- 5/9/2025
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00:00On the 8th of November, 1918, three men met in a railway carriage in the woods in northern France.
00:17They were there to negotiate the end of the First World War.
00:22This is a dark day with tension, as this is the greatest war the world has seen thus far.
00:30Their meeting lasted three days.
00:39At stake were hundreds of thousands of lives.
00:45Leading historians from each country have taken us inside the minds of those involved.
00:52First, keep saying to the British, my country was devastated, yours wasn't.
01:00Too much bonhomie is not going to get you very far in this.
01:03People of 70 million can suffer, but we will not die, you will not get rid of us.
01:09The results of the meeting would echo down through the 20th century, often with terrible consequences.
01:20Now, exactly 100 years later, this is the story of that meeting.
01:25This is the story of the armistice of 1918.
01:29In 1918, German military headquarters were in Spa, in occupied Belgium.
01:51It was from here, at 12 noon, on November the 7th, that the Germans set off for the negotiations to end the First World War.
02:14Leading the delegation was a mild-mannered former schoolteacher turned politician, Matthias Erzberger.
02:31Matthias Erzberger is courageous and selfless.
02:35He is a man of conviction and not a game player.
02:44He looks like a kindly man.
02:47I think of him as a good German.
02:50To get to the negotiating table, Erzberger had to take a 200-mile road trip and cross enemy lines.
03:03On the way, his car crashed and he had to change vehicles.
03:08It felt like a bad omen.
03:13At La Capelle, he reached the front line, where he had to hand himself over to the French.
03:20Here, before the negotiations had even begun, the French made their first psychological move.
03:33They took him on a detour, a guided tour, of the horrors of the Western Front.
03:38The war had been raging for four years.
03:57With soldiers dying at the rate of a thousand a day.
03:59It's important to remember that people like Erzberger, who were in Berlin for the war, had never seen what the front looked like.
04:17The destruction that he witnesses is really, extremely harrowing.
04:26He writes, it was worse than being on his son's deathbed, his young son's deathbed, who died of the Spanish flu, just some three weeks before.
04:47Seeing first hand, the devastation that German troops had actually caused in Belgium and France, I think for him, would have been very shocking.
05:03Very shocking.
05:22At 3am, Erzberger boarded a train with blacked out windows.
05:25Four hours later, it pulled into an empty railroad siding, deep in the forest of Compiègne.
05:38Waiting for him, were two men who could not have been more different from the German.
05:42Britain had sent Rosalind Weems, who joined the military at just 13, and grew up to be commander of the most powerful navy in the world.
05:59Rosie Weems is the right man in the right place in 1918.
06:04He has self-confidence and that fluency and ease of manner.
06:08Weems was knighted for his actions in Gallipoli.
06:14He was well connected and politically astute.
06:19He has a capacity, it seems to, to bring out the best in other people as well as in himself.
06:29For over a hundred years, Britain had ruled the waves, and Weems' main interest was keeping it that way.
06:35For Britain, one of the key concerns is the need for a lead after the war over Germany.
06:46To ensure the security of the empire, which will underpin, as he would see, Britain s prosperity.
06:53France sent Marshal Ferdinand Foch in charge of all the Allied armies.
07:09A short man with a fondness for cheap cigars.
07:13His only son was killed by the Germans in 1914.
07:18But he only grieved for half an hour before getting back to work.
07:22General Foch is a professional, cold, proud.
07:33Foch is all about fighting for the fatherland.
07:37Allons-y, let's go, let's attack.
07:40Foch keeps saying to the British, I have a bleeding country.
07:46My country was devastated, yours wasn't.
07:52My country is bleeding, I know, because I am bleeding, because I am wounded.
08:00So, Foch wanted one thing more than anything else.
08:04To make sure that Germany was never able to invade France again.
08:08Of the three of them, Erzberger was by far in the most desperate position.
08:27For years, the Western Front had been locked in stalemate.
08:31Millions had died, but the front line had only moved a few miles in either direction.
08:36Then, in early 1918, German stormtroopers smashed through Allied lines.
08:49But they went too far, too fast.
08:52And supply lines couldn't keep up.
08:56With the help of American troops, the Allies launched a decisive counter-attack.
09:00Soon, German troops were deserting in droves, and there was unrest on the streets of Berlin.
09:137am, on the 8th of November.
09:17And in just two hours, the armistice negotiations would begin.
