THE LAST WEEK - THE ROAD TO WAR
Chapter 6
August 30, 1939

The Kaiser, anxious and furious, shouts, "Do you by any chance think I am incapable of remaining with my troops?"

Nobody answers. Finally Baron von Grunau says, "I earnestly beseech you not to lose another hour. Going over to Holland is the only solution in this confusion."

The All-Highest is defeated. He tells Hintze to make the necessary overtures to the Dutch government - which he's already done anyway. S.M. says he will stay the night at Chateau de la Fraineuse, but he actually orders his train crew to raise steam, fearing a kidnap attempt.

Admiral Scheer, who has been absent from of this debate, turns up to say farewell, and gets a cold send-off from S.M. The Navy has failed him, says Wilhelm. "I no longer have a Navy."

Then the Kaiser bats out a note to the Kaiserin, ailing in Potsdam, saying they must go "to a neutral State, Holland or elsewhere, where merciful Heaven may permit us to eat our bread - in exile. God's hand lies heavily upon us!"

Finally the shocked All-Highest takes his car to the railway siding, his withered arm not hidden under his cape as usual. S.M. tells his military aides, "Plessen and Hintze have just put a pistol to my head. I was to leave this evening for the Netherlands. In the heat of the moment I agreed, but … I am remaining with the army as King of Prussia … Even if only a few men remain loyal, I will fight with them to the end, and if we are killed, well, I am not afraid of death… No, it is impossible! I am staying here!"

He boards the train at 7:40 p.m. and does not emerge.

At the Pasewalk Hospital, Obergefreiter Adolf Hitler lies still partially blinded by mustard gas poisoning, slowly recovering. When a delegation of three Red German sailors bursts into his hospital to try to convert the patients to Bolshevism, Hitler is outraged. Not only have the firebrands never seen action, having spent the war in barracks or on steel warships, they are Jews. Indignant and shocked, Hitler returns to bed.

Now, on November 9, the patients are gathered in a little hall and a trembling elderly pastor informs the wounded Frontkampfer than the Kaiser is gone and Germany has become a republic. Hitler later writes that "the pastor began to sob gently to himself - in the little hall the deepest dejection settled on all hearts, and I believe that not an eye was able to restrain its tears."

The pastor continues: the war must be ended, all is lost, and the Reich must throw itself on the mercy of the victorious Allies. Hitler is enraged. "It became impossible for me to sit still one minute more. Again everything went black before my eyes; I tottered and groped my way back to the dormitory, threw myself on my bunk, and dug my burning head into my blankets and pillow."

For the first time since his mother's death, Hitler cries, he writes later. "Only now did I see how all personal suffering vanished in comparison with the misfortune of the Fatherland. So it had all been in vain. In vain all the sacrifices…in vain the deaths of two millions." Hitler lies in bed for days, unable to see, furious, and weeping.

Later he writes, "I knew that all was lost. Only fools, liars, and criminals could hope for mercy from the enemy. In these nights hatred grew in me, hatred for those responsible for this deed…Miserable and degenerate criminals! The more I tried to achieve clarity on the monstrous event in this hour, the more the shame of indignation and disgrace burned my brow. What was all the pain in my eyes compared to this misery? In the days that followed, my own fate became known to me…I resolved to become a politician."

Back in Berlin, another politician, the goateed Ebert, son of a tailor, paces up and down the Reich Chancellor's office at 11 p.m. on the evening of November 9th, listening to shouting demonstrators in the streets and shots fired by drunken sailors occupying the Kaiser's palace.

At the age of 48, the one-time saddlemaker's apprentice now holds the office of Otto Von Bismarck. The problem is, Ebert doesn't have the power. The Army and Navy are in mutiny. The cops have gone home. The very legality of Ebert's position is questionable: under the shaky Reich Constitution, Prince Max has no right to choose his successor. And the Kaiser's abdication is not official yet, either. The Armistice has not been signed, so the war is still raging on, with its huge financial and human costs, unending casualty lists, and starvation. Germany is poised to slide into anarchy and Bolshevik revolution.

At that moment, one of three identical telephones on Ebert's desk starts ringing: Number 988 on the Imperial German Post Office's list. Ebert is amazed: the few switchboard operators who defied the strike order have gone home by now.

Ebert scoops up the phone to answer it, not knowing that Line 988 is the secret direct line from the Chancellor's Office to GHQ at Spa.

"Yes," Ebert says, "Who is there?"

"Groener speaking," answers the First Quartermaster-General of the Army. The two last met on the 6th. Now they exchange pleasantries, and Ebert asks how the generalstab is holding up.

Not bad is the answer: the Kaiser is bedded down on his private train for the night, and has agreed to be conveyed to Holland.

Groener gets down to business. "Is the government willing to protect Germany from anarchy and to restore order?" he asks.

"Yes," Ebert answers. "The government most certainly is."

"In that case, the High Command will maintain discipline in the Army and bring it peacefully home," Groener says.

Ebert asks, "What is the attitude of the High Command to the Soldiers' Councils?" He is referring to the Soldatenrate, the rebellious troops' committees that are representing them.

"Orders have been given to deal with them in a friendly spirit," Groener answers.

"What do you expect from us?" The Reich Chancellor asks his general.

"The High Command expects the government to cooperate with the Officer Corps in the suppression of Bolshevism and in the maintenance of discipline in the Army. It places itself at the disposal of the Government for such purposes. It also asks that the provisioning of the Army be assured and that all disturbances of transport and communications be prevented." Hindenburg is willing to remain at the head of the Army.

