The men of Propagandakompanie 612 were busy documenting the aftermath of the successful campaign against France. What the Germans had failed to accomplish in four years a generation earlier, they had managed in just a little over six weeks in 1940. In the 1920’s, the French had erected a memorial in the Forest of Compiègne, where the Germans had signed the armistice in 1918 that ended WW1. The French delegation was led by Marshal Ferdinand Foch (1851-1929), whose private train was used for the meeting. In a glade in the forest was the railway car in which the armistice had been signed, a monument over the French victory, and a statue of Marshal Foch.
The armistice led to the Versailles Treaty in 1919, which imposed crippling and humiliating demands on Germany, causing resentment and the wish for revenge that paved the way for Hitler and his Nazis. It was small wonder that Hitler picked the same railway car for the French to sign the second armistice of Compiègne. The victory monument was destroyed, the railway car was brought as a trophy to Germany, but the statue of Foch was left to watch over the razed site. Hitler had his triumph, his sweet revenge for the loss in 1918 that had affected him deeply and put him on the track to dictatorship. His victory eventually turned to ashes, when Germany less than five years later lay in ruins, with Hitler dead and its armies beaten. After the war, the Compiègne site was restored by German PoW labor, a replica railway car added in place of the original, which had been destroyed in the last days of the war.
World War 2 in Photos 