The Illusion of Victory (48 page)

The final scenes of the armistice drama took place in the saloon carriage of Marshal Foch’s railway train in the forest of Compiègne, northeast of Paris. The German delegates arrived on the morning of November 7. Foch met them at 9 A.M., accompanied by his chief of staff, General Weygand, and two British naval officers. It was no accident that Americans were not included. The omission was the opening gun in the Allied campaign to dilute and if possible dismiss the Fourteen Points—and the American contribution to victory.

The two delegations sat down at a table, facing each other. Foch turned to his interpreter and said in an icy stage whisper: “Ask these gentlemen what they want.”

Matthias Erzberger, the liberal Catholic leader of the German delegation, replied in German that they were here to receive the Allies’ proposals for peace.

Foch replied that he had no proposals to make. The generalissimo started to get up from his chair, as if he were going to end the conference then and there. The flustered Germans asked if they could say they were there to hear the conditions of the armistice. Another German said in French, “How would you like us to express ourselves?”

Foch again replied he had no conditions to offer. Totally bewildered, the Germans read aloud Wilson’s latest note to their chancellor, saying Foch was authorized to make known the conditions of the armistice.

The generalissimo replied he could only do that if the Germans
asked
for an armistice. Swallowing hard, Erzberger said yes, they were asking for an armistice.

Foch ordered General Weygand to read the “principle paragraphs” of the terms. The devastating clauses made it clear that Germany was defeated and would remain defeated. The rest of the document was presented to the delegates in written form.

The Germans were staggered by the scope of the demands, which exploded once and for all any hope that some sort of face-saving armistice could be brokered. These were terms that spelled DEFEAT in capital letters for their own people and the rest of the world.

A request for an immediate cease-fire was curtly rejected. A protest that they might need machine guns to keep order in Germany was also denied. Foch told them to get the guns from their reserve divisions. The Germans replied that there were no reserve divisions. Every available man was already in the lines. Foch still insisted on 30,000 machine guns.
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The Germans were given seventy-two hours to make a decision. A courier with a copy of the terms departed for German army headquarters in Spa, Belgium, where the kaiser and his generals were waiting. In Berlin, Prince Max was getting news from other parts of Germany that added to the mounting atmosphere of collapse. In province after province, workers and soldiers councils were taking over government offices and proclaiming a republic. Munich and Cologne were flying the red flag of Bolshevism. Next came word that all of Bavaria was tottering in the same revolutionary direction. On the evening of November 8, Prince Max phoned the kaiser and told him to abdicate “to save Germany from civil war.” the monarch furiously refused to consider the idea.
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Wilhelm II was reconciled to the inevitability of an armistice and a loser’s peace. But he still dreamed of placing himself at the head of his army and marching on Berlin to restore order. The following day, the kaiser learned that several elite regiments in the capital had joined the revolution. Field Marshal von Hindenburg still supported the idea of a march, but he did not think it would succeed. The man who had replaced Ludendorff as quartermaster general, Wilhelm Groener, told the kaiser the brutal truth:“Sire, you no longer have an army. The army will march home in peace and order under the command of its officers . . . but it no longer stands behind your Majesty.”
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A few hours later, Prince Max telephoned the kaiser to report the rapid growth of the revolution in Berlin. He reiterated that only Wilhelm’s immediate abdication could prevent a civil war. Soon came truly stunning news. Prince Max had announced the kaiser’s abdication and followed it with his own departure. He had handed over the post of chancellor to Friedrich Ebert, leader of the Social Democratic Party. One of Ebert’s lieutenants, hoping to stem the Bolshevik tide, had announced the formation of a German republic. Wilhelm II’s long reign as kaiser was over.