Ebert is relieved. "Convey the thanks of the Government to the Field Marshal," he says.

Then he puts down the phone. In a few sentences, in a matter of minutes, German democracy dies at birth. Through a secret deal, Ebert has committed the shaky Republic to obey and support the Officer Corps and the generalstab. Ebert believes he has preserved the nation from Bolshevik revolution, anarchy, and chaos. It has not occurred to him that the head of government in a democracy does not make "agreements" with generals to gain the support of the armed forces. In a democracy, all soldiers and sailors, from private to Field Marshal, must obey orders. But Ebert has started his tenure by making a political deal with the Army, as if they were a group of recalcitrant Reichstag deputies cutting up legislation and budget appropriations.

Ebert does not realize that he has actually placed real power in the new Weimar Republic into the hands of the generalstab, who will use that behind-the-scenes muscle to being a process of secret re-armament and preparing for wars of revenge and aggression. More importantly, the generals and their allies will also help bring to fame and then supreme power one of the most sinister figures in history, an Army lance-corporal who even now is lying temporarily blinded by British poison gas in the Pasewalk Hospital.

After hanging up the phone, a re-energized Ebert telegraphs instructions to Hindenburg and the Soldiers' Councils to send representatives to Spa the next morning. Expecting to dictate orders to Hindenburg, instead the delegates will learn that they must obey Groener's and the OHL's complex plan to withdraw behind the Rhine in accordance with Foch's timetable. Only obedience to the generalstab will bring the Army home.

When the delegates complain, Hindenburg whips out his telegram from Ebert, their Chancellor and civilian boss, ordering them to obey the Field-Marshal. The Soldatenrate, however, can assist the generalstab in maintaining order. Everybody wants to go home. The delegates agree. The generals are back in charge.

The generals soon find out, however, that empowering the Soldatenraten has its advantages. Despite their anger and fatigue, the Frontkampfer are used to accepting orders and obeying regulations. Many of those who seized trains bought tickets first. The Soldiers' Councils, assured that the Army is heading back to Germany, are willing to obey officers, maintain order, and even swap out their red flags for Imperial banners when they re-enter the Reich.

The delegates file in to foggy Spa long after their War Lord departs from the scene and history. At 4:30 a.m. on the 10th, without any signal or warning, the All-Highest's gold and white train pulls out, red lamps swinging from the rear carriage. The Kaiser writes the Crown Prince, "Since the Field Marshal can no longer guarantee my security here, and since he also will no longer take responsibility for the loyalty of the troops, I have decided, after severe inward struggle, to leave the collapsed army. Berlin is totally in the hands of the Socialists and two governments have already been formed there, one by Ebert as Reich Chancellor, and another at the same time by the Independents. I recommend that you remain at your post and hold the troops together until they start the march back home. As God wills auf Wiedersehen. Your stricken father, William."

A few miles away from Spa, S.M. transfers to his chauffeured car, and four vehicles of 70 members of Wilhelm's personal staff and retainers drive up to the Dutch border near the village of Eysden, south of Maastricht. The last German sentinel shouts some "coarse words" at the All-Highest.

On the Dutch side, chains bar the road this Sunday morning. The House of Orange is determined to preserve its neutrality. It will succeed in this war, fail in the next one. The Kaiser's staff honks horns and finally a drowsy sergeant emerges from the custom-house to face the last of the Hohenzollern monarchs.

Like all petty bureaucrats, the sergeant falls back on regulations. He is unimpressed by the Germans' high titles, medals, and identity certificates. He demands passports from the All-Highest and his entourage. Nobody has any. The sergeant telephones his superiors, while Belgian deserters and Dutch civilians gather to watch the bizarre sight of Germany's War Lord and his retainers standing around, shivering and smoking cigarettes. Someone shouts, "Are you on your way to Paris?" The crowd makes gestures of choking and hanging, aimed at the Kaiser.

At 8 a.m., Major Van Dyl of the Dutch Army arrives to resolve the situation. A reasonably bright fellow, he pulls aside the chains and admits Germany's All-Highest into Holland. Then he asks the Kaiser where he wants to go.

S.M. already knows: he appeals for hospitality to one Godard Bentinck, an Anglo-Dutch Count of the Empire and hereditary Knight of the Order of St. John. They've never met, but the Order of St. John puts a requirement of hospitality on its members, and both Kaiser and Count are among its senior officers. Bentinck lives in a moated 17th-century house at Amerongen, 15 miles south of Utrecht. On this medieval point of punctilio, Germany's medieval-style monarch gains refuge.

Six hours later, someone in The Hague makes a decision. The Kaiser and 30 of his crew will be admitted into The Netherlands. The rest must return to a Fatherland that doesn't want them. The Dutch also let the Imperial train roll through separately.

The Dutch government yanks Count Bentinck out of a day's hunting, and the baffled nobleman agrees to shelter the Kaiser. S.M. drives to Maastricht, and re-boards his train, where Germany's Ambassador, Friedrich Rosen, awaits.

At Maastricht, Wilhelm faces the ambassador. "How can I live life again?" The All-Highest asks Rosen. "My prospects are hopeless. I have nothing left to believe in."

The porters sort through the masses of trunks that all Victorian big shots haul with them. They include five handsome volumes in English, the official biography of Wilhelm's grandfather, Prince Albert. The pages remain uncut. The only grandchild Albert ever knew never reads it.