09:20Erzberger arrives at the armistice negotiations not exactly in the best physical and psychological frame of mind, really, to undertake these momentous negotiations.
09:45Forge shows up, looking like a statue of himself, perfectly shaved, his moustache perfectly groomed.
10:03Foge appears in Erzberger's account as very aloof, very cool.
10:12And Erzberger is unimpressed with Foge's manners.
10:16Also, not terribly won over by Weems.
10:20He was essentially like a fish out of water, I guess, being a civilian in this military environment.
10:29These are the enemy.
10:38You do need to be pretty firm, pretty strong.
10:42And too much bonhomie is not going to get you very far in this.
10:46Each group facing the other across a table, divided, crucially, by the table.
10:51Not united by the table.
10:52Not united by the table.
10:54You know, this is not a dinner party, where people are leaning across.
10:59They're looking at each other, pretty stany-faced.
11:03With a sense of tension, as this is the greatest war the world has seen thus far.
11:10Erzberger expects there to be a handshake, there is no handshake, there are no friendly formalities.
11:21The very fact that Foge doesn't want to shake hands with the Germans indicates that, in his eyes, the horror of the war goes far beyond the normal rules or conventions of chivalry.
11:36And he wants to show the Germans that this war has gone far too far, that something was broken in civilization or in humankind.
11:55Erzberger's first move was a humanitarian one.
12:01He requested a ceasefire whilst negotiations took place.
12:06Erzberger's first move was to point to a peace proposal laid out by the American president Woodrow Wilson.
12:31The proposal set out a new world order, and was known as the 14 points.
12:45Its aim was to place all countries on an equal footing, and spread the American values of democracy and peace.
12:52Wilson's 14 points were his dream.
12:59He was a constitutional historian, the only American president with a PhD.
13:04He was a learned man, he understood these issues.
13:07Arrogance, perhaps, vision, certainly, humility, not really.
13:16Erzberger assumes that this will be a matter of negotiation to agree an armistice along the lines of Wilson's suggestions.
13:29He has lots of ideas of how he thinks he might use the 14 points as a vehicle for trying to arrange a favorable peace for Germany.
13:42The proposals by Wilson are very nice and very interesting, but they missed the point.
13:49The point is ending the war and breaking the German might.
13:54Quickly, Foch and Weems disabuse them of the notion that the 14 points will be the basis of the armistice talks.
14:06Erzberger's memoirs give a sense of the confusion, I think, and surprise also, that he clearly felt given the position he now finds himself in.
14:17Foch and Weems put forward their own terms.
14:28First, they wanted the German weapons.
14:312,000 planes.
14:335,000 artillery pieces.
14:36And 30,000 machine guns.
14:37Those very high numbers, they are there to crush the Germans, to make the German army unable to fight.
14:50Then, they wanted their navy.
14:5310 battleships, 14 cruisers, 50 destroyers and 160 submarines.
15:01Weems is making sure that the ships are delivered to the British, so they cannot be used again. That's end of story.
15:12Erzberger would have been aware that this will be considered an absolute outrage by everyone in Germany.
15:20And they certainly did not want to hand their beautiful fleet over to Britain.
15:25The German navy will be reduced to a point of ineffectiveness.
15:34And the Allies wanted land.
15:37The long disputed areas of Alsace and Lorraine.
15:425,000 square miles of fertile territory that both France and Germany believed was theirs.
15:49They also demanded to occupy a piece of Germany.
15:57The Rhineland.
16:01The first reason is technical and military.
16:04It's bridgehead to the German territory.
16:08That's the first thing.
16:10The second reason is psychological.
16:12For four years, the Germans have been occupying France.
16:16Forch, by sending his troops over to Germany, wants to show the Germans that, from then on, they are occupied themselves.
16:29And they wanted money.
16:31Germany must pay reparations for all the damage done in the war.
16:35The notion that the defeated power should pay for defeat has been well established in European practice before 1918.
16:46The point is there that if you lose a war, you pay.
16:50I think what Erzberger worries about more than anything else is that if Germany does not agree to the armistice conditions, it would be occupied, it would be divided by the Allies, it would be completely destroyed.
17:06I think it dawns on him then that this really is the end of the road.
17:10Erzberger focused on the thing that mattered most to the German people.
17:18The naval blockade of their country.
17:25In place since 1914, a blockade of its ports was preventing food and supplies from reaching the German people.
