Armistice Day: The Story of a Railway Carriage

A colleague received an email from a French client this morning saying they had another day off, and asked whether today was a holiday. It is: today is Armistice Day, or Remembrance Day, in France and several other European countries. In the United States it is called Veterans Day. China was also among the victors of the First World War, and the unfair Treaty of Versailles helped spark the May Fourth Movement, but the Chinese have short memories: today we celebrate “Saint Bachelor’s Day”…

Now for the main story—and a bit of gossip about a railway carriage.

At 5 a.m. French time on November 11, 1918, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, commander-in-chief of the Allied forces, represented the Allies in signing the armistice with German representatives inside a railway carriage at Rethondes station in the Compiègne Forest in northeastern France. The carriage later became known as the “Foch carriage” or “Armistice carriage.” At 11 a.m., the victorious nations fired 101-gun salutes to announce the end of the First World War. After the war, the Foch carriage was placed in a museum.

The armistice was signed inside the Foch carriage in 1918.

During the Second World War, German forces used blitzkrieg tactics to occupy a series of countries in Western Europe, and France was no exception. German troops entered Paris on June 14, 1940. The French government’s surrender faction gained the upper hand. France and Germany held armistice negotiations on June 21 and 22. To humiliate France, Germany chose the Foch carriage—the same one in which the First World War armistice had been signed—as the meeting place. At 6:50 p.m. on June 22, French representatives entered the carriage where Germany had signed the 1918 armistice and were forced to sign a new armistice. The Germans then took the Foch carriage to Berlin as a trophy. It was destroyed during Allied bombing of Berlin—or, according to another account, Hitler ordered it blown up so Germany would not suffer the humiliation of defeat there a second time.

France surrenders to Germany inside the Foch carriage in 1940.