In Europe

collapsed anyway. Central Europe was now open to the Allied armies from the south-east.
    In short, the German generals simply could no longer fight on. The failure of the spring offensive, Spanish flu, fear of the dozens of new American divisions, the Balkans, the revolution that came sweeping in from the East: enough was enough. Supplies of food and munitions stagnated. Officers were increasingly forced to send their men into the fray at gunpoint. At railway stations, where it was more difficult to keep an eye on them, huge numbers of German soldiers regularly disappeared.
    In the end, the war stopped as suddenly as it had started four years earlier. By late September 1918, Ludendorff realised that Germany was in dire straits. Within the space of a few days he ‘arranged’ a new, social-democrat government, thereby saving the army and his generals’ honour.On 29 September he reported to Kaiser Wilhelm that the war had been lost. In late October, during the Austro-German conference in Vienna, the 500-year-old Austro-Hungarian monarchy was disbanded. The new emperor, Karel I, promised autonomy to his realm's major national minorities – the Hungarians, the Czechs and the peoples of the Balkans. Shortly afterwards, he abdicated. But it was already too late. The nationals had seized power. Czech, Polish, Croatian, German and Hungarian regiments deserted. On 3 November, Austria announced a ceasefire. Germany followed suit just over a week later.
    Driving north today from Compiègne one sees countryside flat as a prairie, with hills along the distant horizon. Behind those hills lies the famous forest where the armistice was signed in a railway carriage in November 1918. These days the spot is good for a Sunday afternoon walk, and nothing more, and the historic site is now a park. Then it was a dense and rugged forest with two sets of tracks running through it for the transport of heavy artillery, an ideal place for two trains to meet undisturbed.
    Germany arrived flying the white flag of truce. Its raw materials were depleted, the national industry had now also been struck hard by Spanish flu, its soldiers were deserting by the thousand. A few days earlier, in Munich, the Free Bavarian People's Republic had been established after the king of Bavaria had fled. In Berlin, demonstrations were a daily occur-rence. The red flag had been raised over Cologne after a group of sailors had seized power there. Kaiser Wilhelm stood shivering on a station platform at the border town of Eijsden, waiting to be admitted to the Netherlands.
    Around the historic railway carriage – the same one in which Hitler, in turn, accepted France's capitulation on 20 June, 1940 – a museum has now been built. I see a half smoked, petrified cigar once puffed on by Marshal Foch. Visitors can peek through a window at the famous table where the gentlemen signed the agreement. Funny, though: this railway carriage looks awfully neat and new! Only then does it begin to dawn on me that this is all replicated history. Hitler took the original wagons-lit, number 2419D, to Berlin in June 1940, from where it was towed to the Black Forest at the end of the war. There, on the night of 2 April,1945, that symbol of German humiliation was set ablaze by SS troops. There was not to be a third Compiègne.
    Two trains, therefore, in a boring stand of trees on a drizzly November day. The German delegation requested the cessation of all military operations, because Germany was faced with a revolution. This was news to Foch, and it strengthened his resolve not to discuss any compromise whatsoever. The Germans had no choice but to accept the Allied conditions. When they heard those conditions they were deeply shocked and raised a futile plea for a joint European struggle against the revolution and Bolshevism, but Foch was having none of it:‘Your country is suffering from the malady of the vanquished; Western Europe can defend itself against the danger of which you speak.’ Halfway through the morning of 11 November, 1918, the armistice was announced.
    Louis Barthas heard the news in the barracks at Vitré. ‘Not a single soldier remained in his room. They ran down the corridors like madmen, to the police post where a telegram had been hung up. In two laconic sentences, the telegram announced the liberation of millions of people, the end of their torment and their return to civilian life.’ Vera Brittain wrote: ‘When the sound of victorious guns burst over London