With an eye to the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920), that began on January 18, 1919, by late 1918 the Foreign Office had already established the "Bülow Special Office" (), named after former Reich Chancellor and which had been set up after the armistice. Its role was to collect documents from various sources, including the Bolsheviks, for use by to counter the Allied allegations at Versailles. The documents collected by the Special Bureau were used in German negotiations in Paris, as part of the "Professors' Memorandum" presented to the allies on 27 May 1919. It was probably written by von Bülow, but signed by the professors for "patriotic reasons".