(To avoid confusion, it is important to bear in mind that in November 1918 there was a one-hour difference between the time on the Allied side of the Western Front and the time on the German side: German time was an hour ahead of Allied time. Also, it is important to note that the 7 November false armistice news changed throughout the day: the earliest news started circulating before midday in Paris; later news, adding to it, came out during the mid-afternoon.)
Reports to the US War and State Departments about the news and the American Army Intelligence G-2 (SOS) Report about it do not differentiate between the morning and mid-afternoon armistice messages. They provided information only about the morning news, which was that an armistice had been signed at 10:00 or 11:00 am (Allied time presumably), whereas the mid-afternoon news, according to the French Foreign Ministry, was that an armistice had been signed at 11:00 am and a cease-fire had started at 2:00 pm (French times); included with this was a comment that the American Army had liberated Sedan.
Origin of the morning armistice news
In a brief explanation to the US War Department of what lay behind the news, Military Attaché Major Barclay H. Warburton stated: “Probable reason for universal belief of [armistice] report was no doubt caused by interception of wireless message ordering cessation of fire yesterday afternoon (November 7.) to permit the plenipotentiaries to cross lines”.1 (ENDNOTES)
In Section 8 of its findings, the G-2 (SOS) Report explained: “From the information received by this office, it would appear that the original source of the mistake was the fact that a number of officers here caught a wireless telegram stating that an order had been given to cease firing at 3 o’clock on that afternoon. This, as it since appears, was to allow the German Armistice Delegates to get through the lines, and was only local in its scope. It was, however, interpreted as being a signal that the Armistice had been signed”.2
Both explanations combined – that a cease-fire wireless message had been picked up (“intercepted”/“caught”) by persons who were not its intended recipients, and who misinterpreted it – are entirely believable, for hundreds of military radio stations and listening posts over a large area could have received the message on their equipment. Indeed, it was routine practice for operators to listen in on wireless transmissions, randomly “picking messages out of the air” and gleaning something about what was going on in the war. Information acquired in this way often then travelled around what one American radio operator described as “the unofficial network of communication” at the Front and elsewhere.3 And in such circumstances, there was ample scope for the cease-fire message to have been picked up, misunderstood for a whole variety of reasons, and passed on as the latest war ‘news’.
The G-2 (SOS) statement about the intercepted 3:00 pm cease-fire order does not say whether it was 3:00 pm Allied time or German time or, therefore, indicate whose order it was. As it was, on 7 November 1918, at least two official wireless telegrams ordering a 3:00 pm cease-fire were transmitted. One was German, the other French. Both announced a cease-fire from 3:00 pm, their respective times, in the area of their front lines where the German armistice delegation was due to arrive that day. But which one Major Warburton and the G-2 (SOS) Report were alluding to is not certain. Moreover, when they occurred, the German 3:00 pm cease-fire officially began an hour before the French 3:00 pm cease-fire because no arrangements were made to synchronize their start-times – for example, by commencing the French cease-fire at 2:00 pm French-time/3:00 pm German-time, or the German cease-fire at 4:00 pm German-time/3:00 pm French-time.
