Germany Concedes

The end was near, and Germany’s admirable restraint and discipline were breaking down everywhere. The people were mutinous – deeply upset by false promises and years of privation. The army was damaged beyond repair and demoralised, barring a few pockets of stout resistance. Ludendorff briefly acted as the scapegoat for all the anger, but increasingly came the clamour for the abdication of the Kaiser – the man who had led his country into this terrible war. Scheidemann, leader of the social democrats in the Reichstag was openly calling for the Kaiser to go, and his demand was taken up across the country.

As for the Navy? On 4^th November, widespread mutiny broke out in the German navy. Orders had been sent for the High Seas Fleet to break out for a final despairing battle,  but the officers and men had become so demotivated by their years of inaction since Jutland that they refused to obey orders. A red flag of revolution was flown on the battleship Kaiser (appropriately), and within hours mutiny had spread to Hamburg, Bremen and Lubeck. Political delegates rushed from Berlin to the ports, caving in to their demands and, effectively, sealing the end for the German monarchy. Other politicians travelled with Chancellor von Baden to Spa to consider President Wilson’s latest missive. This brought news that the Allies were prepared to seek peace on the basis of Wilson’s Fourteen Points, but only with two important provisos – namely that they would retain their autonomy regarding ‘liberty of the seas’; and they clarified their draconian expectation of ‘restorations for war damage’. Germany had little choice but to face a ruinous peace offer (much as she had imposed on the Russians at Brest-Litovsk) and find a team of negotiators that would prove acceptable to the Allies for an armistice process.

For the Allied plenipotentiaries, Wilson announced, military supremo Foch would represent the armies, and Sir Rosslyn Wemyss, the British First Sea Lord, would represent the navies. The Germans fielded four low key players as their plenipotentiaries – two politicians, Erzberger and Count Oberndorff, and two military staff officer Generals, von Gundell and von Winterfeld. On the afternoon of 6^th November, these four men and their staff set out from Berlin by rail, heading for the French lines to the north east of Paris. Von Baden issued an appeal (to little effect) to the German people for restraint while this delicate mission was under way.

The German generals and their senior officers were urged to put up the strongest possible resistance while the armistice negotiations were alive. Foch and his commanders had their tails up – as did all the men on the Allied side – and sensed they could finish off the enemy before an official armistice. For the British it seemed that destiny awaited some of the Divisions that fought in the opening Battle of Mons in 1914. Few of those original old contemptibles survived, but it was a matter of Divisional and Regimental pride to retake the ground that marked the beginning of the Great Retreat in 1914. By 8^th November the northern flank was past Conde, opening up the route to Mons. The Belgians and Plumer’s 2^nd Army were beyond Ghent and heading for Brussels. Further south, the Americans and French were closing in on Metz, having taken the three key targets of Hirson, Mezieres and Sedan.

Foch now prepared a plan to push the American 1^st and French 10^th armies into German territory between the rivers Meuse and Moselle on 14^th November. In the feverish atmosphere of accelerating gains, all men knew the end was coming, and there was an eagerness to get as far as possible before any ceasefire (although feelings must have been mixed with the realisation that they were close to surviving the killings). For example, the 8^th Division of Horne’s Army, having spent the previous year in the Ypres salient; the March retreat and the third Battle of the Aisne, was now straining to reach Mons in time: “… one of its battalions, the 2^nd Middlesex, travelled for seven hours in buses, and then marched twenty seven miles, pushing the enemy before them. They wanted to reach the spot in Mons where some of them (then in the 4^th Middlesex) fired almost the first British shots in the war….” (J. Buchan The Great War. Vol IV p411).

The jubilant scenes of people in the liberated towns and cities of France and Belgium contrasted with the sullen and angry mood across Germany. The minor royal figures across the land provided convenient local focus for political dissent. Nowhere was the threat of revolution more present than in the capital. By 9^th November Berlin was in the hands of a workmen and soldiers’ council.  Monarchy was dead, and its leading symbol - the Hohenzollern monarch -  had to fall.

Scheidemann announcing the birth of the Weimar
Republic from the Reichstag, 9 November 1918

On Saturday 9^th November, the Chancellor von Baden issued a decree announcing a socialist government (to become the Weimar Republic) headed by five politicians from the two main parties. Alongside this, Kaiser Wilhelm announced his intention to abdicate and that his son, the Crown Prince, had relinquished his right to succession. The following day the two of them crossed the border into neutral Holland and took refuge in a country house at Amerongen, east of Utrecht. And so, another great dynasty - the Hohenzollerns – moved out from power and influence, like the Russian Romanovs one year earlier, and the Habsburgs one week earlier.

The German armistice delegation, which had departed Berlin on 6^th, arrived late in the evening of 7^th to the French front line near Choisy au Bac. On the morning of the 8^th they presented themselves to Foch and Wemyss at the now famous railway carriage in the Compiegne forest. Foch asked them what it was they wanted. Nonplussed, they responded with a wish to discuss armistice terms. Foch told them, brusquely, there would be no ‘discussion’ of terms. If they wished an armistice, then ‘take it or leave it’ terms that he now handed them would apply. If they refused, the Allies were committed to finishing the war with no armistice. Shocked by the approach  -and the severity of the terms – the Germans asked for time to consult with Berlin, and a provisional ceasefire. Foch refused the latter, and gave them a maximum of 72 hours (i.e. until 11am on 11^th November) to agree to the armistice terms. A courier was dispatched to make the complex journey to Spa (no fax or email available). It took him until the morning of 10^th to get there. The panicked military leadership phoned through to Berlin, where the new Government debated the terms immediately. They saw no choice but to accede. Their decision was passed rapidly to the delegation at Compiegne, and at 5am on 11^th the armistice was signed. Foch immediately sent the historic order to all his generals:

“Hostilities will cease on the whole front as from 11^th November at eleven o’clock. The Allied troops will not, until a further order, go beyond the line reached on that date and at that hour”.

The largest and worst conflict in history was over.