Second Armistice at Compiègne

The Armistice of 22 June 1940 was signed at 18:36 near Compiègne, France, by the top military officials of Nazi Germany and more junior representatives from the French Third Republic. They included General Wilhelm Keitel, the commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht (the German Army), and General Charles Huntziger for the French side. 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 Compiègne Forest 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.