Today, the Armistice wagon sits in a building in the clearing at Rethondes, in the Oise region, some sixty kilometres north of Paris. With educational workshops for schoolchildren, secondary school pupils and high school students, a rich museum that was completely renovated in 2018, military equipment and numerous commemorative monuments: with around 50,000 visitors a year (80,000 in the centenary year), this place is a major place of remembrance, and the second most important tourist site in the département, after Pierrefonds Castle.
But this clearing is not in Rethondes, and the carriage is not the one in which the two armistices were initialled, on 11 November 1918 and 22 June 1940. The Armistice Memorial is located in the commune of Compiègne, in the forest of the same name, not far from the village of Rethondes. The original railway carriage burnt down in 1945.
In fact, many questions surround these two historic signatures. Firstly, why sign the 1918 armistice in a wagon in the middle of the forest and not, for example, in the magnificent ballroom of the nearby Château de Compiègne? "Marshal Foch wanted it to be discreet, and above all he didn't want any politicians or journalists to arrive," explains Major (ER) Dominique Valembois, General Secretary of the Mémorial de l'Armistice, an association set up in 1950. Generalissimo of the Allied armies at the time of their victory over the German Empire, Ferdinand Foch had a command train, "a sort of 'Air Force One' of the time", as the major sums it up.
MARSHAL FOCH'S INTENTION WAS "NOT TO HUMILIATE THE GERMANS".
In his view, the commander-in-chief had "a desire not to humiliate the soldiers, who had fought well". Jean-Yves Bonnard, a doctor in human sciences and secondary school teacher in the Oise region, notes that General Weygand, Foch's aide-de-camp who read out the terms of the armistice to the Germans, refers in his memoirs to this concern "not to humiliate" them: "For Marshal Foch, it was not a celebration, he knew the suffering experienced by the soldiers". Author of "Rethondes, le jour où l'Histoire s'est arrêtée" (Éd. du Trotteur ailé, 2008), the professor adds that "Joffre's main headquarters before 1916 was at Chantilly, under the gaze of the international press. Foch had a bad memory of this media presence, which was far too strong.
What's more, at the beginning of November 1918, "we were on the victory offensive, the front lines were constantly moving in the Ardennes, and we had to be able to leave quickly if we needed to," adds Jean-Yves Bonnard, who is also chairman of the association. Heritage of the Great War. The clearing at Rethondes, near the station of the same name, was ideal for this purpose: the railway network, used for transporting heavy artillery, was divided into a spur of four tracks. This allowed the delegations to arrive quickly, and then to park the Foch train and the German train in parallel.
The negotiations took place on the French train, in a Compagnie internationale des wagons-lits dining car delivered in 1914. The armistice was signed between 5.12am and 5.20am, the culmination of the final talks that had begun at 2am on 11 November. There are no photos of the signing, and only one of the allied delegation leaving the carriage - Foch's concern for discretion. "A railway worker also took a shot from a distance, like a paparazzi," adds Major Valembois.
After the war, the conditions of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles (perceived in Germany as a "diktat"), the weakness of the Weimar Republic and the stock market crash of 1929 fuelled the political rise of a former corporal of the Great War: Adolf Hitler. Defeated in 1940 after less than nine months of fighting, Germany forced France to sign the armistice in the same clearing at Rethondes.
ADOLF HITLER WANTED TO "MAKE AMENDS FOR 1918".
For Major Valembois, "it was Hitler's choice to humiliate the French where the Germans had been humiliated in 1918". The Führer pulled out all the stops: a take-charge with microphones and loudspeakers, numerous journalists, including those from the American magazine Life, who published colour photos... His troops removed the 1918 wagon from the museum where it had been (after having sat for a long time in the courtyard of Les Invalides in Paris) by demolishing a wall and replaced it in the same place as it had been 22 years earlier.
On 21 June 1940, Hitler arrived in the clearing. "He read a letter to the French delegates saying that he wanted to wash away the stain, the affront of 1918", recounts Jean-Yves Bonnard. "For him, it was German politicians, not the military, who had lost the previous war. In 1940, he was in absolute glory for having got rid so quickly of an army that was seen as the most powerful in the world.
"It is considered that he only stayed for an hour", adds Dominique Valembois. The next day, the Nazi dictator did not attend the signing of the armistice. But immediately afterwards, his orders were followed to the letter: the museum building was dynamited, the tracks removed and the clearing ploughed. Only the large statue of Marshal Foch, installed there in 1938, remained.
WHY DID HITLER SPARE THE STATUE OF FOCH?
This indulgence of the 1918 victor gives rise to several hypotheses. "Either Hitler respected First World War veterans such as Foch and Pétain," says Major Valembois. "Or, but this is unlikely, he wanted Foch to 'contemplate' the now empty clearing. Or, since he was superstitious, as his official biographer said, he might have feared that destroying the statue would bring him bad luck.
Jean-Yves Bonnard suggests another possible explanation: "Perhaps he wanted to keep up good relations with Pétain's France? In the armistice treaty, an article stipulates that war memorials must not be destroyed. Only those that were too ostentatious in celebrating past French victory (such as a cockerel or a Poilu crushing the imperial eagle) were blown up.
The two armistices wagon was sent to Germany as a war trophy, along with the monuments in the clearing. Displayed in front of the Brandenburg Gate and then in a park in central Berlin, it was evacuated in 1944 to Thuringia, in the centre of the country. It was there that it burned down in 1945, in an accidental fire at the railway station where it was located.
"It was no longer guarded, and children used to play inside," says Dominique Valembois. "Some villagers had even recovered the bronze letters 'Compagnie internationale des wagons-lits'," adds Jean-Yves Bonnard. "All the wood burnt down, but as the metal structure remained, it was used after the war to transport logs.
IN 1944, THE FRENCH "ERASED" THE DEFEAT OF 1940
In France, once Compiègne was liberated on 1er September 1944, the French reclaimed the clearing. Two ceremonies were organised on 1er and 11 November: "The aim was to erase the defeat of 1940", continues the teacher, "with torch-lighting by scouts as if to 'purify' the site".
Reforested, the Armistice clearing no longer really existed. "What follows is therefore a construction, a remembrance tourism development, of living memory", analyses Jean-Yves Bonnard. "It's not a government initiative, but a local one, supported by the press and veterans in the area.
The wagon that disappeared in Germany, no. 2419 D, has been replaced by another dining wagon from the series delivered in 1914, no. 2439 D. Fitted out like the Armistice wagon, it is the centrepiece of the Memorial. In the new museography inaugurated in 2018, three rooms are devoted to the armistice of 1918, followed by others to the inter-war period, and one to the armistice of 1940. Two armistices that have everything in common, except the place where they were signed.
