On 22 June 1940, the formal surrender of France to Germany was concluded. Signed on 21 June 1940 at Compiegne in the same railway car in which Germany surrendered in 1918, it was a major triumph for Hitler. He also sat in the exact same chair that Marshal Ferdinand Foch sat in receiving the German surrender in 1918. The site where the treaty was signed, a monument to France’s defeat of Germany in World War I, was destroyed and the railway car shipped to Germany.
Photo: Heinz Fremde (1907-1987)
German Federal Archives:Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-126-0350-26A / Fremke, Heinz / CC-BY-SA 3.0
France at the outset of the war was considered to have the best professional army in continental Europe. Aside from trained soldiers, they had tanks and heavy artillery. And, of course, the famous Maginot Line. This was a series of fortifications near the German border meant to deter an invasion force. The hills and woods of the Ardennes were considered impenetrable in the north but there was a caveat as General Philippe Petain noted. You had to destroy the invasion force before it exited that area. France and Germany had officially been at war since 3 Sep 1939 when France, allied with England, offered support to the Polish government.
French forces briefly entered the Saar on 7 September but withdrew after meeting a very thin line of German defense on the undermanned Siegfried line. With most of its forces concentrated in Poland at the time, Germany did not have the capacity to stand up to France’s 98 divisions and tanks that were being committed. However French hesitation and wanting to avoid total war had them withdraw forces starting on 17 September and done a month later. It began a time called the Phony War where both Germany and France were armed and ready, but nothing was happening. Hitler had hoped he could make peace with England and France but that was not to be.
On 10 May 1940, Germany attacked France. German armored units made a push through the Ardennes, and then through the Somme valley to surround the allied units in Belgium. British, Belgian and French forces were pushed to the sea. British forces were evacuated at Dunkirk, which is an exciting tale of its own. During the six-week campaign Germany conquered France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and The Netherlands. German troops marched unopposed into Paris on 14 June. By 18 June with the collapse of both the French government (which had fled) and the military, negotiations began between French and German military officers.
At the meeting on 21 June, Hitler read the preamble and like Marshal Foch left to leave Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht to handle the details. There were several objectives that the Germans wanted and got. They wanted French North Africa and the French Navy out of the war. Also, they wanted to deny the British use of French territories since they could not possibly defend them. Occupied France was 3/5ths of the country which included the key ports on the French Channel and Atlantic and to the Spanish border. The Free Zone was administered by a newly formed French government in Vichy with Marshal Petain as its president.
This iconic picture of a Frenchman weeping is often wrongly attributed as being in Paris on the Champs-Élysées. In actuality, the man was in Marseilles and is weeping because the French troops are departing taking with them their regiment flags to North Africa in September 1940. It first appeared in Life magazine in 1941.
Vichy France, as it became known, was authoritarian and reversed the policies of previous administrations. The media became tightly controlled, anti-Semitism was propagated, and labor unions put under strict controls. Vichy France kept French territories and the navy under French rather than German control. With the German army elsewhere, unoccupied France was generally free from military control. However, due to its neutrality it was forbidden to assist nations at war with Germany. Despite it being unoccupied, Vichy had to conform to German policies including identifying foreign nationals, deporting stateless persons, and of course assisting Germans in locating and ultimately deporting French Jews to be murdered in the death camps.
The treaty was formally concluded on 22 June 1940 and went into effect on 25 June 1940. A separate treaty between France and Italy was signed as well. Italy initially only wanted a small portion of France (about 832 square miles with the largest town being Menton). In November 1942, after Germany seized a large portion of Vichy, Italy got control over Toulon and the eastern part of Provence up to the Rhone River. Corsica and Nice were also to become Italian occupied but that did not occur. During the period of Italian occupation, Jews were relatively safe as Italian authorities declined German requests to turn over Jews to them. Once Italy deposed Mussolini and later signed an armistice with the Allies in 1943, Germans quickly moved in and rounded up all Jews they could locate. Over 3,000 would be deported.
Sources
Byron, Hannah. “The French Riviera Under Italian Rule During WW2 — HANNAH BYRON.” HANNAH BYRON. Last modified January 20, 2024. https://www.hannahbyron.com/blog/the-french-riviera-under-italian-rule-during-ww2.
Hart, Basil Liddell. “The Fall of France (June 5–25, 1940).” Encyclopedia Britannica. Last modified June 18, 2026. Accessed June 22, 2026. https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-France-World-War-II/The-fall-of-France-June-5-25-1940.
Hughes, Thomas A. “Italy’s Entry Into the War and the French Armistice.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Last modified June 22, 2026. Accessed June 22, 2026. https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-II/Italys-entry-into-the-war-and-the-French-Armistice.
“France Signals Intention to Surrender to the Nazis-June 17, 1940.” HISTORY. Last modified May 27, 2025. Accessed June 22, 2026. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/june-17/france-to-surrender.
Videos
Smithsonian Channel. (2017, June 15). The moment France surrendered to German soldiers [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLrZi5udyIc
British Pathé. (2014, April 13). French Surrender to Hitler (1940) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADUcjRc5p3k
Suggested Reading
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Bloch, M. (1999). Strange defeat: A Statement Of Evidence Written In 1940. W. W. Norton & Company.
Churchill, W. (1948). Their finest hour. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Keegan, J. (2005). The Second World War. Penguin Books.
Lord, W. (2017). The Miracle of Dunkirk: The True Story of Operation Dynamo. Open Road Media.
Shirer, W. L. (2022). The collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry Into the Fall of France in 1940. Rosetta Books
Historical Movies or Television
Wouk, H. (2018, December). Winds of War [Special Collector’s Edition]. Paramount. This excellent six-part miniseries is based on the Herman Wouk novel of the same name. And he wrote the script for this, so it hues close to the book (but does compress or eliminate some characters or situations). Through the Henry family, we get to see the scope of the looming war approaching and their involvement in it. The acting is superb, though the actress Ali MacGraw is miscast as Natalie Jastrow. Aside from that, this is a riveting depiction of the events leading up to World War II. It is one of the best miniseries ever made, and it shows with the high production quality and attention to detail.