Ep.330 – The Armistice on the Western Front

In this episode, a lecture given at the Cork Conference in 2023, Professor Stephen Badsey offers a detailed analysis of the Armistice on the Western Front in November 1918.

In his paper, Stephen Badsey follows the sequence of critical events of September-November 1918 on the Western Front leading to the Armistice. Opening with the meeting of the Armistice delegations in November, it looks back over the previous weeks to place the Allied victories in a wider context, showing how at times events converged to overwhelm the participants. The defeat of the German Army on the Western Front interacted with the collapse of the Central Powers elsewhere, and with the differing political objectives of the Allies, the United States, and Germany, including the role of the German General Staff, and of the senior Allied generals. The presentation concludes by explaining how the Armistice came to be signed, and how the war ended.