French enter Mulhouse

On 17 November 1918 French troops entered Mulhouse, the largest industrial city of Upper Alsace, for the third time in this war. They had been there twice before in August 1914, at the start of the war. Each time they had had to withdraw after a few days, and on 25 August 1914 the Germans had taken the city for more than four years. This time the French did not have to fight. Under the Armistice of Compiègne the Germans were to evacuate within 15 days occupied France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Alsace-Lorraine, which had belonged to the Empire since 1871. That same day the French also entered, among other places, Altkirch, Cernay and Ribeauvillé.

The city waits

The last days of German rule in Mulhouse were unsettled. Under the influence of the revolution in Germany a soldiers’ council was formed in the city on 9 and 10 November, and on 13 November there was still an attempt to set up a workers’ council. The mayor, Joseph Cossmann, organised a civic guard to keep order until the French arrived. According to the historian Francis Grandhomme, the soldiers’ council warned that if the population harassed the withdrawing troops, the soldiers would use their weapons and even artillery. No serious clashes took place, however. Instead, tricolour cockades appeared everywhere in the streets. The teacher Philippe Husser, who kept a diary throughout the war, noted that even otherwise very serious people wore them.

The armistice also set the pace of the French advance. French troops could cross the old front line only on the fifth day after it was signed and were to follow the Germans, keeping a safe distance. Mulhouse therefore had to wait several days for them. The local chronicler Émile Zundel wrote that as early as 15 November the city was decorated and waiting for the announced French army, but in vain. Only individual officers and soldiers, greeted with ovations, and released prisoners of war came to Mulhouse.

The entry

On 17 November the troops of General Auguste Hirschauer, commander of the Second Army, entered the city. The choice was no accident. Hirschauer had been born in Saint-Avold in Lorraine, but his father’s family came from Mulhouse. In his speech he recalled his father, who “rests in Alsatian soil”. According to Grandhomme, for the occasion he also put on the old red trousers worn by the French infantry in 1914, to efface from the inhabitants’ memory the disappointment of the start of the war. The soldiers marched along a flag-decked route from Dornach through the centre to the station, where a parade was held.

The welcome was warm, though not everywhere as unanimous as the French press portrayed it. Husser noticed that many soldiers looked tired and indifferent. Zundel, for his part, described how the inhabitants, with the tacit consent of the drivers, pulled about 20,000 loaves of bread off the army lorries. A crowd too eager for white bread had to be dispersed with fire hoses, and in the evening fireworks let off “at random” started a fire.

What came next

From 17 November the French troops moved on through Alsace. The next day they entered Colmar and Sélestat, and a few days later Strasbourg. In memory of that day one of the streets of Mulhouse was later named Rue du 17 Novembre. On 8–10 December President Raymond Poincaré and Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau travelled through the recovered cities of Alsace and Lorraine. In Mulhouse Poincaré paid tribute to the city which at the start of the war “had twice been able to believe it was free” and had twice returned to enemy hands.