Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [234]
On June 21, 1940, six weeks after Germany began its renewed attack on France, the Germans moved Foch’s railroad car back onto the track where it had stood in 1918. Hitler had chosen this place for France’s de facto surrender “to efface once and for all by an act of reparative justice a memory which was resented by the German people as the greatest shame of all time,” according to William Shirer in The Collapse of the Third Republic. After the agreement was signed, the stone plaque was broken up and sent back to Germany, as well as the Alsace-Lorraine memorial. Foch’s railroad car was sent to Berlin, where it was placed on display until 1943. Curiously, the statue of Foch was not taken down or defaced. It’s not likely that this was an act of soldierly courtesy, but rather, as the World War I memorial Web site explains, “another bit of petty revenge on the part of the Führer; the victor of 1918 left in solitude to contemplate the annihilation of his work.”
Compiègne was liberated in 1944, and German POWs restored the Glade on September 1. After the aerial bombardment of Berlin in 1943, the Nazis had moved Foch’s railroad car to the Thuringia Forest for safekeeping. But in April 1945, with the Allies moving in, the Nazis set fire to the car. After the war was over, the pieces of the stone plaque and the Alsace-Lorraine monument were found in Berlin and returned to the Glade. Another railroad car, #2439D, crafted in 1913 like the original, was brought to the Glade; because the original furnishings and documents from Foch’s car had been saved before war broke out, the full restoration of the Glade’s pre-1940 appearance was possible.
In addition to the Glade and the Musée de l’Armistice, Compiègne offers other diversions for visitors, including the forest itself with hiking trails and bike paths. The Château de Compiègne, designed for Louis XV but more noted for the reign of Napoléon III and Empress Eugénie, is also worth a trip; in addition to the historic apartments there, the château also houses the Museum of the Second Empire and the Museum of the Automobile and Tourism. (Reservations are required; see the Web site, musee-chateau-compiegne.fr, for more information. The American Friends of the Château de Compiègne, at afcdc.org, is also dedicated to increasing awareness of the château’s history). Also check out the sixteenth-century High Gothic–style hôtel de ville, which has one of the oldest city clocks in France, featuring a bancloque in the belfry with three Picantins—wooden figures in sixteenth-century attire representing the three enemies of France at that time: Flandrin the Fleming, Langlois the Englishman, and Lansquenet the German—that strike bells with their mallets every quarter hour. The regional cuisine is noted for its chocolate and gâteau de Compiègne, also known as Napoléon’s dessert, made with cherries. The Compiègne town Web site (mairie-compiegne.fr) is in French only but still useful.
CHAMPAGNE
A great book to read that is not only about the bubbly drink but also about the Champagne region is The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It by Tilar Mazzeo (Harper Perennial, 2008). I had no idea how fascinating the world of Champagne was until I read this book. Though I adore Champagne—if I were asked that desert island question, bien sûr Champagne would be the one drink I would request—and I really like Veuve Clicquot, I had