The train clatters through The Netherlands to Maarn station, arriving amid more fog during the afternoon of November 11th. The Kaiser writes his wife, "My reign is ended, my dog's life over, and has been rewarded only with betrayal and ingratitude." Nervous Count Bentinck meets the exiled All-Highest for the first time, and S.M.'s first request of Bentinck is to know if the count is a Freemason. No, Bentinck is not. The Kaiser is relieved. Too listless to hide his withered arm under his cape, S.M. slides into his limousine.

As the Kaiser drives across the bridge leading to the Bentinck home, out of history and into obscurity, he says to his host, "Now, for a cup of real good hot English tea!"

The Kaiser's war is over, but the fighting isn't done. November 10 dawns wanly on Berlin, and the Reichhauptstadt gamely faces its first day without a König or Kaiser.

The revolution is curious by future standards: trains and trolleys run on time, and newspapers appear. The latter bear revolutionary mastheads and headlines. Red flags hang in the Unter den Linden. Factories, however, remain on strike, as workmen meet in the Busch Circus - Berlin's largest indoor arena - to elect a new government. Despite furious pamphlets from competing left-wing parties, nobody has the desire to create a radical state. The Kaiser's departure has sucked the energy out of the revolution, and everyone seems happy to accept Ebert. After a lot of debate, the Independent Socialists, realizing that Ebert is a Chancellor backed by the Army, simply offer three "People's Commissars" to the cabinet.

By dusk, all of Berlin's politicians are in the Busch Circus, Ebert and Liebknecht included. They proclaim unity and reconciliation. Radical speakers eat up time, trying to win votes from tired and hungry delegates, but the workers and soldiers by now just want their dinner, even if it's only sawdust soup.

Liebknecht and his colleague, the limping and intense Rosa Luxembourg, take their hardcore supporters and form the Spartacist Party. They start planning coups and putsches that will leave Berlin awash in civil war and violence, and the two of them savagely murdered by troops acting on government orders two months later. Barely 60 days after the Kaiser's abdication, the new German government will be using on a tactical scale the methods Hitler will use 20 years later at the national level.

At the Busch Circus, the weary delegates agree to support Ebert's new government. They don't have much choice: he's backed by the Army. Despite war, hunger, and revolution, Germans still value obedience to strong men in uniform and Prussian discipline.

These momentous events, of course, have enormous impact on Erzberger and his colleagues in their train at Réthondes, but there's little the Armistice negotiators can do about them. They spend the 9th preparing their objections to the Armistice clauses, on everything from the continuation of the blockade to the demand that the German forces in East Africa capitulate. Erzberger points out that those troops, numbering 150 Germans and 3,000 Africans, are undefeated after four years of war - a better term is needed.

At 3:45 p.m., Erzberger hands over his objections to Weygand in Foch's car, Wagon-Lits 2419D, who also promises a response in writing. The German treatise is entitled "Observations on the Conditions of an Armistice with Germany."

That evening all hands at Réthondes learn of the dramatic events in Germany. Erzberger reads the telegrams Weygand presents and wonders if he is still an official representative of the Reich.

On the morning of the 10th, Foch goes to Mass in Compiégne, while Wemyss goes to Soissons to study the destruction caused by Krupp shells. "Truly a dreadful sight - not one single house is habitable," he writes in his diary. He also notes the German revolution. "All seems confusion. It would appear the plenipotentiaries have no powers."

French couriers deliver the Paris newspapers to Erzberger and his crew, who notes that the poilus are as cold as all the other Frenchmen, except Weygand. Erzberger is stunned to read a long list of German princes and dukes who have renounced or been toppled from their thrones.

Weygand also hauls over a denial of most of the German objections. Weygand also shrugs off the musical chairs in Berlin, saying to Oberndorff, "No matter whether the new chancellor be called Haase, Ebert, or whatever name you please, he will be compelled to sign, all the same!"

The Germans are allowed to leave their train only to exercise, like prisoners. Guarded by French military policemen, the Germans avoid saying anything sensitive outside of their railroad cars that the flics might overhear and report to their superiors.

Erzberger reflects that the Wagon-Lits carriage is the modern replacement for the castles and fortresses of the past. He also realizes that his team is not there to negotiate, but to sign a dictated peace, much as the Germans themselves imposed on Russia, Rumania, and Belgian cities.

All day the Germans and French pass objections and denials back and forth, keeping the typists busy. Hindenburg also sends long telegrams to Erzberger, urging him to sign. At 6:30 p.m., Foch sends a message over Weygand's signature reminding the Germans that their 72-hour window to accept the Armistice will expire by 11 a.m. tomorrow, November 11th.

The Germans can only wait for an answer from Berlin, so both trains chug from Réthondes to Compiégne fill up with water. As they reach the Rethondes depot, the French report a wireless message from Berlin, in clear: "German Government to German plenipotentiaries. The plenipotentiaries are authorized to sign the armistice. Reichskanzler Schluss 3,084." The French wonder what "Schluss 3,084" means. Erzberger tells them "Schluss" is the German telegraphic word "Stop" and "3,084" is the code number to verify the message.

Another message follows, from Berlin to Foch, protesting at the Armistice's harsher terms, but the French ask Erzberger if he and his team are ready to sign. No, Erzberger and his crew need to discuss Hindenburg's telegrams. Foch and Wemyss turn in for the night. Wemyss keeps his uniform on as he climbs into bed.

At 10:35 that evening, the OHL radios its commands: "The Peace Delegation has been notified that the German Government accepts the armistice conditions proposed November 8. Time set for the beginning of the Armistice will be announced later." The French pick this message up. Erzberger has lost all bargaining power.

