On this day, 106 years ago, World War I ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. The date is now known as Armistice Day when Axis and Allies signed an agreement for peace, bringing end to a war that had been waging for over four years and led to the death of over 15 million people. An armistice was preferred over a surrender as both sides believed it was the fastest way to end the war’s misery and carnage. The armistice was an agreement to down the weapons as a precursor to the peace negotiations that would conclude with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in June of the subsequent year.
Prior to the armistice, Germans had suffered heavy casualties as British, French and US forces pushed them steadily. Despite the Germans on the back foot and an opportunity to take over Berlin on the cards, the Allies preferred to walk away as an invasion would have required too much in terms of manpower, logistics and resources.
Germans knew they had run their race. As early as September of 1918, they started to make overtures about an armistice. The German government approached the US with a request for an agreement and hoped that the finer details would be based on the ‘peace without victory’ plan laid down by US President Woodrow Wilson in January.
Commander-in-chief of the Allied forces, Marshal Ferdinand Foch led the negotiations from a position of leverage ensuring that Germans could not dictate the terms.
As part of the armistice, Germans agreed to pull their troops out of France, Belgium and Luxembourg within 15 days, or risk becoming prisoners of the Allies. They were also required to return all the prisoners of war without reciprocity.
The Germans had to hand over their arsenal, which included 5,000 artillery pieces, 25,000 machine guns and 1,700 airplanes, along with 5,000 railroad locomotives, 5,000 trucks and 150,000 wagons. It also had to give up the contested territory of Alsace-Lorraine. And they agreed to the indignity of Allied forces occupying German territory along the Rhine, where they would stay until 1930.
In 1919, King George V of England proclaimed that Armistice Day be marked with two minutes of silence at 11 am, the hour the agreement had gone into effect. “The thoughts of everyone may be concentrated on reverent remembrance of the glorious dead,” the king said during the ceremony held in the palace grounds.
Since then, 11 November has been referred to as Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth. In London, a National Service of Remembrance is held each year at the Cenotaph, a war memorial, and bright red paper poppies are worn as a symbol of support for the armed forces. Sporting events also witness teams standing in silence as the military bugle is blasted during this period.
A few days after King George V’s announcement, the then-US president, Woodrow Wilson declared that the Americans would also be observing the day with ceremonies across the country.
“With splendid forgetfulness of mere personal concerns we remodelled our industries, concentrated our financial resources, increased our agricultural output, and assembled a great army, so that at the last our power was a decisive factor in the victory,” read Wilson’s statement.
In 1953, Alvin J. King of Emporia, Kansas, proposed changing the name of the holiday to Veterans Day, to recognise veterans from all wars and conflicts.
But later, The Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919, formally brought World War One to an end but rather than bring peace, it sowed the seeds of the wars to come.
The foundation of the treaty was established as early as March 1919. However, on March 19, the United States Senate rejected the treaty for the second time, refusing to ratify it and preventing the US from joining the League of Nations. Thus, the preliminary terms could not be finalised.
The treaty burdened Germany with punitive penalties that economically immobilised the country and made it politically weak. This created the right atmosphere for grievances to accumulate, leading to the emergence of radical factions that eventually led to World War Two.
The Treaty of Versailles economically devastated and politically weakened Germany. Hyperinflation and mass unemployment rendered the Weimar Republic rotten in the 1920s and gave fertile ground for extremist ideology.
Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party exploited popular anger at the treaty, promising to turn its provisions on their head and restore the greatness of Germany.
By the beginning of the 1930s, Germany’s outrage against King-Treaty finally came to a boiling point. Hitler’s rise to power was based on the promise of reversing the Versailles conditions, recovering lost territory, and resuscitating German military might.
The inability of the treaty to create a just and balanced mechanism of peace finally pushed the world towards another destructive war World War II.
The Treaty of Versailles is a lesson in the dangers of imposing punitive peace terms without considering their long-term implications. While meant to prevent another war, its harsher provisions fuelled resentment and instability and made a second world war virtually inevitable.
