Armistice extended

The Armistice of Compiègne, which ended the fighting on the Western Front on 11 November 1918, was concluded for 36 days. It was due to expire on 17 December at 5 a.m. The British chronology of the war records under 14 December that the armistice was extended to 17 January 1919. The agreement itself, however, was signed a day earlier, on 13 December, at Trier, occupied since 1 December by American troops. The document was signed by the same men as in the forest of Compiègne: Marshal Ferdinand Foch and Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss for the Allies, and Matthias Erzberger, Count Alfred von Oberndorff, General Detlof von Winterfeldt and Captain Ernst Vanselow for Germany.

The talks were not easy for the Germans. On 12 December the Allies handed them a note listing breaches of twelve articles of the armistice. They accused the Germans of failing to hand over weapons, aircraft, railway rolling stock and warships on time and in the agreed numbers. Five submarines were still in Spain, one in Norway and one in the Netherlands. The Germans were also refusing to hand over ships that prize courts had declared lawful prizes. The note further reproached them for ill-treating the population in the evacuated areas and neglecting released prisoners, for failing to mark minefields in the abandoned areas, for not opening navigation to the Baltic, and for removing securities and gold that were to serve as a financial guarantee for the Allies. The German government replied the same day. It assured them of its good will and explained that the shortcomings resulted from physical impossibility and from the chaos into which the country had sunk after the revolution. The Allies nevertheless upheld their demands, citing in particular the ill-treatment of Allied prisoners and the depletion of the financial guarantees.

The Trier agreement had three points. The armistice was extended by a month, to 5 a.m. on 17 January 1919, with the proviso that with the consent of the Allied governments it could be further extended until the conclusion of the peace preliminaries. Those provisions of the armistice of 11 November that the Germans had not yet fulfilled were to be carried out during the extension, on terms laid down by the Permanent International Armistice Commission in accordance with the orders of the Allied commander-in-chief. A new clause was also added to the armistice: from then on Foch reserved the right to occupy, whenever he saw fit and as an additional guarantee, the neutral zone on the right bank of the Rhine north of the Cologne bridgehead as far as the Dutch border. He was to give the Germans six days’ notice of the occupation. This meant the threat of Allied troops entering the industrial area around Düsseldorf, beyond which lay the Ruhr.

The extension was signed just as the Allied armies were completing their march to the Rhine. On 12 and 13 December the British crossed the river at Cologne, and the Americans, who a few days earlier had entered Koblenz, were occupying the bridgehead on the right bank. On 13 December President Woodrow Wilson arrived in France to take part in the peace conference. Peace itself, however, was still some way off.

For several months Trier became the venue for the armistice talks. According to the historian Christian Jansen, successive rounds took place on a siding of the main station and in the station restaurant. At Trier on 16 January 1919 the armistice was extended for the second time, this time at the price of further concessions. Among other things, the Germans were to place their merchant fleet under Allied control for the duration of the armistice to ensure food supplies, and to hand over agricultural machinery instead of some of the locomotives and wagons. On 16 February 1919 it was extended for the third time, indefinitely. It remained in force until the Treaty of Versailles came into effect in January 1920.