The Armistice of 11 November 1918 was the armistice that ended fighting on land, sea and air in World War I between the Allies and their opponent, Germany. Previous armistices had been agreed with Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empireand the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Also known as the Armistice of Compiègne from the place where it was signed at 5:45 a.m. by the French Marshal Foch, it came into force at 11:11 a.m. Paris time on 11 November 1918 ("the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month") and marked a victory for the Allies and a defeat for Germany, although not formally a surrender.
The actual terms, largely written by the Allied Supreme Commander, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, included the cessation of hostilities, the withdrawal of German forces to behind the Rhine, Allied occupation of the Rhineland and bridgeheads further east, the preservation of infrastructure, the surrender of aircraft, warships, and military material, the release of Allied prisoners of war and interned civilians, eventual reparations, no release of German prisoners and no relaxation of the naval blockade of Germany.
There was no question of negotiation. The Germans were able to correct a few impossible demands.
The Armistice was the result of a hurried and desperate process. The German delegation headed by Matthias Erzberger crossed the front line in five cars and was escorted for ten hours across the devastated war zone of Northern France, arriving on the morning of 8 November. They were then taken to the secret destination aboard Ferdinand Foch's private train parked in a railway siding in the Forest of Compiègne.
The forest is notable as the site of the Armistice between the Allies and Germany which ended World War I on 11 November 1918, as well as the Armistice of 22 June 1940 after the Battle of France in World War II. During World War II, a second treaty was signed in the forest, this time arranging an armistice between France and Nazi Germany(22 June 1940). With an unmistakable desire to humiliate his defeated enemy, German dictator Adolf Hitler gave orders that the surrender should be received in exactly the same spot, even the same railway car, where the Germans had surrendered in 1918.
A famous memorial tablet placed at the precise location of the cease-fire signing reads (in French), Here on the eleventh of November 1918 succumbed the criminal pride of the German Reich... vanquished by the free peoples which it tried to enslave. The original tablet was destroyed by the Nazis, but a new one was emplaced after the war.
For bringing the German delegation to the 1918 meeting, the French had assembled the train with a special saloon car which had once belonged to Napoleon III. The car was decorated with old Imperial emblems, redolent of past glories and mutely confirming the resurgence of French power after its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. The two sides then met in a newer railcar, supplied by Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, to sign the armistice.
After the fall of France in World War Two, this same railway carriage was specifically used by the Germans for the armistice of 1940; it was remanded to Germany where it was eventually destroyed by SS troops in Crawinkel, Thuringia, in 1945, and the remains were buried. In 1950, a faithful replica of this original railcar was installed at the site. Decades later, some vestiges of the original car were discovered in Germany and returned to France: the pieces were added to the memorial display in 1995.
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