OISE - Armistice Clearing - Clairière de Rethondes - Compiègne
- by Pierre Grande Guerre
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- 26 May, 2019
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SPECIAL Photo Impression - Year of visit: 2005, 2008
A visit to the Armistice Clearing in the Forest of Compiègne, the location, where the signature of the Armistice took place at 11 November 1918, between 5:12 AM and 5:20 AM, Paris time. An important location for the history of the 20th century, where an Armistice was signed twice.
The path from the Alsace Lorraine Memorial in the Forest of Compiègne marks the former location of two railway tracks, which lead to the railway clearing.
Some hundred meters southward, the statue of Marshall Foch overlooks the location where, the German and Allied Delegations met to negotiate the Terms of the Armistice.
The sculptor, F. Michelet, made the statue of Foch. The statue was revealed on 11 november 1927. The clearing site was inaugurated by President Millerand on 11-11-1922.
After 8 August 1918, and the later events after the Battle of Amiens, the situation of the German Armies deteriorated more and more. The Allies forced the Germans to withdraw further and further north-eastward.
Social unrest broke out in Germany. In Germany the defeat of the Great War was generally considered as Kaiser Wilhelm’s personal failure, which resulted in a mutiny within the Kaiserliche Marine, a revolution, and the proclamation of the Republic on 9 November 1918.
Negotiations about the Armistice
Under pressure of imminent
revolution in Berlin, Munich, and elsewhere across Germany, Paul von
Hindenburg had requested arrangements for a meeting with Ferdinand Foch
via a telegram on 7 November.
On 8 November the German delegation crossed the front line in five cars
and was escorted for ten hours across the devastated war zone of
northern France. They were then entrained and taken to a secret
destination, a railway clearing in the Forest of Compiègne, near the
village of Rethondes.
The German Delegation of Plenipotentiaries existed of Matthias Erzberger, a civilian politician representing the new German Government under the new Chancellor, the socialist Friedrich Ebert, Count Alfred von Oberndorff, from the Foreign Ministry, Major General Detlev von Winterfeldt, General von Gruennel, for the army, and Captain Ernst Vanselow, for the navy.
The Allied Delegation existed only of military Plenipotentiaries: Marshall of France, Ferdinand Foch, the Allied Supreme Commander First Sea Lord Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss, the British representative, General Weygand, Foch's Chief of Staff, General Desticker, and some French and British officers.
Foch appeared only twice in the three days of negotiations: on the first day, to ask the German delegation what they wanted, and on the last day, to see to their signatures. In between, the German delegation discussed the details of the Allied terms with French and Allied officers.
View over the Armistice Memorial from the location, the remembrance stone, where the railway carriage of the German Delegation was situated.
In between the two railroad tracks lies a huge tablet with a commemorative text:
"ICI
LE 11 NOVEMBRE 1918 SUCCOMBA LE CRIMINEL ORGUEIL DE L'EMPIRE ALLEMAND
VAINCU PAR LES PEUPLES LIBRES QU'IL PRETENDAIT ASSERVIR."
At the other side of the site marks a remembrance stone the exact location of the railway carriage of Marshall Foch.
In 1927 the French Government founded a museum for Foch's railway carriage, a salon wagon, built for Napoléon III in 1867.
At the entrance of the nowadays Museum stands an original French Renault tank.
The Museum preserves a meticulously made copy of Marshall Foch's railway carriage.
The Terms of the Armistice included major points such as the withdrawal of German troops from Belgium, France, the disputed territories of Alsace and Lorraine, a retreat to the original territorial boundaries in the east, and an army free zone of 30 km deep into German territory along the eastern bank of the Rhine.
The Allies demanded the immediate surrender of large amounts of materiel, including weapons and warships of the German fleet to be disarmed and put under the control of the Allies in neutral or Allied harbours.
The Germans were also called upon to renounce the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and Treaty of Bucharest, which were the peace treaties the German Empire had already signed in February 1918 with Russia and Romania.
In fact there was no question of negotiation. The Germans were able to correct only a few impossible demands and registered their formal protest at the harshness of the Allied terms. But they were in no position to refuse to sign. On sunday 10 November , they were shown newspapers from Paris, to inform them, that Kaiser Wilhelm II had abdicated.
Telegrams were passed to and from the German Delegation; to Von Hindenburg in Spa and Ebert's government in Berlin. A telegram from Berlin implored Erzberger to sign immediately without any further hesitation.
The Delegations signed the Armistice in the morning of 11 November between 5:12 AM and 5:20 AM, Paris time.
