Welcome. Welcome to another deep dive. And you
know, when I say welcome, I am speaking directly
to you, the ultimate learner. Absolutely. Whether
you're gearing up for a historical debate or
trying to untangle the complexities of the modern
world by examining how we got here, or you're
simply driven by this insatiable curiosity about
the very messy reality of human history, you
have found exactly the right place. You really
have. We have a pretty profound mission today.
We are going to completely bypass that neat,
sanitized version of history we all get in school,
right? And head straight into the heart of a
moment that completely rewired the 20th century.
Yeah, it really did. We're uncovering the incredibly
complex, deeply chaotic, and frankly surprisingly
tragic reality behind one of the most famous
dates in human history. That is exactly the goal
today. We are pulling all of our insights, all
the facts, the narrative threads from one incredibly
which is the Wikipedia article on the armistice
of 11 November 1918. And what makes this particular
deep dive so compelling is how the historical
record strips away all that simplified folklore.
It doesn't just give us the famous date. It presents
the raw, unfiltered, minute -by -minute sequence
of events that actually brought the absolute
meat grinder of the First World War. to a halt.
Because everyone knows that famous phrase, right?
The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
Oh, absolutely. It's iconic. It is. It's burned
into our collective memory. It sounds so perfectly
neat. Poetic almost. Yeah, exactly. Like poetic
resolved like a curtain gracefully falling on
a stage. But when you actually start looking
at the historical record. The picture that emerges
is anything but graceful. Not even close. The
path to that exact minute on the clock was paved
with secret train meetings in dark, rain -soaked
forests. It had some of the most cynical political
stapegoating imaginable. Naval mutinies, too.
Right. Naval mutinies, full -scale revolutions,
and just shocking numbers of casualties on a
day that was ostensibly supposed to be entirely
about peace. The massive gap between the poetry
of that 11th hour and the grim, muddy reality
on the ground is what we are digging into today.
It is a staggering gap. But before we really
get into the mechanics of how all of this unfolded,
it is crucial that we pause for a second and
lay down a very clear parameter for our discussion.
Good idea. The history we are examining today
delves heavily into the intense political maneuverings
of the time. It discusses various political factions,
including right -wing myths that emerged, the
actions of socialists, the fears of communists,
and the looming impact of the Bolsheviks. It's
a total political minefield. Exactly. And because
of this politically charged content, I want to
make it explicitly clear to you, our listener,
that this deep dive is not taking any political
sides whatsoever. We are not endorsing, we are
not validating or condemning the viewpoints of
the historical factions we'll mention. Our sole
objective is to impartially report on the historical
facts, the sequence of events, and the ideas
exactly as they are contained within our original
source material. We are here to understand the
history, not to litigate the politics. Okay,
let's unpack this. Let's transport ourselves
back to the late summer and early autumn of 1918.
Let's do it. We have to set the stage for why
this armistice even happened in the first place,
because the German Empire didn't just wake up
one day and decide to quit. We are looking at
an empire that is fundamentally crumbling under
its own weight. Imploding, really. Imploding.
So I want to start with the military collapse.
The historical record pinpoints the beginning
of the end to August 1918, specifically the Battle
of Amiens. Yes. The Black Day. Right. But help
me understand this, because earlier that same
year in the spring, Germany had launched this
massive offensive. They had gained all this ground.
What changed so drastically by August? Well,
what changed was the absolute exhaustion of the
German military machine. And that was colliding
with fresh allied tactics and resources. OK.
The Battle of Amiens in August is often referred
to as the Black Day of the German Army. During
the spring offensive. The Germans had pushed
incredibly hard. I mean, throwing everything
they had into breaking the trench deadlock before
the Americans could arrive in large numbers.
So it was a race against time for them. Exactly.
They gained territory, yes, but they lost their
best, most experienced storm troopers in the
process. They basically bled themselves dry to
take ground that was ultimately impossible to
defend. Ah, so they stretched themselves too
thin. Way too thin. So when the Allies counterattacked
at Amiens, utilizing coordinated tank warfare,
aircraft, and creeping artillery barrages in
a way the Germans hadn't fully anticipated. The
German lines just shattered. Completely. They
were forced into a massive withdrawal, falling
all the way back to the Hindenburg line. So they
essentially lost every single inch and ground
they had just sacrificed hundreds of thousands
of men to take. Every inch. The psychological
blow of that alone must have been devastating.
But it didn't stop there, right? Because immediately
after this, we see the Allies launch what's known
as the Hundred Days Offensive. Right. And this
wasn't just a series of isolated attacks. It
was a giant coordinated pincer movement. Like
a vice. Exactly like a vice. If you picture a
map of the Western Front in late September 1918,
you have a massive combined force of United States
and French troops attacking the Mise -Argonne
region. OK. So that's in the south. That is the
southern jaw of the pincer. Hundreds of thousands
of fresh American troops, who hadn't been ground
down by four years of trench warfare, are pushing
relentlessly. And what's happening in the North?