At 2:05 a.m., with nine hours remaining, the Germans announce their readiness to conclude an armistice. Everyone rushes to carriage No. 2419D.

Weygand reads a new text, which incorporates minor modifications. The Germans in East Africa are to be "evacuated," not to "capitulate." The Germans don't have to turn over 160 submarines, as they don't have that many afloat. "All submarines" are substituted.

Then the Germans issue their protests, all from Hindenburg. Why should the German Navy be interned when it has not lost a battle? How can the Army surrender 10,000 trucks out of its 18,000 on hand, when half are unserviceable. The rest are needed to feed the men and take them home. How can the air service surrender 2,000 planes when only 1,700 exist?

Foch denies the Navy's requests, but accepts the German Army's figures, whittling down the actual numbers to be surrendered and kept. The German Army gains 15 days to withdraw from France and Belgium and 16 to withdraw behind the Rhine.

Three hours later, as the first birds begin to chirp at dawn, the terms are nearly set, but the argument continues over the blockade. "It's not fair," says Oberndorff.

"Not fair!" bellows Wemyss. "Why, you sank our ships without discrimination!" But Wemyss adds a concluding line to Article 26: "The Allies and the United States contemplate the provisioning of Germany during the Armistice as shall be found necessary."

But that line is purely to placate Woodrow Wilson. In actuality, the blockade continues for five months. During that time, with the Reich's food rationing system having broken down, hoarding, looting, and bootlegging rolls on. So do thousands of deaths from hunger and associated diseases.

But now Foch brushes off the complaints about the blockade. "My responsibility ends at the Rhine," he says. "I have no concern with the rest of Germany, which is your affair. I would remind you that this is a military armistice, that this war is not ended thereby, and that it is directed at preventing your nation from continuing the war. You must also recollect a reply given to us by Bismarck in 1871 when we made a similar request to what you are making now. Bismarck then said, 'Krieg ist krieg,' and I say to you, 'La guerre est la guerre.'"

At Versailles, on May 7, 1919, German Foreign Minister Ulrich von Brockendorff-Rantzau will point out to Wilson that "hundreds of thousands of noncombatants who have perished since November 11 by reason of the blockade were killed with cold deliberation after our adversaries had conquered and victory had been assured to them. Think of that when you speak of guilt and punishment." Wilson will call that charge "tactless."

But now it is 5:12 a.m., November 11, 1918, and there is nothing more to be said. Foch suggests that the Armistice be signed, dated "5 a.m." for convenience, and go into effect six hours later, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Agreed.

Foch asks the delegates to sign the last page of the agreement before the others are revised, to save time, so he can cut the cease-fire orders immediately.

Weygand shows the Germans the changes: 15 days to withdraw from Belgium and France, 31 to pull out of the Rhineland. Germany must give up 5,000 trucks in 36 days instead of 10,000 in 15; 1,700 aircraft instead of 2,000; 25,000 machine-guns instead of 30,000; German POWs to go home after the conclusion of preliminary peace talks.

At 5:30 a.m., Foch and Wemyss sign, followed by Erzberger, Winterfeldt, and Vanselow, all three close to tears. Erzberger then asks permission to speak. Granted. Erzberger warns that his government may not be able to meet the armistice terms in time, due to their severity and German political and economic dislocation. "You try, and I'll assist you," Foch says.

Erzberger continues, faltering, warning that Germany may collapse, leaving France and Britain open to Bolshevism, a chord Germans will repeat for the next 30 years. Finally, Erzberger gives a defiant snarl: "The German people, which held off a world of enemies for 50 months, will preserve their liberty and their unity despite every kind of violence. A nation of 70 millions of people suffers, but it does not die."

Foch is unimpressed. "Tres bien," he observes.

There are no handshakes. Foch dismisses the Germans with a wave, saying, "Eh bien, messieurs, c'est fini, allez."

It is also over for Erzberger, who has undertaken the most difficult task in German history with honor and courage. He remains in the German Cabinet through the 1919 elections, serving as Minister of Finance and as chairman of the armistice implementation commission, working to gain recognition of the Treaty of Versailles. But financial allegations force his resignation in 1920. A year later, on August 26, 1921, while walking in a wood near Baden, Erzberger is assassinated by two nationalist fanatics, part of the Army-supported Freikorps whose violence helps weaken the Weimar Republic. The assassins do not stand trial until 1957.

Another officer is out the door quickly: Wemyss, bearing copies of the Armistice for Whitehall and Buckingham Palace. He races up by car to Ostende and boards the destroyer HMS Termagant. Her skipper is Cdr. Andrew Browne Cunningham, who will be Britain's toughest admiral and First Sea Lord in World War II.

All across the front line, top officers pass the word of Armistice down their chains of command. French General Charles Mangin reads the terms and shouts, in tears, "No! No! No! We must go right into the heart of Germany. The Armistice should be signed there. The Germans will not admit they are beaten. You do not end wars like this…Who will see that the conditions are enforced? The Allies? A coalition has never survived the danger that has created it. It is a fatal error and France will pay for it!"

British Army messenger Hubert Essame passes the telegram to his brigadier, who grumbles, "They've been allowed to get away with it; we haven't finished the job." Essame, who will himself lead British troops into Germany as an infantry brigadier 20 years later, has "an uncomfortable feeling that it would have to be done over again."

Col. George S. Patton Jr., leading a portion of the 1st Tank Brigade in the Argonne, has a personal reason to celebrate: November 11 marks his 33rd birthday. "Peace was signed and Langres was very excited. Many flags. Got rid of my bandage. Wrote a poem on peace."

