Armistice of 22 June 1940
The Armistice of 22 June 1940, sometimes referred to as the Second Armistice at Compiègne, was an agreement signed at 18:36 on 22 June 1940
Signatories for Germany included
Battle of France
The best, most modernised French armies had been sent north and lost in the resulting encirclement; the French had lost their best heavy weaponry and their best armored formations. Between May and June, French forces were in general retreat and Germany threatened to occupy Paris. The French government was forced to relocate to Bordeaux on 10 June to avoid capture and declared Paris to be an open city the same day.
The proposal of a
By 22 June, the German Armed Forces (Wehrmacht) had losses of 27,000 dead, more than 111,000 wounded and 18,000 missing. French losses were 92,000 dead and more than 200,000 wounded. The British Expeditionary Force suffered 68,000 casualties, with around 10,000 killed.
Choice of Compiègne
When Adolf Hitler received word from the French government that it wished to negotiate an armistice, he selected Compiègne Forest as the place for the negotiations. Compiègne had been the site of the 1918 Armistice, which ended World War I with Germany's surrender. As an act of revenge Hitler held the signing in the Compiègne Wagon, the same rail carriage where the Germans had signed the 1918 Armistice.
In the last sentence of the preamble, the drafters inserted: "However, Germany does not have the intention to use the armistice conditions and armistice negotiations as a form of humiliation against such a valiant opponent", referring to the French forces. In Article 3, Clause 2, the drafters said that Germany did not intend to heavily occupy north-west France after the cessation of hostilities with Britain.
Terms
Adolf Hitler had a number of reasons for agreeing to an armistice. He wanted to ensure that France did not continue to fight from French North Africa, and he wanted to ensure that the French Navy was taken out of the war. In addition, leaving a French government in place would relieve Germany of the considerable burden of administering French territory, particularly as he turned his attentions towards Britain. Finally, as Germany lacked a navy sufficient to occupy France's overseas territories, Hitler's only practical recourse to deny the British use of them was to maintain a formally independent and neutral French rump state.[citation needed]
According to
This was envisaged as a temporary treaty until a final peace treaty was negotiated. At the time, both French and Germans thought the occupation would be a provisional state of affairs and last only until Britain came to terms, which they both thought was imminent.[
A final peace treaty was never negotiated, and the free zone (zone libre) was invaded by Germany and its ally Italy in Case Anton following the invasion of French North Africa by the Allies in November 1942.
Article 19 of the Franco-German armistice required the French state to turn over to German authorities any German national on French territory, who would then frequently face deportation to a concentration camp (the "Surrender on Demand" clause).[4] Keitel gave verbal assurances that this would apply mainly to those refugees who had "fomented the war", a euphemism for Jews, and especially German Jews who until then had enjoyed asylum in France. Keitel also made one other concession, that French aircraft need not be handed over to the Germans.[5]
The French delegation—led by General Charles Huntziger—tried to soften the harsher terms of the armistice, but Keitel replied that they would have to accept or reject the armistice as it was. Given the military situation that France was in, Huntziger had "no choice" but to accede to the armistice terms. The cease-fire went into effect at 00:35 on 25 June 1940, more than two days later, only after another armistice was signed between France and Italy, the main German ally in Europe.
The armistice did have some relative advantages for the French, compared to worse possible outcomes, such as keeping the colonial empire and the fleet, and, by avoiding full occupation and disarmament, the remaining French rump state in the unoccupied zone could enforce a certain de facto independence and neutrality vis-à-vis the Axis.[citation needed]
Destruction of the armistice site in Compiègne
The Armistice site was demolished by the Germans on Hitler's orders three days later.
See also
Notes
- ^ University of Perpignan. Retrieved 11 June 2015.
- ISBN 978-1-4516-5168-3p. 742
- ^ Durand, LaCaptivité, p. 21
- ^ "The Varian Fry Foundation Project/IRC". Retrieved 7 December 2013.
- ^ Lacouture 1991, pp. 233–234
- ^ Lehrer, Steven. "Compiègne". Retrieved 7 December 2013.
References
- United States Department of State, Publication No. 6312, Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945, Series D, IX, 671–676. Washington, DC : Government Printing Office, 1956.
Further reading
- Gates, Eleanor. End of the Affair: The Collapse of the Anglo-French Alliance, 1939–1940 (1980)
- Jackson, Julian. France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944 (2001) ch 6
- Lacouture, Jean. De Gaulle: The Rebel, 1890–1944 (1984; English ed. 1991), ISBN 084190927X
- Potts, William J. The German-French Armistice of June, 1940, and the German Armistice Commission, 1940–1942 1966.
- Shirer, William. The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969)