Franco-Italian Armistice

The Franco-Italian Armistice, or Armistice of Villa Incisa, signed on 24 June 1940, in effect from 25 June, ended the brief Italian invasion of France during the Second World War.

On 10 June 1940, Italy declared war on France while the latter was already on the verge of defeat in its war with Germany. After the fall of Paris on 14 June, the French requested an armistice from Germany and, realising that the Germans would not allow them to continue the war against their Italian allies, also sent an armistice request to Italy, whose forces had not yet advanced. Fearing that the war would end before Italy had achieved any of its aims, Prime Minister Benito Mussolini ordered a full-scale invasion across the Alps to begin on 21 June. The Franco-German armistice was signed on the evening of the 22 June, but would not come into force until the Italians signed their own armistice. Their troops unable to break through, the Italians abandoned their major war aims and signed the armistice on 24 June. It came into effect early the next morning. It established a small occupation zone and an Italian Armistice Commission with France (Commissione Italiana d'Armistizio con la Francia, CIAF) in Turin to oversee French compliance. Armistice commissions were also established for French North Africa and French Somaliland. The armistice remained in force until November 1942, when during Case Anton the Italians occupied all of southeastern France and Corsica and invaded Tunisia.

On 17 June, the day after he transmitted a formal request for an armistice to the German government, French Foreign Minister Paul Baudoin handed to the Papal nuncio Valerio Valeri a note that said: "The French government, headed by Marshal Pétain, requests that the Holy See transmit to the Italian government as quickly as possible the note it has also transmitted through the Spanish ambassador to the German government. It also requests that he convey to the Italian government its desire to find together the basis of a lasting peace between the two countries." That same morning, Mussolini received word from Hitler that France had asked Germany for an armistice, and he went to meet Hitler at Munich, charging General Roatta, Admiral Raffaele de Courten and Air Brigadier Egisto Perino with drafting Italy's demands. Ciano wrote in his diary about the ridiculous demand some of his staff suggested: the entire French fleet, all its colonies, all its locomotives, the Mona Lisa. The final list of demands actually presented to the French were mild. Italy dropped its claims to the Rhône Valley, Corsica, Tunisia, and French Somaliland. According to Romain Rainero, Mussolini still clung to the goals laid out in his meeting with Hitler on 18 June as late as 21 June, when the "Protocols of the Armistice Conditions between France and Italy" were officially published in Rome. It was his view that it was not German pressure that led him to back down. Indeed, Hitler had wanted the Italians to claim even more territory from the defeated French. Badoglio, however, had warned Mussolini that a larger occupation of southern France would require fifteen divisions.

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