ABSTRACT
In the eyes of the General Staff, it is true, the People’s Deputies had incurred the odium of signing the armistice terms, but the more shrewd of the General Staff officers had already recognized that Germany could never really have been expected to carry the burden of a war on several fronts. They thus felt that their defeat had occurred in the political and economic rather than the military field, and had therefore done nothing to impair their self-respect as soldiers. Hans von Seeckt, Chief of Staff to “Frontier Defence North”, was thus confronted with a very delicate situation, not the least delicate element of which were Rüdiger von der Goltz’s Freikorps. Seeckt in thought it more important to keep the Army in being and preserve the possibility of a military resurrection. The Truppenamt plays a large part in history from now on that it is thought best to use its characteristic but deliberately misleading German name throughout.
