On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918 a quiet settled over the trenches of the Western Front, ending the four-year slaughter of the Great War. After nine million combat deaths, twenty-one million wounded and five million civilians killed, Germany signed an armistice agreement with France and Great Britain stopping the carnage.
The signing took place in French Commander Ferdinand Foch’s railway car at the Forest of Compiègne, 37 miles north of Paris. The Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919 officially ending the “war to end all wars” and laying the foundation for World War II. (The Treaty also carved up the lifeless Ottoman Empire, drawing artificial boundaries without regard to local geography, tribal affiliations or national identity, thus giving us the seemingly intractable Mid-East conflict ongoing still today.)
President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation in 1919 declaring November 11 as Armistice Day. Twenty year later Congress made November 11 an official holiday, “…a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as ‘Armistice Day.’” The “Great War” became “World War I” to differentiate it from the second world war that began twenty years after the Treaty of Versailles.
Another armistice was signed in1940, in the same railway car at the same location in Compiègne. This time the French agreed to stop their fighting against Germany, essentially surrendering. Adolph Hitler sat in the same chair as Foch had in 1918.
After World War II and the Korean Conflict, Congress amended the Act of 1938, changing “Armistice” to “Veterans.”
Fifty years after the armistice, in 1968, the Uniform Holiday Bill became law, making the official celebration of the Veterans Day holiday – and others – on a Monday, thus giving Americans a three-day weekend.
