The Armistice of June 22, 1940 was signed at 18:36 CET near Compiègne, France, by officials of Nazi Germany and the French Third Republic. It did not come into effect until after midnight on June 25.
Signatories for Germany included senior military officers like Wilhelm Keitel, the commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht, while those on the French side were more junior, such as General Charles Huntziger. Following the decisive German victory in the Battle of France, 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.
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