17:32Erzberger pleads with them, he says, look, Germans are starving.
17:40But there is no pity in that railway carriage for starving Germans at that point.
17:47Weems doesn't give any indication that he's concerned about the German civilian population.
17:54In continuing the blockade, Foch and Weems' aim was strategic.
18:02The Allies wanted a way to maintain the upper hand over Germany.
18:06Even if it meant hundreds of thousands of civilians would starve to death.
18:12The blockade is hostile, there's no doubt about that, and it's designed to be hostile.
18:16What Foch and Weems are trying to do is to continue to exert pressure in order to make sure that they get the right outcome at the peace settlement.
18:27For Weems, the moment to get Germany is at the armistice. This is the moment.
18:34The continuation of the blockade was a major blow for Erzberger.
18:38Poch sees some German delegate crying, but what is the weight of some tears of the German politician in front of him compared to the 1.5 million dead people in France?
18:56What does it weigh compared to the 15% of the French territory that were devastated by the German army? Nothing.
19:03When all the conditions had been read out, Erzberger was asked if he would agree to the armistice terms on behalf of Germany.
19:12For Erzberger, this is a really difficult position to be in because, of course, he is also a patriotic German.
19:20He does not want to put his name to something that is going to be so hateful to many, many Germans because this really spells defeat for Germany.
19:38Erzberger had been presented with tougher terms than he could possibly have imagined.
19:42Then, Foch and Weems told him he had just 72 hours to decide.
19:54Erzberger had to give them an answer by the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
20:01But he didn't have the authority to just sign away the future of his country.
20:06The terms were too long to encrypt and radio back, so a document had to be sent all the way to German High Command at Spa.
20:20A journey of over 200 miles back across the Western Front.
20:24Erzberger tries to negotiate on this with Foch and says, look, we're going to struggle to make this deadline.
20:40And Foch is nonplussed, really, so that's your problem.
20:43Foch is inflexible about the deadline because it's part of the game.
20:49It's part of showing the enemy that he sets the rules.
20:52It's an agonizing wait during which time Erzberger has a lot of time to reflect on how he had got to that point.
21:16The clever son of a tailor, Erzberger was a self-made man.
21:22The journey that he had to being the Imperial German representative at these armistice negotiations is actually quite staggering.
21:35He really, in a sense, pulled himself by his boot strings.
21:44Erzberger knew that back in Germany there were many people who weren't going to take these terms well.
21:49People like the strategic mastermind of the German army, General Erich Ludendorff.
21:58I see in Ludendorff a man who is convinced that the normal state is war, that peace is un-normal, it is only a time between two wars.
22:13A social Darwinist who believes in the benefit of wars over humanity.
22:20Ludendorff detested politicians like Erzberger, yet was, in part, responsible for sending him to Compiègne.
22:30When Ludendorff realized that Germany was losing the war, he didn't want the military to have to carry the can.
22:37Ludendorff was seeking for a scapegoat for putting the blame of a defeat on shoulders that, so far, had no say in this war.
22:54Now, the people who had, as he phrased it, boiled the soup, they should eat it.
23:09He was clearly using these people to say, they brought us into the mess, should now actually get us out of it.
23:20That's why Erzberger had been sent to negotiate.
23:44The messenger had been delayed by the chaos of the Western Front,
23:47where the German army was being pushed back, but was putting up a fight.
23:57He spent hours struggling to find a route through no man's land, to German territory.
24:02The Erzberger is just desperate for news, desperate for an authorization or some sort of guidance as to what he should do.
24:21He needed that answer back. By this point, Erzberger will have been just exhausted.
24:31Not knowing how these negotiations will eventually pan out, I think he must have been basically just at the end of his tether.
24:41Weems has every reason to be nervous about whether these terms will stick.
24:54There is a real possibility that the Germans might actually not signing up with this.
25:03If the terms are too draconian, then why shouldn't they dig in to get ready to continue the conflict into 1919?
25:12So, Weems has good reason to be concerned.
25:20Awaiting news in London was the man who sent Weems to Compiègne, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George.
25:27Lloyd George is a bit of a chancer, a gambler I would say, and he was ruthless.
25:38He grew up without much money. He didn't go to university.
25:43He was this figure who had come from the ranks, and I think he was someone who felt that he was a man of destiny.
25:50His hour had come.
