The Compiègne Wagon, 1918 & 1940

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.

1918: Association wagon de l'Armistice
1940: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-M1112-500 / CC-BY-SA 3.0