Instead of struggling to retain his power, the kaiser began to fear for his life. The fate of his cousin Czar Nicholas II and the czar’s family loomed before his eyes. “I am hated everywhere in the world,” he told one of his aides.
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When the American First Army resumed the offensive in the Argonne on November 1, Pershing urged it forward with ferocious intensity, hoping it could smash the German army before the armistice negotiators agreed on terms. Rested and reorganized, with new tactics to deal with enemy machine guns, the Americans opened the attack with a massive barrage that mixed poison gas and high explosives, as well as a blizzard of bullets from heavy machine guns. By nightfall the divisions in the center had driven a five-mile wedge into the German lines, forcing the enemy to abandon the Argonne in headlong retreat. A triumphant Pershing said: “For the first time, the enemy’s lines were completely broken through.”
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On November 5, Foch made yet another attempt to steal a chunk of Pershing’s army. He asked for six divisions for an attack in Lorraine, under the command of Charles “Butcher” Mangin. No doubt recalling the staggering casualties of Soissons, Pershing growled that he could have the divisions, but only if they fought as a separate American army, with no French interference in their operations. Foch demurred and the idea was abandoned.

The proposal reignited Pershing’s ire at Foch and his boss, Clemenceau. The AEF commander retaliated with a ploy that seriously endangered the fragile alliance. He decided the Americans would capture Sedan, the city where the French had ingloriously surrendered to Kaiser Wilhelm I’s Germans in 1870. Ignoring a boundary drawn by Foch that placed Sedan in the zone of the French Fourth Army, Pershing ordered the First Army to capture the city and deprive the French of the symbolic honor.

The order directed the U.S. Army’s First Corps, spearheaded by the Forty-Second Division, to make the main thrust. But the details were so vague that General Summerall, by then commander of the V Corps, was encouraged to march the First Division across the front of the Forty-Second Division to win the prize. In the darkness and confusion, the First Division captured Brigadier General Douglas MacArthur. His unorthodox uniform made the doughboys suspect he was a German spy. It was a mira
cle the two divisions did not shoot each other to pieces. Meanwhile, the French Fourth Army liberated Sedan, as originally planned.
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By this time, everyone knew armistice talks were under way. But Pershing’s order to keep attacking was still in force. Generalissimo Foch, it should be added, bolstered Pershing’s order with an attack order of his own on November 9. Major General Charles Summerall decided this meant he should attempt to cross the Meuse River to continue the pursuit of the retreating enemy. By this time Summerall not only accepted heavy casualties, he exulted in them.

On the afternoon of November 10, Summerall spoke to field grade officers at the Second Division’s headquarters. He told them he wanted a bridgehead on the east bank of the Meuse by morning. “The lateness of the hour demands heroic action,” he said. Increasing the pressure was the only way to bring the Germans to terms.“I don’t expect to see any of you again,” Summerall added. “But that doesn’t matter. You [will] have the honor of a definite success. . . . Report to your commands.” Eleven years later, an officer would still remember “the cold anger” Summerall’s merciless words generated.
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A battalion of U.S. Marines from the Second Division and a battalion of doughboys from the Eighty-Ninth Division were ordered to make the crossing. In cold, rainy darkness, the marines tried to get across on a footbridge swept by German machine-gun fire. It was little short of a massacre. Only about a hundred men made it to the other side, where they were pinned down by more machine-gun fire. A second marine battalion tried to cross on another footbridge, which had been holed by artillery. Many were killed and wounded by shell fire before they got to the bridge. A German shell dumped the battalion commander and his staff into the river. But enough marines made it to the east bank to create a bridgehead and send out patrols.
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The battalion from the Eighty-Ninth Division arrived at the river almost two hours after the marine assault. Its commander, Major Mark Hanna, bore a famous name. His uncle had been the man who made William McKinley president in 1896. Totally fearless, Hanna led his men across on the footbridge. Twice, while dozens died, he survived sheets of machine-gun fire. The company that led the assault was reduced to 19 privates and 2 noncommissioned officers. On the third attempt, Major Hanna’s luck ran out. But about 300 men made it to the other side.

