So still was the clearing that correspondents standing beside the old dining car 2419D could hear the beat of a thrush's wing, the sound of a woodpecker tapping against a beech tree in the Forest of Compiégne beyond. A warm June afternoon sun beat down on the clearing and cast purple shadows across the avenue leading through the forest from the clearing to a road. It was Friday, June 21, 1940. At exactly 3:15 o'clock, German summer time, from a touring car that had stopped at the far end of the avenue stepped a small man with a catlike tread and a supreme sense of the drama that is history.
This was Adolf Hitler's first visit to the Forest of Compiégne, where Louis XVI received Marie-Antoinette and Napoleon received Marie-Louise, where 510 years ago Joan of Arc surrendered to the Duke of Burgundy and 22 years ago a delegation of Germans signed an armistice dictated by France's Marshal Ferdinand Foch. Before Adolf Hitler as he stepped out of the car stood France's monument to Alsace-Lorraine. German war flags covered the sculptured sword thrust into a limp German eagle. Swastika banners hid the inscription beneath: To the Heroic Soldiers of France, Defenders of the Country and of Right, Glorious Liberators of Alsace-Lorraine.
Adolf Hitler gazed at the monument, then walked slowly down the avenue 200 yards to the clearing. He wore a double-breasted, grey field uniform with the Iron Cross hanging from his left breast pocket. Behind him walked the six highest officials of the German Third Reich: Field Marshal Hermann Wilhelm Göring in the blue uniform of the Air Force, his Field Marshal's baton in his right hand; Colonel General Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the German Armed Forces, his cap cocked jauntily on one side; Colonel General Walther von Brauchitsch in field grey; Grand Admiral of the Fleet Erich Raeder in a blue naval uniform and upturned stiff collar, also carrying a baton; Deputy Nazi Leader Rudolf Hess in a grey Party uniform; Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop in the grey uniform of the Foreign Office. As the group reached the clearing, at 3:18, Hitler's personal standard was run up.
Near the flagstaff a great granite block stood some three feet above the ground. Hitler marched to it, followed by the others. One after another the seven men read the inscription on the stone. It said in French (which Hitler is not very good at): Here on the Eleventh of November, Succumbed the Criminal Pride of the German Empire, Vanquished by the Free Peoples Which it Tried to Enslave. None of the Germans spoke, or even changed his expression, but next day that stone was ordered removed.
To a smaller stone, set between a pair of rusty railroad tracks, Hitler led his followers. This stone, marking the spot where a railroad car containing the German delegation stood from Nov. 8 to Nov. 11, 1918, was inscribed simply: The German Plenipotentiary. From there Hitler and his aides walked straight to Car 2419D. For two minutes they stood outside, chatting in the sunlight that sent a lengthening shadow of the old wagon-restaurant slanting across the grass. Then Adolf Hitler stepped nimbly aboard the car. It was 3:25 p.m.