Armistice of 22 June 1940

The Armistice of 22 June 1940, sometimes called the Second Armistice at Compiegne, was an agreement signed at 18:36 on 22 June 1940 near Compiegne, France, by officials of Nazi Germany and the French Third Republic. It took effect at midnight on 25 June. Colonel General Wilhelm Keitel, head of the German armed forces, signed for Germany, while the French side was led by General Charles Huntziger and other officers of lower rank. After the decisive German victory in the Battle of France, the armistice set up a German occupation zone across northern and western France, covering about three fifths of the country's European territory and every English Channel and Atlantic port. The rest of France stayed unoccupied under a new regime that was recognised as the legitimate government of all of Metropolitan France except Alsace-Lorraine, and France kept control of its non-European territories. Adolf Hitler chose the Compiegne Forest on purpose, because it was where the Armistice of 11 November 1918 ending the First World War had been signed.