Fighting and preparations to fight continue. Major Trafford Leigh-Mallory and his RAF squadron of Handley-Page bombers in Malincourt, just west of Mons, prepare for the first air raid on Berlin, scheduled for later that day. The raid is cancelled.

The British 7th Dragoons led by Brigadier Bernard Freyberg end the war with a cavalry charge to capture a bridge over the river Dendre at Lessines and to free some POWs. At 10:50 a.m., the Dragoons charge into German machine-gun fire. The POWs immediately behind the Germans grab sticks and stones and start beating the Germans with them. The British cavalrymen chase the Germans around Lessines' streets and buildings.

Between the impromptu rock barrage and the cold steel, the Germans are in desperate shape, and the British capture more than 100 Germans before the Germans cease fire at 11 a.m. Freyberg earns a second bar to his Distinguished Service Order for this achievement.

The Canadian 42nd Battalion, bagpipes skirling, marches into the town square of Mons, the community where Britain entered the war in 1914.

At the U.S. First Army HQ, Col. George C. Marshall is yanked out of his sack at 6 a.m. and told to draft orders to four divisions to cancel their attack planned for 6:30 a.m. He spends the next two hours turning the divisions around, and then goes back to sleep. He finally has breakfast at 10:30 a.m., with French and British liaison officers, and all are discussing postwar politics when a massive blast rips through the officers' mess.

"I thought I had been killed," Marshall writes later, "and I think each of the others had the same idea, but we picked ourselves up and found that aside from the ruin of the breakfast, no particular damage had been done. A few minutes later a young aviator hurried in to see what had happened. He explained that he had been out in his plane with some small bombs, all of which he thought he had just released, but…one stuck to the rack and as he sailed down just over our roof to make his landing, the remaining bomb jerked loose and fell just 10 yards outside our window."

Had the bomb been larger or the farmhouse less strong, the U.S. Army of World War II would need another man to serve as chief of staff.

As the clock ticks up toward 11 a.m., the firing increases along the front, as everyone wants to get in the "last shot." Captain Harry S. Truman's artillery battery fires his 75-mm guns until 10:45 a.m.

At 10:58, Canadian Private George Price, in the village of Ville-sur-Haine, just east of Mons, becomes the 60,661st and final Canadian combat death of the war, when he is hit by a sniper's bullet. British Lt. J.W. Muirhead, moving into Mons, sees the bodies of three British soldiers, just killed by machine-gun fire. He notices that the bodies wear the service ribbon for Mons in 1914.

At 10:59, artillerymen blaze away with their shells, up to the last second. Historian John Buchan, serving with a South African brigade, watches a lone German machine-gunner fire off an immense burst from his Spandau without pause. At 11 a.m. precisely, as the guns fall silent, the German machine-gunner rises from his position, takes off his helmet, bows deeply, and walks away to the rear.

Buchan checks his watch: it's 11 a.m. The sound of gunfire dies away and is replaced by a "curious rippling sound, which observers far behind the front likened to the noise of a light wind. It was the sound of men cheering from the Vosges to the sea."

After 1,564 days, the First World War is over.

In London, Big Ben chimes the hour, and by the 11th stroke, Winston Churchill sees from his Ministry of Munitions office, Trafalgar Square filled with people, dancing, laughing, singing and cheering. Flags appear and people drive around in cars and taxicabs, singing "God Save the King" and other patriotic ditties. King George V and the Royal Family appear on the Buckingham Palace balcony to accept the cheers, making many re-appearances. They also ride in their carriage through London's streets to greet the people. "Nine miles through waves of cheering crowds," the King writes in his diary. "The demonstrations of the people are indeed touching."

When he returns to the Palace, the King honors the wartime pledge to abstain from liquor for the duration by unlocking the royal cellars for the first time since 1914. He broaches a bottle of brandy laid down by the Prince Regent to celebrate Waterloo, and pronounces it "very musty."

Churchill, however, feels no jubilation. "Scarcely anything which I was taught to believe had lasted. And everything I was taught to believe impossible had happened." Then he drives to Downing Street to congratulate Lloyd George. The Prime Minister is having a scheduled meeting with Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, who will be the first president of the Republic of Israel 30 years later, to discuss the future of Palestine.

Out in the Mall, the party continues, as Londoners enjoy firecrackers and release from rationed food and liquor. British, Canadian, Australian, Italian, Belgian, Indian, French, Portuguese, and American troops in uniform dance with British Land Girls, Women's Auxiliaries, WRENs, and munitions factory girls. Total strangers copulate in doorways and on sidewalks. Historian A.J.P. Taylor calls it the "asserting the triumph of life over death."

Some celebrations turn violent. In Sydney, Australia, a crowd tears up trolley tracks. Australians in London start tearing up the "Buy War Bonds" signs on Nelson's Column. When the Fire Brigade shows up, the Australians grab the hoses and turn them on the firemen. The heat from the fires damages the granite facing at the base of the column, and the scars remain to this day.

Some people take the war's end thoughtfully. Conscientious objector Herbert Morrison, later a leading Labor politician and wartime member of Churchill's cabinet, is digging for winter planting at Letchworth. At 11 a.m., he stops digging and experiences a "quiet and profound emotion; relief that the carnage was over; sorrow for the fallen." Author Joseph Conrad writes a friend, "Great and blind forces are set catastrophically all over the world."

When rain pours down on the Mall in London, the partygoers take refuge in the lap of the statue of Queen Victoria. Unfortunately, the old Queen provides no shelter. It's frozen cold.

