The day that ended the Great War

One hundred years ago this Sunday, the First World War came to end

How did the armistice come about?

On 7 November 1918, near La Capelle in Picardy, a German delegation crossed no man’s land by car into French-held territory, waving a white flag and blowing the bugle call for a ceasefire. The delegates were taken by train to a railway siding in the Forest of Compiègne to meet their opposite numbers, led by Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the Allied commander-in-chief. There was no real negotiation: the Allies dictated terms. And at 5am on 11 November, in Foch’s train, a former luxury dining car, the German delegates signed the agreement. No one shook hands. The armistice was to take effect six hours later. And so, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the guns fell silent.

How had the Germans been defeated?

German high command had come to realise that its only hope of victory lay in defeating the Allies before the vast resources of the US, which had entered the War in April 1917, were fully deployed. Under Erich Ludendorff, the chief quartermastergeneral, five major offensives were launched between March and July 1918. These broke the long deadlock on the Western Front, but failed to produce a decisive breakthrough. The Allies then counter-attacked: by early August they had reclaimed all lost territory. On 8 August, the British Fourth Army attacked Amiens, penetrating seven miles, and killing and capturing 30,000 men in one day – an unprecedented defeat that Ludendorff called “the black day of the German army”. Coordinated French, British and US offensives followed, pushing the Germans back to the defensive Hindenburg Line, and beyond. On 29 September, Ludendorff informed Kaiser Wilhelm II that the situation was hopeless.

What was the situation in Germany itself?

Germany was on the point of collapse. By 11 November, its two major allies, the Ottoman Empire and Austria-hungary, had already admitted defeat. Since 1914, the Royal Navy had thrown a tight blockade around its ports; in total, malnutrition caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. In late October, the German navy revolted at Kiel, and within a week the mutiny had spread to every big city in Germany, with workers’ and soldiers’ councils seizing power. A constitutional revolution followed within days. Friedrich Ebert of the Social Democratic Party was made chancellor. The country’s new leaders sought peace, and the removal of the kaiser. Wilhelm abdicated on 9 November and went into exile in the Netherlands. On the same day, a new republic was declared.

And when did the fighting stop?

Foch rejected German demands for a ceasefire while the armistice was discussed. In fact, 2,738 lives were lost and 8,200 men were wounded on 11 November itself – more than on D-day. The artillery continued to fire shells, partly to avoid having to haul them back with them. The last British soldier to be killed was Private George Edwin Ellison, a

Yorkshireman who had served through the entire war; he was shot outside Mons at 9.30am. The last soldier killed was a US sergeant, Henry Gunther, who charged at a German machine-gun crew with his bayonet fixed. The Germans shouted at him to go back. When he didn’t, they shot him. It was 10.59am.

What was the reaction?

In towns and cities across the Allied nations there was jubilation. In Paris, PM Georges Clémenceau came out onto the balcony of the Ministry of War to cry “vive la France!” to the crowd below. In London, Winston Churchill recalled that on the stroke of 11am, “streams of people poured out from all the buildings. The bells of London began to clash.” Many, though, felt a sense of anticlimax. “The men and women who looked incredulously into each other’s faces did not cry jubilantly: ‘We’ve won the War!’” wrote Vera Brittain in her memoir Testament of Youth. “They only said: ‘The War is over.’” In the trenches, one British soldier recalled: “We were too far gone, too exhausted really, to enjoy it.” Another recalled: “the Germans came from their trenches, bowed to us and then went away. That was it. There was nothing with which we could celebrate, except cookies.”

And how was it received in Germany?

The War was concluded with an armistice, not a surrender. Most German units marched home in good order, their regimental flags flying. Chancellor Ebert greeted troops at the Brandenburg Gate as having returned “unconquered from the field of battle”. Germany had not been invaded, and indeed had conquered vast swathes of eastern Europe. Thanks to propaganda, little news of major defeats had reached the German people. Yet under the terms of the armistice, Alsace and Lorraine were returned to France, and territory taken in eastern Europe was surrendered. Allied prisoners were released, Germans were not. Foreign troops occupied the Rhineland. And the naval blockade would not be lifted until 1919, when the Treaty of Versailles imposed punishing reparations and stripped Germany of its empire.

Hence the perception of a “stab in the back”?

In the autumn of 1918, German high command sought an armistice and accepted its terms, knowing that the army was broken. However, the generals were keen that Germany’s new government should take the blame: the delegation had been led by a peace-seeking moderate Catholic politician, Matthias Erzberger. Later, Ludendorff in particular popularised the myth of the dolchstoss, the “stab in the back” administered to the army by civilian politicians. In 1921, Erzberger was assassinated by a right-wing death squad for his part in it. The dolchstoss became a central feature of Nazi propaganda. When, in June 1940, Hitler received France’s surrender, he insisted that the terms be signed in Foch’s carriage in Compiègne, which had been preserved as a national monument.