Although I thought it seemed odd to watch chips, putts, and drives at the Olympics, I learned that golf had been played at four previous Olympics – in 2020, 2016, 1904 (yes, there was a 112-year hiatus), and 1900. This happens to be the second time that golf has been played during Olympics in France. The Olympic rounds in 1900 were played at the Compiegne Country Club, 45 miles northeast of Paris.

I wrote about Compiegne in a previous newsletter. Although Compiegne had no direct impact on the Franco-British naval clash that I’m writing about now, it’s a place that I was drawn to visit for the two historical dramas that were staged in that remote and quiet place. Germany signed an armistice agreement with France in a small, private rail car in a forest clearing at Compiegne on November 11, 1918. When Germany overran France in June 1940, Adolph Hitler arranged for that same rail car to be dragged through a recently-drilled hole in the façade of the museum in which it sat for decades, and humiliated the French by having them sign an armistice agreement in that same car.

The 1918 signing is brilliantly captured in this scene from the 2022 movie “All Quiet on the Western Front.”

In the photograph below, Hitler scowls at the table as he sat in Marshal Foch's chair in that same rail car as General Wilhelm Keitel reads the preamble to the German armistice terms, which included Hitler's "determination to efface once and for all, by an act of reparative justice, a memory ... that was felt by the German people to be the greatest dishonor of all time."

I wrote about Compiegne – the town, the two armistice signings, and a shocking reminder of the Holocaust – in greater detail in Everybody Knows a Salesman Can’t Write a Book, in a chapter titled, simply, “Compiegne.” If you’d like to read that chapter, here’s a link.

The study of history provides frequent reminders that the world has always been a mess. Realistically, it will always be a mess.

All of which helps us appreciate breakthrough moments of harmony and grace, such as … a gathering of world leaders on November 11, 2018, the hundredth anniversary of the armistice signing that ended “the war to end all wars.” Veterans who fought in those two World Wars would never have imagined a day when the leaders of the two most hostile adversaries, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Angela Merkel, would meet to celebrate peace - at Compiegne of all places, actually the perfect place.

And, speaking of moments of harmony and grace … despite its controversies, thank goodness for the island of joy, achievement, celebration - and perfect moments like this - that the Olympics provide every couple of years.

Thanks for reading,
Bill

Compiegne - 1900, 1918, 1940, 2018