Second Armistice at Compiègne
The German Blitzkrieg defeated the French Army and France's will to fight and resist the invaders. After the Second Armistice at Compiègne, many Frenchmen, especially on the right, believed that their country had deserved to lose the war. Key leaders and politicians, led by the aging Pétain and the corrupt, power-hungry Pierre Laval, stepped in and proclaimed their devotion to the survival of France within a Hitlerian New Order for Europe. Overawing the French Parliament, which had fled occupied Paris and was meeting in exile in the resort town of Vichy, they forced their fellow politicians to grant them full powers to control the remainder of unoccupied France for the remainder of the war.