At 11 a.m. on 11 November 1918 the Armistice signed by Germany and the Allies came into force, and the guns fell silent on the Western Front. The same day in Warsaw the Regency Council handed command of the Polish army to Józef Piłsudski, the moment Poland marks as the rebirth of its independence. And on 11 November 1673, in sleet and bitter cold, Grand Hetman Jan Sobieski stormed the Ottoman camp at Khotyn on the Dniester. This page is a short guide to the day, with links to our full articles.
The eleventh hour, 1918
By the autumn of 1918 Germany and its allies were exhausted, and after the Allies' Hundred Days Offensive a German delegation met the Allied commander in chief, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, on 7 November in a railway carriage north-east of Paris. There the Armistice was drawn up and signed. Its terms forced the Germans to leave France and Belgium and to surrender weapons, aircraft and warships, which the Imperial War Museums describe as making it effectively a German surrender. It took effect at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.1 › Hundred Days Offensive, 1918
Men died to the last minute. The U.S. National Archives tells the story of Private Henry Gunther of the 313th Infantry, shot charging a German roadblock at 10:58 a.m., two minutes before the ceasefire. The war formally ended only with the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919, and fighting went on in much of eastern Europe long after November. How the last days played out is told in our article on how World War One ended.2
Poland's Independence Day
Józef Piłsudski arrived in Warsaw on 10 November 1918, freed from German imprisonment in Magdeburg. The next day the Regency Council handed him military authority and command of the Polish troops under it, and days later asked him to form a national government. The Museum of Polish History's portal dzieje.pl calls the handover the symbol of regained independence.3 › Józef Piłsudski
11 November became a national holiday by a statute of 1937, was abolished after the Second World War, and was restored by the Sejm on 15 February 1989, during the Round Table talks. Independence had to be fought for on every border, beginning with the street battles in Lwów from 1 November 1918, told in our article on the defense of Lwów and on our page for 1 November. The whole story is in the battles that won Polish independence.4
Armistice Day and the poppy
In November 1919 President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the first Armistice Day in the United States, and in 1954 it was renamed Veterans Day to honor veterans of all wars. In Britain and the Commonwealth the day is Remembrance Day. How the two traditions grew, and why so many people wear a red poppy, is told in our history of Veterans Day and our story of the remembrance poppy.5
Khotyn, 1673
A year after the humiliating Treaty of Buczacz, which had cost Poland Podolia and made it a tributary of the Ottoman sultan, Sobieski led a Polish and Lithuanian army against the Ottoman army of Hussein Pasha, entrenched in the old fortified camp at Khotyn on the Dniester. After a night of rain, snow and freezing wind, Sobieski attacked on the morning of 11 November. According to dzieje.pl the ramparts fell within a quarter of an hour, and the charge of the hussars into the camp decided the battle. The only bridge over the Dniester collapsed under the fleeing troops, and many drowned.6
King Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki had died in Lwów on the eve of the battle, and the victory carried Sobieski to the throne, to which he was elected the following year. The battle is told in full in our article on the Battle of Khotyn, 1673.7
Also on this day
- 1914: Battle of Łódź. German and Russian armies fought around Łódź in harsh winter weather on the Eastern Front of the First World War.
