The Armistice and How the War Ended

In this presentation Professor Stephen Badsey examines the Armistice of 11 November 1918 which ended the war on the Western Front. The heart of the story is how the negotiators on either side were selected, how they were able to meet safely on board the famous railway carriage in Compiegne forest, what their rival objectives were in negotiating, the resulting Armistice, and what it meant at the time to the soldiers on the Western Front and to the British people at home.

The part that the victory on the Western Front played in winning the war was being argued about from even before the Armistice was signed. This talk also puts the victory on the Western Front in context, including the importance of the Allied victories on other fronts and at sea, the German claim that their armies were not defeated but "stabbed in the back" by the collapse of their home front, and the remarkable sequence of political events and decisions that took place while the battles of the Hundred Days campaign were being fought.