Glade of the Armistice
| Glade of the Armistice | |
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| France | |
| For French soldiers of World War I and signing of the Armistice | |
| Location | 49°25′38″N 2°54′23″E / 49.42722°N 2.90639°E |
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"1914-1918 / To the heroic soldiers of France / Defenders of the Fatherland and of Justice / Glorious liberators of Alsace-Lorraine"
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The Glade of the Armistice (French: Clairière de l'Armistice) is a French national and war memorial in the Forest of Compiègne. It was built at the location where in 1918 the Germans signed the armistice that ended World War I. During World War II, Adolf Hitler deliberately chose the same spot for the French and Germans to sign the Second Armistice at Compiègne after Germany won the Battle of France.
Today, the Glade of the Armistice contains a statue of Ferdinand Foch and the Alsace-Lorraine Memorial.
The armistice, which put an end to World War I, was signed in a carriage of Foch's private train, CIWL #2419 ("Le Wagon de l'Armistice") in Rethondes. It was later put back into regular service with the Compagnie des Wagons-Lits, but after a short period it was withdrawn to be attached to the French presidential train. From April 1921 to April 1927, it was on exhibition in the Cour des Invalides in Paris.
In November 1927, this carriage was ceremonially returned to the forest in the exact spot where the Armistice was signed, a part of the newly constructed monument "the Glade of the Armistice". Marshal Foch, General Weygand and many others watched it being placed in a specially constructed building; near, but not on, the exact place of the signing.
There it remained, a monument to the defeat of Imperial Germany and the triumph of France, until 22 June 1940, when swastika-bedecked German staff cars bearing Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop and others swept into the Clairiere and, in that same carriage, moved back to the signing-place, the Second World War armistice with France was signed; this time with Germany triumphant. William Shirer reported on Hitler's reaction to seeing the monument:
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