On This Day: France signs armistice with Nazi Germany after defeat in six-week battle

JUNE 22, 1940: Defeated France signed a humiliating armistice with Nazi Germany on this day in 1940 – just six weeks after being invaded.

Marshal Philippe Petain was forced to sign the agreement in the same train carriage where German generals had capitulated 22 years earlier to end the First World War.

Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler even ordered the wagon to be towed from a museum to the same spot in the Compiegne Forest for ceremony shown in a British Pathé newsreel.

France, which was the only country invaded by the Nazis to sign peace terms, was divided into a German-occupied zone in the north and west - and a ‘free zone’.

Both were nominally ruled by the French government, led by the newly instated Prime Minister Petain, but in reality it was more of a puppet state.

The decision to sign an armistice came after a UK proposition to unite Britain and France as a single state was rejected by the French cabinet.

Most Frenchmen accepted the peace agreement as the best they could expect from the Germans and believed Britain would also soon be conquered.

France, which had a mighty army of five million men and spent more on its military than any other European country, was defeated at an alarming pace.

Germany had only launched a ‘Blitzkrieg’ – lighting war – assault against its western neighbour on May 10 after surprising the French again by driving through Belgium.

Few thought Britain, with a smaller army that had already been forced into evacuating 300,000 troops from France at Dunkirk, could survive this mechanised onslaught.

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Also, many Frenchmen thought liberal France’s weaknesses had been exposed and that if it followed Germany, it too could be a muscular, disciplined nation.

The new Vichy government itself fostered this belief and thousands joined right-wing organisations like the Milice paramilitary militia that supported the Nazis.

During this period, French police in both the Vichy and occupied zones assisted their German ‘allies’ by rounding up and deporting Jews to the East, where 90,000 died.

Also enabling French support for the Nazis was increasing anti-British anger.

This was partly fuelled by Britain’s attack on the French fleet in North Africa, which killed almost 1,300 sailors, in a bid to stop her ships being used by the Germans.

However, as German occupation spread to the Vichy zone in 1942 and became more harsh, the French Resistance became more active.

Also, following Nazi failure in the Battle of Britain in September 1940 and the British victory in North Africa in November 1942, many Frenchmen realised that Germany could be beaten.

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In December 1942, America finally joined the war on Britain’s side and – with the Soviet Union now pushing the Nazis back– the war looked winnable for the Allies.

Among those who had never accepted Vichy rule was France’s ace military leader General Charles de Gaulle, who led the Free French forces from exile.

A small contingent of these men were among the 130,000 Allied men who stormed the beaches at Normandy.

France was eventually liberated on August 25, 1944, two months after mostly British, American and Canadian forces launched the D-Day landings.