How common was it that the fighting in WWI had ceased more than seven months before the Treaty of Versailles was adopted? Did this period of de-escalation cripple Germany's ability to fight, had they have decided not to accept the terms the Allies offered, or were they a spent force?

by td4999

yoshiK

Quite common actually. As a point of reference, the Franco-Prussian war ended with an armistice on 28th of January 1871, a different treaty of Versailles on the 26th of February 1871 and the treaty of Frankfurt on 10th of May of the same year. Similar in WWI the central powers and Russia did have an armistice in December 1917 and the treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on 3rd of March 1918. (The armistice from 1917 did however not hold, when negotiations of the peace treaty broke down.)

Between the armistice on 11th of November 1918 and the signing of the treaty of Versailles was no period of deescalation. Germany had surrendered and the terms of the armistice, including retreat out of occupied territories in France, surrendering of heavy weapons, trains and naval vessels and stationing the remaining German fleet in allied harbors and allied occupation of the Rhineland reflect that. The period in between was for the most part for the allies to figure out what the terms of surrender were, not a period were Germany could second guess the decision to surrender. (And they were a spent force already before that, they had surrendered because they could not continue hostilities.)

cozyduck

I'd like to add on the: "were the German army a spent force"

I think this is an excellent question and I would have love to hear about Germany's military situation and state of the army at the time of the ceasefire.

state of the Navy?
state of the flycorp?
state of remaining reserves?

Then, without going too far into whatifhistory territory, what were the expected results with post data in hand if the ceasefire failed and war continued?