The two 3:00 pm cease-fire telegrams
The German cease-fire telegram was the third of four reported to have been sent during 6-7 November, in clear Morse code, from Field Marshal Hindenburg’s Supreme Command Headquarters in Spa (in occupied Belgium) to Supreme Allied Commander Marshal Foch’s Headquarters in Senlis (north-east of Paris). Its message read: “To allow the German delegation to cross the two lines, the order has been given to stop firing on the front today from 3 o’clock in the afternoon until further orders. From the German forward positions to the French forward positions, the delegation will have a company of road-menders to help with the motorcars on the la Capelle road, which has been destroyed.”4
The French cease-fire telegram was sent from Foch’s Senlis Headquarters, via the weather bureau radio station in the Noyon region north-east of Paris, to French First Army units operating in the broad area where the German delegation was expected to arrive at the French lines. Its message defined the limits of the French cease-fire zone there and showed a transmission time of 3:00 pm (“15 h”) – its effective start-time in the designated area: “To facilitate the arrival of the German delegates, no firing will be carried out into the area between the line Flamengrie-Trélon in the north and the line Froidestrées-Mondrepuis in the south. This order is effective from the time of its receipt until midnight.”5
The German telegram certainly seems to have been susceptible to misunderstanding or misinterpretation in the way claimed by the G-2 (SOS) Report. For instance, it did not state that the cease-fire would be a purely local action restricted to the crossing-area for the German armistice delegation. And anyone taking it to mean that a general cease-fire would begin at 3:00 pm German time/2:00 pm French time along the whole Western Front could, credibly, also have assumed that an armistice with Germany must have been concluded before the cease-fire announcement was made: recent general cease-fires with Germany’s allies had started after their armistice agreements, as part of the agreements themselves. In contrast, the French cease-fire telegram was unambiguous about the limited scope and duration of their action. Moreover, as it was transmitted more than three hours after the morning false armistice news was released in Paris, it could not have been the intercepted and misconstrued telegram in the Major Warburton and G-2 (SOS) reports. Hence, the German telegram was assumed to be the “original source” of the 7 November false armistice news (G-2 (SOS) Report), and the “probable reason for universal belief of [armistice] report” (Major Warburton).
It was made public when Allied newspapers printed the Spa-Senlis messages on Friday 8 November. (The French cease-fire order was not publicised at the time or later, although some newspapers did refer loosely to a ‘French cease-fire order’). However, one particular detail shown on the published German telegram casts doubt on the assumption that it was the source of the false armistice news. This detail is that the French authorities received the telegram at 1:50 pm French time on 7 November – that is, just ten minutes before the German cease-fire was due to start at 2:00 pm French time, 3:00 pm German time. If this is so, there would have been very little time for the telegram to have been intercepted by third parties, its message misconstrued, and the resulting morning false armistice news released in Paris before midday. Research for this website has shown, however, that the Germans actually transmitted their 3:00 pm cease-fire telegram at 12:30 pm their time, 11:30 am French time, and that Marshal Foch’s headquarters in Senlis received it soon after that.4 And as this was around the same timethat the ‘armistice-signed’ news reported by Major Warburton started circulating in Paris, all things considered, it is safe to conclude that the German cease-fire telegram was indeed the genesis of the 7 November early morning false armistice news.
(The G-2 (SOS) Report clearly implicated French Second Bureau (Army Intelligence) officers and French War Ministry officials as being primarily responsible for releasing and spreading this armistice news. But whether they were also the ones who had intercepted and misinterpreted the German telegram is not made clear.2)
Explanations in Allied newspapers
Many newspaper explanations echoed both the G-2 (SOS) Report’s conclusion that a misinterpreted, intercepted telegram was behind the false armistice news and its unawareness of distinct morning and afternoon armistice messages. But at least one French paper, the Orléans Journal du Loiret, also named the German 3:00 pm cease-fire telegram as the source of the news – the Report’s conclusion – which surprisingly few others did.
In its edition of Saturday 9 November (the date also on the Report) the Journal explained that “in Orléans, in Paris and other towns, telephone calls spread the rumour that the German armistice had been signed [and] it seems most likely that an unfortunate, confused interpretation of an official document was the reason for it”.
The paper then referred to the Spa-Senlis wireless information printed on its front page, and intimated that the German 3:00 pm cease-fire message – which it described as denoting a “limited and temporary halt in the firing” – must have been mistaken for the armistice itself. “Some well-meaning but not very well-informed persons who heard the message”, the explanation concluded, “hastily presented it to others as meaning that armistice talks had ended, whereas they had not even begun”. This concluded the paper’s explanation, without any suggestion of who the “persons” were that had supposedly misinterpreted the telegram’s message or disclosure of where the paper’s details about it came from.6
At least one New Zealand newspaper – the Horowhenua Chronicle – and an Australian one – the Hobart Mercury – printed similar (though much shorter) pieces – but in this instance about the false armistice news that had circulated in Britain on 7 November.
