Photo: Library of Congress Upon learning of the German retreat from her district, this distraught French woman returned to her home in the Somme region, only to discover it was no longer there. The opening day of the battle of the Somme, July 1, 1916, remains the bloodiest day in the history of the British military. Of the 57,470 British casualties on that day, 19,240 were killed.

November 11 began with a heavy fog in northern France. Here, at a hamlet, Le Francport, near Compiègne, on the Oine River, negotiations between German, French and British military officials had been going on for three days in an attempt to bring the hostilities in western Europe to stop. The delegations were reviewing the terms for an armistice that had been requested by the Germans.

It was at this place, at five o’ clock in the morning, that the armistice ending the fighting of the Great War in most of Europe was signed. The armistice was not signed in a beautiful government administrative chamber, nor in a palace. It was, in fact, signed in a railway car.

The armistice was not a German admission of defeat. Nor was it a ceasefire or a truce. Truces and ceasefires refer to temporary cessations of hostilities within a limited area for a limited time. During the American Civil War, for example, truces were often arranged between battling Confederate and Union forces for the object of collecting the wounded and the dead and usually lasted from three to five hours.

In 1918, the armistice was signed between the military leaders of principle nations involved, in this case, France, Great Britain and Germany, to stop hostilities on land, sea and air. The duration of the armistice was originally 36 days.

According to the general rules regarding an armistice, as adopted at the Hague Conference in 1907, hostilities could be resumed in an indefinite armistice following proper notification or serious violation of the armistice.

French general Ferdinand Foch, Supreme Allied Commander, on whose rail car the armistice was signed, was absolutely adamant in ensuring that Germany be denied the martial means of resuming hostilities. Among the terms for an armistice, Foch demanded all German and Central military forces evacuate France, Belgium and Alcase-Lorraine, the immediate release of all Allies prisoners of war and interned civilians. Foch’s demands did not stop there, though. They also included the surrender of aircraft, all warships, and military materiel, artillery, guns, etc., Allied occupation of the Rhineland and bridgeheads, and no release of German prisoners of war. Foch also stated there would be no relaxation of the Allied naval blockade of Germany.

Although Foch’s demands included eventual reparations from Germany, that was outside of the parameters of a military agreement; that would need to be determined by governments during surrender negotiations.

By November 11, the German military technically had no government with which to consult. On Nov.9, while the negotiations were going on, Kaiser Wilhelm, King of Prussia and German Emperor, faced with uprisings in Berlin that had become a revolution, was forced to abdicate his throne. Power was handed to a new government, the Social Democratic Party, led by Friedrich Ebert. Wilhelm’s abdication was declared for him by Chancellor Maximilian of Baden. With the abdication, the German Empire dissolved and ended 500 years of rule under the Hohenzollern Prussian dynasty.

Germany’s citizens, largely as a result of the Allied naval blockade, were starving. The military had lost faith in Wilhelm, and in turn he lost its support. He fled to the Netherlands. While Germany was collapsing internally, the military offensives by the United States military forces in France had all but collapsed the German front lines between August and November.

Faced with external defeat by the Americans on the battlefield, and internal defeat by the Socialist revolution in Berlin, the German officials had no option remaining than to sign the armistice.

In the United States, President Woodrow Wilson in 1919 proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day. Today, it is celebrated as Veterans Day, but in most other countries that were involved in the war, it is Remembrance Day and honors members of the armed forces who died in the line of duty. In the U.S. that day is Memorial Day.

The Treaty of Versailles, which ended the Great War, was ratified in June, 1919 and took affect on Jan. 20, 1920. Remembrance Day, Armistice Day, Veterans Day, is observed, not on the anniversary of the day that the war officially ended, but on the anniversary of the day the blood-letting of the Great War stopped. It was the bloodiest war in history up to that time.

Casualty estimates vary greatly among sources. To this day, human remains continue to be uncovered on old battlefields. Entire towns were literally blown off the map. Many are marked with signs that indicate where they stood. Among them are Fleury-devant-Douaumont, Tahure, Regniéville, Ailles and Courtecon, where the numbers of killed will never be known.

According to census.gov, most sources put the number of military and civilian deaths of World War I at approximately 40 million, 20 million deaths and 21 million wounded. More civilians than military combatants were killed and wounded. The Compiègne Armistice brought the mass slaughter to an end and led to the end of the War to End All Wars.