Armistice of 22 June 1940

The Armistice of 22 June 1940 was signed at 18:36 near Compiegne, France, by officials of Nazi Germany and the French Third Republic. It did not come into effect until after midnight on 25 June.
Signatories for Germany included senior military officers like Wilhelm Keitel. the commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht, while those on the French side were more junior, such as General Charles Huntziger. Following the decisive German victory in the Battle of France (10 May–21 June 1940), this armistice established a German occupation zone in Northern and Western France that encompassed all English Channel and Atlantic Ocean ports and left the remainder “free” to be governed by the French. Adolf Hitler deliberately chose Compiegne Forrest as the site to sign the armistice due to its symbolic role as the site of the 1918 Armistice with Germany that signaled the end of World War I with Germany’s surrender.


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.
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, under command of Field Marshal Lord Gort apparently lost about 10,000 men: the often seen casualty figure of over 68,000 British men seems to include those killed, those wounded as well as those captured.

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