Allies reach the German border

On 26 November 1918 the period that the Armistice of Compiègne had given the Germans for evacuating Belgium, France, Luxembourg and Alsace-Lorraine ran out: 15 days from the signing. The British chronology of the war records under this date that the last German units crossed back over the Belgian–German border, which the emperor’s armies had crossed on 4 August 1914, and that on the same day French troops entered German territory. Two days earlier, on 24 November, according to the same chronology, British and American troops had reached the German border. Other sources show that the individual armies reached it on different days, from 23 to 29 November.

Withdrawing the German western armies in so short a time was an enormous undertaking. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers marched east through Belgium and Luxembourg, and behind them, at a distance of about 10 kilometres, came the advanced guards of the Allies, which had set out from the armistice line on 17 November. The Germans had to leave military equipment where it was and were not allowed to destroy anything. They sent released Allied prisoners of war westwards, often without food or transport.

The Americans moved fastest. According to an American study of 1938, the advanced guards of the Third Army, marching through Luxembourg, passed through its capital on 21 November, and two days later, on 23 November, stood on the German border, which there is formed by the rivers Sauer and Moselle. They rested there until 1 December. The British had further to go and greater supply difficulties. The gap in the railway between Valenciennes and Mons was closed only on the night of 25–26 November, and until then supplies were brought by lorry from railheads west of the Scheldt. According to Field Marshal Douglas Haig’s final despatch, the first to arrive were patrols of the 2nd Cavalry Division, which on the night of 28–29 November reached the German border near Beho (PL) in the Belgian province of Luxembourg. The next day the 1st Cavalry Division reached the border along the whole front of the British march, and the infantry closed up behind it. At the request of the local authorities Haig had earlier sent cavalry detachments to Charleroi and Namur to keep order there.

In the case of the French, too, leaving aside the recovered Alsace and Lorraine, the dates differ. According to the German municipal chronicle, French troops occupied Saarbrücken as early as 23 November and at once introduced military administration there. General Augustin Gérard’s French Eighth Army, on the other hand, began the occupation of the Palatinate only on 1 December. In Belgium and Luxembourg the Allied soldiers were welcomed with flags and triumphal arches. Haig noted that the population, itself long underfed under the occupation, shared its food with them.

On 1 December all the occupation armies moved into Germany. That day the Americans entered Trier, and according to the American study the German population received them with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. The British entered Cologne on 6 December, and on 12 and 13 December the Allies crossed the Rhine.