Simultaneously to the North, you have the British
and Dominion forces assaulting the St. Quentin
Canal. This is the northern jaw. And they actually
broke through the Hindenburg Line, which the
Germans had considered practically impregnable.
So the German Army is suddenly facing an overwhelming,
synchronized crush from two directions. Yeah,
the tactical situation was rapidly becoming completely
untenable. I'm trying to visualize this. You've
got an exhausted German Army, completely overstretched,
and suddenly they are caught in this giant vice.
But it wasn't just the Western Front that was
collapsing. No, not at all. When you look at
the broader map, the dominant effect happening
to Germany's allies is almost unbelievable. It's
like watching a geopolitical house of cards disintegrate
in real time. That's a great way to put it. First,
you have the Ottoman Empire, which is basically
described as being close to total exhaustion.
Then the Austro -Hungarian Empire, which is literally
descending into absolute chaos, fracturing along
ethnic lines. But the one that really caught
my eye was Bulgaria. The Bulgarian army's resistance
on the Macedonian front completely collapsed,
leading to the armistice of Salonika on September
29th. Why was Bulgaria such a critical linchpin?
We really need to pause on that detail about
Bulgaria because the strategic implications are
massive. For most of the war, the Central Powers,
Germany, Austria -Hungary, the Ottomans, and
Bulgaria formed a contiguous block. They were
connected. But the collapse of Bulgaria combined
with an Italian victory over the Austro -Hungarians
around the same time, completely changed the
strategic map. It effectively severed the central
powers in half. Oh, wow. But more terrifyingly
for Berlin, it opened a back door. for the Allies
to invade Germany from the south, right through
an entirely collapsing Austria. Wait, so Germany
had spent four agonizing years fighting a two
-front war against France and Britain in the
west and Russia in the east. Yes. And just as
they finally get Russia out of the war in 1917,
suddenly there's a threat of an invasion from
the south. Exactly. They're facing the terrifying
prospect of a third front opening up on their
completely exposed southern border. The German
High Command recognized immediately that this
was a fatal development. They had absolutely
zero reserves left to send south to defend Bavaria.
Which brings us to the situation inside Germany
itself. the home front. Yeah, the home front
was a nightmare. Because while the military is
facing this giant pincer in France and a new
southern back door through Austria, the civilian
population is enduring absolute hell. The naval
blockade by the allies seems to have been incredibly
effective, but brutally so. I've heard the term
turnip winter thrown around regarding Germany
during this time. Right. Just how bad were the
conditions for the average civilian? The conditions
were catastrophic. The Allied naval blockade
had effectively choked off Germany's ability
to import food and essential fertilizers for
years years Yes, the turnip winter actually refers
to the winter of 1916 to 1917 where the potato
crop failed and the civilian population had to
survive almost entirely on route of Vegas Which
were previously just used as animal feed that
sounds awful It was. And by the autumn of 1918,
things were even worse. The German people were
surviving on literal starvation rations. Bread
was adulterated with sawdust to make it go further.
Meat was practically non -existent. You have
a population that has been slowly starving for
years. And if starvation wasn't enough, you have
the devastating Spanish flu pandemic sweeping
through this incredibly vulnerable population.
Precisely. The influenza virus was tearing through
cities, killing people who were already immunocompromised
by years of severe malnutrition. It's just a
perfect storm of misery. It really is. And that
civilian suffering directly impacted the military's
capacity to continue the war. While the discipline
of the German troops actually on the front line
was miraculously holding together, there was
a desperate critical shortage of manpower. Because
they just didn't have anyone left to draft. Right.
Between the horrific battlefield casualties of
100 days offensive, the starvation rations making
men physically too weak to fight, and the toll
of the Spanish flu, which incapacitated up to
a million soldiers, they simply didn't have the
bodies to fill the trenches. So they try to pull
new recruits from the home front. But what kind
of recruits are they getting? They're getting
teenagers and old men. And worse for the military
command, these new recruits are arriving completely
war weary. entirely disaffected, and carrying
all the misery, anti -war sentiment, and revolutionary
discontent of the starving civilian population
right into the frontline trenches. The military
machine was running on fumes and the engine was
starting to spark. So the military is essentially
paralyzed and the civilians are starving. I have
to imagine the pressure cooker at the highest
levels of German command is about to explode.
It does explode. And this brings us to the political
chessboard, the sheer panic at the top. We are
at the Imperial Army headquarters at Spa. in
occupied Belgium. The date is September 29th,
1918. Same day Bulgaria signed their armistice.
Right. So Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff,
who, along with Hindenburg, is basically running
a military dictatorship in Germany at this point,
goes to Emperor Wilhelm II and the imperial chancellor.
And Ludendorff just drops a bomb. A massive one.
He tells them the military situation is completely
hopeless. He explicitly says he cannot guarantee
that the front will hold for another two hours.
Two hours. And he demands that a request be sent
for an immediate ceasefire. The panic is palpable.
Ludendorff's nerves are famously shattered at
this point. But what's truly sinister is the
strategic pivot he makes in that exact same breath.
