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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
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...
invasion of
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
during the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. On 3 September 1939, France
declared war A declaration of war is a formal act by which one state announces existing or impending war activity against another. The declaration is a performative speech act (or the signing of a document) by an authorized party of a national government, i ...
on Germany following the German
invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week aft ...
. In early September 1939, France began the limited
Saar Offensive The Saar Offensive was a French invasion of Saarland, Germany, in the first stages of World War II, from 7 to 16 September 1939. The original plans called for 40 divisions, and one armored division, three mechanised divisions, 78 artillery r ...
and by mid-October had withdrawn to their start lines. German armies invaded Belgium,
Luxembourg Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small lan ...
and
the Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
on 10 May 1940.
Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
entered the war on 10 June 1940 and attempted an
invasion of France France has been invaded on numerous occasions, by foreign powers or rival French governments; there have also been unimplemented invasion plans. * the 1746 War of the Austrian Succession, Austria-Italian forces supported by the British navy attemp ...
. France and the
Low Countries The term Low Countries, also known as the Low Lands ( nl, de Lage Landen, french: les Pays-Bas, lb, déi Niddereg Lännereien) and historically called the Netherlands ( nl, de Nederlanden), Flanders, or Belgica, is a coastal lowland region in N ...
were conquered, ending land operations on the Western Front until the
Normandy landings The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as ...
on 6 June 1944. In ''Fall Gelb'' ("Case Yellow"), German armoured units made a surprise push through the
Ardennes The Ardennes (french: Ardenne ; nl, Ardennen ; german: Ardennen; wa, Årdene ; lb, Ardennen ), also known as the Ardennes Forest or Forest of Ardennes, is a region of extensive forests, rough terrain, rolling hills and ridges primarily in Be ...
and then along the Somme valley, cutting off and surrounding the
Allied An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
units that had advanced into Belgium to meet the German armies there.
British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...
, Belgian and French forces were pushed back to the sea by the Germans; the British and French navies evacuated the encircled elements of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and the French and Belgian armies from
Dunkirk Dunkirk (french: Dunkerque ; vls, label=French Flemish, Duunkerke; nl, Duinkerke(n) ; , ;) is a commune in the department of Nord in northern France.Operation Dynamo Operation or Operations may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * ''Operation'' (game), a battery-operated board game that challenges dexterity * Operation (music), a term used in musical set theory * ''Operations'' (magazine), Multi-Man ...
. German forces began ("Case Red") on 5 June 1940. The sixty remaining French divisions and the two British divisions in France made a determined stand on the Somme and
Aisne Aisne ( , ; ; pcd, Ainne) is a French department in the Hauts-de-France region of northern France. It is named after the river Aisne. In 2019, it had a population of 531,345.air superiority Aerial supremacy (also air superiority) is the degree to which a side in a conflict holds control of air power over opposing forces. There are levels of control of the air in aerial warfare. Control of the air is the aerial equivalent of c ...
and armoured mobility. German armies outflanked the intact
Maginot Line The Maginot Line (french: Ligne Maginot, ), named after the French Minister of War André Maginot, is a line of concrete fortifications, obstacles and weapon installations built by France in the 1930s to deter invasion by Germany and force the ...
and pushed deep into France, occupying Paris unopposed on 14 June. After the flight of the French government and the collapse of the
French Army The French Army, officially known as the Land Army (french: Armée de Terre, ), is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces. It is responsible to the Government of France, along with the other components of the Armed For ...
, German commanders met with French officials on 18 June to negotiate an end to hostilities. On 22 June 1940, the
Second Armistice at Compiègne The Armistice of 22 June 1940 was signed at 18:36 near Compiègne, France, by officials of Nazi Germany and the Third French Republic. It did not come into effect until after midnight on 25 June. Signatories for Germany included Wilhelm Keitel, ...
was signed by France and Germany. The neutral
Vichy government Vichy France (french: Régime de Vichy; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was the fascist French state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. Officially independent, but with half of its terr ...
led by Marshal
Philippe Pétain Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Pétain (24 April 1856 – 23 July 1951), commonly known as Philippe Pétain (, ) or Marshal Pétain (french: Maréchal Pétain), was a French general who attained the position of Marshal of France at the end of World ...
replaced the Third Republic and German military occupation began along the French North Sea and Atlantic coasts and their hinterlands. The Italian invasion of France over the Alps took a small amount of ground and after the
armistice An armistice is a formal agreement of warring parties to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, as it may constitute only a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace. It is derived from the La ...
, Italy
occupied ' (Norwegian: ') is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is co-created with Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjærg. Season 2 premiered on 10 October ...
a small area in the south-east. The Vichy regime retained the (free zone) in the south. Following the Allied invasion of
French North Africa French North Africa (french: Afrique du Nord française, sometimes abbreviated to ANF) is the term often applied to the territories controlled by France in the North African Maghreb during the colonial era, namely Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. In ...
in November 1942, in
Case Anton Case Anton (german: link=no, Fall Anton) was the military occupation of France carried out by Germany and Italy in November 1942. It marked the end of the Vichy regime as a nominally-independent state and the disbanding of its army (the severel ...
, the Germans and Italians took control of the zone until it was liberated by the Allies in 1944.


