11-11-1918
Why this Veterans day is especially special and what is the armistice actually?
Celebrating 100 years of the Armistice: At 11:00 am on 11-11 in the year 1918 A German Republic was declared and peace extended to the Allies. This because at 5 AM on that same morning of November 11, an armistice was signed in a railroad car in a forest glade outside of Compiègne, France near the front lines in the presence of France’s WWI Commander, Marshal Ferdinand Jean Marie Foch.
The terms of the agreement called for the cessation of fighting along the entire Western Front to begin at precisely 11 AM that morning. After over four years of bloody conflict, the Great War was at an end.The Germans had signed the Armistice ending World War I in front of French General Marshal Foch, a long and horrendous war that resulted in more than 20 million dead and as many wounded, military and civilians alike.
Ironically, on June 22, 1940 amidst the outbreak of WWII, a pompous “Hitler dictates that the French capitulation take place at Compiègne, in that very same forest glade north of Paris. This is the same exact spot where twenty-two years earlier the Germans had signed the Armistice ending World War I (on 11-11-18) in front of French General Marshal Foch. Hitler intended to disgrace the French and avenge the German defeat. (Indeed he chose to sit in the very same seat used by his nemesis Marshal Foch in 1918.) To further deepen the humiliation, he ordered that the signing ceremony take place in the same railroad car that hosted the earlier surrender. Under the terms of this Armistice, two-thirds of France is to be occupied by the Germans. The French army is to be disbanded. In addition, France must bear the cost of the German invasion.” (Eyewitness to History: Account of American journalist William Shirer). Indeed the Paris Blvd, Avenue Foch, named for the famous General, literally was largely confiscated and controlled by the Nazis during the Paris occupation with one few exception at #11 Avenue Foch where American expat Doctor Sumner Jackson and his family carried out resistance activities literally under Nazi noses. Alex Kershaw’s book “Avenue of Spies” tells the rest of that story.
Today let’s not just think about Veterans day as a holiday from work. This year of all years, remember that forest glade 100 years ago, that railroad car, the generals, the soldiers, the people who strived to bring peace to the world, what sacrifices were made 100 years ago, and in the years since by so many for the cause of freedom.