"Hmph. It is better not to ask too much, Major. Remember who you are — nothing more than a Major."
Field Marshal Hindenburg's face hardened as he read the report submitted by Major Perfect Inz.
"What? You are not convinced?"
He expected defiance. Yet the young officer said nothing. Mainz stood in silence, offering no defense, no explanation. The old marshal's irritation deepened.
"No, I am not angry," Mainz finally answered, his voice calm and steady. "And I am not in a position to be angry."
Such composure startled Hindenburg. He had seen countless men across a lifetime of wars, but rarely one so controlled at so young an age.
"If only you understood…"
The old marshal exhaled. Perhaps his tone had been too harsh. His voice softened, though his gaze remained sharp.
"Lewinsky, you are still young. These things are not so simple. I know well enough they plan to dismantle the Krupp works at Essen. But we cannot stop it. Do you understand?"
In the first week of December, Allied troops marched from Belgium into the Ruhr basin. From the moment their columns arrived, they behaved less like an occupying army than marauders, plundering towns and villages with impunity.
The world-famous Krupp foundry at Essen was not spared. Two thousand French soldiers descended upon the complex, dismantling the arsenal brick by brick. Worse still, Gustav Krupp himself was seized, dragged away, and sent to stand trial before a military court in the city of Eifel.
Mainz could not stand by. He gathered a handful of loyal men, struck at the escort in secret, and spirited Krupp into hiding. Now the French scoured every street, furious, rounding up innocents in their search for the missing industrialist. Nearly a hundred citizens had already been taken.
Nor did Mainz conceal his actions from Hindenburg. He submitted his report in full, even listing other key arms dealers and contractors whose capture would cripple Germany, urging that they be shielded before the Allies struck again.
Hindenburg read in silence, shaken. He already knew of the occupiers' excesses — each day desperate men and women came to his headquarters, begging him to send troops to defend the Ruhr.
But he had remained unmoved. Not out of cowardice, nor out of fear of offending the French. The truth was harsher: the German Empire had been defeated. The Reich no longer existed. Though hundreds of thousands of soldiers still stood under his command, resistance was impossible.
What would it achieve if they drove out the tens of thousands of Allied troops in the Ruhr? Retaliation would be swift and merciless. Millions more would come. Germany would bleed, and its people would be crushed into the dust.
Defeat carried its consequences.
Hindenburg knew this better than most. As a young officer in the Franco-Prussian War, he had marched with the Guards Regiment into Paris itself and witnessed what the German army had done there.
Now he studied Mainz — young, impassioned, untempered by age. He admired such fire. A soldier with blood in his veins could rise to greatness. Yet he also knew that same fire, unchecked, could consume not only the man but the Fatherland itself.
Among Hindenburg's own generation, few remained. Moltke the Younger and Schlieffen were long in their graves. Marshal Mackensen, though still active, was nearly seventy. His old partner, General Ludendorff, had once been his most brilliant ally — together they had shattered the armies of Tsarist Russia on the Eastern Front and forced the empire into revolution. Yet their partnership had collapsed in the West, after the failed counteroffensive of 1918. In rage, Ludendorff resigned. Rumor now held that he had sailed into exile in Sweden.
The truth was grim. Nearly all of Germany's senior officers were relics of earlier Prussian triumphs — veterans of Königgrätz and Sedan. Their experience was vast, but their years were many. Across both Eastern and Western fronts, scarcely a handful of commanders under forty remained. Among them stood only Crown Prince Wilhelm, son of the exiled Kaiser.
It troubled Hindenburg deeply. The old guard would not endure forever. Unless the young could rise swiftly to take their place, the proud tradition of German arms — unbroken since the Teutonic knights — might perish.
And now, with the Empire humbled, the future was clouded. The path ahead was uncertain, perhaps perilous.
It would fall to Hindenburg, last of the elder marshals, to keep the flame alive — to find among the youth the rarest steel, and forge them into the soldiers who might one day rebuild what had been lost.
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