He doesn't just ask for a ceasefire. He recommends
that the German government fundamentally change
its structure. He demands they accept the main
demands of U .S. President Woodrow Wilson's 14
points, which specifically included putting the
imperial government on a democratic footing.
Now hold on a second. Yeah. Ludendorff was a
hardline, aristocratic, authoritarian military
commander. Why on earth would he suddenly advocate
for handing power over to a democratic parliament?
That makes no sense. It makes perfect, cynical
sense when you realize what he was doing. Oh,
I see where you're going. The historical record
makes his motive chillingly clear. Yes, he did
it, hoping for more favorable peace terms from
the Americans, believing Wilson would be softer
on a fellow democracy than on an autocratic empire.
Sure, that's the surface reason. But primarily,
he did it to save the face of the Imperial German
Army. Ludendorff knew the war was lost. He knew
a humiliating surrender was inevitable. By handing
power to a civilian democratic government at
the exact moment the war was lost, he ensured
the new democratic politicians would be the ones
forced to sign the capitulation. This is one
of the most critical moments we are going to
talk about today. Ludendorff is orchestrating
a military defeat, recognizing the army has failed.
but intentionally designing the political aftermath
so the civilians take the fall. That is dark.
There is a specific quote that we have to feature
here. Ludendorff, speaking to the officers of
his staff on October 1st about these civilian
politicians taking over, says they now must lie
on the bed that they've made for us. The sheer
audacity of that statement. I know. It is breathtakingly
cynical. He is preemptively washing his hands
of the disaster he helped create. This exact
moment, this specific calculated decision by
Ludendorff to step back into the shadows and
let a brand new civilian government sign the
surrender, is the absolute bedrock of the disastrous
stab in the back myth that will plate Germany
later. Yeah. He is setting the trap. And the
political scrambling just accelerates from there.
On October 3rd, the liberal Prince Maximilian
of Baden is appointed as the new chancellor,
replacing the old third specifically to negotiate
this armistice. By October 5th, they are sending
messages to President Wilson in Washington. But
this telegraph war in October is fascinating
because Wilson is playing absolute hardball.
The Germans want peace based on his 14 points,
but Wilson keeps escalating his demands. We should
probably clarify what Wilson's 14 points actually
were, because they are central to this whole
negotiation. Yeah, good point. In January 1918,
Wilson had outlined a vision for a postwar world.
It included things like open diplomacy with no
secret treaties, absolute freedom of navigation
on the seas, the removal of economic barriers
and free trade. Sounds very modern. It was. It
also included national self -determination for
the peoples of Europe and the creation of a general
association of nations, what would eventually
become the League of Nations. It was a highly
idealistic, almost utopian framework for peace
without a clear victor or vanquished. Right,
so the Germans, facing total military collapse,
suddenly say, hey, those 14 points sound great,
let's do that. But Wilson isn't buying the sudden
conversion to democracy. On October 23, Wilson
essentially writes back that if the U .S. has
to deal with the military masters and the monarchical
autocrats of Germany, they aren't going to negotiate
peace. They are going to demand absolute surrender.
He draws a hard line. He really does. He makes
the abdication of the Kaiser a hard prerequisite
for even stopping the shooting. And while Wilson
is demanding the Kaiser's head and pushing his
idealistic points, there is a massive fracture
happening among the allies themselves. Oh, because
the The French, the British, and the Italians
didn't actually want Wilson's 14 points. Really?
Why not? Wasn't the whole point of the allied
effort to establish a lasting peace? You get
to look at it from the European perspective.
The European allies view these 14 commandments,
as French Prime Minister Clemenceau mockingly
called them, essentially as clever American propaganda.
It was a great psychological weapon for undermining
the fighting spirit of the central powers, but
they thought the actual principles were vague,
completely unrealistic, and deeply threatening
to their own postwar plans. Threatening how?
Well, France and Britain had vast colonial empires.
They didn't want to hear about national self
-determination. Oh, right. That would be bad
for the empire business. Exactly. Furthermore,
France had had its industrial heartland completely
destroyed by four years of German occupation
and artillery. They didn't want a lenient piece
based on American ideals. They wanted security.
They wanted to crush Germany's physical ability
to ever cross the Rhine River again. This disagreement
among the Allies gets so intense that Wilson
has to consult the top military commanders to
find a consensus on what the actual armistice
terms should be. Right. And the debate between
these Allied commanders is so revealing of their
vastly different mindsets. You have Field Marshal
Douglas Haig representing the British. He actually
urges moderation, which surprised me. Yes. Haig
argued that the German army wasn't totally broken
yet. He believed they could still retreat to
shorter, highly defensible lines closer to the
German border and drag the war out for another
year. Which nobody wanted. Right. He wanted to
grant them conditions they could actually stomach
to end the slaughter now. But interestingly,
there was also a political calculation. The British
establishment wanted to keep The German army,
somewhat intact and mobilized to act as a conservative
counterweight against the spread of communist
agitation sweeping westward from Bolshevik Russia.