The Armistice was agreed to come into effect at the same day, at 11 November, at 11 o'clock Paris time, for which reason the time, date, and month of the effective Armistice is sometimes referred to as "the eleventh of the eleventh of the eleventh".
Of course the Armistice was great news of world-wide importance. Some period newspaper headlines telling about the Armistice, the German revolution, the exile of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and the Crown Prince fleeing to the Netherlands:
The severe conditions and the high financial reparation impositions on the Germans of the Versailles Treaty would form some of the main motivations for the Germans under Adolf Hitler to start later the Second World War in 1939.
This 2 min. 35 sec. period videoclip shows the large crowd gathered in Berlin, Germany in front of the Brandenburg Gate and the Hotel Adlon in the early days of the Weimar Republic demonstrating and protesting the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and to urge the government not to sign the treaty.
Right after the war Foch's railway carriage was brought over to the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris to be temporarily exposed to the public.
In 1927 the original carriage was taken to this Museum, which exposes now a copy of Foch's original railway carriage.
Hitler ordered to remove Foch's 1918 Armistice railway carriage from the museum building and to place it on the exact spot, where it was located in 1918.
On 21 June 1940 Hitler sat in Foch's restaurant wagon in the very same chair, that Marshal Foch had sat in, when he faced the defeated German representatives. After listening to the reading of the preamble of the armistice conditions by Generaloberst Wilhelm Keitel, Hitler left the carriage with a calculated gesture of disdain to the French delegates.
Inleiding: Franz Von Papen & Werner Horn; schaker en pion
Onlangs stuitte ik in een oud boek (1) van 1919 op een opmerkelijk verhaal over een Duitse Luitenant, die in begin februari 1915 een half geslaagde bomaanslag pleegt op een spoorbrug over een grensrivier tussen de Verenigde Staten en Canada. Ook al staat de bekentenis van de dader, Werner Horn, deels in het boek te lezen, de naam van zijn opdrachtgever zal Horn blijven verzwijgen. Na wat verder zoeken vond ik ook de naam van Horn’s opdrachtgever, Franz von Papen, een van de aangeklaagden van het latere Neurenberg Proces in 1946.
In een Grote Oorlog als de Eerste Wereldoorlog is Horn’s aanslag op de brug uiteraard slechts een bescheiden wapenfeit. Toch vermoed ik dat dit relatief onbekende verhaal, dat de geschiedenis is ingegaan als de “ Vanceboro International Bridge Bombing ”, nog interessante kanten kent. Het is onder andere een spionageverhaal over hoe in een groter plan een sluwe schaker zijn naïeve pion offert.
Beknopte situatieschets Canada en de Verenigde Staten in 1915
This trip we start at the Léomont near Vitrimont and we will with some exceptions concentrate on the Battle of Lorraine of August-September 1914 in the area, called, the “Trouée de Charmes”, the Gap of Charmes.
After the Léomont battlefield we continue our explorations to Friscati hill and its Nécropole Nationale. Next we pay a visit to the battlefield of la Tombe to go on to the Château de Lunéville. There we cross the Vezouze to move on southward to the Bayon Nécropole Nationale. At Bayon we cross the Moselle to pass Charmes for the panorama over the battlefield from the Haut du Mont. North-west of Charmes we will visit the British Military Cemetery containing 1918 war victims. From Charmes we go northward to the battlefield of the First French Victory of the Great War, the Battle of Rozelieures of 25 August 1914. North of Rozelieures we will visit the village of Gerbéviller. From there we make a jump northward to visit the ruins of Fort de Manonviller to finish with an interesting French Dressing Station bunker, west of Domjevin.
During this visit, we try to focus on the day that the momentum of the battle switched from the French side to the advantage of the Bavarian side: the day of 20 August 1914, when the Bavarians rapidly re-conquered the territory around Morhange , being also the day of the start of their rather successful “Schlacht in Lothringen”.
We will visit beautiful landscapes of the "Parc Naturel Régional de Lorraine", memorials, ossuaries, and cemeteries. Sometimes we will divert to other periods of the Great War, honouring Russian and Romanian soldiers, who died in this sector. We start our route at the border village of Manhoué, and via Frémery, Oron, Chicourt, Morhange, Riche, Conthil, Lidrezing, Dieuze, Vergaville, Bidestroff, Cutting, Bisping we will finish in Nomeny and Mailly-sur-Seille, where the Germans halted their advance on 20 August 1914, and where they constructed from 1915 some interesting bunkers.
