stylistic:style_transfer, quality:corruption
Armistice

During the autumn of 1918, the Central Powers began to collapse. Desertion rates within the German army began to increase, and civilian strikes drastically reduced war production. On the Western Front, the Allied forces launched the Hundred Days Offensive and decisively defeated the German western armies. Sailors of the Imperial German Navy at Kiel mutinied in response to the naval order of 24 October 1918, which prompted uprisings in Germany, which became known as the German Revolution. The German government tried to obtain a peace settlement based on the Fourteen Points, and maintained it was on this basis that they surrendered. Following negotiations, the Allied powers and Germany signed an armistice, which came into effect on 11 November while German forces were still positioned in France and Belgium.

Many aspects of the Versailles treaty that were later criticised were agreed first in the 11 November armistice agreement, whilst the war was still ongoing. These included the German evacuation of German-occupied France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Alsace-Lorraine, and the left bank of the Rhine (all of which were to be administered by the Allies under the armistice agreement), the surrender of a large quantity of war materiel, and the agreed payment of "reparation for damage done".

German forces evacuated occupied France, Belgium, and Luxembourg within the fifteen days required by the armistice agreement. By late 1918, Allied troops had entered Germany and began the occupation of the Rhineland under the agreement, in the process establishing bridgeheads across the Rhine in case of renewed fighting at Cologne, Koblenz, and Mainz. Allied and German forces were additionally to be separated by a 10 km-wide demilitarised zone.