That makes sense. They're already looking at
the next threat. Exactly. But the French commander,
Marshal Ferdinand Foch, had a totally different
view. Right. Completely different. Foch agrees
with Hague's military assessment that the Germans
could retreat and form a new defensive line.
But his conclusion is the exact opposite. He
wants to crush them. Foch wants. stringent punishing
terms. He doesn't want to negotiate. He wants
to dictate. He demands the military occupation
of the Rhineland, allied bridgeheads over the
Rhine River itself, and the surrender of massive
crippling quantities of military material. He
wants to physically neuter the German military
once and for all. And then finally, you have
General John Pershing, the commander of the American
Expeditionary Forces. I have to play devil's
advocate here because Pershing's stance sounds
incredibly extreme. It was very extreme. He opposed
giving the Germans any armistice at all. He wanted
to reject the ceasefire entirely and fight the
war all the way to Berlin. Why would he want
to continue the bloodshed when the enemy is asking
for peace? You can certainly view it as warmongering,
but Pershing actually foresaw exactly what would
happen if they didn't secure an unconditional
surrender on German soil. What did he see coming?
He believed that if the Allied armies didn't
march into Berlin, the German military would
never truly admit defeat and the German populace
wouldn't believe they were beaten. He wrote that
accepting an armistice now would only mean they
would have to fight Germany again in another
20 years. That is a chillingly accurate prophecy.
It really is. But the combined effect of these
hardcore military perspectives from Foch and
Pershing effectively nullified Wilson's idealistic
14 points. The terms were going to be brutal.
And while the Allied commanders are arguing in
Paris over exactly how hard to crush Germany,
Germany is rapidly crushing itself from the inside.
Yes. The situation completely spirals out of
the government's control. We see the outbreak
of the German Revolution. And it starts of all
places with the Navy. Yes. It starts with the
mutiny of the German high seas fleet. For most
of the war, the mighty German fleet had been
bottled up in port by the British Royal Navy.
Just sitting there. Sitting there. Yeah. In late
October, the German Naval Command, without authorization
from the new civilian government, decided to
launch one final, massive, suicidal battle against
the British fleet to quote, save the honor of
the Navy. So they ordered these sailors, who
knew the war was basically over and the government
was suing for peace, to sail out and die just
for the sake of naval pride. Exactly. And the
sailors simply refused. I don't blame them. Right.
During the night of October 29th to 30th, sailors
in the port of Vilhamshaven revolt. They extinguish
the boilers on their ships. They refuse to weigh
anchor. When the naval command tries to suppress
them and arrest the ringleaders, this mutiny
just erupts and spreads like wildfire. It jumps
from the ships to the streets. Within days, the
revolt moves from the ports into the industrial
cities. Workers and soldiers councils modeled
directly on the Soviets of the Russian Revolution
start seizing control in major cities like Kiel,
Bremen, Munich, and eventually Berlin. What do
they want? Their primary goal is an immediate
end to the war, the abdication of the Kaiser,
and drastic social reform. The pressure on the
government is insurmountable. The situation forces
the hand of the ruling elite. Prince Max of Baden,
the Chancellor, realizes that the Kaiser's stubborn
refusal to abdicate is not only blocking any
chance of peace with the Allies, but it is fueling
a full -blown violent, potentially communist
revolution right outside his window in Berlin.
Yeah, he has to act fast. So on November 9th,
acting entirely on his own authority without
even telling the Kaiser, Prince Max announces
to the press that Wilhelm II has abdicated. He
then hands the office of Chancellor over to Friedrich
Ebert. the leader of the Social Democrats. And
that very same afternoon, another Social Democrat,
Philip Scheidman, steps onto a balcony at the
Reichstag. OK. He sees massive crowds of workers
and soldiers. And to preempt the more radical
communists from declaring a Soviet republic,
he officially declares Germany a republic. Just
like that. Just like that. So. In the span of
a few chaotic hours, the centuries old German
Empire falls. The Kaiser is forced to flee by
train into exile in the Netherlands. And this
brand new, incredibly fragile, democratic republic
is born. And it is born just in time to be handed
the pen to sign a humiliating, crushing surrender
exactly as Ludendorff had planned. Exactly. Which
brings us to the actual signing process. Section
three, the secret train in Kampian. Negotiations,
if you can even call them that. Dictations more
like? Yeah. We have Matthias Erzberger stepping
up to lead the German delegation. Who is Erzberger
and why is he the one going instead of a military
general? Matthias Erzberger was a prominent civilian
politician from the Catholic Center Party. He
had actually been an early supporter of the war,
but by 1917 he had become a leading voice in
the Reichstag, pushing for a negotiated peace.
So he's already associated with wanting peace.
