However, the old marshal himself believes it ,does not mean that others believe it, so he needs Major Mainz to give a reasonable explanation for what he said to convince others!
"The reason is very simple. The French army had already disbanded large numbers of its troops to celebrate the victory. When we passed through Tours, we saw countless French soldiers returning from the front. Most of them were not from Tours at all. The city was merely a transit hub for men heading back to their homes. By now, many of them have already returned to their villages and towns!"
Major General Mainz's reasoning sounded straightforward, almost too simple. It was not entirely convincing. Although no one doubted the accuracy of his observations, few believed such a detail could drastically affect the number of troops France could field.
"Gentlemen, the situation in France is completely different from ours!"
Mainz sighed. Judging from the doubtful looks in the room, he realized everyone had fallen into the same trap of assumption.
The Germans were a defeated people, forced to gather their armies while waiting for the Entente to decide their fate. Most of these formations were already earmarked for disbandment, but before that could happen, endless bureaucratic procedures had to be completed. For the sake of public order, it was unthinkable to simply release so many soldiers onto the streets without structure.
France, by contrast, was the victor. Its soldiers did not wait for some humiliating decree from Paris or London. They went home on leave, some demobilized entirely. With the Second Reich gone and the German army disarmed, France no longer needed to keep vast forces massed along the Rhine.
After hearing Mainz's explanation, the mood shifted. Some remained skeptical, but most of the staff began to see merit in his reasoning.
"You mean to say," Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg asked gravely, "that the French cannot field enough men at the front, and are relying only on what remains under arms?"
"Exactly," Mainz replied. "The Entente still holds a strong line on the Western Front. Besides the French, there are also British and American contingents. As long as no fresh war breaks out, France has no need to maintain massive numbers in the field. Even if Britain, America, and France each kept half a million troops, that would be more than enough to secure the front."
"Then we plan on that basis," Hindenburg declared. With a sweep of his hand, he ended the argument. "We assume an enemy force of five hundred thousand."
Mainz fell silent after that. His rank was too low to argue further, and in truth, there was no need.
The German General Staff quickly reached a consensus: the French and their allies would likely march from Belgium toward Aachen, perhaps through Liège, where the terrain was flatter and suited for an offensive. The Vosges mountains in the west were far less practical for attack, and the Rhine valley—with the Ruhr industrial basin at its heart—was the true prize. On this point, everyone agreed.
So the German army braced itself, prepared to meet France's thrust head-on.
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Mainz's estimate was correct: the French force was indeed smaller than expected. But there was another factor he had not considered.
French generals believed the German army, humiliated and beaten, was demoralized and hollow. With no supply lines and no public support, the Germans surely lacked the will to fight. Meanwhile, France's soldiers were well-fed, rested, and confident after victory.
In Paris, the war was imagined as little more than a hunt for a wounded animal. Crushing the Weimar Republic, they thought, would be easy.
They were wrong.
On February 26, 1919, French forces launched an assault on Aachen.
On February 27, they began retreating.
By March 1, the German army had not only thrown them back but counterattacked into Belgium, capturing Liège.
The Entente powers were stunned.
Britain and the United States had never supported France's reckless adventure. They feared Paris was trying to seize all the spoils of victory. But when the French army was routed so swiftly—losing cities, men, and equipment in days—the entire alliance panicked.
Newspapers across London, Washington, and Paris began printing headlines with a single terrifying theme: The German Army is back.
Inside Belgium, panic spread like wildfire. Families packed carts and fled westward, streaming toward France. In Paris, the memories of 1914 returned with a vengeance—the invasion, the destruction of the northeast, the millions displaced. Now, only a few years later, it seemed to be happening again.
By early March, streams of refugees from Belgium and the Ardennes poured into Paris, bringing with them tales of French collapse at the front. The capital erupted in fear; millions trembled at the thought that the Germans, defeated only months before, were once again on the march.
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In the Élysée Palace, the French president paced like an ant on hot iron. He regretted everything. He should never have allowed the generals to press him into war.
"Your Excellency, we must call for British and American reinforcements," urged Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. The war reports from the front were nothing but disaster, rumors of German columns advancing everywhere. Even in Paris, panic was rising by the hour.
"Do you truly think they will come?" the president asked bitterly. "London and Washington would rather laugh at our humiliation."
Better laughed at, Clemenceau thought grimly, than destroyed.
For the first time, even he—"the Tiger"—began to fear the German army's resurgence. Defeated or not, disarmed or not, the spirit of Germany was alive again.
And this time, Clemenceau swore, when victory finally came, the restrictions imposed on Germany would be harsher than ever before.
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