By the autumn of 1918, the German Empire was collapsing. The great Spring Offensive, Germany’s final attempt to win the war before American troops arrived in overwhelming numbers, had failed. Since August, the Allies had launched what became known as the Hundred Days Offensive, forcing the exhausted German Army steadily backwards along the Western Front. Food shortages were crippling the civilian population, Allied naval blockades had strangled the German economy for years, and strikes and protests were breaking out across the country. Even senior German generals, including Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, accepted that military victory was now impossible.
Germany’s allies fell one after another. Bulgaria surrendered in September, the Ottoman Empire signed an armistice in October, and Austria-Hungary began to disintegrate as its many nationalities declared independence. Germany now stood alone. In late October, sailors at the naval base of Kiel mutinied rather than sail on what they considered a suicidal final mission against the Royal Navy. The rebellion spread rapidly across Germany, with workers’ and soldiers’ councils taking control of major cities. Faced with the prospect of revolution, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated on 9 November and fled across the border into the neutral Netherlands. That same day, Germany was proclaimed a republic, with Friedrich Ebert becoming Chancellor and leading a new democratic government determined to end the war as quickly as possible.
The new government requested an immediate armistice. To negotiate it, a German delegation led by politician Matthias Erzberger travelled through the devastated battlefields of northern France before arriving in the Forest of Compiègne. There, deep in the woods, stood the private railway carriage of Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the Supreme Allied Commander. It was an intentionally symbolic setting. Germany, which had dictated harsh peace terms to defeated Russia just months earlier, now found itself on the receiving end.
When the German delegation entered Foch’s railway carriage during the early hours of 8 November, they hoped that President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points might provide the basis for a relatively moderate peace. Instead, Foch bluntly asked what they wanted before presenting them with a lengthy list of Allied demands. There would be virtually no negotiation. Germany was ordered to evacuate Belgium, France, Luxembourg and Alsace-Lorraine, withdraw all forces east of the Rhine, and allow Allied occupation of bridgeheads on the river. Thousands of artillery pieces, machine guns, aircraft, locomotives and railway wagons were to be handed over, while the powerful German High Seas Fleet was to be interned. The Allied naval blockade would remain in place until a permanent peace treaty had been signed.
The German delegates considered refusing the terms. They knew they were severe and feared the reaction at home. Yet the alternative was equally bleak. The German Army was exhausted, revolution was spreading through the country, and the Allies were preparing to continue their offensive if negotiations failed. With no realistic prospect of improving their position, Erzberger signed the armistice shortly after 5 a.m. on 11 November 1918.
Although the agreement had been signed, the fighting did not stop immediately. The ceasefire would not take effect until 11 a.m., giving armies six more hours of combat. Across the Western Front, artillery continued to fire, patrols continued to clash, and commanders launched attacks to improve their positions before the deadline. More than 10,000 men became casualties during those final hours, including around 2,700 killed. Among the last was the American soldier Henry Gunther, who charged a German machine-gun position just one minute before the armistice came into force and was shot dead at approximately 10:59 a.m.
Then, at exactly 11 o’clock on the morning of 11 November 1918 – the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month – the guns fell silent. After more than four years of industrialised warfare, the First World War had finally come to an end. The armistice did not bring lasting peace, however. It merely paused the fighting while diplomats prepared the Treaty of Versailles, whose controversial terms would reshape Europe and sow many of the grievances that contributed to the outbreak of the Second World War just two decades later.