1940 : THE SECOND ARMISTICE AT COMPIEGNE, PARIS Hitler was going to lay down his terms for the armistice which Pétain had requested at the same spot where the German Empire had capitulated to France and her allies on November 11, 1918: in the little clearing in the woods at Compiègne. June 21st : At 3:15 P.M. precisely, Hitler arrived in his big Mercedes, accompanied by Goering, Brauchitsch, Keitel, Raeder, Ribbentrop and Hess, all in their various uniforms, and Goering, the lone Field Marshal of the Reich, fiddling with his field marshal’s baton. They alighted from their automobiles some two hundred yards away, in front of the Alsace-Lorraine statue, which was draped with German war flags so that the Fuehrer could not see the large sword, the sword of the victorious Allies of 1918, sticking through a limp eagle representing the German Empire of the Hohenzollerns. Hitler glanced at the monument and strode on. When he reached the little opening in the forest and his personal standard had been run up in the center of it, his attention was attracted by a great granite block which stood some three feet above the ground. Hitler, followed by the others, walks slowly over to it, steps up, and reads the inscription engraved (in French) in great high letters: “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. Hitler and his party then entered the armistice railway car, the Fuehrer seating himself in the chair occupied by Foch in 1918. Five minutes later the French delegation arrived, headed by General Charles Huntziger, commander of the Second Army at Sedan. French delegation looked shattered, but retained a tragic dignity. They had not been told that they would be led to this proud French shrine to undergo such a humiliation, and the shock was no doubt just what Hitler had calculated. As General Halder wrote in his diary that evening after being given an eyewitness account by Brauchitsch: The French had no warning that they would be handed the terms at the very site of the negotiations in 1918. They were apparently shaken by this arrangement and at first inclined to be sullen. Perhaps it was natural, even for a German so cultivated as Halder, or Brauchitsch, to mistake solemn dignity for sullenness.
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 11:53:01 +0000
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