It was dark when the uniformed men climbed aboard their open-topped automobiles and began their grueling 10 hour drive across the war torn landscape of the Western Front. Seated in five separate cars were German politician Matthias Erzberger, Foreign Minister Count Alfred von Obendorff, Army Major General Detof von Winterfeldt, Navy Captain Ernst Vanselow and two Generals, Weygand and von Gruennel. The unlikely caravan had been quickly assembled by an arrangement between German chief of staff, Paul von Hindenburg and French Marshal Ferdinand Foch. When the five cars arrived at their secret location, the road weary men then boarded a train which took them to their final destination deep in the forest of Compiegne; a private rail car situated at a siding in the woods. Upon boarding Foch’s private train car, the German delegation met with their allied counterparts, Foch himself, General Weygand, French chief of staff, British First Sea Lord Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss, Rear Admiral George Hope, Royal Navy and Captian John Marriot, Royal Navy. For the next three days, negations and the terms of the armistice were hammered out. For Germany, there were no negotiations………they simply were in no position not to sign. Their government had fallen, the Kaiser had abdicated, their armed forces were depleted and their people were suffering. The war simply had to end. Finally as a misty dawn came on the 11th of November 1918, signatures were made on the armistice that would end what was known as the Great War.
The terms of the armistice were brutally clear; termination of military hostilities within six hours of signing, immediate removal of all German troops from France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Alsace-Lorraine, removal of all German troops from the west side of the Rhine plus an 18 mile bridgehead on the right side of the Rhine to be occupied by allied troops, removal of all German troops from the Eastern Front to the 1914 border, Renunciation of the treaties of Breast-Litovsk and Bucharest with Russia and Romania, internment of the German fleet and a massive surrender of war materiel which would effectively disarm Germany.
News of the cessation of hostilities quickly spread via wireless radio throughout the entire front line. The fighting did not end quite as dramatically as gunners continued to shell German positions right up until the last minute to avoid hauling away their stocks of ammunition and soldiers competed to be the last man to fire the last shot of the war. Finally, at 11:00 a.m on November 11th, 1918, all guns fell silent for the first time since August, 1914. An eerie silence pervaded across the blasted landscape of the Western Front. For the soldiers, an overwhelming sense of relief flooded over them. Some wept openly, others laughed and shook hands with their comrades, while some simple sat without saying a word, the enormity of their experience being too much for words. The soldiers of France, Germany, Great Britain and her commonwealth nations, the United States, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Portugal, Italy, and Greece were finally going home. The human toll for over four years of war was an almost unbelievable 38,880,500 soldiers dead, wounded and missing. To put it another way, 57% of all mobilized men between 1914 and 1918 became casualties. Many towns in France, Britain and Germany were completely devoid of military-age men for years after the end of the war due to such appalling numbers.
As for the site of the armistice itself, Foch’s private rail car, “Le Wagon de l’Amistice” was displayed at the national museum in Paris before being returned to the exact spot in the forest of Compiegne in a specially constructed building. Later, during WW2, the Nazis destroyed the memorial building and removed the carriage which was later burned by the SS as an American armored column entered the town of Ohrdruf, where it was being stored. In 1950, the entire Compiegne site was restored to its original state in 1927 and a replacement rail car, identical in every way to the original, was re-dedicated on November 11th.
