Newspaper Page Text
10A Thursday, November 8, 2018
The Times, Gainesville, Georgia | gainesvilletimes.com
WORLD
Hitler in war, Merkel in peace:
A train dining car for history
Associated Press
This undated file photo shows the train wagon in which the armistice of 1918
ending World War I was signed on Nov. 11,1918, in Rethondes, north of Paris.
Standing in front of the train are the most important members of the armistice,
Marshal Ferdinand Foch, second right, and General Maxime Weygand,
second left. For the French, the dining car became a shrine to peace. For Adolf
Hitler, it was a symbol of the humiliation of surrender. The Nazi leader had it
dragged to Germany after conquering France in World War II.
BY THOMAS ADAMSON
Associated Press
COMPIEGNE, France — Adolf
Hitler went in wartime for revenge.
Angela Merkel plans a pilgrimage
in the name of peace. Two German
chancellors, with opposite aims and
the same destination: a train car in a
French forest.
Hitler tried literally to rewrite his
tory in 1940 when the Nazi leader
commandeered the dining coach to
serve France the same humiliation
Germany suffered there on the last
day of World War I.
This time, Merkel will have the
French president by her side as she
visits what remains of the Wagon
of Compiegne, the carriage-turned-
office where the Allies and Ger
many signed the armistice on Nov.
11,1918.
An unusual journey took Wagons-
Lits Co. carriage 2419D from serving
sauteed veal and boeuf bourguignon
to passengers in the seaside town of
Deauville to serving as a crucible
for world peace while stopped in the
middle of a forest in Compiegne.
Puzzled tourists often ask Bernard
Letemps, the curator of the Armi
stice Museum, why the Allies signed
the cease-fire agreement that ended
the atrocities of the Western Front
in that humble setting instead of a
grand military building or a glitter
ing palace.
At the time, the official head
quarters in Senlis of the Allied com
mander, French Marshal Ferdinand
Foch, would have been the expected
place to sign a cease-fire.
But the town had endured a brutal
German assault. Its inhabitants were
taken hostage and its mayor shot in
September 1914, before the first Bat
tle of the Marne. How the bruised
townspeople would react to the pres
ence of a German delegation, even
one coming with the goal of peace,
was a serious concern.
“It was out of the question to
receive the plenipotentiary Ger
mans in (such a) town,” Letemps
said.
A moveable train carriage in
the nearby Compiegne forest was
deemed ideal: The isolated location
would deter intruders and the calm
and secrecy offered a measure of
respect to the defeated Germans.
As it happened, Foch had fitted out
a mobile office just the month before
— a dining car chosen at random
from the French passenger train
fleet. And so 2419D became known
as the “Wagon of Compiegne.”
The Armistice was signed just
after 5 a.m., but officials held out
six hours to put it into effect out of a
sense of poetry — the eleventh hour
of the eleventh day of the eleventh
month in 1918. That delay, rather
unpoetically, cost lives on both sides
at the end of a war that had already
left 17 million dead.
“The train car represents the end
of fighting. The end, when people
found peace,” Letemps said.
He added, smiling: “It fulfilled its
role of dining car before becoming
famous.”
The Armistice Museum lays on
the train tracks on the site of the
signing in the middle of forest.
Foch was immortalized in statues
ubiquitous across France and gave
his name to one of the broad, leafy
avenues radiating out from the Arc
de Triomphe.
The same reception was not
reserved for the losing side: One of
the Germans to sign the document,
Matthias Erzberger, was vilified for
his role in the surrender. He was
assassinated in 1921.
The story of dining car 2419D and
Compiegne didn’t end with the war.
For throngs of French mourners
in the post-war years, the dining
car became a shrine to peace and
catharsis.
The car was taken to Paris for
display in the courtyard of the
Invalides, the final resting place of
Napoleon, before it went back to
Compiegne in 1927 to sit in a spe
cially-made memorial constructed
on the site of today’s museum.
Letemps said the wagon received
over 190,000 visitors in one year
alone in the 1930s as it became a
focus for mourning France’s 1.4 mil
lion fallen soldiers.
For Hitler in those same years,
it became a rallying cry during his
ascent to power as he exploited the
German public’s contempt for the
punitive terms of surrender.
79 kidnapped
Cameroon
students set free
BY EDWIN KINDZEKA M0KI
Associated Press
YAOUNDE, Cameroon —
The 79 students kidnapped
by unidentified gunmen from
a school in Cameroon have
been released, but two of the
three staff members abducted
with them are still being
held, a church official said
Wednesday.
The students, aged between
11 and 17, were brought to a
church near the regional capi
tal of Bamenda, said Fonki
Samuel Forba, moderator of
the country’s Presbyterian
Church.
“They look tired and psy
chologically tortured,” he said.
Forba pleaded with the kid
nappers to free the remaining
captives.
The students were abducted
Sunday night in part of Cam
eroon that is beset by violence
and instability by armed
separatists who want to cre
ate a breakaway state called
Ambazonia.
Fighting between the mili
tary and separatists in the
northwestern and southwest
ern regions increased after the
government clamped down on
peaceful demonstrations by
English-speaking teachers and
lawyers protesting what they
said was their marginalization
by Cameroon’s French-speak
ing majority.
Hundreds have been killed
in the past year and the sepa
ratists have vowed to desta
bilize the regions. They have
attacked civilians who oppose
their cause, including teachers
who were killed for disobeying
orders to keep schools closed.
Forba said that parents and
guardians of the students at
the boarding school where
the abductions occurred were
asked to take them home.
“It is unfortunate we have
to close the school and send
home 700 children,” he said.
“Their security is not assured
by the state and armed groups
constantly attack and kidnap
them.”
A previous kidnapping from
the school was resolved when
the church paid a ransom of
about $4,000 to the armed
gang.
“We can no longer con
tinue,” he said.
The group taken Sunday was
the largest number abducted
at one time in Cameroon’s
Anglophone regions. The sepa
ratists also have set fire to at
least 100 schools and driven
out students and teachers from
buildings taken over as train
ing grounds.
North West regional Gov.
Deben Tchoffo said this week
the government is providing
adequate security for schools.
“I must insist that we have
taken enough measures to
protect schools, but we also
need the assistance of all,”
Tchoffo said. “People should
inform the military whenever
they see strange faces in their
villages.”
Tah Pascal, father of one of
the kidnapped students, said
he does not trust what the gov
ernor has said.
“How can he always talk of
protection and security when
our schools are torched every
day, our children tortured and
their teachers killed?” Pascal
said. “This is done in spite of
the presence of the military.”
Parents interviewed said
they were relocating their chil
dren to safer areas.
The U.S. called for the
immediate and safe return
of the remaining hostages,
according to Tibor Nagy,
Assistant Secretary for U.S.
Department of State’s Bureau
of African Affairs via Twitter.
“We urge an immediate halt
to the indiscriminate target
ing of civilians and burning
of houses by Cameroonian
government forces and to the
attacks perpetrated by Anglo
phone separatists against
security forces and civil
ians,” he said, “..we urge all
sides to end the violence and
enter into broad-based rec-
onciliatory dialogue without
preconditions.”
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