Background


Maginot Line

During the 1930s, the French built the
Maginot Line The Maginot Line (french: Ligne Maginot, ), named after the French Minister of War André Maginot, is a line of concrete fortifications, obstacles and weapon installations built by France in the 1930s to deter invasion by Germany and force the ...
, fortifications along the border with Germany. The line was intended to economise on manpower and deter a German invasion across the FrancoGerman border by diverting it into Belgium, which could then be met by the best divisions of the
French Army The French Army, officially known as the Land Army (french: Armée de Terre, ), is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces. It is responsible to the Government of France, along with the other components of the Armed For ...
. The war would take place outside French territory, avoiding the destruction of the
First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. The main section of the Maginot Line ran from the Swiss border and ended at
Longwy Longwy (; older german: Langich, ; lb, label=Luxemburgish, Lonkech) is a commune in the French department of Meurthe-et-Moselle, Lorraine, administrative region of Grand Est, northeastern France. The inhabitants are known as ''Longoviciens''. ...
; the hills and woods of the
Ardennes The Ardennes (french: Ardenne ; nl, Ardennen ; german: Ardennen; wa, Årdene ; lb, Ardennen ), also known as the Ardennes Forest or Forest of Ardennes, is a region of extensive forests, rough terrain, rolling hills and ridges primarily in Be ...
region were thought to cover the area to the north. General
Philippe Pétain Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Pétain (24 April 1856 – 23 July 1951), commonly known as Philippe Pétain (, ) or Marshal Pétain (french: Maréchal Pétain), was a French general who attained the position of Marshal of France at the end of World ...
declared the Ardennes to be "impenetrable" as long as "special provisions" were taken to destroy an invasion force as it emerged from the Ardennes by a
pincer attack The pincer movement, or double envelopment, is a military maneuver in which forces simultaneously attack both flanks (sides) of an enemy formation. This classic maneuver holds an important foothold throughout the history of warfare. The pin ...
. The French commander-in-chief,
Maurice Gamelin Maurice Gustave Gamelin (, 20 September 1872 – 18 April 1958) was an army general in the French Army. Gamelin is remembered for his disastrous command (until 17 May 1940) of the French military during the Battle of France (10 May–22 June 1940 ...
also believed the area to be safe from attack, noting it "never favoured large operations". French war games held in 1938, of a hypothetical German armoured attack through the Ardennes, left the army with the impression that the region was still largely impenetrable and that this, along with the obstacle of the
Meuse River The Meuse ( , , , ; wa, Moûze ) or Maas ( , ; li, Maos or ) is a major European river, rising in France and flowing through Belgium and the Netherlands before draining into the North Sea from the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta. It has a t ...
, would allow the French time to bring up troops into the area to counter an attack.


