During World War II, Adolf Hitler chose the same spot for the French and Germans to sign the Armistice of 22 June 1940 after Germany won the Battle of France.

Today, the Glade of the Armistice contains a statue of World War I French military leader and Allied supreme commander Marshal Ferdinand Foch, and the reconstructed Alsace–Lorraine memorial, depicting a German Eagle impaled by a sword.

Foch had convened the armistice talks deep in the forest beside the small village of Rethondes,[2]: 261  because he wanted to shield the meeting from intrusive journalists,[3] as well as spare the German delegation any hostile demonstrations by French locals.

[4] The carriage was put back into regular service with the Compagnie des Wagons-Lits, but after a short period it was withdrawn to be attached to the French presidential train.

There it remained, a monument to the defeat of Imperial Germany and the triumph of France, until 22 June 1940, when German staff cars bearing Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop and others swept into the Clairière and, in that same carriage, having been moved back to the 1918 signing-place, the World War II armistice with France was signed; this time with Germany triumphant.

Then he read the inscription on the great granite block in the center of the clearing: Here on the eleventh of November 1918 succumbed the criminal pride of the German empire ... vanquished by the free peoples which it tried to enslave."

[6] The carriage itself was taken to Berlin as a trophy of war, along with pieces of a large stone tablet which bore the inscription (in French): The Alsace-Lorraine monument was also destroyed and all evidence of the site was obliterated, with the notable exception of the statue of Marshal Foch: Hitler intentionally ordered it to be left intact, so that it would be honouring only a wasteland.