France falls in six weeks and the Vichy regime collaborates with Germany
A stunning defeat splits the country between occupation and collaboration
Quick facts
- Location
- Compiegne and Vichy, France
- Key people
- Marshal Philippe Petain
- Armistice
- 22 June 1940
What happened
German forces invaded France through Belgium and the Ardennes on 10 May 1940, bypassing the Maginot Line, and defeated French and British forces so quickly that France signed the Second Armistice at Compiegne on 22 June 1940, only six weeks after the invasion began. The armistice split the country into a German-occupied zone in the north and along the coasts and a nominally independent zone in the south governed from the town of Vichy by Marshal Philippe Petain, who dissolved the Third Republic on 10 July. The Vichy government declared neutrality but actively collaborated with Germany, passing antisemitic laws, seizing Jewish-owned property, and helping deport tens of thousands of French and foreign Jews to Nazi concentration and death camps.
Why it matters
The speed and scale of the defeat shattered France's prewar self-image as a major military power, and the Vichy regime's active collaboration in the Holocaust left a legacy of national reckoning that French politics and historiography wrestled with for decades afterward. The war's full course is covered on its own dedicated timeline.
How we know
The armistice's official text and Vichy's own government decrees survive in French and German archives, and the postwar trials of Vichy officials, including Petain's own 1945 trial for treason, produced extensive documentary evidence of the regime's policies and actions.
Sources
- Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. France · Reputable sourceencyclopedia.ushmm.org · The domain "encyclopedia.ushmm.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Smithsonian Magazine. Was Vichy France a Puppet Government or a Willing Nazi Collaborator? · Reputable sourcesmithsonianmag.com · The domain "smithsonianmag.com" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- World War II → · Follow the fall of France and the wider Second World War on its own timeline