German invasion of Poland

In 1939, the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
and
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
offered military support to
Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...
in the likely case of a German invasion. At dawn on 1 September 1939, the German
invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week aft ...
began.
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
and the United Kingdom declared war on 3 September, after an ultimatum for German forces immediately to withdraw their forces from Poland was not answered. Australia and New Zealand also declared war on 3 September, South Africa on 6 September and Canada on 10 September. While British and French commitments to Poland were met politically, the
Allies An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
failed to fulfil their military obligations to Poland, later called the
Western betrayal Western betrayal is the view that the United Kingdom, France, and sometimes the United States failed to meet their legal, diplomatic, military, and moral obligations with respect to the Czechoslovak and Polish states during the prelude to and af ...
by the Poles. The possibility of Soviet assistance to Poland had ended with the
Munich Agreement The Munich Agreement ( cs, Mnichovská dohoda; sk, Mníchovská dohoda; german: Münchner Abkommen) was an agreement concluded at Munich on 30 September 1938, by Nazi Germany, Germany, the United Kingdom, French Third Republic, France, and Fa ...
of 1938, after which the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
and Germany eventually negotiated the Nazi–Soviet Pact, which included an agreement to partition Poland. The Allies settled on a long-war strategy in which they would complete the rearmament plans of the 1930s while fighting a defensive land war against Germany and weakening its
war economy A war economy or wartime economy is the set of contingencies undertaken by a modern state to mobilize its economy for war production. Philippe Le Billon describes a war economy as a "system of producing, mobilizing and allocating resources t ...
with a trade
blockade A blockade is the act of actively preventing a country or region from receiving or sending out food, supplies, weapons, or communications, and sometimes people, by military force. A blockade differs from an embargo or sanction, which are le ...
, ready for an eventual invasion of Germany.


Phoney War

On 7 September, in accordance with the
Franco-Polish alliance The Franco-Polish Alliance was the military alliance between Poland and France that was active between the early 1920s and the outbreak of the Second World War. The initial agreements were signed in February 1921 and formally took effect in 1923 ...
, France began the
Saar Offensive The Saar Offensive was a French invasion of Saarland, Germany, in the first stages of World War II, from 7 to 16 September 1939. The original plans called for 40 divisions, and one armored division, three mechanised divisions, 78 artillery r ...
with an advance from the Maginot Line into the
Saar Saar or SAAR has several meanings: People Given name *Saar Boubacar (born 1951), Senegalese professional football player * Saar Ganor, Israeli archaeologist *Saar Klein (born 1967), American film editor Surname * Ain Saar (born 1968), Est ...
. France had mobilised 98 divisions (all but 28 of them reserve or fortress formations) and 2,500 tanks against a German force consisting of 43 divisions (32 of them reserves) and no tanks. The French advanced until they met the thin and undermanned
Siegfried Line The Siegfried Line, known in German as the ''Westwall'', was a German defensive line built during the 1930s (started 1936) opposite the French Maginot Line. It stretched more than ; from Kleve on the border with the Netherlands, along the west ...
. On 17 September, Gamelin gave the order to withdraw French troops to their starting positions; the last of them left Germany on 17 September, the day of the
Soviet invasion of Poland The Soviet invasion of Poland was a military operation by the Soviet Union without a formal declaration of war. On 17 September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east, 16 days after Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west. Subse ...
. Following the Saar Offensive, a period of inaction called the
Phoney War The Phoney War (french: Drôle de guerre; german: Sitzkrieg) was an eight-month period at the start of World War II, during which there was only one limited military land operation on the Western Front, when French troops invaded Germ ...
(the French , joke war or the German , sitting war) set in between the belligerents.
Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
had hoped that France and Britain would acquiesce in the conquest of Poland and quickly make peace. On 6 October, he made a peace offer to both Western powers.Shirer 1990, p. 715


German strategy


(Case Yellow)

