Cold Open

It’s the morning of November 11th, 1918.

The First World War is raging along the Western Front in north-east France.

Soldiers on both sides – exhausted by four years of unrelenting war – take shelter in artillery craters as enemy bullets whistle overhead. The air is filled with smoke and shrapnel and the groans of dying men. 

For several days, two battalions have been locked in a bloody stalemate over control of a strategic riverbank, feet from the German line. And after a night of heavy rain, the ground has turned to a freezing sludge. Each day brings more casualties and more suffering. That’s what this war has become – a slow and torturous fight to the death in hellish conditions.

But the lieutenant in command of the Allied regiment has heard rumours of an impending ceasefire; the Germans maybe are on the verge of surrender. But without confirmation, he cannot call off his men. So with a heavy heart, he orders another wave over the top.

Meanwhile, back behind the reserve lines, a young British private is scampering through the trenches toward the front. Clutched in his right hand is a message from High Command.

He struggles through the muck, trying desperately to get to the front. He must deliver this message, saying the armistice has been signed. The war is over.

Vaulting outstretched limbs of his injured compatriots, the private holds onto his helmet as he runs, bursting with excitement at the news. He knows that many more men will die before he can relay the message to his Lieutenant. Every second counts because many lives are stake.

10,000 soldiers will die on that final morning of World War One, before the armistice comes into effect, and after more than four years of fighting, when “the war to end all wars” finally draws to a close on November 11th, 1918.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast – every day – we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is November 11th, 1918: The Signing of the World War One Armistice. 

Act One: Negotiating Peace

It’s November 7th, four days before the armistice is signed.

Three German automobiles wind their way through a no man’s land, an apocalyptic hellscape of artillery craters and razor wire.

Inside one of the cars, German Secretary of State, Matthias Erzberger, peers gloomily out across the desolate battlefield. He has been sent by his government to negotiate a peace treaty with France and Great Britain. And he is feeling the pressure.

The war, Erzberger knows, is already lost. A ceasefire might look like a more respectable result for Germany than unconditional surrender, but the difference is largely semantic. This war has not ended in a stalemate. The Germans are beaten. And the French and British want to make sure this “truce” looks like a defeat – and a humiliating one at that.

Erzberger balances his pince-nez eyeglasses on the bridge of his porcine nose and reads through the proposed terms. Without any real bargaining power, his main aim here is to minimize the damage.

For the German military, the outlook has been bleak for months. Defeat at the Battle of Amiens in August heralded the start of the Hundred Day Offensive, a string of successive Allied victories along the Western Front, victories that dismantled Germany’s territorial advantage. And now, with the support of the United States, who joined the Allied cause in 1917, Germany’s enemies are amassing even greater stocks of weaponry and manpower.

Making matters worse, morale at home in Germany is at rock bottom. Food shortages caused by the Allied blockade are leading to widespread discontent. In 1918 alone, nearly 300,000 German civilians will die from hypothermia and starvation.

Germany’s allies aren’t faring much better. The Ottoman Empire is close to exhaustion, while the Austro-Hungarian Empire is descending into chaos under the privations of war. Germany’s own monarch, Kaiser Wilhelm II, has been steadily losing his grip on power. In a matter of days, his government will be overthrown.

So it is in this context of military collapse and domestic turmoil that a car carrying a low-spirited Matthias Erzberger snakes its way through the no-man’s land. Soon, he and three other envoys will board a train that will take them deeper into enemy territory. 

On the morning of November 8th, they pull into a railway siding in the Forest of Compiégne, 60 kilometres, or just 37 miles, north of Paris, where the British and French delegates are already waiting.

There, the screech of metal makes Marshal Ferdinand Foch glance up from his desk. The Commander-in-Chief of the Allied forces stands and walks to the window of his office – temporarily housed in a train carriage in the Forest of Compiégne.

He looks out the window to see that the German delegates have arrived.

Emerging from the carriage, Foch is joined by his chief-of-staff, General Maxime Weygand; the British representative, Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss, as well as two British naval officers named George Hope and Jack Marriott. The five men line up, stiff in their military uniforms. 

The German envoys climb down from their train. A strained silence ensues as the sworn enemies stand face to face, neither party certain of how to greet the other. There were never going to be warm handshakes. No “water under the bridge” sentiments. The French and British aren’t here to go easy on their enemy.

Nevertheless, many will criticise the armistice. When Foch first received a radio message from the Germans requesting a ceasefire, the Allied position was strong. American support, better equipment and a number of decisive military victories in key locations all helped the Allies establish superiority by November 1918.

For soldiers on the winning side, the opportunity to march through Berlin, to stamp their authority over those who had slaughtered so many of their compatriots, would have been a satisfying end to the conflict. But invading Germany – even in their weakened state – would have cost countless more lives for no discernible advantage. In addition, the war was becoming cripplingly expensive for all involved. And so, despite their advantage, the Allied powers chose to accept Germany’s request. They would sign a ceasefire. But Germany would have to their terms.

***

As Matthias Erzberger reads through the conditions of the armistice, he can hardly believe his eyes. 

He was expecting severe measures, but these are harsher than he feared. This is no peace settlement; this is revenge. As well as a complete withdrawal of German forces from France, the Allies are demanding that Germany disarms completely and cedes huge tracts of territory. But there will be no end to the naval blockade of Germany, and they will have to pay economic reparations for years to come. 

The next three days are spent in terse negotiation. But the German delegation has little leverage. They must accept these humiliating conditions or face annihilation.

