dare to resist openly, still harbored a sentiment of boycott in secret; for example, not buying German products. After all, you can't force people to buy German products, but obviously, as time went on, more and more German products flooded the market, and they had no choice but to purchase them.

As is well known, during World War II, food was not abundant in Germany. Although Germany had a highly developed industry at the time, its agriculture was not as advanced, and there were always problems with food shortages. Wilhelm, of course, would not ignore these issues. He not only urged the chemical department to research more efficient fertilizers but also established large breeding bases everywhere, specifically for animals with strong reproductive abilities.

The overpopulation of Asian carp in Europe and America is not a new phenomenon in later generations. Without natural predators or competitors, a single carp can lay hundreds of thousands of eggs in one breeding season, which shows their reproductive capacity.

As for the reproductive ability of rabbits, one only needs to look at Australia in later generations. Originally, Australia did not have rabbits. In 1859, twelve European wild rabbits were brought to Australia by immigrants from England. Their population exploded, and by the end of the 19th century, there were over ten billion rabbits in Australia. The overabundance of rabbits even forced Australia to send bombers to bomb them wildly.

And among these breeding bases, muskrats were the craziest.

Muskrats are one of the most widely distributed herbivores in the Arctic. How strong is their reproductive ability?

They can have 7-8 litters a year, with each litter producing 12 offspring, and it only takes a little over 20 days for the young to mature and start breeding. Let's calculate their reproductive capacity: If a pair of muskrats starts breeding in March and has 7 litters a year, with each litter having 12, that's a total of 84, which is their second generation, their sons and daughters. Assuming each litter has 6 males and 6 females, that's 6 pairs. After 20 days, the first litter's 6 pairs start breeding, each litter having 12, which can produce 72 at once, and they can have 6 litters, making 432. After 40 days, the second litter's 6 pairs also join the breeding army, they can have 5 litters, if each litter has 12, that's 360. By this calculation, how many grandchildren can they have? A total of 1512. This is the third generation. Don't forget, after 40 days, the first litter of the third generation, 36 pairs, also started breeding, their first litter can produce 432, and they can have 5 litters, making 2160. There are also the second to seventh litters of the third generation, so the fourth generation can produce 6480 little mice. Continuing this calculation, the fifth generation is 25920, the sixth generation is 93312, the seventh generation is 279936, and the eighth generation, which is the last batch of the year, is 559872. Look, from two in March, by the end of August or early September, it will become a huge army of 967118! Even if half die along the way due to climate, disease, and predators, there are still almost 500,000.

This creature is simply a living breeding machine, doing nothing but producing offspring all year!

Although the taste is not as good as beef or lamb, it's not far off, and after all, it's meat, which is quite nutritious, better than having none at all.

Breeding so many animals with such strong reproductive abilities, Germans have long been accustomed to having various exotic meats on their dining tables. Some meats even became cheaper than vegetables.