On 9 October 1939, Hitler issued 6 (). Hitler recognised the necessity of military campaigns to defeat the Western European nations, preliminary to the conquest of territory in Eastern Europe, to avoid a
two-front war According to military terminology, a two-front war occurs when opposing forces encounter on two geographically separate fronts. The forces of two or more allied parties usually simultaneously engage an opponent in order to increase their chances ...
but these intentions were absent from Directive N°6. The plan was based on the seemingly more realistic assumption that German military strength would have to be built up for several years. Only limited objectives could be envisaged and were aimed at improving Germany's ability to survive a long war in the west. Hitler ordered a conquest of the
Low Countries The term Low Countries, also known as the Low Lands ( nl, de Lage Landen, french: les Pays-Bas, lb, déi Niddereg Lännereien) and historically called the Netherlands ( nl, de Nederlanden), Flanders, or Belgica, is a coastal lowland region in N ...
to be executed at the shortest possible notice to forestall the French and prevent Allied
air power Airpower or air power consists of the application of military aviation, military strategy and strategic theory to the realm of aerial warfare and close air support. Airpower began in the advent of powered flight early in the 20th century. Airpo ...
from threatening the industrial area of the
Ruhr The Ruhr ( ; german: Ruhrgebiet , also ''Ruhrpott'' ), also referred to as the Ruhr area, sometimes Ruhr district, Ruhr region, or Ruhr valley, is a polycentric urban area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population density of 2,800/km ...
. It would also provide the basis for a long-term air and sea campaign against Britain. There was no mention in the directive of a consecutive attack to conquer the whole of France, although the directive read that as much as possible of the border areas in northern France should be occupied. On 10 October 1939, Britain refused Hitler's offer of peace and on 12 October, France did the same. The pre-war German codename of plans for a campaign in the Low Countries was (Deployment Instruction No. 1, Case Yellow). Colonel-General
Franz Halder Franz Halder (30 June 1884 – 2 April 1972) was a German general and the chief of staff of the Oberkommando des Heeres, Army High Command (OKH) in Nazi Germany from 1938 until September 1942. During World War II, he directed the planning and i ...
(Chief of the General Staff (OKH), presented the first plan for on 19 October. entailed an advance through the middle of Belgium; envisioned a frontal attack, at a cost of half million German soldiers to attain the limited goal of throwing the Allies back to the
River Somme The Somme ( , , ) is a river in Picardy, northern France. The river is in length, from its source in the high ground of the former at Fonsomme near Saint-Quentin, to the Bay of the Somme, in the English Channel. It lies in the geological ...
. German strength in 1940 would then be spent and only in 1942 could the main attack against France begin. When Hitler raised objections to the plan and wanted an armoured breakthrough, as had happened in the invasion of Poland, Halder and Brauchitsch attempted to dissuade him, arguing that while the fast-moving mechanised tactics were effective against a "shoddy" Eastern European army, they would not work against a first-rate military like the French. Hitler was disappointed with Halder's plan and initially reacted by deciding that the Army should attack early, ready or not, hoping that Allied unreadiness might bring about an easy victory. Hitler proposed an invasion on 25 October 1939 but accepted that the date was probably unrealistic. On 29 October, Halder presented , with a secondary attack on the Netherlands.Shirer 1990, p. 718 On 5 November, Hitler informed
Walther von Brauchitsch Walther Heinrich Alfred Hermann von Brauchitsch (4 October 1881 – 18 October 1948) was a German field marshal and the Commander-in-Chief (''Oberbefehlshaber'') of the German Army during World War II. Born into an aristocratic military family ...
that he intended the invasion to begin on 12 November. Brauchitsch replied that the military had yet to recover from the Polish campaign and offered to resign; this was refused but two days later Hitler postponed the attack, giving poor weather as the reason for the delay. More postponements followed, as commanders persuaded Hitler to delay the attack for a few days or weeks, to remedy some defect in the preparations or to wait for better weather. Hitler also tried to alter the plan, which he found unsatisfactory; his weak understanding of how poorly prepared Germany was for war and how it would cope with losses of armoured vehicles were not fully considered. Though Poland had been quickly defeated, many armoured vehicles had been lost and were hard to replace. This led to the German effort becoming dispersed; the main attack would remain in central Belgium, secondary attacks would be undertaken on the flanks. Hitler made such a suggestion on 11 November, pressing for an early attack on unprepared targets. Halder's plan satisfied no-one, General
Gerd von Rundstedt Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt (12 December 1875 – 24 February 1953) was a German field marshal in the '' Heer'' (Army) of Nazi Germany during World War II. Born into a Prussian family with a long military tradition, Rundstedt entered th ...
, the commander of
Army Group A Army Group A (Heeresgruppe A) was the name of several German Army Groups during World War II. During the Battle of France, the army group named Army Group A was composed of 45½ divisions, including 7 armored panzer divisions. It was responsible ...
() recognised that it did not adhere to the classic principles of ( war of manoeuvre) that had guided German strategy since the 19th century. A breakthrough was needed to encircle and destroy the main body of Allied forces. The most practical place to achieve this would be in the region of Sedan, which lay in the sector of Army Group A. On 21 October, Rundstedt agreed with his chief of staff,
Erich von Manstein Fritz Erich Georg Eduard von Manstein (born Fritz Erich Georg Eduard von Lewinski; 24 November 1887 – 9 June 1973) was a German Field Marshal of the ''Wehrmacht'' during the Second World War, who was subsequently convicted of war crimes and ...
, that an alternative operational plan to reflect these principles was needed, by making Army Group A as strong as possible at the expense of
Army Group B Army Group B (German: ') was the title of three German Army Groups that saw action during World War II. Operational history Army Group B first took part in the Battle of France in 1940 in Belgium and the Netherlands. The second formation of ...
to the north.


