Transport
The Compiègne Wagon, 1918 & 1940
The interwar period was bookended by two events that took place in the same French railway dining carriage (no. 2419D). On 11th November 1918, the carriage was placed in a forest clearing near Compiègne for the signing of the armistice by Ferdinand Foch, Allied Commander-in-Chief, and a German delegation led by Matthias Erzberger (top image), after which it was displayed in the Musée de l’Armée in Paris and in a special museum, surrounded by monuments and memorial landscapes, in the heavily wooded location, henceforth known as the ‘clairière de l’Armistice’ (the ‘glade of the Armistice’). One of the monuments was dedicated to the region of Alsace-Lorraine, acquired by Germany after 1871 and returned to France in 1919. This depicted a German eagle impaled on a sword. On 22nd November 1940, the site was visited by Adolf Hitler and a deputation of high-ranking Nazi officials, including Hermann Göring, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Wilhelm Keitel (bottom left image), for a highly symbolic ceremony in which the original carriage was used once again for a French delegation, representing their defeated nation, to sign the act of surrender. The American journalist William Shirer, author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, later wrote of Hitler’s reaction as follows: ‘Through my glasses I saw the Führer stop, glance at the [Alsace-Lorraine] monument.... Then he read the inscription on the great granite block in the center of the clearing: Here on the eleventh of November 1918 succumbed the criminal pride of the German empire... vanquished by the free peoples which it tried to enslave. I look for the expression on Hitler's face. I am but fifty yards from him and see him through my glasses as though he were directly in front of me. I have seen that face many times at the great moments of his life. But today! It is afire with scorn, anger, hate, revenge, triumph.’ (Shirer is shown at Compiègne in bottom right image.) Hitler ordered the destruction of all commemorative features from the ‘clairière de l’Armistice’, except the statue of the French military commander Ferdinand Foch. The carriage was moved to Berlin where it was displayed once again, as evidence of German resistance and revival, and then stored in the small town of Crawinkel in Thuringia where it was destroyed by the SS in March 1945 to prevent it returning to the Allies.
Further information:
The official website of museum and memorial landscapes around the ‘clairière de l’Armistice’ (the ‘glade of the armistice’) where the Compiègne Wagon was positioned for the signing of the armistice at the end of World War One contains many photographs: https://armistice-museum.com/
RMS Maloja
The interwar ‘age of internationalism’ was, comparatively, quite slow. Traversing the land, sea and air lanes between nations was laborious, but often productive, work. Ocean liner companies exploited the urge to international travel, whether for officials, workers or, increasingly, tourists. The journey from Bombay to London took roughly two weeks, often the last leg of a journey from Sydney, as it was for ten Round Table Conference delegates in 1931 aboard the RMS Maloja. The Maloja was a Peninsular and Orient (P&O) liner, ordered in 1918 and launched in 1923. It formed part of an international infrastructure that sustained the commercial, social and political networks of both imperialism and internationalism. The ocean liner is one of the paradigmatic spaces of internationalism, one of glamour and boredom for the elite, and of toil and discomfort for the ship workers. For Round Table delegates, who could claim a first class return berth, the journey to Britain was comfortable. They used this time to prepare their negotiating tactics and to size up their adversaries and friends over meals, cocktails, and deck-top dancing through the Arabian, Red and Mediterranean Seas, and in the train carriages across France between Marseilles and Calais. Gandhi received a great deal of press coverage (see the films 'Gandhi's travel to London' and 'Gandhi is - Here!') for his decision to forego his first class ticket and to spend his time on the second-class deck.
Further information:
For information on P&O liners http://www.pandosnco.co.uk/
For a recent Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition on Ocean Liners https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/ocean-liners-speed-style
Lord Baden Powell aboard the Maloja in 1937 https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/video/maloja-at-sea-lord-robert-baden-powell-and-others-look-news-footage/531589198
Journey of WEB Du Bois
By the early 1920s, Europe had re-emerged as an open and affordable destination for Americans, but travel to the continent remained relatively slow. Days were spent on sea and the ships themselves became important spaces of international encounter and exchange. This image depicts the travels of WEB Du Bois, a leading African American intellectual, attending the Third Pan-African Congress in London and Lisbon in 1923. The publication of the map in the popular African American periodical The Crisis reveals how Du Bois’s internationalist politics, embodied in his leading role in the Pan-African Congress movement and as an active commentator on African affairs, was intimately associated with travel. The map depicts Du Bois’s first visit to Africa, despite having written extensively about African Affairs for decades, and shows the trip culminating in Liberia, a country which held an important space in African American consciousness and one of only three independent black sovereignties in the interwar world (the other two being Ethiopia and Haiti). Leaving the 3rd Pan-African Congress in Lisbon on his way to Africa, he described himself as ‘a sort of ambassador of Pan-Africa’.
Further information:
“W.E.B. Du Bois – The father of modern Pan-Africanism?” New African (3 December 2013): https://newafricanmagazine.com/latest-and-current-affairs/current-posts/web-du-bois-the-father-of-modern-pan-africanism/
Letter from Thomas Cook
Many academic and personal accounts of African Americans travelling to Europe in the interwar years, either through wartime deployment in France or after, reflected on the relative respite Europe offered from the racial divisions that were strictly enforced in the United States. Whilst this was undoubtedly true, travel – like so many aspects of public life – continued to be racially segregated (literally or otherwise) and unequal. This letter from the travel company Thomas Cook and Son to WEB Du Bois, written when the latter was organising the Second Pan-African Congress in Europe in 1921, notes that, on account of race, accommodation at the best hotels might not be possible. The letter is a reminder that international spaces, despite offering new possibilities for political exchange, also remained starkly divided along conventional lines of race, gender and class.