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2 Life after the Fall of France JUNE 24, 1940–AUGUST 29, 1940 Monday, June 24, 1940 ......................................... France has to hand over all her army matériel and resources to Germany , plus the greater part of her metropolitan land area; all to be employed against her ally. She has now no independent government, and will be allowed only a small armed force in the unoccupied region south of a line drawn from Geneva to Tours. All the west coast is to remain under German control. Our army is to be demobilized at once except those who were taken prisoner. These will not be released until peace is signed. Hitler does not mention peace terms at this point, so it could be in years! Also the cost of the occupation is to be supported by the French in the meantime! These are the terms of the Armistice that France has signed in the forest of Compiègne.1 In London, the French General de Gaulle is organizing a Committee of France, which will be legal, in cooperation with the British Government. This organization will represent independent France in opposition to the Government put in place by the Germans and will uphold the treaty obligations of France with her ally. General de Gaulle has been deprived of his military rank for all of this by the French German-controlled Government 1. The terms of the armistice created a zone of occupation that included Paris, northern France, the Atlantic coast, and French borders with Belgium and Switzerland . The southern part of France remained unoccupied; a collaborationist government , headed by Pétain, was established at Vichy, a famous spa some 320 kilometers southeast of Paris. Unoccupied France, along with French colonies, was administered by the Vichy government. French prisoners of war, estimated at 1.8 million, remained in German hands. Except for a small ‘‘Armistice Army’’ of one hundred thousand that was maintained to help keep domestic order in the Unoccupied Zone, the French army was demobilized. The French fleet was to be disarmed, and France was required to assume the cost of occupation, which would total about $2 billion a year. but that matters not a penny! Thank goodness there are men with still some fight in them!!2 Tuesday, June 25, 1940 ........................................ Today is the day that prophecy marked to stop the invaders on the Loire river, but it seems that we are the ones to be stopped. We handed down arms yesterday evening at midnight, six hours after Hitler was noti- fied of the signing of the Franco/Italian Armistice in Rome. We still do not know the terms of this Armistice, but it is disgraceful to think that we had to sign it with a country who has up to date suffered practically nothing of the fighting, much less reduced us to a state of surrender. Today is also National mourning day as proclaimed by the Pétain Government . At 11 am there is to be a minute of silence in honor of the dead, many of them useless dead.3 Why on June 13th, when Pétain decided we could resist no longer, did our men continue to fight? Why this waiting of six hours after the signing of the Italian Armistice? I know nothing of strategic tactics, but I feel we have been duped badly. The selfish side of 2. In a June 18, 1940, BBC Broadcast from London, General Charles de Gaulle delivered a stirring speech in which he told the French people: ‘‘This war has not been settled by the Battle of France. This war is a world war . . . whatever happens the flame of resistance must not and will not be extinguished.’’ He also appealed to French officers, soldiers, and workmen in the British territories to join him in the fight against Germany. Quoted in John Keegan, The Second World War (New York: Penguin Books, 1989), p. 86. Evidently Virginia heard this broadcast. De Gaulle founded the Free French, an anti-German and anti-Vichy movement that included French forces who had been evacuated to England. On June 28 Britain recognized de Gaulle as the ‘‘Leader of All Free Frenchmen’’ and gave financial support to the Free French. For his actions de Gaulle was charged with treason and condemned to death by the government at Vichy. While de Gaulle argued that the Vichy government was illegal, he ‘‘was technically a dissident and rebel,’’ which made ‘‘his position [in London ] more precarious than that of...

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