Manstein Plan

While Manstein was formulating new plans in
Koblenz Koblenz (; Moselle Franconian language, Moselle Franconian: ''Kowelenz''), spelled Coblenz before 1926, is a German city on the banks of the Rhine and the Moselle, a multi-nation tributary. Koblenz was established as a Roman Empire, Roman mili ...
, ''Generalleutnant''
Heinz Guderian Heinz Wilhelm Guderian (; 17 June 1888 – 14 May 1954) was a German general during World War II who, after the war, became a successful memoirist. An early pioneer and advocate of the " blitzkrieg" approach, he played a central role in t ...
, commander of the
XIX Army Corps The XIX Army Corps ( German: ''XIX. Armeekorps'') was an armored corps of the German Wehrmacht between 1 July 1939 and 16 November 1940, when the unit was renamed Panzer Group 2 (German: ''Panzergruppe 2'') and later 2nd Panzer Army (German: ''2. P ...
, was lodged in a nearby hotel. Manstein was initially considering a move north from Sedan, directly in the rear of the main Allied mobile forces in Belgium. When Guderian was invited to contribute to the plan during informal discussions, he proposed that most of the ''Panzerwaffe'' should be concentrated at Sedan. This concentration of armour would advance to the west to the
English Channel The English Channel, "The Sleeve"; nrf, la Maunche, "The Sleeve" (Cotentinais) or ( Jèrriais), (Guernésiais), "The Channel"; br, Mor Breizh, "Sea of Brittany"; cy, Môr Udd, "Lord's Sea"; kw, Mor Bretannek, "British Sea"; nl, Het Kana ...
, without waiting for the main body of infantry divisions. This might lead to a strategic collapse of the enemy, avoiding the relatively high number of casualties normally caused by a ''
Kesselschlacht Encirclement is a military term for the situation when a force or target is isolated and surrounded by enemy forces. The situation is highly dangerous for the encircled force. At the strategic level, it cannot receive supplies or reinforcem ...
'' (cauldron battle). Such a risky independent use of armour had been widely discussed in Germany before the war but OKH doubted such an operation could work. Manstein's general operational ideas won immediate support from Guderian, who understood the terrain, having experienced the conditions with the
German Army The German Army (, "army") is the land component of the armed forces of Germany. The present-day German Army was founded in 1955 as part of the newly formed West German ''Bundeswehr'' together with the ''Marine'' (German Navy) and the ''Luftwaf ...
in 1914 and 1918. Manstein wrote his first memorandum outlining the alternative plan on 31 October. In it he avoided mentioning Guderian and played down the strategic part of the armoured units, to avoid unnecessary resistance. Six more memoranda followed between 31 October 1939 and 12 January 1940, each becoming more radical. All were rejected by ''OKH'' and nothing of their content reached Hitler.


