Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1971-083-01, Frankreich, französische Flüchtlinge

The Exodus (french: l'Exode) refers to was a massive flight of Belgian, Dutch, Luxembourgish, and French populations in May – June 1940 when the German army invaded Belgium, the Netherlands, and the majority of French territory during the

Battle of France The Battle of France (french: bataille de France) (10 May – 25 June 1940), also known as the Western Campaign ('), the French Campaign (german: Frankreichfeldzug, ) and the Fall of France, was the Nazi Germany, German invasion of French Third Rep ...

, after the breakthrough at Sedan. This exodus is one of the largest refugee crisis in the French history, and also one of thee largest population movements of the 20th century in Western Europe. During the summer of 1940 and in the following months, the French had to deal with millions of civilian refugees fleeing the war. Automobiles and horse-drawn carts carrying possessions clogged roads. As the government had not foreseen such a rapid military collapse, there were few plans to cope. Between six and ten million French fled, sometimes so quickly that they left uneaten meals on tables, even while officials stated that there was no need to panic and that civilians should stay. The population of

Chartres Chartres () is the prefecture of the Eure-et-Loir department in the Centre-Val de Loire region in France. It is located about southwest of Paris. At the 2019 census, there were 170,763 inhabitants in the metropolitan area of Chartres (as d ...

dropped from 23,000 to 800 and Lille from 200,000 to 20,000, while cities in the south such as Pau and Bordeaux rapidly grew in population.

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