25:52Lloyd George saw the armistice as a chance to crown his political career.
25:57To win the war for Britain, and keep him at number 10.
26:01He was a politician to his fingertips.
26:04He gets elected to the House of Commons at 27, and he's there for 55 years.
26:11I think he was a humane, compassionate man.
26:15And he felt that we needed to stop the war, because people were dying, and it seemed like a futile exercise.
26:21David Lloyd George is very much seen as the man who can get the war to a successful conclusion.
26:27A conclusion that was up to Weems to deliver.
26:40Extraordinarily, just as the messenger was stuck on the Western Front, events in Germany were unfolding at an incredible pace.
26:48That day, riots turned to revolution.
26:54Armed protesters took to the streets of Berlin.
26:58Furious at lives lost in a futile war, they were threatening to shoot up the city unless heads rolled.
27:05Ludendorff was a frightened man.
27:12He immediately left Berlin, went into hiding.
27:18A huge mob descended on the Reichstag, and demanded the politicians got rid of the Kaiser and brought the war to an end.
27:27Parliament contacted German High Command at Spa.
27:34Either the Kaiser abdicated within minutes, or Berlin would fall to the revolution.
27:39The commander of the army, General Paul von Hindenburg, with tears in his eyes, met with Kaiser Wilhelm.
27:49At 3pm, the Kaiser abdicated.
27:53Germany was now a republic.
28:05So remarkably, when the messenger finally arrived, with the armistice terms, it was no longer clear who was in charge.
28:12The guerra came from the French.
28:2210th of November.
28:24In just 24 hours, the deadline given to Erzberger would pass.
28:28For Wien's, the worry in Compiègne, when the news of the revolution comes through, is that there will be no government.
28:34government and with no government Germany will not be able to agree terms
28:39it won't have a recognized authority and a legal authority to do that with no
28:47response from Germany Weems fears seem to be confirmed at 6 30 p.m. Foch sent a
28:58message to Erzberger reminding him the time was almost up the very fact that the
29:05Kaiser is abdicating as far as Foch is concerned means the German army is not
29:12able to resist a strong attack from the Allies Foch saw opportunity
29:22he had hundreds of thousands of men and 600 tanks awaiting the order to attack the German line
29:34for him it will be a cup of tea Foch knows that first the German army is at the end of its capacities
29:44and second that there is a revolution in Germany so far she's convinced that the Germans will yield
29:50and will accept each and every condition
29:54weems too was thinking strategically so far the war had not presented him with a decisive naval
30:05victory like Nelson's at Trafalgar weems feels frustrated that there has been no battle at Trafalgar
30:15and says you know we will deliver Trafalgar we will deliver the outcome at the armistice
30:23Lloyd George also wanted to use the armistice to reassert Britain's role at sea
30:29and help secure its empire the British strategy was Britannia rules the waves so it made sense to
30:40essentially defang Germany to remove all the naval infrastructure they built up to prevent them from
30:47starting a war starting that kind of arms race again at 9 p.m. a message arrived for Erzberger
31:00it was from German high command
31:09general Hindenburg told Erzberger to try and get concessions from the allies but if he couldn't sign
31:18anyway for Erzberger the highest military leader in the land does not feel we can continue fighting so
31:28he's not being told do what you can but otherwise we'll carry on there's a clear message that try
31:34and get the best outcome you can this armistice gives clear conditions which are difficult to swallow
31:45and Erzberger was under no illusions even at the time that this walk of the cross as he called it in his memoirs
31:53would be his cross to bear
31:5511th of November 1918
32:13the war continued with unremitting savagery
32:18two thousand seven hundred and thirty eight soldiers lost their lives on this last day of the first world war
32:25shortly after two in the morning with just hours left before the deadline negotiations finally began in earnest
32:37Erzberger only had a few short hours left to fight his corner with the fate of his nation on his shoulders
32:52by this point Erzberger has been essentially on the road for four days so he will have had a little bit of sleep on and off
32:59certainly not in a position to argue as forcefully and well as he might have under better circumstances
33:08as far as Erzberger is concerned it's very much a case of damage limitation
33:14Erzberger picked his fights carefully he had three priorities
33:21Fox had demanded the German army hand over 30,000 machine guns
33:28but Hindenburg told Erzberger the army needed weapons to quell the revolution that was still threatening to tear the country apart