Mechelen incident

On 10 January 1940, a German aircraft, carrying a staff officer with the ''Luftwaffe'' plans for an offensive through central Belgium to the North Sea, force-landed near
Maasmechelen Maasmechelen (; li, Mechele) is a municipality located on the Meuse in the Belgian province of Limburg. It comprises the former municipalities of Mechelen-aan-de-Maas, Vucht, Leut, Meeswijk, Uikhoven, Eisden, Opgrimbie, Boorsem, and Kotem. A ...
(Mechelen) in Belgium. The documents were captured but Allied intelligence doubted that they were genuine. In the full moon period in April 1940, another Allied alert was called for a possible attack on the Low Countries or Holland, an offensive through the Low Countries to outflank the Maginot Line from the north, an attack on the Maginot Line or an invasion through Switzerland. None of the contingencies anticipated the German attack through the Ardennes but after the loss of the ''Luftwaffe'' plans, the Germans assumed that the Allied appreciation of German intentions would have been reinforced. ''Aufmarschanweisung'' N°3, ''Fall Gelb'', an amendment to the plan on 30 January, was only a revision of details. On 24 February, the main German effort was moved south to the Ardennes. Twenty divisions (including seven panzer and three motorised divisions) were transferred from ''Heeresgruppe B'' opposite Holland and Belgium to ''Heeresgruppe A'' facing the Ardennes. French military intelligence uncovered a transfer of German divisions from the Saar to the north of the Moselle but failed to detect the redeployment from the Dutch frontier to the
Eifel The Eifel (; lb, Äifel, ) is a low mountain range in western Germany and eastern Belgium. It occupies parts of southwestern North Rhine-Westphalia, northwestern Rhineland-Palatinate and the southern area of the German-speaking Community of ...
Moselle The Moselle ( , ; german: Mosel ; lb, Musel ) is a river that rises in the Vosges mountains and flows through north-eastern France and Luxembourg to western Germany. It is a bank (geography), left bank tributary of the Rhine, which it jo ...
area.


Adoption of the Manstein Plan

On 27 January, Manstein was sacked as Chief of Staff of Army Group A and appointed commander of an army corps in
East Prussia East Prussia ; german: Ostpreißen, label=Low Prussian; pl, Prusy Wschodnie; lt, Rytų Prūsija was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and again from 1878 (with the Kingdom itself being part of the German Empire from 187 ...
. To silence Manstein, Halder had instigated his transfer to
Stettin Szczecin (, , german: Stettin ; sv, Stettin ; Latin language, Latin: ''Sedinum'' or ''Stetinum'') is the capital city, capital and largest city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in northwestern Poland. Located near the Baltic Sea and the Po ...
on 9 February. Manstein's staff brought his case to Hitler, who had independently suggested an attack at Sedan, against the advice of OKH. On 2 February, Hitler was told of Manstein's plan and on 17 February, Hitler summoned Manstein, General
Rudolf Schmundt Rudolf Schmundt (13 August 1896 – 1 October 1944) was a German officer and adjutant to Adolf Hitler. Between 1942 and 1944, he was chief of the German Army Personnel Office. Schmundt was injured during the 20 July 1944 assassination attempt o ...
(Chief of Personnel of the German Army) and General
Alfred Jodl Alfred Josef Ferdinand Jodl (; 10 May 1890 – 16 October 1946) was a German ''Generaloberst'' who served as the chief of the Operations Staff of the '' Oberkommando der Wehrmacht'' – the German Armed Forces High Command – throughout World ...
, the Chief of Operations of (OKW, Supreme Command of the Armed Forces), to a conference. The next day, Hitler ordered Manstein's thinking to be adopted, because it offered the possibility of decisive victory. Hitler recognised the breakthrough at Sedan only in tactical terms, whereas Manstein saw it as a means to an end. He envisaged an operation to the English Channel and the encirclement of the Allied armies in Belgium; if the plan succeeded, it could have a strategic effect. Halder then went through an "astonishing change of opinion", accepting that the should be at Sedan. He had no intention of allowing an independent strategic penetration by the seven ''
Panzer This article deals with the tanks (german: panzer) serving in the German Army (''Deutsches Heer'') throughout history, such as the World War I tanks of the Imperial German Army, the interwar and World War II tanks of the Nazi German Wehrmacht, ...
'' divisions of Army Group A. Much to the dismay of Guderian, this element was absent from the new plan, , issued on 24 February. The bulk of the German officer corps was appalled and called Halder the "gravedigger of the ''Panzer'' force". Even when adapted to more conventional methods, the new plan provoked a storm of protest from the majority of German generals. They thought it utterly irresponsible to create a concentration of forces in a position impossible to adequately resupply, along routes that could be cut easily by the French. If the Allies did not react as expected, the German offensive could end in catastrophe. Their objections were ignored and Halder argued that, as Germany's strategic position seemed hopeless anyway, even the slightest chance of decisive victory should be grasped. Shortly before the invasion, Hitler, who had spoken to forces on the Western Front and who was encouraged by the success in Norway, confidently predicted the campaign would take only six weeks. He was most excited over the planned
military glider Military gliders (an offshoot of common gliders) have been used by the militaries of various countries for carrying troops (glider infantry) and heavy equipment to a combat zone, mainly during the Second World War. These engineless aircraft were ...
attack on Fort Eben-Emael.


