Battle of France

In World War II, the Battle of France, also called the Fall of France, was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries from 10 May 1940 that ended the Phoney War. The battle was made up of two parts.

Battle of France
Part of World War II
British and French soldiers taken prisoner in Northern France.
Date 10 May – 25 June 1940 Location France, Low Countries Result Decisive German victory
Belligerents
Axis: Germany Italy (from June 10)	Allies: France United Kingdom Belgium Netherlands Template:Country data Polish government-in-exile Canada Czechoslovakia Luxembourg
Commanders and leaders
Gerd von Rundstedt (Army Group A) Fedor von Bock (Army Group B) Wilhelm von Leeb (Army Group C) Prince Umberto (Army Group West)	Maurice Gamelin Maxime Weygand Charles de Gaulle Lord Gort (British Expeditionary Force) Leopold III Henri Winkelman Template:Country data Polish government-in-exile Władysław Sikorski
Strength
Germany: 141 divisions 7,378 guns 2,445 tanks 5,638 aircraft 3,350,000 troops Alps on 20 June 300,000 Italians	144 divisions 13,974 guns 3,383 tanks 2,935 aircraft 3,300,000 troops Alps on 20 June ~150,000 French
Casualties and losses
Germany: 28,225 dead (possibly as high as 49,000) 113,152 wounded 13, 307 missing 1,290 aircraft lost (10 May to 24 June 1940) 1,097 aircrew killed, 1395 injured, 1930 missing 795 tanks Italy: 1,247 dead or missing, 2,631 wounded, 2,151 hospitalised due to frostbite1	360,000 dead or wounded, 1,900,000 captured 1029 RAF aircraft, 1274 french aircraft
1 Italian forces were involved in fighting in the French Alps, where severe sub-zero temperatures are common, even during the summer.

In the first part, called Fall Gelb in German ("Case Yellow" in English), German tank units pushed through the Ardennes to circle the Allied units that moved into Belgium. Most of the British Expeditionary Force and many French soldiers escaped to England from Dunkirk during Operation Dynamo.

The second part of the battle, called Fall Rot in German ("Case Red" in English), started on 5 June, when German armed forces circled the Maginot Line to attack the rest of France. Italy got into the war and started its own invasion of France, in the southeast of the country, on 10 June. The French government left Paris for Bordeaux, and the Germans took Paris on 14 June. After the French Second Army Group's surrender on 22 June, Philippe Pétain signed an armistice on 25 June.

The campaign was a major victory for the Axis Powers.

The French Third Republic ended. France was split into a German-occupied part in the north and west, a small Italian-occupied part in the southeast, and a satellite state part in the south that was called Vichy France. Southern France was invaded by Germany on 10 November 1942.

France began to be freed by the Allies at the Battle of Normandy in 1944. The Low Countries were freed later in 1944 and in 1945.

Battle Of France Media

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  French soldiers in underground bunkers on the Maginot Line during the Phoney War

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  French soldier in the German village of Lauterbach in Saarland

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  The evolution of German plans for Fall Gelb, the invasion of the Low Countries

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  The three potential Allied defensive positions in Belgium against a German invasion
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  Map of Dyle plan with Breda variant
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  The classic characteristic of what is commonly known as "blitzkrieg" is a highly mobile form of infantry, armour and aircraft working in combined arms. (German armed forces, June 1942)

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  British troops of the 2nd BEF move up to the front, June 1940

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  Men of the 1st Royal Welch Fusiliers fire Boys anti-tank rifles near Etaples, February 1940

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  Belgian anti-aircraft gun, circa 1940

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  Rotterdam city centre after the bombing