The Horowhenua Chronicle published the following 8 November dispatch it had received by cable from London:
“There were numerous rumours of peace yesterday during mid-afternoon and thousands of copies of the cheaper newspapers were sold in the city. The circulators of the story were obliged to withdraw the message. Apparently, it was based on the misreading of a message received from France regarding ceasing firing while the German delegates crossed the lines”.7
The Hobart Mercury’s explanation omitted the part about the cease-fire for the German delegates and stated briefly: “Apparently the [armistice] report was based on the misreading of a wireless message from France”.8
The Australian and New Zealand Cable Company had sent out the dispatch, which apparently came originally from the Press Association in London – the organization that had helped circulate the false armistice news in Britain on 7 November after receiving it from the Reuters news agency. But British newspapers do not appear to have used the Press Association’s, or indeed any other, explanation about how the false news arose and who was responsible for it, not even the allegations against Roy Howard and his armistice cablegram from Brest. They gave plenty of space to information about the Spa-Senlis wireless messages but no suggestions that the German 3:00 pm cease-fire telegram was probably the source of the false peace news.9
Most American and Canadian newspapers had reports on the Spa-Senlis wireless messages and the German delegates’ journey to the Front. In several, for some reason, the sequence of the messages released for publication in French newspapers was changed, with the German 3:00 pm cease-fire announcement becoming part of the first Spa telegram to Senlis and being excluded from the third.10
Interestingly and unusually, explanations in the New York Times and the New York Tribune attributed the false armistice news to a misinterpretation of a French cease-fire order.
For the New York Times, a member of Associated Press, their journalist confidently reported that “What had actually happened at the French front is shown by . . . dispatches, published in this morning’s TIMES. In preparation for the expected arrival of the German delegates the French command had given the order to cease firing temporarily at 3 P.M. at that part of the front where the German delegates were to cross the line”. However, the report continued, “in the mind of the writer of the erroneous dispatch” announcing the end of the war, the temporary cease-fire order “was apparently distorted into a cessation of hostilities . . . and from this mistaken notion, seemingly, the conclusion was drawn that the armistice must have been signed.”11
The New York Tribune journalist, drawing on a dispatch about the Spa-Senlis telegrams received the previous evening from the Associated Press news agency in Paris, informed readers that a “German wireless had been received at Allied Grand Headquarters expressing a hope that a meeting might bring about ‘a provisional suspension of hostilities’ and requesting passage for the German truce delegation, headed by Mathias Erzberger”. In response, Marshal Foch, “[the] Allied commander issued orders ‘to cease fire on the front at 3 o’clock p.m. until further orders’” – this “appears to indicate that the order . . . applied only to the front which the German delegates were approaching”. Later, Foch directed “the enemy truce commission” to head for the French forward positions on the Chimay-Fourmies-La Capelle-Guise road”; after which another “German wireless” was received announcing that the delegation “would be accompanied by a road-mending company to repair the La Capelle road”. Referring next to Roy Howard’s armistice cablegram to the United States, the journalist concluded that the Associated Press dispatch from Paris “obviously explains the premature United Press message . . . that an armistice had been signed and that hostilities had ceased at 2 o’clock (Paris time)”.12
Both journalists presumably used the same Associated Press dispatch from Paris, which apparently had no information about the German 3:00 pm cease-fire order or had confused it with Foch’s afternoon order. But this does not detract from the New York Times journalist’s explanation that the misinterpreted order signified an armistice must have been signed. The New York Tribune journalist did not point this out; and even if he had, exactly how the Associated Press dispatch explained Roy Howard’s cablegram in particular, is not as ‘obvious’ as he thought it was.
