The situation on the Western Front looked grim—at least, that's how it seemed to the German soldiers retreating from the front.
As the last unit to pull back from the forward positions, Major Mainz arrived in Daleiden with his battalion. By then, nearly a regiment of weary soldiers had already gathered in the small town.
It was the 4th Infantry Regiment of Luxembourg, men who had retreated from their homeland. Luxembourg itself had already fallen to the advancing Allied forces and now stood on the verge of independence from Germany. The fate of its regiment was almost certain: disbandment.
But Major Mainz knew well that it would not stop there. With the war lost and the armistice signed, the coming Treaty of Versailles would bring devastating restrictions upon Germany. For the army, the punishment would be especially harsh. By the terms whispered in every camp, perhaps 98% of Germany's forces would be dissolved.
Compared with the battered and demoralized Luxembourgers—men half-crippled with wounds, their uniforms in tatters, their spirits broken—Mainz's battalion stood in stark contrast. They were smaller in number, only one battalion against a regiment, yet they carried themselves with discipline. Their ranks were orderly, their wounded properly tended, their bearing still sharp despite defeat. Even the battered military banner they bore, emblazoned with the great Iron Cross and crowned by the black eagle, seemed to radiate defiance.
The sight of it alone made the soldiers of the 4th Regiment straighten their backs and salute in silence.
---
Daleiden, a town of barely three thousand, lay nearly abandoned. Most of its people had fled; what remained was rubble, the husks of houses gutted by artillery fire.
The arrival of the 4th Regiment nearly filled the whole settlement, leaving little space for Mainz's men. The air of despair that hung over the regiment unsettled the young major, and he would not let his troops be infected by it.
"Camp outside the town," he ordered curtly.
Without hesitation, his battalion marched around the ruins and pitched camp east of Daleiden.
It was there that an officer approached, saluting briskly.
"Good evening, Herr Major. I am liaison officer of the Corps. Are you Major Mainz of the 1st Guards Corps?"
"I am," Mainz replied, puzzled. "What is it?"
The officer, clearly relieved, handed him a sealed document. "At last, I've found you. This is an order from the Corps Commander. Please acknowledge it."
Mainz broke the seal. It was a transfer order—his battalion was to proceed west, to the city of Bonn. After reading carefully, he signed without objection.
But the officer lingered awkwardly, shuffling his boots. Mainz frowned. "Is there something else?"
The man flushed, his voice embarrassed. "Herr Major… might I trouble you for… for your signature? Not official, just… for me."
"A signature?" Mainz blinked. He was only a major—one of thousands like him in the German Army. What man would ask his autograph?
But the lieutenant's eyes glistened. "Yes, sir. You are a hero of the Empire. Even if… even if the Empire no longer exists."
The words trembled, and his gaze dropped. Like many officers, the man had not yet accepted that the German Empire was gone.
Mainz, however, had no time for mourning. Better to look forward than wallow in defeat. Taking the notebook, he wrote his name with deliberate care, then clapped the young officer on the shoulder.
"The Empire will rise again," he said firmly. "It will come back. I swear it."
---
The following day, after brief rest in Daleiden, Major Mainz led his men by rail to Bonn, arriving by afternoon.
Bonn, once the capital of the old Electorate of Cologne, was a city steeped in two thousand years of history. Yet now it lay scarred by war. The uprising that had begun in Berlin was spreading rapidly westward. Worse still, the Ruhr industrial basin north of Bonn—Germany's beating heart of factories and coal—seethed with workers' unrest.
Only days earlier, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, Chief of the General Staff, had struck an agreement with Friedrich Ebert, Chancellor of the new German Republic. The army would back the fragile republic; in return, Ebert kept Hindenburg in his post, charging him with crushing both the Bolshevik uprising and the mutinous soldiers still in revolt.
General Wilhelm Groener had returned from Berlin with grim reports, and at once Hindenburg began mobilizing troops to stamp out the revolution.
At first, Major Mainz had not been considered for transfer. Yet Hindenburg—thinking of the young officer who had twice repelled the enemy and held fast while others collapsed—made an unusual decision. The old marshal, commander of empires, had personally issued an order to move a mere major.
Neither he nor Mainz could have known it then, but this single order would alter not only the fate of the young major, but that of Germany itself—and with it, the course of the entire world.
---