At Rosyth in Scotland, Captain Waistell, commanding the battleship HMS Benbow, reads the Armistice terms to the crew of his ship, which includes a young midshipman named George Simpson, will later command the 10th Submarine Flotilla in Malta in 1942.

In Belgium, RAF Major Keith Park greets the Armistice with relief. Two days before, he made a sloppy take-off while testing a new Bristol bomber, and his right wing hit telephone wires. Despite the damage, he landed safely. Now he fills in paperwork for his squadron, noting that he has 11 kills, making him 59th in a list of 130. Park's future boss, Hugh Dowding, is in England, a Brigadier-General at age 35, overseeing the expansion of the world's first independent air service, the Royal Air Force.

Another officer with much to ponder on Armistice morning is Brian Horrocks, sitting forlornly in solitary confinement at the German POW camp at Clausthal. He's doing time for a failed escape attempt that brought him 200 miles across the Reich, to within 500 yards of the Dutch border, only to be re-captured while hiding in a hayloft.

News of the Armistice brings Horrocks freedom. While other officers view imprisonment as a waste of time, he regards it as an opportunity to learn at an early age and in a hard school to stand on his own feet and make his own decisions quickly. He also learns to think things out from the enemy point of view, so as to stay one jump ahead.

In America, President Woodrow Wilson gives the nation the day off (starting a new holiday), and department stores announce Victory Sales. In New York, newly-installed air raid sirens blast away, joined by factory hooters. At dusk, the Statue of Liberty is illuminated for the first time since America's entry into the war. The fire commissioner warns against hurling confetti into the streets, so people toss money.

Despite wartime Prohibition - soon to be made permanent - taverns sell and give away beer to men and women in uniform. At Battery Park, an effigy of Kaiser Wilhelm II is delivered by a wagon (painted like a hearse) to a scaffold, where it is burned before thousands of delighted civilian and military spectators. Another dummy Kaiser is hanged from the top floor of a tall building on Fifth Avenue, scaring pedestrians and cops, and a third is carried down the avenue by boys in a coffin marked "Resting in Pieces."

The German community in Yorkville gets into the act, hauling an effigy of the Kaiser in a coffin made from a mackerel barrel to the Men's Night Court on East 57th Street at 3rd Avenue. Beneath the clattering elevated line, a band plays the "Star Spangled Banner," while the effigy faces a mock trial. The audience wants the Kaiser to get 50 years.

Magistrate Frothingham bellows from the bench, "I am sorry, gentlemen, I cannot accommodate you. All I can do is sentence your prisoner to the workhouse for six months. That is the severest penalty that can be meted out by this court. But that will not satisfy you men according to your state of mind."

"You bet it won't," someone shouts.

The crowd hauls the "Kaiser" out and into the middle of 57th Street, where they burn the effigy, while singing "There'll be A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight."

A more highbrow celebration is held at the Metropolitan Opera House, where Enrico Caruso and Louise Homer sing Allied national anthems.

Another officer in New York has an intense and painful personal reaction. Told of the impending Armistice while awaiting embarkation with his tank unit in New York City, Lt. Col. Dwight D. Eisenhower angrily tells Capt. Norman Randolph, "I suppose we'll spend the rest of our lives explaining why we didn't get into this war. By God, from now on I am cutting myself a swath and will make up for this." Ike's next job will be to discharge thousands of men and dismantle the Army's tank training center, Camp Colt, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Some folks try to work. Sgt. Irving Berlin, awaiting discharge, makes the rounds of music publishers, seeking donations of sheet music for army camps. Nobody is interested in his songs from his musical "Yip! Yip! Yaphank!" any more, so he decides to hang on to one song in particular, a sentimental ditty that seems inappropriate to the moment, called "God Bless America."

Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor mingle with throngs on Washington's streets, tossing confetti.

In Tsaritsyn, Russia, Josef Dzugashvili, known to his friends as Koba and to telegraph signature blocks as Stalin, shows little reaction. He is too busy purging off potential enemies, including the Tsarist colonel who ordered Stalin exiled to Siberia in 1913.

In Paris, a tearful Premier Georges Clemenceau reports the armistice terms to the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, then goes back to his apartment, spending the afternoon walking around his garden, overwhelmed. Maurice Chevalier sings at the Casino de Paris. At the Folies Bergere, American actress Shirley Kellogg sings "Scotland the Brave" before a huge crowd, which includes future U.S. Vice President Charles C. Dawes. The French band, wearing unlikely kilts and playing bagpipes, are joined by dozens of excited British soldiers in the singing.

In Strasbourg, Alsatian soldiers join with citizens in marching down the streets with banners reading, "We Want to Be Re-Attached to France, Our Mother Country." Mounted German police look on grimly.

There is far less joy in Berlin, Vienna, and the other major cities of Germany and sundered Austria-Hungary. The blockade remains in place. There is scarcely any food, very little fuel, and the Army is coming home, which will demand more food and fuel.

In the Ruhr, Gustav Krupp faces the termination of millions of Reichmarks in armaments contracts with calm and courage. Wearing his bowler hat, the Konzernherr departs from his normally meticulous schedule and strides through crowds of laid-off workers. The fired Kruppianer whip off their caps, the sign of respect when Gustav visits the shops. Krupp later announces that everyone on the payroll as of August 1, 1914, will stay on it: everyone else, 70,000 workers, half of them Poles, will have to go. But they get 14 days pay and a one-way rail ticket home.

