"Let me introduce myself properly. My name is Yarkov Molotov, and I am currently the head of the Soviet External Liaison Office."
Molotov extended his hand first, greeting Mainz with a cordial smile.
In his demeanor, there was no trace of old hatred—no shadow of past bloodshed. It was as if the brutal clashes between them had never happened.
Mainz understood. One should not strike the hand of a man who greets with a smile. The past was buried, and if Molotov himself did not mention the scars of war, then neither would he.
"Hello," Mainz replied, reaching out his hand. The two men, once soldiers of bitterly opposed armies, now sat across from each other like old comrades reunited after many years, exchanging words that carried the warmth of reluctant friendship.
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"What are you here to purchase this time?" Mainz asked.
After the Great War, the German Empire—like the Entente powers—was left with vast stockpiles of weapons and equipment. These arsenals, once symbols of defiance, had to be disposed of.
Historically, after the collapse of the German Empire in 1918, the Allied victors seized most of these weapons before the German people themselves could even think of reclaiming them.
But in this altered timeline, because Mainz and his actions prolonged the German resistance, the Reich's army endured longer than expected. During that time, Mainz managed to seize opportunities—to hide and to sell large caches of weapons before the Allies could confiscate them.
He understood Europe. After a war as devastating as the one just concluded, there would likely be a decade or two of uneasy peace. The Treaty of Versailles had already dictated sharp disarmament; Germany's armed forces would shrink drastically. Stockpiled weapons, now deemed useless to the new Reichswehr, could only find their worth on the black markets of Europe—where men like Mainz turned surplus into profit.
And who were his most eager customers? None other than the Soviets, embroiled in civil war, desperate for arms to secure their survival.
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"What do you have?" Molotov asked, his expression sharpening the moment business came to the table.
"Planes, artillery, machine guns, rifles, ammunition—everything but capital warships. Whatever you need, we have."
It was no idle boast. At the outbreak of the Great War, Imperial Germany had been the world's second greatest industrial power. Its factories outproduced both Britain and France combined. That was why it had been able to fight Britain, France, and Russia simultaneously—defeating Tsarist Russia outright and still holding against Britain and France on the Western Front.
Such immense industrial strength had given Germany a war machine unparalleled in history. Millions of weapons rolled out of its factories. Mainz himself had seen the evidence.
On an inspection trip to Munich, he had once stood at the edge of a valley south of the city. Before his eyes lay the wreckage of over 1,200 aircraft—German fighters, once destined for the skies. After the Armistice, the Allies had ordered them destroyed. Their wings had been sawed off, their cockpit instruments smashed, and their fuselages abandoned like corpses in a valley of steel.
From the ridge above, the sight resembled a cemetery stretching for nearly seven kilometers—a graveyard of planes that had never taken flight, condemned to death before their first mission.
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The Allies were shrewd. They understood that modern aircraft were the weapons of the future. Selling them abroad could bring enormous profit—many nations still lacked air forces. Yet Britain and France preferred to restrict the export of such advanced machines, releasing only older technologies like rifles, cannons, and machine guns to weaker states.
That policy changed after the global economic crash of 1929. As economies crumbled, governments sought foreign exchange by loosening arms restrictions. Suddenly, even agricultural nations such as China managed to acquire aircraft and establish fledgling air forces.
Molotov's eyes darkened in thought. If it were possible, he would have asked for Germany's great warships—the pride of the Kaiser's High Seas Fleet.
Though the fleet had not decisively defeated the Royal Navy during the Great War, it was still regarded as the second most powerful navy in the world, behind only Britain's. Even the United States Navy was not yet its equal.
Because it had never suffered a catastrophic defeat, many of its dreadnoughts and battlecruisers remained well preserved. If the Soviet Union could acquire such ships, their naval balance would change overnight.
Tsarist Russia had been shattered by the Russo-Japanese War: its Pacific and Baltic fleets nearly annihilated. The humiliation crippled Russian sea power for decades. After the October Revolution, matters grew worse. Most of the officer corps had been aristocrats, and few survived the upheaval. The Bolsheviks inherited only a handful of usable warships. By the time of the Civil War, the Soviet Navy was nearly non-existent.
In peace, this weakness might have been tolerable. But in war, it left the Soviets vulnerable. Their immense coastlines lay exposed. Petrograd itself—perched on the Baltic—lived under constant threat of bombardment from British and American squadrons, not to mention the White Russian fleets supported by the Entente.
If the Soviets possessed the High Seas Fleet, they could dominate the Baltic entirely—expel hostile navies, secure Petrograd, and even project force against enemy bases from the sea.
But such a dream was impossible. Even if they had the funds, even if Mainz were willing to sell, the moment those ships sailed east, they would be hunted down and sunk by the Allies long before reaching Soviet waters.
Molotov exhaled and returned to reality. "Then we will take what we can. Tell me what you can sell immediately."
"Krupp artillery. Mauser rifles. Maxim heavy machine guns. Ammunition. As much as you require," Mainz answered without hesitation.
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