Blitzkrieg

Page 1 of 8

• 1. Hitler dictates terms
• 2. Allies unprepared
• 3. German tactics
• 4. New form of warfare?
• 5. Antecedents
• 6. Development of the strategy
• 7. Applying the doctrine
• 8. Find out more
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Hitler dictates terms

On 21 June 1940, early in the second year of World War Two, the French president, Marshall Philippe Pétain, sued for peace with Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. In the course of the negotiations Pétain - victor of the battle of Verdun in World War One - agreed to cede three-fifths of French territory to German control.

In one of history's great ironies, Hitler insisted that the armistice be signed in the very railway car in which Germany had been compelled to admit defeat at the end of World War One. He was in a good position to dictate such terms.

It had taken only a few short weeks for the Wehrmacht (the German army), under his control, to crush the army of the French Third Republic . His well-trained and organised troops had also caused France's Allies, in the form of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), to beat an ignominious retreat from continental Europe.

Thus between 10 May and 21 June 1940, the Wehrmacht had accomplished what the army of Kaiser Wilhelm II had not managed to do in four years of desperate fighting in World War One.

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