But the destruction of the Hohenzollern and Hapsburg monarchies leave in their place vast tracts of disillusioned and angry men, many of them soldiers being discharged, furious over defeat and betrayal. With their lives defined by the horror of the trenches (like Hitler's), they return to the Reich disgusted with their failure, angry at the Armistice's harsh terms, believing that they have not been defeated in the field, but defeated from within.

Not so. For the past two years, Germany has been a military dictatorship, ruled by Hindenburg's prestige and Ludendorff's organization. It is the German Army that has been defeated in the field by British and American tanks and infantry, and the generals that demanded that Prince Max sign an immediate armistice. Prince Max wanted to hold off and try and gain terms more favorable or at least more humane to Germany. The Army has failed the Reich. But its generals, frustrated in the field and angered by the revolutionaries, have found a convenient scapegoat for their failings: Socialists, democrats, and Jews. The generals treat the new government, which has all three in its leadership, as mere puppets from the start.

Indeed, the mere fact that not one member of the Generalstab has signed the Armistice will be a major arguing point for nationalists, including Hitler. The Generalstab is able to successfully disassociate itself from the Armistice and Versailles.

The new government is virtually powerless, its shaky Constitutional mandate dependent on Ebert's secret phone line to Groener, as the Generalstab moves from Spa to Kassel, with the same phone line.

Groener starts giving orders to Ebert right away, calling the Chancellery between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m., when Ebert and a few cleaning ladies are the only people in the cavernous building. Groener has good news for Ebert: the Army is withdrawing over the Rhine in good order, a model of military precision and discipline. It is hard to believe these troops are the losing side.

The Germans on the front line face defeat in many ways. Hordes of German troops simply go home. Among them: Bavarian Crown Prince Rupprecht, who heads for Munich in a car bedecked by the Soldiers' Councils with red flags.

At Tellancourt in France, Jagdgeschwader Freiherr von Richtofen is ordered to disarm its planes and fly them to French air headquarters at Strasbourg. The commanding officer, Lieutenant Hermann Goering, and his executive officer, Lieutenant Ernst Udet, refuse. They won't give up their gleaming red Fokker Dr. 1 triplanes. At 11:30, the angry Germans are treated to an aerial display by victorious British Spads, who stunt-fly over the lines and the German airfield.

A furious Goering tells his men, "We cannot stay here and fight on, but we can make sure that when the end comes, we will be in Germany." Goering orders the flyable planes to head for Darmstadt, the ground crews to truck equipment and records. Everything else is burned. Five planes are chosen by lot to head for Strasbourg. Goering tells the luckless five to ensure they land so that the planes are useless.

Goering and his pals head off into the overcast sky and a few reach Mannheim instead of Darmstadt, where revolutionaries are in control. They disarm the Fokkers and haul the pilots to town. When Goering, in Darmstadt, hears of this from two of the pilots, he shouts, "They must be taught a lesson!" The Richtofen Geschwader scrambles its nine aircraft, headed for Mannheim.

There, Goering and his six buddies fly over the airfield while the two men forced to abandon planes land on the airfield and stomp over to the administration building. They give the Spartacists four minutes to give back the Spandau machine-guns, or Goering will shoot up the airfield. A fired Verey pistol will be the signal for agreement.

"Then fire, fire!" shouts the Council leader. "Of course we agree!"

The planes return to Darmstadt, Goering in the lead. As his planes approach the runway, he angles sharply, to smash up the undercarriage. All the pilots do the same, smashing their Fokkers. That night, Goering makes the final entry in Jagdgeschwader 1's log himself: "11 November. Armistice. Squadron flight in bad weather to Darmstadt. Mist. Since its establishment the Geschwader has shot down 644 enemy planes. Death by enemy action came to 56 officers and non-commissioned pilots, six men. Hermann Goering, Lieutenant OC, Geschwader."

A few days later, JG 1 is officially disbanded, followed by the usual lugubrious party in a nearby tavern. Goering tells his angry and humiliated men, "Our time will come."

On November 11, one of Goering's future top officers, Captain Erhard Milch, who will later be a field marshal in Hitler's Luftwaffe, parades his Jagdstaffel 6 in eastern Belgium. Milch has been commanding officer for the past five weeks. He inspects the men, berates a few for insolence and sloppy uniforms, and then reads out the Fourth Army's order for the election of Soldiers' Councils. The squadron will equip its motor transport with machine-guns and head for Aachen, leaving the Fokker D7 fighters behind. Milch asks his men to fly the Imperial banner from their cars. He writes in his diary, that the Armistice "terms are the best possible cause for a future war."

His views are echoed by many. On November 18, General Ludendorff, back from a brief exile in Sweden, entertains British General Malcolm from the Armistice Commission by explaining the failure of Kaiserliche arms. It is not the fault of the generals or the troops, Ludendorff explains, struggling with his English. The culprits are the backsliders, radicals, Socialists, and Jews in the rear, who sabotaged the war effort.

"You mean," says the Briton, trying to clarify Ludendorff's turgid German eloquence and understand the point, "That you were stabbed in the back?"

"Yes, that's it, exactly," shouts Ludendorff. His eyes light up, as he invents the myth that will be the central thread of Weimar Germany. "We were stabbed in the back."

The "dolchstoss" myth has begun. The "Big Lie" or "Grossenluge," that will empower Nazism and a new generation of German militarism, conquest, and slaughter, is born.

At the time, the Generalstab does not swallow or repeat this lie. Hinenburg's contemporary letters show that the Generalstab wanted to stop the war because of the "military situation."