Further down the river, in another battalion of the Eighty-Ninth Division, Sergeant Ralph Forderhase wondered why headquarters “seemed unable to visualize the effectiveness of the German rear guard tactics.” an earlier attempt to cross the Meuse by his battalion had been a calamitous failure. The acting battalion commander, Captain Arthur I. Wear, had asked for volunteers to swim the cold, deep river to explore German strength on the opposite bank. Only a handful survived the machine-gun and artillery fire. Few of these brought back information of any value. As Sergeant Forderhase later recalled it, Captain Wear thanked them for their heroism and “walked a short distance into the dark and somber woods and shot himself in the head with his service pistol.”
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This time Sergeant Forderhase and his battalion crossed the river on rafts, unopposed. In the morning, they moved forward in a dense fog toward the village of Pouilly. Forderhase heard a voice calling his name. It was Captain Wear’s replacement, pointing in amazement at two Germans manning a machine gun. The Americans had stumbled on them in the fog, and they had surrendered without firing a shot. The captain wondered why the gunners had not slaughtered them.

Forderhase knew enough German to ask them for an explanation. The Germans told them the war was ending at eleven o’clock and they saw no reason “to sacrifice their lives, or ours, needlessly.” the skeptical Americans took them prisoner and continued to advance until they were stopped by sniper fire. They took cover and debated what to do next. Suddenly the snipers stopped shooting. Forderhase looked at his watch. It was eleven o’clock.
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Up and down the Western Front, other guns also fell silent. In the stunning stillness, men emerged from their trenches and dugouts, amazed to find themselves alive. In the Thirty-Third Division, two privates, one a German-American who spoke fluent German, crossed no-man’s-land and exchanged souvenirs with the enemy. In the sky above the battlefield, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, America’s leading fighter pilot, with twenty-four kills, looked down on the historic scene. The Great War was over.
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The beginning of the end took place in Germany at 5 A.M. on November 10, when the kaiser and his aides headed for Holland in automobiles. His special train traveled in the same direction, empty. They had decided the train was too likely to be stopped by revolution-minded soldiers. At the border, the royal entourage talked their way past army guards and by eight o’clock were conferring with a Dutch diplomat, who had been alerted to the kaiser’s arrival.

The former supreme war lord was told that he would have to await the decision of a ministerial council in The Hague to grant his request for asylum. He boarded his imperial train when it arrived from Spa, but was disconcerted to find large numbers of people, many of them Belgian refugees, on the platform making threatening gestures and noises. The police finally cleared the station and stood guard until word arrived from Dutch Queen Wilhelmina that asylum had been granted. The kaiser and his party were ordered to proceed to the town of Maarn, where they would be quartered in nearby Amerongen Castle.

The trip from the border to Maarn was not without its anxieties. Almost every station platform was full of people shaking their fists and shouting insults. At Maarn, Wilhelm was greeted by Count Godard von Aldenburg Bentinck, proprietor of Amerongen Castle. At the castle, the count’s daughter greeted him cordially and Wilhelm relaxed, his fear of imminent assassination subsiding.

People were struck by how unaffected, charming and courteous the kaiser became. He had never been comfortable as a supreme war lord. He was happiest when he was entertaining or being entertained in regal fashion—as on his visits to England to see his grandmother, Queen Victoria, and his royal cousins. Groping for a shred of comfort, Wilhelm turned to his host and said, “What I should like, my dear Count, is a cup of tea—good hot English tea.”
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In her hospital, Shirley Millard felt overwhelmed by a deluge of new wounded. Many were mustard gas cases.“They cannot breathe lying down or sitting up,” she wrote. “They just struggle for breath. But nothing can be done. Their lungs are gone. Some with their eyes and faces entirely eaten away by the gas and bodies covered with burns. . . . One boy, today, screaming to die. The entire top layer of his skin burned from his face and body. I gave him an injection of morphine.”

On November 10, Charlie Whiting died. Millard held his hand as he stopped breathing and “could not keep back tears.” Near the end, he saw
her crying and patted her hand with his two living fingers to comfort her. “I cannot describe that boy’s sweetness. He took part of my heart with him,” Millard wrote in her journal.