Himmler (Peter Padfield's Second World War)

by Peter Padfield

The inability of the western allies to stem the advance of the German armies across France inspired Mussolini to enter the war on Hitler’s side, fulfilling the earlier promise of a central European ‘Axis’ of the two dictatorships. On the same day, 10 June, the French government abandoned Paris; four days later German troops entered the capital. On 16 June the French Premier resigned, to be replaced by Marshal Pétain, who immediately entered armistice negotiations. The terms Hitler imposed were extraordinarily moderate considering the huge war indemnity the Germans had hoped to claim from France in the first war, the humiliation they had actually forced on Russia at Brest-Litovsk in 1918 and Germany’s own humiliation at Versailles.