Allied strategy


Escaut Plan/Plan E

On 3 September 1939, French military strategy had been settled, taking in analyses of geography, resources and manpower. The French Army would defend in the east (right flank) and attack on the west (left flank) by advancing into Belgium, to fight forward of the French frontier. The extent of the forward move was dependent on events, which were complicated when Belgium ended the
Franco-Belgian Accord of 1920 The Franco-Belgian Military Accord of 1920 (french: Accord militaire franco-belge de 1920) was a collective defense pact signed between France and Belgium in September 1920. The Accord was cancelled in 1936 as Belgium returned to pursuing a policy ...
after the German
Remilitarisation of the Rhineland The remilitarization of the Rhineland () began on 7 March 1936, when German military forces entered the Rhineland, which directly contravened the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Treaties. Neither France nor Britain was prepared for a milita ...
on 7 March 1936. The neutrality of the Belgian state was reluctant openly to co-operate with France but information was communicated about Belgian defences. By May 1940, there had been an exchange of the general nature of French and Belgian defence plans but little co-ordination against a German offensive to the west, through Luxembourg and eastern Belgium. The French expected Germany to breach Belgian neutrality first, providing a pretext for French intervention or that the Belgians would request support when an invasion was imminent. Most of the French mobile forces were assembled along the Belgian border, ready to forestall the Germans. An early appeal for help might give the French time to reach the German–Belgian frontier but if not, there were three feasible defensive lines further back. A practicable line existed from
Givet Givet () (german: Gibet Walloon: ''Djivet'') is a commune in the Ardennes department in northern France surrounded on three sides by the Belgian border. It lies on the river Meuse where Emperor Charles V built the fortress of Charlemont. It ...
to
Namur Namur (; ; nl, Namen ; wa, Nameur) is a city and municipality in Wallonia, Belgium. It is both the capital of the province of Namur and of Wallonia, hosting the Parliament of Wallonia, the Government of Wallonia and its administration. Namu ...
, across the
Gembloux Gap The Battle of Gembloux (or Battle of the Gembloux Gap) was fought between French and German forces in May 1940 during the World War II, Second World War. On 10 May 1940, The Nazi ''Wehrmacht'', invaded German invasion of Luxembourg in World War ...
(),
Wavre Wavre (; nl, Waver, ; wa, Wåve) is a City status in Belgium, city and Municipalities in Belgium, municipality of Wallonia, capital of the Provinces of Belgium, province of Walloon Brabant, Belgium. Wavre is in the Dijle, Dyle valley. Most ...
,
Louvain Leuven (, ) or Louvain (, , ; german: link=no, Löwen ) is the capital and largest city of the province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located about east of Brussels. The municipality itself comprises the historic c ...
and along the Dyle river to Antwerp, which was shorter than the alternatives. A second possibility was a line from the French border to Condé,
Tournai Tournai or Tournay ( ; ; nl, Doornik ; pcd, Tornai; wa, Tornè ; la, Tornacum) is a city and municipality of Wallonia located in the province of Hainaut, Belgium. It lies southwest of Brussels on the river Scheldt. Tournai is part of Euromet ...
, along the Escaut (
Scheldt The Scheldt (french: Escaut ; nl, Schelde ) is a river that flows through northern France, western Belgium, and the southwestern part of Netherlands, the Netherlands, with its mouth at the North Sea. Its name is derived from an adjective corr ...
) to
Ghent Ghent ( nl, Gent ; french: Gand ; traditional English: Gaunt) is a city and a municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the East Flanders province, and the third largest in the country, exceeded in ...
and thence to
Zeebrugge Zeebrugge (, from: ''Brugge aan zee'' meaning "Bruges at Sea", french: Zeebruges) is a village on the coast of Belgium and a subdivision of Bruges, for which it is the modern port. Zeebrugge serves as both the international port of Bruges-Zeeb ...
on the
North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian S ...
coast, possibly further along the Scheldt (Escaut) to Antwerp, which became the Escaut Plan/Plan E. The third possibility was along field defences of the French border from Luxembourg to
Dunkirk Dunkirk (french: Dunkerque ; vls, label=French Flemish, Duunkerke; nl, Duinkerke(n) ; , ;) is a commune in the department of Nord in northern France.Gaston Billotte Gaston-Henri Billotte (10 February 1875 – 23 May 1940) was a French military officer, remembered chiefly for his central role in the failure of the French Army to defeat the German invasion of France in May 1940. He was killed in a car accident ...
, commander of the 1st Army Group, giving the 1st Army Group permission to enter Belgium, to deploy along the Escaut according to Plan E. On 24 October, Gamelin directed that an advance beyond the Escaut was only feasible if the French moved fast enough to forestall the Germans.