But a year later, Hindenburg himself repeats the myth to Weimar's Committee of Inquiry of the National Assembly, declaring on November 18, 1919, that "As an English general has very truly said, the German Army was 'stabbed in the back.'" A year later, the Generalstab has buried their own failures and attributed them to the politicians they are Constitutionally required to serve.

When the German troops come home, they spruce up their uniforms as they re-enter the Fatherland. Bands break out their instruments and the troops march through the Rhineland smartly, behind "Die Wacht Am Rhein," "Prussia's Glory," and "Deutschland Uber Alles," as if they had defeated all of France's constables. The German people agree. Railway stations bear huge signs that read, "Unconquered in the field, you were victorious nonetheless."

German troops are handed pamphlets from the ruling Social Democratic Party, which read, "Perhaps you do not return as victors who have completely crushed the enemy to the ground… But neither do you return as the vanquished, for the war was stopped at the wishes of the leadership of the Reich. So you can hold your heads high." As the feldgrau men retreat across the Rhine, they all know they will advance across it again.

Some of the men who will lead them are deeply involved in those preparations already. Major Fedor von Bock, a future Field Marshal who will lead panzers in the Ukraine, is a major on the Crown Prince's staff. The ambitious and unscrupulous Kurt von Schleicher is an aide to Groener. Karl Heinrich von Stulpnagel, a veteran of Verdun and a major at Spa, will become Militarbefehlshaber Frankreich - Military Governor of France - 20 years later, before joining the 1944 Bomb plot.

Captain Heinz Guderian, an observer with the Austro-Hungarian Armistice Commission, heads home from Italy to Munich. He sees withdrawing Austrian regiments singing happily and wearing red flowers. In Munich, he sees shops plundered and men in uniform assaulted. He writes his wife Grete, "Our beautiful German Empire is no more. Bismarck's work lies in ruins. Villains have torn everything to the ground. All comprehension of justice and order, duty and decency, seems to have been destroyed." Bitter, the man who will create the panzer forces of 1939 joins a Right-wing Freikorps in Berlin.

At Wurzburg University, a club-footed young student from Rheydt limps around campus, angered by Germany's defeat. Joseph Goebbels writes a friend, "It is bitter enough to have lived through these dark hours of our Fatherland, but who knows if one day it might not profit us after all. The way I see it, Germany has certainly lost the war, but our Fatherland may well turn out the winner."

Greater minds than the chief exponent of the Grossenluge are also affected by peace. Thomas Mann hopes that surrender "should not cause the Germans to commit an abominable moral self-betrayal."

Albert Einstein, in Berlin, gets word through Holland that British astronomers are going to use an upcoming solar eclipse to test his relativity theories as they impact on light waves. He writes his mother in Switzerland, "What a privilege to have lived through such an experience! No breakdown can be so severe that one would not willingly suffer it in return for so glorious a reward! Militarism and bureaucracy have been thoroughly abolished here."

He's not alone: Germans in general, despite the shortages of food and breakdown of the monarchy, hope that peace and a new government will bring Utopia. Gustav Noske, one of Ebert's ministers and a future Chancellor, goes up to the Baltic ports, where he urges the Sailors' Councils to support the government. They do so, and soon they start returning to their barracks and even sailing their minesweepers and patrol boats. In Berlin, the "People's Marine Division" starts to try to maintain law and order.

On December 5, Groener moves 10 of his best divisions to Berlin, to hold a march-past in Berlin, with Ebert in review. After that, the troops will purge the Reichhauptstadt of Bolsheviks, and put Ebert firmly in power. That sounds just fine to Ebert, but the Soldatenrate don't like the idea. They say that only token detachments should make the parade, without ammunition.

Groener is enraged. He shouts over the phone to Ebert that the Generalstab will regard such a move as "surrender to the tyrannical despotism of the Spartacists." Ebert gives in to the diktat. On December 10, the Guards Cavalry Division marches into Berlin amid pouring rain, bands playing patriotic music, machine-guns and mortars at the ready. Cavalrymen wear garlands of heroic oak leaves on their coal-scuttle helmets. Ebert stands in the downpour, taking the salute.

He greets the Frontkämpfer by saying, "Never have men performed greater deeds than you have, or endured great hardship. No enemy has vanquished you in the field."

Already the Allies have made a fundamental error: while imposing an Armistice of harsh terms, they have failed to demonstrate cleanly to the Germans that they have been fully defeated.

Noske's speech, echoing Ludendorff, impresses the troops. Not so the crowds of civilians watching. The hordes of revolutionaries, workers, and mutineers, are soon joined by demobilized soldiers from the very units marching through Berlin. The troops who go straight into their barracks, change their clothes, and go home. Ebert's government is on shaky ground. German citizens are eating pine cones, nettles, flour made from chestnuts, and ersatz coffee from acorns. The situation will get worse, as everyone awaits the judgment of the victorious powers, who are assembling in Paris for the Peace Conference to firmly end the war.

On December 13, at 4:20 a.m., the SS George Washington, a former German liner that the U.S. government seized at its Hoboken pier in 1917, sails towards the port of Brest, in France. The liner steams past a line of escorting battleships that include USS Nevada, USS Texas, USS Arkansas, USS Oklahoma, USS Pennsylvania, and USS Arizona.

The George Washington moors in Brest harbor at 1:30 p.m., after a barrage of saluting shells, American and French national anthems, steam whistles, and deafening cheers.

On board are 150 American geographers, ethnologists, historians, economists, and international lawyers, and the Hotel Belmont's top chef. This academically powerful crew, called "The Inquiry," reports to the gaunt, formal, somber, taciturn, idealistic President Woodrow Wilson, who is making history simply by making this voyage.