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In June 1940, just after his armies had smashed France, Hitler traveled to Compiègne. Here, in a forest clearing, on November 11, 1918, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the French commander, had humbled the Kaiser's generals and accepted a humiliating German surrender, the armistice ending World War I. Foch held the fateful meeting in his railroad car, number 2419D, a dining car that the Wagon-Lits Company had converted to an office on wheels. The German delegation arrived in another train.

French officials later made the site into what they called the “Glade of the Armistice.” The French architect M. Magès opened up a grand avenue, 250 yards long, leading to a broad circular center with a great granite block inscribed: “Here on 11th November 1918 perished the criminal pride of the German Empire defeated by the free people whom it set out to enslave.” At the entrance to Magès’ avenue stood an imposing monument in Alsatian sandstone, erected by the newspaper Le Matin’s public subscription, depicting the point of a sword impaling a large limp eagle. Underneath was inscribed: “To the heroic soldiers of France...Defenders of the country and of right...Glorious liberators of Alsace Lorraine.” A statue of Marshal Foch gazing out with imperious satisfaction was added in September 1937.

CBS Radio correspondent William L. Shirer arrived at Compiègne on June 19, 1940. German army engineers with pneumatic drills were feverishly demolishing the wall of the museum where Foch’s railroad car was kept. Finally, they hauled the car out to the spot it occupied in November 1918.

At three PM on June 21, Hitler walked past the Alsatian monument with its skewered eagle, now bedecked with red Reich flags bearing black swastikas. He wore a double-breasted gray uniform. His World War I Iron Cross First Class hung from his left breast pocket; a Jewish officer, Lieutenant Hugo Gutmann, had nominated him for this decoration. To Shirer, Hitler’s face looked grave, solemn, brimming with revenge and scornful inner joy. The Führer’s step was springy, the step of a triumphant conqueror who had defied the world.

Surrounded by his entourage, Hitler strode up to the massive central granite block and read its inscription in silence. As he stepped off the monument, he glanced back at it, snide, angry. He swiftly snapped his hands on his hips, arched his shoulders, and planted his feet wide apart, a haughty gesture of defiance and burning contempt.

Hitler led his entourage to another smaller granite stone, fifty yards to one side. This stone marked the position of the German generals’ railroad car on November 11, 1918. Hitler gave only a passing glance at the inscription, “The German Plenipotentiaries.” The stone itself lay between a pair of rusty railroad tracks. Hitler appeared not even to see the nearby statue of Marshal Foch.

In Foch’s railroad car, Hitler gave the Nazi salute, arm raised. As his generals handed armistice terms to the defeated, dispirited French, he sat at the same table in the same position as Foch but said nothing. Twelve minutes after the French arrived, Hitler stood up, saluted stiffly, and alighted from the car. The whole surrender ceremony was over in fifteen minutes.

During the occupation (1940-44) the Germans laid waste to the entire site. They dynamited the inscribed central granite block, plowed up the avenues, cut down the trees, and took Foch’s railroad car to Berlin, where in 1944 it was destroyed during a British air raid. Only Foch’s statue was left untouched. Why? Hitler wanted the despised victor of 1918 to stand witness to the ruin of his work.

After the war, the French used German prisoners to completely restore the Glade of the Armistice. Today, visitors can see a meticulous reproduction of Foch’s railroad car in a shed where the original had been kept.

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