World War I (1914–1919): The Collapse of the Central Powers

The Armistice

Finally, on November 11, at 5:10a.m., the armistice with Germany was signed. Hostilities officially ended at 11:00a.m. that day. Thus, the end of World War I is generally reported to have come on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. It would be more than seven months, however, before formal peace treaties would finalize the arrangements among all the various warring nations.

The Treaty of Versailles

Just as it had begun, World War I ended with complicated diplomatic negotiations. It took many months, but the treaty defining Germany’s present and future existence was signed at Versailles on June 28, 1919.

For Germany, it was a day of complete humiliation. The country was required to accept losses of territory, including Alsace-Lorraine and much of present-day Poland. Germany would retain the border region of the Rhineland but was strictly forbidden to develop the area militarily. Germany also had to agree to pay massive war reparations that would require half a century to fulfill. Finally, Germany was forced to publicly acknowledge and accept full responsibility for the entire war. This stipulation was a hard pill for many Germans to swallow, and indeed it was a blatant untruth.

The Legacy of the War

World War I began with a cold-blooded murder, diplomatic intrigue, and overconfident guesses about what the other side would do. Contemporary accounts report that there was even a sense of excitement and adventure in the air, as some seemed to envision the war more as a chance to try out the newest technological innovations than anything else. Five tragic years later, the reality of the war was unfathomably different: tens of millions dead, entire countries in ruins, and economies in shambles. Millions of soldiers had been drawn into the war, many from faraway colonies and many with little more than an inkling of what it was they were fighting for.

The Treaty of Versailles, rather than fix these problems, imposed bewilderingly harsh terms upon Germany, forcing that nation to accept full financial and diplomatic responsibility for the entire war. In the peace treaties ending most previous European wars, each side had accepted its losses, claimed its spoils, shaken hands, and then moved on. After World War I, however, the German people were humiliated, impoverished, and left with nothing to hope for but more of the same. Internally, Germany became a tumultuous place, teetering on the brink of violent revolutions from both the right and the left and vulnerable to takeover from extremist elements like the Nazi Party. Indeed, just a few decades would prove that the Allies had gone overboard with the punishments they inflicted on Germany—a misjudgment that created precisely the conditions required to launch Europe into the center of an even more horrible war.

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