hearing Ebert cry out to the soldiers: ‘You have returned undefeated.’2 This conviction that the German army remained undefeated was deeply rooted – as foreigners soon discovered. Before Franck set out on his own travels, he had served as an officer with the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) on the Rhine at Koblenz. His duties involved interviewing scores of German soldiers who, to a man, he reported, believed that in terms of military prestige they were unquestionably the victors. It was only the treacherous politicians in Berlin who had stabbed them in the back, together with the lack of
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