Henri Parisot (1881–1963) was a French general during the First World War (1914–18) and Second World War (1939–45).
Parisot fought with the infantry during the First World War. In February 1918, he was appointed attaché to the Italian general headquarters. In April, he was moved to the newly established allied headquarters of Ferdinand Foch. He remained with the French headquarters in occupied Germany until December 1925. Following this, he was given command of a regiment until 17 June 1933, when he was sent to Rome as military attaché at the French embassy. [1]
As attaché at Rome, Parisot advocated détente with Italy. This policy was at odds with that in favour at the Deuxième Bureau (the French intelligence agency). As a result, Parisot found his communications with the Bureau stymied. [2] He was still attaché at Rome when Italy declared war on France on 10 June 1940. He was repatriated and then selected as one of the French delegation that formally negotiated and signed the armistice with Germany on 22 June and the armistice with Italy on 24 June. [3] [4] [5]
After the armistice with Italy, Parisot was sent to Turin as deputy chief of the French delegation to the Italian Armistice Commission. He was valued because he had a good relationship with the Italian chief-of-staff, Marshal Pietro Badoglio, going back to their time at the allied headquarters under Foch in 1918. [6]
Henri Philippe Bénoni Omer Joseph Pétain, commonly known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain, was a French general who commanded the French Army in World War I and became the head of the collaborationist regime of Vichy France, from 1940 to 1944, during World War II.
Maxime Weygand was a French military commander in World War I and World War II, as well as a high ranking member of the Vichy regime.
Ferdinand Foch was a French general, Marshal of France and member of the Académie Française. He distinguished himself as Supreme Allied Commander on the Western Front during the First World War in 1918.
Ugo Cavallero was an Italian military commander before and during World War II. He was dismissed from his command due to his lacklustre performance, and was arrested upon the fall of Benito Mussolini's regime. Cavallero was later freed by the Germans, but refused to collaborate and was found dead the following day.
The Armistice of 11 November 1918 was the armistice signed at Le Francport near Compiègne that ended fighting on land, at sea, and in the air in World War I between the Entente and their last remaining opponent, Germany. Previous armistices had been agreed with Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary. It was concluded after the German government sent a message to American president Woodrow Wilson to negotiate terms on the basis of a recent speech of his and the earlier declared "Fourteen Points", which later became the basis of the German surrender at the Paris Peace Conference, which took place the following year.
The Armistice of 22 June 1940, sometimes referred to as the Second Armistice at Compiègne, was an agreement signed at 18:36 on 22 June 1940 near Compiègne, France by officials of Nazi Germany and the French Third Republic. It became effective at midnight on 25 June.
Shunroku Hata was a field marshal (gensui) in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. He was the last surviving Japanese military officer with a marshal's rank. Hata was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1948, but was paroled in 1955.
The Supreme War Council was a central command based in Versailles that coordinated the military strategy of the principal Allies of World War I: Britain, France, Italy, the United States, and Japan. It was founded in 1917 after the Russian Revolution and with Russia's withdrawal as an ally imminent. The council served as a second source of advice for civilian leadership, a forum for preliminary discussions of potential armistice terms, later for peace treaty settlement conditions, and it was succeeded by the Conference of Ambassadors in 1920.
The Forest of Compiègne is a large forest in the region of Picardy, France, near the city of Compiègne and approximately 80 kilometres (50 mi) north of Paris.
Friedrich August Eberhard von Mackensen was a German general and war criminal during World War II who served as commander of the 1st Panzer Army and the 14th Army. Following the war, Mackensen stood trial for war crimes before a British military tribunal in Italy where he was convicted and sentenced to death for his involvement in the Ardeatine massacre, in which hundreds of Italian civilians and political prisoners were shot. The sentence was later commuted and Mackensen was released in 1952. He died in West Germany in 1969.
Ubaldo Soddu was an Italian general and politician who held the position of Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army and Undersecretary of State for War during the initial phases of World War II. On 13 June 1940, immediately after the outbreak of hostilities with France and the United Kingdom, he assumed the position of deputy chief of the General Staff. Promoted to army general, he replaced general Sebastiano Visconti Prasca as commander of the Albanian Higher Troop Command during the Greco-Italian War on 8 November 1940. Because of the defeat Italian troops suffered between 22 and 23 November 1940, he was replaced after four weeks in command by the Italian Royal Army's chief of staff, General Ugo Cavallero.
Sebastiano Visconti Prasca was an Italian general. A veteran of the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–1912 and World War I, he led the initial offensive of the Greco-Italian War in 1940 during World War II, but was relieved of his command after two weeks for incompetence and relieved by General Ubaldo Soddu.
The Italian invasion of France, also called the Battle of the Alps, was the first major Italian engagement of World War II and the last major engagement of the Battle of France.
General Sir James Handyside Marshall-Cornwall was a 20th Century British Army soldier and military historian.
The Italian Military Information Service was the military intelligence organization for the Royal Army of the Kingdom of Italy from 1925 until 1946, and of the Italian Republic until 1949. The SIM was Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini's equivalent to the German Abwehr. In the early years of the war, the SIM scored important intelligence successes. Rommel’s successful military operations in North Africa in 1942 were substantially facilitated by the SIM through the securing of the U.S. Black Code used by Colonel Bonner Fellers to communicate plans for British military operations to his Headquarters in Washington.
Major-General Sir Kenneth William Dobson Strong was a senior officer of the British Army who served in the Second World War, rising to become Director General of Intelligence. A graduate of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, Strong was commissioned into the 1st Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers in 1920. After service as an Intelligence Officer with his battalion in Ireland from 1920 to 1922 during the Irish War of Independence, he volunteered for service as an interpreter and was posted to Germany with the British Army of the Rhine. In 1935 he returned to Germany as a member of the International Force supervising the Saarland plebiscite. Afterwards, he joined the German Intelligence Section at the War Office. In 1937 he became Assistant Military attaché in Berlin.
The Glade of the Armistice is a French war memorial in the Forest of Compiègne in Picardy, France, near the city of Compiègne approximately 60 kilometres (37 mi) north of Paris. It was built at the location where the Germans signed the Armistice of 11 November 1918 that ended World War I. During World War II, Adolf Hitler chose the same spot for the French and Germans to sign the Armistice of 22 June 1940 after Germany won the Battle of France. The site was destroyed by the Germans but rebuilt after the war.
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.
The Compiègne Wagon was the train carriage in which both the Armistice of 11 November 1918 and Armistice of 22 June 1940 were signed.
Luigi Marchesi was an officer in the Royal Italian Army during World War II, most notable for his involvement in the events surrounding the Armistice of Cassibile.