33:36Erzberger tries very hard in these negotiations these very uneven negotiations to make little tweaks at least to the conditions of the armistice
33:48of the armistice
33:53Fox was now so sure of victory he agreed to reduce the number of machine guns by 5,000
34:02Fox also agreed to Erzberger's request to decrease the allied occupation east of the Rhine by 30 kilometers
34:09Erzberger had at least secured some concessions
34:16he's proud of that his memoirs reflect this
34:19the fact that he you know I managed at least to get them to reduce the zone of occupation by a few kilometers
34:25or to reduce the amount of military hardware we have to hand over he lists all this these were my achievements
34:32next Erzberger turned to the naval demands
34:37Weems had insisted that the German Navy hand over a hundred and sixty of its prized submarines
34:46Erzberger knows this was perhaps the most unpalatable for the military and naval elites in Germany
34:54because the Navy at that point had not been defeated in war and it was just a complete surrender
35:02that essentially hands Britain the German Navy on a plate
35:08Right up until the end there is a fear that the German Navy will come out and be a real threat to Britain through the submarine campaign
35:17and certainly in Weems's mind as he reports it there is no scope for negotiation it is take it or leave it
35:28Weems had asked for a hundred and sixty submarines because he hoped that would account for most if not all of them
35:34He was told Germany didn't have that many so he said he would take whatever they had
35:45At the stroke of a pen Weems secured the entire U-boat fleet and his decisive naval victory
35:53Weems has a sense of a sort of I suppose both impishness and and celebration
35:59When he realizes that by getting his figures wrong he's actually got the right result
36:06You know there's no attempt to pretend he had greater knowledge than he did
36:10No attempt to say that this was the result of superior wisdom
36:14But it is a reflection of course of his determination
36:17To make sure that this is the outcome
36:23Then Erzberger made his most important request
36:25He pleaded with them to lift the naval blockade that was killing innocent German civilians
36:37But Foch and Weems refused
36:39At 5.15 a.m. the terms of the armistice were finally agreed
37:01Not wanting to delay the end of the war a moment longer
37:03Incredibly, only the last page of the agreement was typed out for the men to sign
37:07The last page of the agreement was typed out for the men to sign
37:09The last page of the agreement was typed out for the men to sign
37:16You might think that Weems having had no sleep would have felt exhausted, emotionally drained, ready to go to bed
37:25It's not what he says, what he says is this is wonderful, we've got there, this is a moment of success, a moment of real achievement
37:46For Foch, after four years of total war, of a horrible war, what he feels is victory, this is victory
38:07This is victory, this is victory
38:11Erzberger, signed on behalf of Germany
38:16I think Erzberger is in no doubt that signing the armistice will expose him to a tirade of hatred
38:28From those who felt that Germans should have continued to fight
38:32As he signs that document, I'm sure he must have realised how fateful that action was for Germany and for himself personally
38:46Erzberger says to Foch, people of 70 million can suffer, but we will not die, you will not get rid of us
38:54So a final act of defiance perhaps
38:57To which Foch simply replies, très bien, very well
39:17Foch and Weems posed for this photograph on the steps of the carriage
39:21Erzberger wasn't asked to be in it
39:24Erzberger wasn't asked to be in it
39:43The train left Compiègne and headed for Paris
39:45Aboard, a complete copy of the armistice was finally typed out
39:46Aboard, a complete copy of the armistice was finally typed out
40:00Starting with the time hostilities would cease
40:03Every unit along the western front was ordered to stop shooting
40:08At the eleventh hour
40:10Of the eleventh day
40:12Of the eleventh month
40:14Of 1918
40:16War was replaced by peace
40:17Despair by hope
40:30Despair by hope
40:32Despair by hope.
40:48Years of the armistice travelled quickly around the globe.
40:53The people of Paris, who just a few months earlier were almost in reach of the German guns, breathed a collective sigh of relief.
41:03French Prime Minister Clemenceau had been supportive of his army, urging him to fight on, even during the darkest moments of the war.
41:12Now, at the outbreak of peace, crowds rushed to embrace him.
41:17Clemenceau was really happy. For the first time in his life he was almost speechless and it was the feeling of victory for France and the success of his policy.
41:33In London, thousands poured onto the streets in a spontaneous celebration.
41:40The royal family waved from the balcony.
41:43Then the tidal wave of joy moved to Downing Street, where David Lloyd George was waiting.
41:52For Lord George, it was a moment of great exaltation.
