A railway carriage in the forest of Compiègne, 11 November 1918. They stop the war at 11:00 on the 11th of the 11th. The German army is beaten but still standing on foreign soil, which will matter. In the last hours men still die taking villages that will be handed back by lunch.
Why then
The Allied offensives of the summer, American numbers and a starving home front force Germany to ask for terms. Sailors mutiny at Kiel, revolution spreads, and on 9 November the Kaiser abdicates and a republic is proclaimed in Berlin. The generals who lost the war let civilians sign for it.
What they wanted
Germany's high command wants an armistice that looks like a pause, with its own name kept off the paper. Foch, the Allied commander, writes terms so Germany cannot start again. London and Paris want the killing stopped and the bill ready.
What changed
Matthias Erzberger, the Catholic politician who signs, is murdered three years later. The army marches home in good order and is greeted as unbeaten. That becomes a story: stabbed in the back by the civilians and the left, never beaten in the field.
Still argued
Could the Allies have marched to Berlin and killed the myth at birth, or would that have meant another year of the Somme? The question is as old as the armistice.