Zaharoff's Gun Deal With Russia

Zaharoff made sure that Vickers sold arms to the Russian Empire rather than the country who was actually loaning them money to buy guns. His main competitor for Russia's business was a French firm called Schneider Crusoe. He had his own newspapers and he planted a story in them that Russia was about to sign a deal with Krupp to let them build factories inside Russia. This was really scary to the people of France because all of the gun plans that Russia had gotten were French. So if Krupp started building Russian arms factories producing French guns, that would effectively mean that Germany was gaining access to all of France's military secrets.