Explanations by historians Stanley Weintraub and John Toland
Unlike historians whose accounts of the last days of the Great War overlook the False Armistice, Stanley Weintraub and John Toland both discuss it and explain it mostly with information concerning the 3:00 pm cease-fire, taken from the G-2 (SOS) Report. Neither, however, distinguishes between the morning and afternoon false news.
Stanley Weintraub writes that “the only actual cease-fire on the wires was a purely local and restricted one, beginning at three in the afternoon in the vicinity of Guise, and intended to last only until the German armistice delegates had passed through. The message may have been picked up and misinterpreted.” A few lines later he remarks, “it is possible that reports of an armistice were suggested by Foch’s instructions to the French First Army to hold its fire in a particular sector during the period when the German armistice mission was expected to cross into the French lines”.13
Here, he could be alluding to orders, sent out early on 7 November from Senlis Headquarters to General Debeney at French First Army Headquarters, to make arrangements to meet the German Armistice Delegation on the Chimay-Fourmies-La Capelle-Guise road. Weintraub does not elaborate, but it is entirely possible that information about these early morning instructions to General Debeney reached French circles in Paris and caused the false armistice news.14 On the other hand, he could be referring to the later French 3:00 pm cease-fire order for the crossing-point sector, although for the reasons noted earlier this order was not responsible for the morning armistice news.
Inexplicably, Weintraub does not discuss whether the German 3:00 pm cease-fire telegram may have been the source of the false armistice news. He refers to it several pages later in a subsequent chapter, but – surprisingly – ignores the part of its message which announced a 3:00 pm cease-fire.15 On the whole, his account of it and of the other telegrams in the Spa-Senlis sequence is misleading.
John Toland explains that the false armistice news came from “an erroneous report that the armistice was signed and all hostilities would cease at two that afternoon”. The comment appears to be based on Section 8 of the G-2 (SOS) Report and the afternoon Jackson armistice news sent to Admiral Henry B. Wilson in Brest, but Toland offers no further explanation. His main interest was in how US Liaison Officers, the US Military and Naval Attachés, and Admiral Henry B. Wilson and Roy Howard helped to spread the news.16
Origin of the mid-afternoon false armistice news
Of just a small number of known 7 November afternoon false armistice messages, the one in the Jackson Armistice Telegram sent to Admiral Henry B. Wilson in Brest is the best known – especially in the United States. Roy W. Howard obtained a copy of it from the Admiral and then cabled it to the United States. He later acquired copies of another afternoon armistice message and a follow-on cancellation-message, which were sent to warships in the British Grand Fleet. The armistice message which reached Britain from Paris just before 4:00 pm on 7 November was published in newspapers throughout the country, but it and the celebrations it provoked were soon forgotten. Indeed, had it not been for the Jackson Armistice Telegram, the afternoon armistice news in Paris would probably never have come to light, and the only 7 November 1918 armistice news known to historians would be the morning news. Certainly, if the telegram’s message had stayed in Paris, there would have been no False Armistice celebrations in Britain and Brest, or in the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand.
The message carrying Naval Attaché Captain R. H. Jackson’s name read: “[French] Foreign Office announces Armistice signed 11 a.m. hostilities cease 2 p.m. today. Sedan taken this morning by U.S. army. 15207 Jackson. This is a translation, shall never be transmitted.”17 What, then, lay behind it and the afternoon armistice news?
The most likely answer is suggested by the time shown on the telegram itself – “15207”, that is, 3:20 pm French time on 7 November 1918. This was twenty minutes after the French cease-fire order came into effect, and an hour and twenty minutes after the expected start of the 3:00 pm cease-fire announced by the Germans in their third Spa-Senlis telegram. From this, it is reasonable to infer that the afternoon armistice news was released only after both the German and French cease-fires were operating on either side of the front lines where the German Armistice Delegation would be crossing. And therefore, that just as the morning Spa telegram giving advance notice of the German 3:00 pm cease-fire prompted the morning false armistice news in Paris, the Germans’ implementation of their promised 3:00 pm cease-fire and the French implementation of a cease-fire an hour later prompted the afternoon false armistice messages.