Right. And because the military high command
Hindenburg and Ludendorff refused to have their
fingerprints anywhere near the surrender document,
they forced the new civilian government to send
someone. Erzberger was essentially handed a poison
chalice. What a terrible position to be in. He
was a civilian, a Democrat, being sent to surrender
on behalf of an army that claimed it hadn't been
defeated. Imagine the journey this man had to
take. Erzberger and his small team crossed the
front line in five cars. They are escorted by
French officers for 10 harrowing hours across
the completely devastated war zone of northern
France. Just a horrific landscape. 10 hours driving
over filled -in artillery craters, navigating
through seas of mud, passing the rotting corpses
of horses, and seeing the total ruins of towns
wiped off the map by four years of industrialized
slaughter. They cross no man's land with a white
flag and a bugler sounding the ceasefire just
to reach the meeting point on the morning of
November 8th. What's fascinating here is the
sheer psychological dominance of the setup once
they finally arrive. The power dynamics. Exactly.
They aren't taken to a grand palace or a government
building in Paris. They are taken to a secret
destination, a railway siding deep in the forest
of Compiègne. And they are brought aboard the
private train car of the allied supreme commander.
The claustrophobia of that must have been intense.
You're trapped in a train car in a dark forest
with a man who has just defeated your nation.
And this wasn't a diplomatic negotiation around
a table. Foch designed it to be a dictation.
He treated the German delegation with absolute
icy contempt. I can imagine. The historical record
explicitly notes that Foch only appeared twice
during the entire three days of talks. Only twice
in three days? Yes. He appeared on the first
day simply to ask the German delegation, What
do you want of me?" When Erzberger said they
were there to hear the proposals for an armistice,
Fosch coldly replied, I have no proposals to
make. Wow. He forced the Germans to formally
ask for an armistice as a defeated power. Then
he handed them a staggering list of allied demands
and essentially told them they had 72 hours to
agree, take it or leave it. So they have 72 hours.
Erzberger is stuck in this train car, frantically
sending telegraphs back to a government in Berlin
that is literally in the middle of a revolution.
Trying to talk to leaders who might not even
be in power the next hour, right? He is begging
for instructions, but his leverage is exactly
zero They were allowed to discuss the technical
terms with other French and Allied officers But
not with fuck himself right the Germans were
trapped They were only able to correct a few
demands that were physically impossible to fulfill
like what for example They pointed out the Allies
were demanding the surrender of more operational
submarines than the entire German fleet actually
possessed. OK, yeah, you can't hand over what
doesn't exist. Exactly. They also managed to
slightly extend the timeline for their military
withdrawal across the Rhine, arguing that if
they had to move that fast, their army would
simply disintegrate into an armed starving mob.
But otherwise, the terms were immovable. On Sunday,
November 10th, the French show Erzberger Paris
newspapers confirming that his own Kaiser had
abdicated. He finds out from the enemy's newspapers.
Yeah. That same day, Ebert, the new chancellor
in Berlin, finally gets a message through instructing
Erzberger to sign. They even got a message from
Paul von Hindenburg, the head of the German high
command, begging them to sign even if the terms
couldn't be improved because the army was on
the verge of total collapse. Because the terms
Foch handed them were absolutely crushing. When
we look at the specific list of surrendered material,
it's not just a military disarmament. It is a
systematic calculated dismantling of a modern
industrial state's capacity to function. Let's
hear the numbers. The Allies demanded 5 ,000
artillery pieces, 25 ,000 machine guns, 3 ,000
trench mortars, and 1 ,700 aircraft, specifically
including all -night bombers. That immediately
strips away their offensive capability. But then
you look at the logistical demands and my jaw
hit the floor. Yeah. 5 ,000 railway locomotives,
150 ,000 railway carriages, and 5 ,000 motorized
road trucks. The numbers are so vast they are
almost hard to visualize. Just to put it that
in perspective, taking 150 ,000 railway carriages
is isn't just taking their guns. Precisely. It
is essential to understand why those specific
items mattered so much. In 1918, a nation's entire
existence was dependent on railways. Taking 150
,000 carriages and 5 ,000 locomotives was about
completely paralyzing Germany's internal logistics.
So they can't move troops. Yes. It meant they
couldn't move troops to the border to restart
the war. But it also meant they would severely
struggle to move food from the farms to the starting
cities or coal from the mines to heat homes during
the winter. It was a strategic crippling of the
civilian economy to ensure absolute compliance.
And furthermore, the terms required the evacuation
of all German territory on the west side of the
Rhine River and established major allied bridgeheads
with a 30 kilometer radius on the east side,
a key industrial cities, Mainz, Koblenz and Cologne.
They were putting allied boots firmly on German
soil, holding the industrial heartland hostage.
And on top of all that, the allies demanded the
immediate release of all allied prisoners of
war. OK, that makes sense. But and this is a
deeply brutal punitive detail. This was without
any reciprocal release of German POWs. Wait,
really? The German prisoners stayed locked up
in allied camps. Furthermore, the naval blockade
of Germany. The very blockade causing the starvation
rations, the sawdust bread, the turnip winter
we talked about earlier, was to continue in full
force until a final permanent peace treaty was
agreed upon months later at Versailles. So the
starving continues. It was an armistice of total
unmitigated submission. Which brings us to the
signing itself and into section four, the eleventh
hour and the deeply tragic final morning of the
war. The agreement was officially signed in Faxxi's
railway car at 5 a .m. Paris time on Monday,
November 11th, 1918. However, it was scheduled
to come into effect six hours later at 11 a .m.