Related pages

• Blitzkrieg
• Battle for Holland
• Vichy France
• Western Front

References

• Churchill, Winston S. The Second World War: Their Finest Hour (Volume 2). Houghton Mifflin Company, Cambridge, 1949
• Durand, Yves. La Captivite, Histoire des prisonniers de guerre francais 1939 - 1945, Paris, 1981. Best available study of the French prisoners of war in German captivity.
• Frieser, Karl-Heinz Blitzkrieg-Legende—Der Westfeldzug 1940. Oldenbourg, 2005.
• Gunsburg, Jeffrey A., 'The Battle of the Belgian Plain, 12-14 May 1940: The First Great Tank Battle', The Journal of Military History, Vol. 56, No. 2. (Apr., 1992), pp. 207–244.
• Harman, Nicholas. (1980) Dunkirk; the necessary myth. London: Hodder and Stoughton. ISBN 0-340-24299-X
• Hooton, E.R. (2007). Luftwaffe at War; Blitzkrieg in the West. London: Chervron/Ian Allen. ISBN 978-1-85780-272-6.
• Jackson, Julian T.. The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940. Oxford UP, 2003.
• Krause, M. and Cody, P. (2006) Historical Perspectives of the Operational Art. Center of Military History Publication. ISBN 978-0-16072-564-7
• Taylor, A.J.P. and Mayer, S.L., eds. A History Of World War Two. London: Octopus Books, 1974. ISBN 0-70640-399-1.
• Weal, John (1997). Junkers Ju 87 Stukageschwader 1937-41. Oxford: Osprey. ISBN 1-85532-636-1
• Weinberg, Gerhard L. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. Cambridge UP, 1995.
• Martin, J. and Martin, P. Ils étaient là: l’armée de l’Air septembre 39 - juin 40. Aero-Editions, 2001. ISBN 2-9514567-2-7

More reading

• Alexander, Martin. Republic in Danger, General Maurice Gamelin and the Politics of French Defence, 1933-1940, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. An examination of Gamelin’s career and French military preparations during the 1930s. Highly complimentary work stressing French rational preparations for the war.
• Blaxland, Gregory (1973). Destination Dunkirk. Military Book Society. pp. 436pp. This was the first detailed account of the B.E.F. in France. The fight for survival finished with the return from France in the little ships
• Bloch, Marc. Strange Defeat, A Statement of Evidence Written in 1940, Hopkins, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1968. Written in 1940 by a veteran of the campaign. Considered one of the early key works on understanding how the French saw this defeat. Writer killed in 1943 by Gestapo due to resistance work.
• Cornwell, Peter D. (2008). The Battle Of France Then And Now. Battle of Britain International Ltd. Six nations locked in aerial combat - September 1939 to June 1940.
• Doughty, Robert Allan. The Seeds of Disaster: The Development of French Army Doctrine, 1919-1939, Archon, 1986. Examination of errors the French made in military doctrine during the inter-war years and how this, not defeatism or lack of quality equipment, led to the defeat of 1940.
• Doughty, Robert Allan. The Breaking Point: Sedan and the Fall of France, 1940. Archon, 1990. Classic study on the events of 13 and 14 May.
• Gerard, Lt. Robert M. Tank-Fighter Team, 1943
• Horne, Alistair. To Lose a Battle, 1940, Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1969. Narrative account of the Fall of France in 1940. Very readable but also dated in terms of its non-critical acceptance of the defeatism argument.
• Keisling, Eugenia C. Arming Against Hitler: France and the Limits of Military Planning. UP of Kansas, 1996. Study stressing the weaknesses of the French reserve, mobilization and training system. Rejects the defeatism interpretation.
• Maier, Klaus A. Germany and the Second World War: Germany's Initial Conquests in Europe. Oxford UP, 1991. English translation of a thorough collective German academic study, giving a detailed account of all events.
• May, Ernest R. Strange Victory: Hitler's Conquest of France. Hill & Wang, 2001. A modern account for the general public focusing on politics, strategy and intelligence.
• Mosier, John. The Blitzkrieg Myth: How Hitler and the Allies Misread the Strategic Realities of World War II. HarperCollins, 2003. Strongly revisionist interpretation, denying that the concept of Blitzkrieg can even be applied to this campaign.
• Shepperd, Alan. France 1940, Blitzkrieg in the West; Osprey Campaign Series #3, Osprey Publishing, 1990.
• Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941. Johns Hopkins UP, 2002. In the period just before the surrender, Shirer worked for CBS News under Edward R Murrow, moving around Europe as events dictated. This is his written account of the period.
• Young, Robert J. In Command of France: French Foreign Policy and Military Planning, 1933-1940, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978.

Other websites

• BBC - History - WW2: Fall of France Campaign (Flash animation of the campaign)
• Official German account of the Battle of France (as published in 1940) Archived 2008-12-05 at the Wayback Machine
• Battle of France Archived 2007-05-04 at the Wayback Machine
• Armistice Agreement Between Germany and France, 22 June 1940 Archived 20 March 2018 at the Wayback Machine