Germans leave France

The British chronology of the war records under 18 November 1918 that the last German troops crossed back over the French frontier, and refers in this connection to 2 August 1914, when the first clashes took place on the Franco-German border. What is meant is the 1914 border, that is without Alsace and Lorraine, which had belonged to the Reich since 1871 and which the Germans were only then in the process of leaving. For the departments of north-eastern France, parts of which had been occupied for more than four years, it was the end of the German occupation.

What the armistice required

The evacuation was enforced by the Armistice of Compiègne. Its second article required the immediate evacuation of Belgium, France, Luxembourg and Alsace-Lorraine, to be completed within 15 days of the signing. Soldiers who failed to leave in time were to become prisoners of war. An annex to the armistice divided the area into three zones. The first, between the front line of 11 November and the so-called line no. 1, the Germans had to give up within five days, the second within nine, the third within fifteen. Allied troops could follow them only from the sixth day and always with a certain delay, so as to avoid clashes. The Germans were not allowed to destroy anything or carry off the inhabitants, and they were to send all deportees and hostages home within two weeks.

At the moment of the armistice only a small part of French territory was still in German hands. After the recapture of Mézières the occupation covered the north of the Ardennes department, the narrow valley of the Meuse as far as Fumay and Givet on the Belgian border. The Germans had attached both these towns administratively to occupied Belgium as early as 1915. Further east the Germans still held the industrial basin of Briey and Longwy in French Lorraine, occupied since August 1914. From Longwy itself, according to surviving period photographs, the Germans had already left on 12 November.

Retreat without a fight

The German army returned home in surprisingly good order, although revolution had already taken hold of it. Soldiers’ councils were active in many units, and officers often lost control over their men. Even so, the withdrawal of millions of men from France and Belgium went largely according to plan. The sources do not give the exact hour at which the last German soldier left pre-war France, and the withdrawal from individual places was spread over several days. The date in the British chronology does, however, fit the armistice timetable, and only individual places, such as Longwy, point to earlier dates.

By 18 November French troops were already on the other side of the 1871 border. The day before, in accordance with the armistice, they had crossed the old front line and entered Mulhouse. On 18 November they occupied Colmar and Sélestat in Alsace. Colmar was entered by the troops of General Adolphe Messimy, who in 1914 had been minister of war. That day further regiments marching through Lorraine towards the Rhine also crossed the 1871 border, as part of the Allied advance to the Rhine that had begun the day before. According to Lorraine studies, the last Germans left Alsace and Moselle around 21 November, and the whole evacuation, in accordance with the armistice, was completed before 26 November.

The occupation’s toll

The occupied departments of northern and eastern France came out of the war in ruins. For four years the Germans had requisitioned food, raw materials and machinery and deported people for forced labour, and during the retreat in the autumn of 1918 they blew up mines, bridges and railway lines. The Ardennes department, which before the war had 319,000 inhabitants, had about 175,000 at the time of liberation. The reconstruction of the devastated regions was to take many more years.