Why the six hour delay? If the ink is dry at
5 a .m., why not just issue an immediate ceasefire
order? The delay was ostensibly practical. They
needed time to transmit the news down a vast
complex chain of command from the Supreme Headquarters
through the Army groups down to the divisions,
brigades, and finally to the millions of individual
men sitting in the mud across hundreds of miles
of the Western Front. Because communications
back then were pretty rudimentary. Very. They
relied on a spotty network of telegraphs, field
telephones, and literally just runners. But those
six hours of delay proved to be lethal. Here's
where it gets really interesting, but in the
most heartbreaking, infuriating way possible.
Because you would think once the paper is signed,
the shooting naturally winds down. But the historical
record reveals that the fighting actually intensified
in some sectors right up until 11 a .m. It's
awful. The numbers are just unbelievable. There
were nearly 11 ,000 casualties, 10 ,944 to be
exact, on the very last day of the war. Of those,
2 ,738 men actually died, nearly 3 ,000 men killed
in a war that was already officially over on
paper. How on earth does a military apparatus
justify that? It is justified through a mix of
bureaucratic inertia, logistical stubbornness,
and cold, hard, callous military calculation.
Logistical stubbornness? What do you mean? Well,
you have to remember, these generals have been
fighting a war of attrition for four years. The
mindset doesn't just switch off. Many artillery
units continued to fire simply because they didn't
want to have to haul their heavy spare ammunition
all the way back to the railheads. You have got
to be kidding me. So they just fired it off at
German targets. They killed people, rather than
carry heavy boxes. Essentially, yes. Furthermore,
Allied commanders wished to ensure that if the
armistice failed, if the Germans rejected the
terms at the last minute or resumed fighting
in a week, the Allied armies would be in the
most favorable tactical positions possible. So
they ordered their men to keep advancing. Keep
capturing high ground. Keep attacking machine
gun nests right up to the final minute. A stunning
example of this determination to maintain pressure
is Battery 4 of the U .S. Navy's long -range
14 -inch railway guns. What did they do? They
fired their last massive shell at exactly 10
.57 and 30 seconds in the morning from the Verdun
area. They timed it perfectly, calculating the
flight time so the shell would land far behind
the German front lines just seconds before the
11 a .m. deadline. It is so clinical and so utterly
devastating when you realize what that meant
for the men on the ground. We have the names
and stories of some of the final Fallen, and
slowing down to look at these stories is really
the only way to grasp the senselessness of those
final hours. For instance, there's George Edwin
Ellison, a soldier from the UK serving with the
5th Royal Irish Lancers. He had survived four
solid years of the war. He fought at the First
Battle of Mons in 1914, and he was killed around
930 a .m. that morning while scouting on the
outskirts of that exact same city, Mons, in Belgium.
an hour and a half before peace. Then there is
Augustin Trebichon, the last French soldier to
die. His story is incredibly poignant and highlights
the mundane tragedies of the front line. Tell
me about him. He was shot at 1045 a .m. He wasn't
even engaged in an active firefight at that exact
moment. He was acting as a messenger. What was
the message? He was running to tell his fellow
soldiers who were preparing for a completely
unnecessary assault across the Meuse River that
hot soup would be served to them after the ceasefire
at 1130. Oh man. He died 15 minutes before the
gun stopped, carrying a message about soup. At
that exact same time, 10 -4 -5 a .m., Marcel
Toussaint -Tuff, the last Belgian soldier to
die, succumbed to a mortal lung wound from German
machine gunfire. And the timeline gets even tighter,
almost to the second. We have George Lawrence
Price, a private from Canada. He was part of
a force advancing into a Belgian town north of
Mons. They were clearing houses. He was shot
and killed by a German sniper at 1058 a .m. Just
two minutes before the armistice went into effect.
Two minutes. And then generally recognized as
the last American and the last soldier killed
in action overall on the Western Front. is Henry
Gunther. His story is just soaked in tragic psychological
irony. What happened to Gunther? Gunther had
recently been demoted in rank because military
sensors caught him writing a letter home, complaining
about the miserable conditions. He was apparently
deeply despondent over this demotion. They wanted
to prove himself. Exactly. In a desperate, reckless
attempt to redeem his reputation in the final
minutes of the war, he charged a German road
lock with his bayonet fixed. The war is practically
over. The historical accounts note that the German
troops were astonished. They knew the armistice
was literally seconds away. They actually tried
to wave him off, firing warning shots, but he
kept charging and firing his rifle at them. You
wouldn't stop. He was killed by a burst of machine
gun fire exactly 60 seconds before 11 a .m. It's
just a cascade of totally avoidable heartbreak,
and the tragedy wasn't confined to the Allied
side. No. We have records of the last German
to die in the war, believed to be a lieutenant
named Thomas. Shortly after 11 a .m., perhaps
11 zero 1 a .m., after the ceasefire had officially
begun and the artillery had finally gone quiet,
he exited his trench. He thought it was safe.