Finally, at 5 AM on November 11th, the armistice is signed. But when Erzberger tries to shake Ferdinand Foch’s hand, Foch declines. There is still plenty of bitterness between the two former combatants.

The representatives emerge from the train carriage into the pre-dawn gloom. The faraway rumble of artillery still shakes the forest floor. Many more thousands of soldiers will die before the shooting stops. And it’s these final deaths that will exemplify the tragedy of this cataclysmic war.

Act Two: The Eleventh Hour 

It’s November 11th 1918, hours after the armistice is signed. 

As day breaks on the Western Front, soldiers on both sides prepare for another day of combat. Even as Foch and Erzberger emerge from the train carriage, infantrymen stand at arms in trenches, rifles trained on enemy soldiers who, in just a few hours, won’t be enemies at all.

11 o’clock is Foch’s original deadline for the ceasefire, allowing time for the news to travel along the front. Commanders have been notified in advance; what they haven’t been told is what they should do in the meantime.

For some Allied commanders, sending their men to capture ground that they will soon be able to walk across safely is madness. For others, it is one last chance to punish the Germans, to gain territory and to improve the Allies’ position at the bargaining table.   

Such are the thoughts of one American officer, Major General Charles Summerall. His Marine regiment is camped on a riverbank in northeast France. Despite knowledge of the impending ceasefire, Summerall orders his men to cross the river. But the crossing is a catastrophe. Over eleven hundred Marines are killed, picked off by German snipers.

Further up the line, another American brigade attempts to seize a tiny French village from German troops.

A morning mist hangs over the cobbled streets of the village as the American soldiers advance. When German guns start raining bullets down upon them, the Allies retreat, unwilling to perish in a war that is moments from being won. But one American supply soldier, twenty-three-year-old Private Henry Gunther, presses on.

The Germans look up from their rifle sights, in disbelief. Clearly, this foolish American does not know the war is nearly over. They shout and wave him away. But Private Gunther keeps charging. So, with an air of resignation, a German soldier fires a single shot, stopping the private’s advance.

Gunther is the last American killed in World War I. The time of his death is 10:44, sixteen minutes before the ceasefire. 

Perhaps the most powerful story is that of Augustin Trebuchon, a forty-year-old French soldier – the last to die of anyone on the Western Front.

Trebuchon, a shepherd from the mountains of southern France, volunteered to fight in 1914. He served for the entirety of the war, fighting in major battles at Verdun and the Somme. At 10:50 AM on November 11th, he and his regiment are locked in a skirmish with German gunners in the Ardennes, near the Belgian border. Five minutes later, at 10:55, following a lull in artillery fire, Trebuchon lifts his head from the bunker – and is immediately struck and killed by a German bullet. 

Five minutes later, the entire war is over.

Eventually, the French will place a white cross at the very spot of Trebuchon’s death. But French authorities, embarrassed that their men died after the signing of the armistice, will lie about the date. A plaque on the cross reads: “Died for France on November 10th, 1918”. 

Then, finally, at the eleventh hour, all guns fall silent. The horrific slaughter of the Western Front is over. For the survivors, emotions are mixed. There is relief, certainly, but mostly just a profound sense of loss and disbelief.

One British soldier writes in his diary: “I suppose I ought to be thrilled and cheering. Instead I am merely apathetic and incredulous… There is some cheering across the river – occasional bursts of it as the news is carried to the advanced lines. For the most part, though, we are in silence… For months we have slept under the guns. We cannot comprehend the stillness.”

The terms of the armistice will have far-reaching consequences. The Paris Peace Conference will begin in January, leading to the Treaty of Versaille in June 1919. And just like the armistice of 1918, the Treaty will impose humiliating and crippling conditions on Germany’s economy and military. Its terms will sow the seeds of resentment that will spawn another, more deadly political movement: Nazism.

Ferdinand Foch, the architect of the 1918 armistice, will predict the carnage of the 20th century most accurately when, after the Treaty of Versailles signed, he turns to his aides and says darkly, “This is not a peace treaty. This is war postponed for twenty years.”

Act Three: A Twenty-Year Armistice 

It’s August 26th, 1921 in the Black Forest, in western Germany, almost three years after the armistice brought an end to World War I.

Matthias Erzberger strolls through the woods. Despite the summer heat, it's cool in the forest beneath the soaring trees. But more importantly for Erzberger, it's peaceful.

Erzberger is loathed by many in Germany, who blame him for the harsh conditions imposed on the country, following the end of the war. Because Germany was never invaded, a conspiracy is circulating that the country never lost the war. Instead, it was betrayed from within by Jews, or communists, or may be both.

It's a nonsense theory, but one which has been eagerly adopted and spread by right-wing extremists. And if Erzberger thinks he can escape his tormentors in the peace and quiet of the Black Forest, he is mistaken. He is ambushed by a member of a far-right extremist group and shot dead. He will be far from the last to die in the aftermath of World War I. 

The terms of the Treaty of Versailles will set in motion events that will wreak havoc all across Europe – and the world – many long years after the armistice was signed, and the guns fell silent on November 11th, 1918.

Outro

Next on History Daily. November 12th, 1660. English nonconformist preacher John Bunyan is arrested and sent to prison where, from his cramped cell, he manages to write one of the most widely read books of all time.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Mollie Baack.

Sound design by Derek Behrens.

Music by Lindsay Graham.

This episode is written and researched by Joe Viner.

Executive Producers are Steven Walters for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.