On June 15, 1940, with France stating its intent to seek a ceasefire with Germany, the British High Command activated Operation Aerial, a second Allied evacuation, this time through western France. Conducted until June 25, the British Royal Navy used the ports of Cherbourg, Saint-Malo, Brest, Saint-Nazaire, La Pallice, Le Verdon, Bordeaux, and Bayonne to evacuate some 190,000 Allied troops. The greatest Allied loss during this evacuation occurred on June 17 when the British ship, RMS Lacastria, was sunk by German planes, killing some 5,000 Allied troops and becoming Britain’s worst maritime disaster.
By then, the Battle of France was winding down. On June 13, 1940 in a Supreme War Council meeting in Tours, the French and British governments acknowledged that the war was lost. As both parties had agreed months earlier that neither side could seek a separate peace with Germany without the other side’s consent, French Prime Minister Reynaud now asked Prime Minister Churchill to allow France to be released from this commitment. Churchill refused, and instead proposed a political union between the two countries (Anglo-French Union) and the French government and military transferring France’s seat of power to its colonies in North Africa where they would continue the war. Both proposals were rejected by the French government, and on June 15, Reynaud resigned as Prime Minister, and was succeeded by World War I hero, Marshall Philippe Petain, who immediately made a radio broadcast indicating his intention to seek an armistice with Germany.
On June 21, 1940, French and German representatives met at the Forest of Compeigne, some 40 miles north of Paris and the location purposely chosen by Hitler, for negotiations, and inside the railway carriage where the 1918 Armistice of World War I had taken place. Hitler led the German delegation but later abruptly departed, and left the negotiations to his generals as a sign of contempt to the French delegates .
The French viewed the German demands for an armistice as unacceptably excessive; but as the Germans were firm and threatened to restart hostilities, the French relented, and the armistice was signed on June 22. The next day, negotiations between the French and Italians were held in Rome, leading to a separate armistice on June 24. On June 25, 1940, both armistices came into effect, officially ending hostilities.
Total casualties in the campaign in France and the Low Countries were: Germans – 155,000 (27,000 killed, 110,000 wounded, 18,000 wounded); French – 2.1 million (90,000 killed, 200,000 wounded, and 1.8 million captured), British – 68,000 (10,000 killed), Belgian – 23,000, Dutch – 10,000, and Polish – 6,000.
Aftermath Despite Germany’s overwhelming military position at the end of hostilities, the armistice negotiations were conducted with consideration of other realities: for Hitler, that the French government and army could very well move to French colonies in North Africa from where they could continue the war; and for the French government, that it wanted to remain in France but only if the Germans did not impose “dishonorable or excessive” terms. Terms that were deemed unacceptable included the following: that all of France would be occupied, that France should surrender its navy, or that France should relinquish its (vast) colonial territories.
Not only did Hitler not impose these terms, in fact, he desired that France remain a sovereign state for diplomatic and practical reasons: in the first case, France had ostensibly switched sides in the war, isolating Britain; and in the second case, France, with its large navy, would maintain its global colonial empire, which Germany could not because it did not have enough ships.
Thus, in the armistice agreement, France was allowed to remain a fully sovereign state, with its mainland territory and colonial possessions intact, with some exceptions: Alsace-Lorraine became part of the Greater German Reich, although not formally annexed into Germany; and Nord and Pas-de-Calais were attached to Belgium in the “German Military Administration of Belgium and Northern France”. France also retained its navy, but which was demobilized and disarmed, as were the other branches of the French armed forces.
Because of the continuing hostilities with Britain, as part of the armistice agreement, the German Army occupied the northern and western sections of France (some 55% of the French mainland), where it imposed military rule. The occupation was intended to be temporary until such time that Germany had defeated or had come to terms with Britain, which both the French and German governments believed was imminent. The Italian military also occupied a small area in the French Alps. In the rest of France (comprising 45% of the French mainland), which was not occupied and thus called zone libre (“free zone”), on July 10, 1940, the French government formed a new polity called the “French State” (French: État français), which dissolved the French Third Republic, and was led by Petain as Chief of State. (Excerpts taken from Wars of the 20th Century Volume 6 – World War II in Europe.)