The Fall of France
France sues for peace
On October 15th, Field Marshal Pétain assumed the Presidency of the faltering III Republic with an agenda of peace with Germany. It was clear to the Field Marshal, victor at Verdun in the Great War, that it was now only a matter of time before all of France was occupied by the Germans. The French forces were suffering terrible casualties each day and badly needed an end to hostilities. There had been furious controversy between the French Government and the Army over the forms of the armistice. The Government wanted the Army to surrender, in order to be legally able to continue the war from the colonies. The Army on the other hand refused to have its honour tarnished by surrender after putting up such a valiant fight and demanded that the Government should surrender; France as a state would make peace. As General Weygand put it “The Government declared war – now the Government will have to assume the consequences”.
Field Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain
Pétain was on the side of the Army in this matter – he intended to make peace with Hitler at almost any cost, as long as the honour of the French army remained unsullied. There was also a great deal of bitterness against the British, who it was felt, had left France to face the wrath of the Germans alone. Not a single British or Empire land unit had yet taken part in the French campaign (although one would soon be doing so, when it was too late by far).
On the very day he took office, Pétain contacted Germany through the Swiss ambassador, asking for terms. In Berlin, Hitler immediately agreed to a cease-fire and demanded that peace negotiations would be held in the same railway car in which the 1918 armistice had been signed, currently parked in a museum at Compiégne forest outside of Paris. The French agreed to these humiliating conditions and a provisional cease fire became effective immediately from 0:00 hours in the morning of October 16th 1939, pending the signature of the provisional peace to be held on October 18th in the aforementioned railway car.
Journalists at work outside the Compiégne museum inside which the railway car from the 1918 armistice was kept
The French troops were told to stop fighting the invaders and the German forces received instructions to stop the advance. Despite of this, the last shots of the French Campaign were yet to be fired – there were French forces ready to carry on the fight regardless of the cease-fire order.
Giraud and the Free France movement
As Marshal Pétain announced the provisional cease-fire over the radio, there were French officers that refused to surrender. Many would have believed General Charles de Gaulle would become a prominent opponent to surrender, but he had been captured when his armoured division surrendered at Reims. He would eventually become the Vichy regime’s most trusted General.
Situation at 6:00 after provisional armistice
Among the more illustrious names intending to continue the fight was General Henri Honoré Giraud, commander of the French forces recently repulsed from Orleans by 2. Armee. Upon receiving the provisional armistice orders, he declared them illegal and vowed to carry on the fight until the bitter end with his remaining forces, currently advancing on Orleans from Le Mans in preparation for another attempt at offensive against 2. Armee. The French forces facing 20. Armee in Normandy also refused to surrender and took possession of Cherbourg and the Contentin peninsula, hoping to be reinforced by the British. The one strong force left to France, the 3. Armée under Field Marshal Lattre de Tassigny deployed at the Maginot line in Alsace did however accept the orders from Pétain and ceased fighting.
There were also the first Commonwealth troops to arrive in France to deal with: A Canadian Army Corps had landed at Nantes and quickly seized control of the surrounding area from the surrendering French forces. The last Belgian forces, at the time surrounded between Troyes and Auxerre did also refuse to acknowledge Pétain’s orders and kept on fighting – briefly.
Resistance is futile
Upon hearing the news of General Giraud’s rebellion, Pétain was outraged and dismayed. It came as no great surprise when the Germans coldly informed him that since French forces were still fighting them, they considered the cease fire broken by France, and that now only the following conditions would satisfy them: all French forces were to surrender immediately to the nearest German unit. If no German unit was in the vicinity, French units would stay in place until approached by German forces, at which time they should surrender. German forces would advance wherever they saw fit and would destroy any resistance encountered without mercy. Any French troops captured while resisting the Germans would be considered criminals of war and not be accorded the normal rights and privileges of POW’s. Realising full well that any residual leverage for negotiations France might still posses would be lost with the surrender of the remaining French troops, Pétain still saw himself forced to agree to these conditions, and promptly issued new orders. The French began to lay down their arms by 19:00 hours of October 16th. Giraud’s forces fought valiantly against 2. Armee until well after the fall of darkness, but by 23:00 hours, it was all over and they surrendered with the exception of one Corps, including Giraud himself, that managed to slip out of the ring and escape towards the channel coast, hoping perhaps to escape to England. The Germans did not follow through with their threats and treated Giraud’s men as any other French prisoners.
End of the French campaign
The operations during the last days of the war in France can be summarized in few words. On the 17th, von Manstein forced the surrender of the last Belgian forces in Dijon province and von Paulus defeated the French remnants at Cherbourg, securing the strategic harbour before any British reinforcements could be brought in. Giraud’s surviving forces reached Normandy and briefly recaptured Caen in the rear of 20. Armee, but von Paulus soon returned from Cherbourg and defeated these forces on the 18th. Giraud himself was saved by a British submarine and taken to London, where he would eventually become leader of “Free France”. Meanwhile Guderian was rushing west, reaching Nantes on October 19th. The Canadian troops had little to oppose the gruppe with and surrendered on the 19th. With the notable exception of air operations (German and British fighters were regularly fighting it out over the Channel since the fall of Lille) the war in France was over.
Italy joins the war
Upon hearing the news of the French suing for peace on October 16th, Mussolini could be contained no longer and declared war on France, the British Empire, Holland and Belgium. He had been aching to do so for some time, but Hitler had believed (rightly or not) that the Italians would have a tough time defending Libya against both the French and British forces in Africa and advised against it. With France knocked out of the war, Italy would only have to fight the British on one front and it was hoped that this would suffice. As a part of the Alliance agreement, Germany agreed to deliver large amounts of coal and steel to Italy via rail transport through the Alp passes. (
This is a New Order event, an overland convoy)
An industrial “exchange” program was also initiated, with German engineers arriving in northern Italy to help setting up an Italian synthetic oil and rubber production (
Another New Order event). These aid programs followed the pattern of the previous German alliances with Hungary and Slovakia.
Armistice at Compiégne
The signing of the Armistice was delayed until October 20th, when Hitler arrived at Compiégne with the Chief of Staff of the OKW, Field Marshal Keitel. The conditions were read to the French delegates by Keitel, and they were told that the terms would not be discussed; they could only choose to accept or reject them.
The armistice conference. General Keitel reads the German conditions with Hitler sitting on his right
The conditions were harsh: All of Elsass and Lothringen (Alsace-Lorraine) including Metz would be annexed to the German Reich. The German war reparations paid since the Versailles treaty were to be repaid, with interests, in raw materials. Northern France and a strip along the Atlantic coast would come under German occupation until such time as the hostilities between Germany and the British Empire had come to and end. The French fleet would remain under French control but French forces would have to cooperate with Germany in the defence of their territories against the British. Given the overall situation, the French delegates felt themselves to have little choice and signed. The treaty was triumphantly ratified by the Reichstag on the following day, in which Elsass, Lothringen and Luxemburg were officially annexed to the Greater German Reich.
Situation after the Armistice at Compiégne of October 20th
The Japanese also profited from the French debacle. Already on the 16th, Japan presented France with an ultimatum demanding the surrender of French Indochina to Japan, and the French accepted.