Perfect Timing

Anybody with an interest in 20th Century history (and or French history) will be aware of what day it is today. At just after 6:50 p.m on 22 June 1940 in a railway carriage in the forest of Compiegne the Franco-German Armistice was signed and three days later the cease fire came into effect.


























Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler and one of their staff have those vital 'wish you were here' snaps taken.

Reading the Armistice Document some sixty-six years on at http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/wwii/frgearm.htm it's not surprising that, when the relief came for the French in 1944, there was such an outpouring of thanks to the British, Canadian and American troops after D-Day. The country signed away its existence and its future rights to any existence in much the same way as Germany had done in the same railway carriage at Versailles in 1918. The carriage itself was destroyed by allied bombing whilst it was in Berlin in 1945.

And tonight on BBC














Springtime for Hitler in Germany