42:01It was probably the finest moment in his career. The appalling slaughter had come to an end.
42:07And it was a great moment for the country. We defeated the German Empire and the British Empire stood really at the head of the world.
42:18In America, it was party time.
42:25An impromptu ticker tape parade attracted thousands in New York.
42:35Wilson's reaction was one of exhilaration.
42:50He made the United States into a carrier of a message that the world order could be changed.
42:57This may not have been the armistice that Wilson proposed, but it was peace nonetheless.
43:07The Allies weren't the only ones celebrating.
43:18Even for the Germans, the end of such a bloody conflict was initially met with relief.
43:23Around the time the guns fell silent, Erzberger arrived at Spa to report back to German high command.
43:33Erzberger is congratulated by Hindenburg for having done such a good job.
43:39And others in the delegation also point out that he fought like a lion,
43:44says one of the men who was there, to try and get the best deal possible for Germany.
43:47So there is a sense that his efforts are appreciated.
43:56Erzberger's memoirs make the point they knew it was the only thing I could have done.
44:10For those actually in the trenches, the end of the war brought a complex mix of emotions.
44:17The silence was, I can only describe it as terrible.
44:24Everything dropped away from me, I thought, no, what do I do now?
44:28There's no objective, there's nothing in front of us.
44:32I've just got to wait.
44:33I've just got to wait.
44:38You were scared Steph.
44:42In the trench, you were all right.
44:46If you kept down, Snoufer couldn't get you.
44:49I couldn't get you.
44:56Those that didn't come back, that's the people that should be honoured.
45:01Those that didn't, they gave their life and that is it.
45:06As the world began to dust itself off after four years of war, the main architects of the Armistice, Lloyd George, Clemenceau and Wilson, travelled to Paris to turn its sketched out clauses into the terms for a permanent peace.
45:33Later known as the Treaty of Versailles.
45:41The terms Erzberger had agreed to at Compiègne had been quickly set in motion and the consequences were already starting to unfold.
45:53Britain's Admiral Weems had demanded the Germans make the largest surrender in naval history.
46:03After the Armistice, the entire German fleet had sailed across the North Sea to Britain to hand itself over to the Royal Navy.
46:10Weems did regard what he'd achieved as a naval victory and was anxious to present it as that.
46:26The German Navy is handed over, to all intents and purposes, lock, stock and barrel to Britain.
46:31For some of Germany's sailors, the humiliation was unbearable, so they decided to sink their own ships.
46:46The entire German Navy was lost, just off the north coast of Scotland.
46:50The sinking of the German Navy, from all accounts we have, was an extremely traumatic event.
47:05The naval officers were absolutely devastated at this happening.
47:12And they blamed Erzberger personally for signing the Armistice, for handing over the Navy to Britain.
47:22Europe, after the war, was broke.
47:42In France, Clemenceau started to take stock of what was left of his nation.
47:46France was a country which most suffered from devastations and destructions of houses, of fields, of factories.
47:57So the question of reparation was a crucial question for all French people.
48:03And the main motto in France would be German will pay.
48:07In Britain too, tens of thousands of wounded soldiers and war widows desperately needed financial support.
48:17The country is in a big amount of debt.
48:20It's borrowed huge amounts of money to finance the war.
48:24Lloyd George says let the Germans pay for all the damage and destruction they've wrought.
48:32Lloyd George says they will pay to the utmost farthing, the Germans will pay to the utmost farthing.
48:36He's swept up by his own rhetoric.
48:41However, if Britain or France had troubles, it was nothing compared to Germany.
48:46The reparations they had to pay, combined with the naval blockade, led to a humanitarian disaster.
48:56At least 300,000 men, women and children died as a result of malnutrition.
49:01For Erzberger, the fact that he hadn't been able to take out the continuation of the blockade would have worried him because hundreds of thousands of German women and children continue to starve.
49:17The backlash against the armistice steadily grew.
49:26And the warlord, General Erich Ludendorff, started to rewrite history.
49:41He now claimed that the German army was not defeated in the war, and that Erzberger betrayed the trust of his country when he signed the armistice.
49:53The accusation that Erzberger had stabbed Germany in the back obviously was upsetting for him because he had acted in the best way he thought he could to save Germany.
50:10Erzberger becomes one of the most hated men of the new republic.
50:17There are countless articles written against him, books published against him.
