The handover was completed with unusual haste, and on December 10, 1918, Major Mainz reported directly to the headquarters of the German General Staff in Hamburg.
Within two days of his new post, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg himself summoned him. The Marshal entrusted Mainz with a delicate mission: to join a secret delegation that would open negotiations with the Allied Powers in Paris, the capital of France.
The delegation, however, would not be under Mainz's command. Its leader was Major General Harut, a senior officer already chosen for the role. Mainz was somewhat surprised by this arrangement, but he accepted the order willingly. In truth, he was eager to see France with his own eyes. He had heard that, even during the darkest days of the war, anti-war demonstrations erupted in Paris. Now that the fighting had ended, Mainz wondered what kind of city the French capital had become.
For an officer who believed in preparation, seeing one's enemy firsthand was indispensable. Only by entering Paris itself could he truly understand the French and their resolve.
On December 12, the German delegation crossed into France and quietly arrived in Paris. It was there that Major General Harut revealed the true purpose of their mission.
After the Armistice, the French government demanded harsh retribution against the German military leadership. In particular, Hindenburg himself had become a figure of hatred in Paris. To the French, he was the architect of their humiliation in the spring offensive of 1918, when German forces came dangerously close to breaking through. The French Army had been driven back in disarray, losing men and matériel in catastrophic numbers. Though the war ultimately ended in Allied victory, the memory of that near-defeat lingered as a wound to national pride.
Thus, French leaders sought to bring Hindenburg before an international tribunal as a war criminal.
But such a plan was easier conceived than executed. By December, the German forces along the Rhine and throughout the Western Front still numbered more than 1.2 million men, all loyal to Hindenburg. From his command center in Cologne, the Marshal remained in firm control. To arrest him would require a direct French invasion of the Rhineland—an operation neither the British nor the Americans had any appetite for.
For the other Allied powers, the war was over. Britain was exhausted. The "Empire of British" had spent vast sums, borrowed heavily from the United States, and drawn manpower from its colonies at great political cost. The British people were weary of war, and the generals had no desire to commit hundreds of thousands more soldiers to a campaign that promised little but bloodshed.
The United States, too, had little reason to indulge French vengeance. President Woodrow Wilson had already shifted his focus to his grand project—the creation of a League of Nations. He sought reconciliation with the new Weimar Republic, not its destruction, hoping instead to secure American influence in Europe through diplomacy and commerce.
Even Britain was reluctant to see Germany crushed too thoroughly. For centuries, British strategy had rested on maintaining a balance of power in Europe. If Germany were broken completely, France would emerge as the dominant continental power—a prospect London found just as dangerous as a resurgent Berlin.
France, however, carried the memory of 1870. Defeated and humiliated in the Franco-Prussian War, the French elite had long dreamt of vengeance against the "Huns." Now, with Germany prostrate, they sought not only justice but the permanent crippling of their old enemy.
Thus, the Entente stood divided. France demanded blood, Britain counseled caution, and the United States urged reconciliation.
For Hindenburg and his loyalists, this discord among the Allies was an opportunity. If handled wisely, Germany might preserve some measure of strength from the ruins of the fallen empire. If Mainz and Harut could maneuver carefully, perhaps they could strike a bargain that would save their Marshal—and with him, the honor of the German Army.
---