He began walking across no man's land, presumably
to inform the American troops opposite him that
the armistice was in effect and that the Germans
would be evacuating their positions. Oh no. But
the specific unit of Americans he approached
hadn't yet received the news through their chain
of command. They saw an enemy soldier approaching
their line, opened fire, and killed him instantly.
It's maddening. And it wasn't ignored by history.
There must have been immense backlash once the
public realized nearly 3 ,000 men died on the
morning of peace. There was a deep, profound
shame that followed. In the United States, Congress
actually opened a formal investigation post -war
to find out why this happened. and to see if
blame should be placed on the leaders of the
American Expeditionary Forces, including General
Pershing. Good. They demanded to know why American
boys were ordered to charge machine guns at 1030
a .m. for ground they could have just walked
onto at 1101 a .m. Did Pershing face any consequences?
No formal punishment. He defended his actions
by saying he was maintaining pressure on a retreating
enemy. Typical military defense. But in France,
the shame was so acute and the political optics
so horrifying that the military authorities literally
engaged in a cover up. A cover up. The graves
of many French soldiers who died on November
11th were backdated to November 10th. The government
couldn't bear the public or the grieving mothers
seeing that men were ordered to their deaths
on the very day of peace. This profound disconnect
between the high -level signatures in a comfortable
train car and the brutal, senseless reality in
the mud leads us perfectly into Section 5, the
aftermath and the birth of a dangerous myth.
Because the reactions to the 11 a .m. ceasefire
were completely bifurcated depending on where
you were standing. Very true. If you look at
the home front for the Allies, the reaction was
explosive. The news officially hit Paris around
9 a .m. By 11 a .m., the first peace gunshot
was fired from Fort Montlarian. The Eiffel Tower
fired shots. The Ministry of War and the Elysee
Palace threw up flags. Church bells rang all
across Paris. The French prime minister, Georges
Clemenceau, appeared on a balcony and shouted,
Vive la France! to a massive cheering crowd.
And in London, Big Ben shined for the first time
in years. People flooded Trafalgar Square. It
was pure jubilation. relief. But at the actual
front lines, the reaction was incredibly muted.
There was no cheering. The surviving soldiers
describe a sudden deafening silence that was
almost unnerving after four years of constant
artillery roar. There's a quote from a British
corporal who described the exact moment at 11
a .m. He said, the Germans came from their trenches,
bowed to us and then went away. That was it.
There was nothing with which we could celebrate
except cookies. Just eating dry cookies and feeling
a profound sense of emptiness after 52 exhausting
months of violence. That silence and the specific
way the war ended on the battlefield became the
incubator for one of the most toxic destructive
lies of the 20th century. So what does this all
mean? What's fascinating here is that we have
to look at the geographical reality of November
11th, 1918. At the exact moment the armistice
took effect, the Western Front was still some
450 miles over 700 kilometers away from Berlin.
That is a huge distance. The Kaiser's armies
had retreated for the battlefields of France
and Belgium, yes, but they had retreated in relatively
good order. They marched back to Germany with
their rifles on their shoulders. Most importantly,
the German frontier had barely been breached.
Essentially, no Allied troops had invaded or
occupied German soil before the fighting stopped.
Right. It means that to the average German civilian
at home, the army didn't physically look defeated.
They hadn't seen enemy soldiers marching triumphantly
through the Brandenburg Gate. They hadn't seen
their cities shelled into rubble like the towns
in France and Belgium. And this physical reality,
this lack of visible, visceral defeat, allowed
Hindenburg, Ludendorff and other senior right
-wing leaders to spread a massive, self -serving
lie. They pushed what became known as the stab
in the back myth. They claimed that the mighty,
undefeated German army was never actually beaten
on the battlefield. Instead, they argued the
army was betrayed. stabbed in the back by the
public at home who failed their patriotic calling,
and specifically sabotaged by Democratic politicians,
Jews, socialists, and Bolsheviks who instigated
the November Revolution. It's just a master class
in shifting the blame. Ludendorff designed the
civilian handover at Spa exactly for this purpose.
But how did they convince the public of this?
Didn't people know they were losing? The military
had heavily censored the press throughout the
war. So the public had been fed a diet of constant
victories until the very end The shock of the
sudden surrender made them desperate for an explanation
that didn't involve military failure People want
to believe what feels good and the military leaders
even used foreign press to bolster their lie
They grossly misrepresented a book by British
Major General Frederick Maurice called The Last
Four Months. What did they do? Hindenburg literally
went before a National Assembly committee a year
later in November 1919 and declared under oath,
quote, As an English general has very truly said,
the German army was stabbed in the back. He perjured
himself using fake news to legitimize a conspiracy
theory. And this myth wasn't just some historical
footnote. It was incredibly dangerous because
in the eyes of the German right, the blame for
the surrender and the horrific terms of the subsequent
Treaty of Versailles was carried over directly
to the Weimar Republic itself. The Republic was
born with the original sin of surrender. Exactly.