50:22He is absolutely vilified and aware of it.
50:25He is absolutely vilified and aware of it.
50:27He is absolutely vilified and aware of it.
50:28He is absolutely vilified and aware of it.
50:29He is absolutely vilified and aware of it.
50:31Knowing that Germany had borne the brunt of the armistice terms, Wilson tried to ensure at Versailles that some concessions were made.
50:39Such as the French occupation of the Rhineland being declared temporary.
50:44But the Allies did impose a final, additional clause.
50:48Article 231, the notorious war guilt clause.
50:57Germany had to accept sole responsibility for the outbreak of war and that was something that basically nobody in Germany was willing to accept, Erzberger included.
51:08The reparations on their own well have been a pill that could have been swallowed but combining it with this allocation of blame and of guilt caused an uproar in Germany.
51:29Despite the uproar, threatened with the resumption of hostilities, the Germans had little option but to sign.
51:35There were fierce critics on the Allied side too.
51:45Fauche saw the Versailles Treaty not as a peace treaty, which would settle things forever.
51:52And I quote here, merely an armistice for twenty years.
52:03For Fauche, it was the worst solution ever.
52:07In his eyes, it is obvious that Germany is still existing and the conditions of the peace treaty being far too harsh.
52:20The Germans, of course, will want to take revenge, of course.
52:24Revenge, too, was a concern for Erzberger.
52:38Erzberger knew that his life was in danger.
52:40There had been several attempts on his life.
52:43A hand grenade was thrown into his office in the Reichstag, and he was shot outside the courtroom and injured.
52:53His friends are worried for him.
52:56He's advised to learn to shoot a gun to defend himself, which he refuses to do.
53:01When Erzberger is assassinated, he's still a young man with a young daughter of seven years old.
53:16Erzberger's assassins were former German naval officers who were still bitter about being forced to hand over their ships by the armistice.
53:35It seems very tragic, Erzberger's fate.
53:38Because he does seem to be somebody who puts his convictions before his own personal advantage.
53:49Erzberger is very much a person who did the right thing.
53:53And he did it really selflessly.
53:56Meanwhile, General Erich Ludendorff returned to public life, throwing his weight behind a new political movement.
54:14In the 1920s and 30s, the resentment created by the harsh conditions imposed on Germany...
54:42...proved fertile ground for the far right.
54:52Hitler, a lance corporal during the First World War, claimed to have wept when he heard the armistice had been signed.
55:09Once in power, he systematically dismantled the peace settlement.
55:16In France, the train on which the armistice was signed had been treasured as a monument to German defeat.
55:23They added a statue of Foch and a memorial featuring a slain German eagle.
55:29In June 1940, as Europe descended into the Second World War, Hitler took a very public revenge.
55:35Hitler took a very public revenge.
55:36Hitler took a very public revenge.
55:42The Fuhrer with his generals passes along in front of the Guard of Honour and salutes.
55:43The Fuhrer with his generals passes along in front of the Guard of Honour and salutes.
55:47The Fuhrer with his generals.
55:48The Fuhrer with his generals passes along in front of the Guard of Honour and salutes.
55:54He demanded that the French surrender to him here.
56:01In the very carriage where Erzberger, Foch and Weems met in 1918.
56:08With their leader, General Hunsaker, the French delegation arrives.
56:33After reading of the preamble of the German conditions, the Fuhrer leaves Compiègne.
56:58And many felt that the connection is more than symbolic.
57:03At the end of the First World War, the suffering and humiliation the Germans felt was a cause of the next World War.
57:12Those who had fought in the trenches had a clear message.
57:27I don't think there should be any wars.
57:31I don't believe in them.
57:33Although I'm a soldier, I don't believe in them.
57:35Not after what I've seen, anyway.
57:41The age between 17 and 23 or 24 and you had to be fighting in a war.
57:50There's no doubt about it that the cream, the cream age, were killed unnecessarily. What for?
58:00It's painful.
58:01I got three mates.
58:02There is somewhere.
58:03I don't know where.
58:04Too many.
58:05I got three mates.
58:06I got three mates.
58:07There is somewhere.
58:08I got three mates.
58:09There is somewhere.
58:12I don't know where.
58:14Too many.
58:18Too many.
58:19Too many.
58:20Too many.
58:21Too many.
58:23Too many.
58:24Too many.
58:25Too many.
58:26Too many.
58:28Too many.
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