11 November—What’s now called Veterans Day in the United States was originally called Armistice Day when it was proclaimed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1919 and established as a national holiday by Congress in 1938 to commemorate the end of a war and honor the people who served in it. Veterans Day, since 1954, honors all living and deceased military veterans.

The armistice—a temporary suspension of hostilities, specifically the fighting on the Western Front—that effectively ended the Great War—now called World War I—was signed on 11 November 1918 in French Marshal Ferdinand Foch’s personal railroad car in the Forest of Compiègne, France, at 5 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time, which was also Paris Time. Five o’clock in the morning?! Anything for peace. (France, east of the United Kingdom, has since moved its time an hour ahead of GMT, by the way.)

At the behest of Marshal Foch, the Supreme Allied Commander, the armistice took effect at 11 a.m. That made for the lucky elevens that he reckoned would be easy to remember and transmit to the troops: the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Onze chanceux, as Foch might have put it.

The armistice was signed by seven men, three for the Allies, four for the Krauts—sorry, Germans: Maréchal de France Ferdinand Foch, who had essentially set the terms of the armistice; Foch’s Chief of Staff Général Maxime Weygand; and Britain’s First Sea Lord Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss (usually pronounced Weems) for the winners. Even though the Allies couldn’t have prevailed without Pershing’s American Expeditionary Forces, inter alia, no American nor other Ally signed the armistice.

Not that it matters in the circumstance, but General Pershing believed the armistice was a mistake, putting a premature end to the war rather than a decisive, total military victory—attainable a few weeks down the road, he reckoned—that would have humiliated the Germans and led to a more lasting peace. Right. Adolf Hitler was just a low-ranking noncom in the Bavarian Infantry at the time and hadn’t yet perfected his demagogic skill.

The losers who signed the not-all-that-humiliating armistice for the new German government following the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II were two civilians, Matthias Erzberger and Graf (Count) Alfred von Oberndorff, and army Generalmajor (Major General) Detlof von Winterfeldt and navy Kapitän (Captain) Ernst Vanselow. Evidently higher-ranking officers couldn’t be woken up so early in the morning.

Getting back to Foch and Hitler, when the Nazis invaded France in 1940, Hitler made the French sign the armistice in the selfsame railroad car, still parked in what had become the Glade of the Armistice near Compiègne, in which Germany had capitulated to the Allies in 1918. Hitler made a point of attending the ceremony that vindictively humiliated the French, which took place at about 6:30 in the evening of 22 June. Probably because he was a late sleeper.

Whom does vindictive dictator bring to mind? Certainly not Donald Trump. And he’s an early riser . . .