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The Germans marched into deserted Paris on June 14. Reynaud fled to England, leaving the government in the hands of Marshal Henri Petain, 84, who was still revered as the man who had defended Verdun during World War I under the watchword, "They shall not pass." But on June 17 he asked Hitler for an armistice. Hardly noticed in the debacle was an appeal from London one day later by an obscure French general named Charles de Gaulle, who, in a speech that was to become the rallying cry for the Resistance, asked all Frenchmen to fight on under his leadership: "France has lost a battle! But France has not lost the war!"
Hitler's terms seemed mild: Germany would occupy and rule the northern half of France and its Atlantic coast; the southern half could remain an autonomous state under Petain, with its capital in the sleepy resort town of Vichy. But he insisted that the armistice be signed in Compiegne, just outside Paris, in the same railroad car where Marshal Foch had made the Germans sign the armistice in 1918, the site marked by a stone tablet placing blame for the war on "the criminal pride of the German empire." CBS correspondent William Shirer, who was standing nearby, reported that Hitler's face was "afire with scorn, anger, hate, revenge, triumph." Once the armistice was signed, Hitler had the stone blown up and the train shipped to Germany. (After World War II the French replaced the stone and restored the train, which stands there in the gloomy forest to this day.)
In the last days before the fall of France, Churchill had summoned up his most heroic eloquence to rally his beleaguered people. "We shall go on to the end," he told Parliament on June 4. "We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans . . . we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." And again on June 18: "Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say, 'This was their finest hour.' "
Hitler could not believe it. The French had been defeated, the war won, and the British must see reason. In a speech to the Reichstag, he jeered at the idea of Churchill's fighting on in Canada, but he offered to make peace. "I can see no reason why this war must go on," he said. Churchill decided not even to answer, leaving it to Lord Halifax to declare, "We shall not stop fighting until freedom is secure." Hitler was again lying. Just three days before his "peace speech" on July 19, he had officially told his commanders, "I have decided to prepare a landing operation against England."