armistice

armistice, mutual agreement whereby the fighting stops so that permanent peace terms can be agreed upon later. Several were agreed during the course of the War, some of them on more lenient terms than the unconditional surrender mostly demanded by the Allies. Those dictated by the Allies were controlled by Allied Control Commissions.

The first armistice to be signed was between France and Germany in June 1940. Marshal Pétain, using the Spanish government as an intermediary, requested one immediately he was appointed French prime minister on 17 June 1940. Hitler, who desired it as much as the French, did not demand total surrender as he did not want to risk the French government carrying on the war from North Africa, where it could have escaped with the French fleet and at least some aircraft. He therefore decreed that France should survive as a sovereign power, and that there should be no demands concerning her empire, in case this forced the colonies to side with the UK. He decided, too, that only part of France would be occupied. The French Army would be demobilized in the unoccupied zone, but some units could be retained to maintain law and order. The French fleet was to be neutralized under German or Italian control, but no demands were to be made for it to be handed over and the French government was to be assured that once peace terms had been agreed the fleet would be returned to it. Any territorial demands on France would be a matter for a peace settlement.

On 21 June the French delegation, headed by General Huntziger, met Hitler and other Nazi leaders in the same railway coach in the forest of Compiègne where the armistice had been signed in 1918. Peace terms were not discussed as Hitler wanted to see first what the British would do. Instead, Huntziger was simply handed an armistice convention of 24 articles which he was told were immutable. It was signed the next day but only came into force after there had been an armistice with Italy, which, after declaring war on the Allies on 10 June, had launched an attack on France on 21 June. Mussolini, who had been vainly hoping for some success against the French before agreeing to an armistice—the only town of any size the Italians had taken was Menton—realized he was in no position to delay. The French delegation signed the armistice in Rome on the evening of 24 June, hostilities ceased at 0135 the next morning, and an Italian zone of occupation was established (see Map 34). Negotiations were continued between the Germans and the French to establish peace terms. But none were ever signed and in November 1942 the Germans, and the Italians, violated the terms of the armistice by occupying the whole of France.

Once Sicily was invaded by the Allies in July 1943 it became obvious that Italy could not remain in the war. Mussolini's advisers attempted to make him seek an agreement from Hitler that Italy should seek an armistice with the Allies, but this came to nothing. Mussolini fell from power on 25 July, but Italy, with German troops pouring into the country, remained in the war on the Axis side, though the new prime minister, Marshal Badoglio, began secret, if ambivalent, negotiations with the Allies who insisted on Italy's unconditional surrender. With the king, Victor Emmanuel III, constantly assuring the Germans that Italy would not desert them, and Badoglio still ambivalent as to whether he would honour its terms, the armistice was signed secretly by General Giuseppe Castellano on 3 September, the day of the Allied landings at Reggio di Calabria, near Syracuse in Sicily, and was announced just before the Allies landed at Salerno at 0330 hours on 9 September. Known as the ‘short’ armistice, this covered the military surrender only, and included the repatriation of prisoners-of-war and the use of Italy as an Allied base. Its final clause provided that Italy would observe additional political, economic, and financial terms to be imposed at a later date. Known as the ‘long’ armistice, these were signed by Badoglio and Eisenhower on 29 September at Malta. They gave the Allies complete control over every aspect of the Italian state and the Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories which had been formed to administer Sicily was extended to Italy, though the Italian government soon controlled some parts of the country. The Italian fleet escaped to Malta as ordered (one battleship was lost to German air attack), but on land the Germans forced the surrender of all Italian forces in Italy and the Balkans, the principal Italian cities were occupied, and the German occupation of Italy was announced.

Other armistices included those between Vichy French forces and the Allies at Acre in July 1941 after the Syrian campaign; between Finland and the Allies; and between Romania and the Allies, in which, among other matters, the territorial realignment of parts of Bessarabia were formalized; and between Bulgaria and the Allies. All these armistices took place in September– October 1944, with the USSR dictating the terms and running the Allied Control Commission. Preliminary terms for an armistice with the USSR were also agreed by Hungary's Admiral Horthy in October 1944 but the Nazis organized a coup and he was forced to denounce it after broadcasting its terms on 15 October 1944.