This myth deliberately crippled the new democracy
from its very inception. It caused massive political
instability, justified the assassination of politicians
like Matthias Erzberger, who was murdered by
right -wing extremists in 1921 specifically for
signing the armistice, and directly fueled the
grievances that led to the rise of the Nazi party
and the Third Reich. The seeds of the Second
World War were planted in the muddy, unresolved
soil of the 1918 armistice. Which brings us to
our final section, legacy and echoes in history.
Because history unfortunately loves a dark rhyme.
There is a chilling postscript regarding Marshal
Foch's private railway wagon in the Campign for
us. Oh, this is such a dark detail. Fast forward
to the Second World War, June 1940. The German
military has just rapidly defeated France. Adolf
Hitler, keenly aware of the humiliation of 1918
and a massive proponent of the stab in the back
myth, orchestrates a staggering act of historical
revenge. He forces the French delegation to negotiate
their surrender inside that exact same railway
car. He had it brought out of the museum. Yes.
Hitler had the car placed on the exact same spot
in the Compiègne Forest where Erzberger had been
forced to sign in 1918. He sat in the very chair
Flush had used. The armistice was explicitly
portrayed as erasing the shame of 1918. And immediately
afterward, the glade of the armistice was blown
up and destroyed by the Germans, and the train
car was eventually taken to Berlin. It's incredibly
petty, but it shows how deeply these events scarred
the European psyche. If we connect this to the
bigger picture, it shows how deeply the symbolism
and the precise timing of 1918 embedded itself
into global consciousness. The numerology alone
is powerful. Right. The numerology of the eleventh
hour of the eleventh day of the 11th month became
iconic. We see a fascinating example of this
echoing across the world decades later. When
was that? When the second Sino -Japanese War,
which was the Asian theory of World War II, finally
came to an end, the formal surrender of Japanese
forces in China was signed on September 9th.
1945, at exactly 9 a .m. That is the ninth hour
of the ninth day of the ninth month. Exactly.
This date and time were chosen specifically to
echo the 1918 armistice. Additionally, in Chinese
culture, the number nine is a homophone for the
word meaning long lasting, suggesting the hope
that this new peace in Asia would endure forever.
It's incredible how humanity clings to these
patterns, these neat dates, to try and impose
order on the absolute chaos of war. And we still
do it today. We do. This singular, hurried, desperately
flawed event in a cold railway car gave birth
to the global traditions of remembrance we still
observe. Armistice Day, Veterans Day in the U
.S., Remembrance Day across the Commonwealth,
even Polish Independence Day, they all stemmed
directly from the ink drawing on that paper on
November 11th. Indeed. The legacy of that day
is profoundly dual -natured. It is a day of genuine
relief and solemn remembrance for the millions
of young men who died in the mud. But it is also
a permanent historical warning of how the manner
in which a war ends, the political machinations,
the physical realities on the ground, the myths
that are allowed to fester, can directly dictate
the peace that followed. We started by looking
at a crumbling German empire facing a massive
allied pincer movement and the domino -like collapse
of its allies, particularly the opening of that
southern back door through Bulgaria. We saw the
cynical political chessboard where military leaders
like Ludendorff engineered a democratic government
just so they could wash their hands of the defeat.
We traveled with Matthias Erzberger on a 10 -hour
drive through hell to be dictated crushing terms,
terms designed to paralyze a nation's infrastructure
by Marshal Fosch in a secret train car. We tracked
the heartbreaking, totally avoidable deaths of
men like Augustin Trevichon and Henry Gunther
in those final maddening minutes before the 11th
hour. And we watched how the lack of visible
defeat in Germany spawned the stab in the back
myth, poisoning the Weimar Republic and setting
the stage for an even greater catastrophe two
decades later. It really underscores the value
of understanding the incredibly messy human reality
that exists just beneath the neat, clean dates
we memorize in history class. It does. And as
we wrap up this deep dive, I want to leave you
the listener. with a final thought to mull over,
building directly on our discussion of that stab
in the back myth. All right. What is it? We noted
that the physical reality of the war, the fact
that the front line was still 450 miles from
Berlin and no foreign troops stood on German
soil allowed this devastating lie to flourish.
So this raises an important question. How does
the physical visceral visibility of a defeat
dictate a nation's psychological ability to accept
peace? That's a good question. If a population
doesn't see the war lost with their own eyes,
if their cities aren't occupied, can they ever
truly accept the consequences of a surrender
treaty? It makes you wonder about General Pershing's
terrifying stance. Marching to Berlin. Would
the 20th century have looked entirely different
if Pershing had gotten his way? What if the Allies
had refused the armistice, suffered the horrific
casualties required, and actually fought their
way into the streets of the capital? Would a
shattered, occupied Berlin in 1919 have prevented
the rise of the Third Reich in 1933? It is a
chilling, profound counterfactual to consider.
A truly profound question to end on. Thank you
as always to our listener for joining us on this
deep dive. Keep questioning the narratives. Keep
looking past the neat headlines of history and
keep exploring the why behind the facts. Until
next time.