But who released the afternoon armistice news? Certainly not the Germans, in spite of the spy conspiracy theories. By inference again, it is reasonable to state that French War Ministry personnel released it just as they had released the morning armistice news. Already aware of a German cease-fire in operation after 2:00 pm French time, they regarded news of the 3:00 pm French cease-fire order as an awaited confirmation of the morning ‘armistice-signed’ news they had been putting out since before midday. After 3:00 pm, therefore, in a report sent to the French Foreign Ministry and others, the War Ministry reaffirmed that the German armistice had been signed that morning (at 11:00 am) and added that a resulting cease-fire was now in effect. The Foreign Ministry forwarded the news to the American Embassy and other diplomatic establishments presumably, and from the Embassy it reached American Navy Headquarters in Brest.
© James Smith (June 2018) (Reviews and changes, April 2022; October 2024, July 2025.)
ENDNOTES
1. See ‘False Armistice Cablegrams from France’, on this website.
2. See ‘The American Army G-2 (SOS) Report on the False Armistice News’ on this website.
3. Amico J. Barone, ‘November 7 11’. Article in The American Legion Magazine, December 1938, pp1-3. Available online: http://www.oldmagazinearticles.comThe German Peace Delegation Crosses the Lines (American Legion Monthly, 1938)
4. See the ‘Spa-Senlis Telegrams and the German Armistice Delegation’ on this website.
5. Armistice – Radiogrammes du 5 au 17 novembre 1918. ‘7 novembre 1918 – 15h. Radio passe par le poste météo français “MAX” (région de Noyon) à 15 heures. ORDRE’. Wesserling, mémoires familiales, Stamm, Binder http://www.wesserling.fr Translated for this article by the writer.
6. Journal du Loiret, 9 Novembre 1918. Translation from information under ‘Faux bruits, fausses nouvelles’, p2. The Spa-Senlis Messages are printed on p1 under, ‘Les Parlementaires allemands chez le maréchal Foch’. Available online from AURELIA – BIBLIOTHÈQUE NUMÉRIQUE D’ORLÉANS.
7. Horowhenua Chronicle (North Island), 9 November 1918, p3 under ‘Peace Rumours. How They Originated.’ Available online through the PAPERS PAST portal provided by the National Library of New Zealand.
8. The Mercury (Hobart, Tasmania), 9 November 1918, p7 under ‘THE GERMAN DELEGATION’. Available online through the TROVE portal provided by the National Library of Australia.
9. See the ‘False Armistice in Britain’ on this website, and ‘Reuters and the False Armistice’ at http://www.thebaron.info/archives/reuters-and-the-false-armistice-of-7-november-1918
10. For instance, the Norwich Bulletin (Connecticut), November 8, 1918, front page under ‘Germany Announces Start Of Peace Envoys’. Available through the US Library of Congress Chronicling America
11. The New York Times, November 8, 1918, p3 under ‘United Press Men Sent False Cable’. Available by subscription.
12. The New York Tribune, Friday, November 8, 1918, front page, under ‘Guns Silenced on Front Crossed by Truce Envoys’. Available through the US Library of Congress Chronicling America
13. Stanley Weintraub, A Stillness Heard Round The World. The End of the Great War: November 1918 (edition used here OUP paperback, 1987), p39, under ‘The False Armistice’.
14. See the ‘Local Cease-Fires for the German Armistice Delegation , 7 November 1918’ on this website.
15. Stanley Weintraub, p47, under ‘The Dining Car in the Forest’.
16. John Toland, No Man’s Land: The Story of 1918. Chapter 15, ‘The False Armistice’, pp547-550. (London. 1980)
17. See ‘The Jackson Armistice Telegram of 7 November 1918’ on this website.
The False Armistice, 7 November 1918 