Armistices ARMÉE DE L’AIR See French Air Force ARMÉE DE L’AIR DE VICHY See French Air Force ARMÉE DE L’ARMISTICE See armistice; French Army ARMIA KRAJOWA See Polish Army “Home Army.” ARMISTICES An armistice is an agreement on cessation of hostilities in the expectation that a full peace settlement will follow, but does not in itself constitute the product of final negotiations, though it may lay out basic terms The Finns and Soviets agreed to an armistice to end the Finnish–Soviet War (1939–1940), effective on March 13, 1940 That war resumed when Finland joined the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, launching what the Finns call the “Continuation War.” France agreed to an armistice with Germany on June 22, 1940, that left French prisoners of war in Germany until the “end of the war.” It split France into occupied and unoccupied zones, disarmed it to a level of 100,000 men, docked the French Navy, and forced France to pay for the cost of German occupation troops France and Italy agreed to an armistice on June 24, ending a two-week war begun by Benito Mussolini to muscle in on French defeat at German hands No formal peace followed between France and either Axis power The rump state of Vichy was instead occupied by the Germans in the wake of the TORCH landings by Western Allied forces in Algiers in November 1942 Vichy forces agreed to a local armistice with the British in Lebanon on July 14, 1941 Simple ceasefires rather than armistices with local Vichy officials were arranged across North Africa, as overseas Vichy laid down its arms after initially resisting the landings in Algiers Joseph Stalin wanted an armistice to stop the German onslaught during the opening weeks of BARBAROSSA, preliminary to surrender of large swaths of Soviet territory to Germany, but Adolf Hitler was interested only in total victory and a war of racial annihilation in the east, a position that converted Stalin to a policy of all-out resistance A secret armistice was arranged by the Western Allies with the new Italian government of Marshal Pietro Badoglio in the summer of 1943 A more detailed armistice was agreed in talks held on Malta, but the occupation was then badly botched, permitting German troops to occupy all of north and central Italy Rumania signed an armistice with representatives of the three major Allied powers in Moscow on September 12, 1944 The Finns signed an armistice on September 19 that required them to attack German forces still on their territory Bulgaria signed an armistice with the Soviet Union and the Western Allies on October 28 A Hungarian–Soviet armistice was agreed in mid-October but aborted by German 72