Dyle Plan/Plan D

By late 1939, the Belgians had improved their defences along the
Albert Canal The Albert Canal (, ) is a canal located in northeastern Belgium, which was named for King Albert I of Belgium. The Albert Canal connects Antwerp with Liège, and also the Meuse river with the Scheldt river. It also connects with the Dessel ...
and increased the readiness of the army; Gamelin and (GQG) began to consider the possibility of advancing further than the Escaut. By November, GQG had decided that a defence along the Dyle Line was feasible, despite the doubts of General
Alphonse Georges Alphonse Joseph Georges (August 15, 1875 in Allier - Montluçon – April 24, 1951 in Paris) was a French army officer. He was commander in chief of the North East Front in 1939 and 1940. Opposing the plan by supreme commander Maurice Gamelin to ...
, commander of the North-Eastern Front, about reaching the Dyle before the Germans. The British had been lukewarm about an advance into Belgium but Gamelin persuaded them; on 9 November, the Dyle Plan was adopted. On 17 November, a session of the
Supreme War Council 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 US and Japan. It was founded in 1917 after the Russian revolution and w ...
deemed it essential to occupy the Dyle Line and Gamelin issued a directive that day detailing a line from Givet to Namur, the Gembloux Gap, Wavre, Louvain and Antwerp. For the next four months, the Dutch and Belgian armies laboured over their defences, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) expanded and the French army received more equipment and training. Gamelin also considered a move towards
Breda Breda () is a city and municipality in the southern part of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Brabant. The name derived from ''brede Aa'' ('wide Aa' or 'broad Aa') and refers to the confluence of the rivers Mark and Aa. Breda has ...
in the Netherlands; if the Allies prevented a German occupation of Holland, the ten divisions of the Dutch army would join the Allied armies, control of the North Sea would be enhanced and the Germans would be denied bases for attacks on Britain. By May 1940, the 1st Army Group was responsible for the defence of France from the Channel coast south to the Maginot Line. The Seventh Army (
Henri Giraud Henri Honoré Giraud (18 January 1879 – 11 March 1949) was a French general and a leader of the Free French Forces during the Second World War until he was forced to retire in 1944. Born to an Alsatian family in Paris, Giraud graduated from ...
), BEF (General
Lord Gort Field Marshal John Standish Surtees Prendergast Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort, (10 July 1886 – 31 March 1946) was a senior British Army officer. As a young officer during the First World War, he was decorated with the Victoria Cross for his acti ...
), First Army (
Georges Maurice Jean Blanchard Georges Blanchard (1877–1954) was a French military officer. He served in the French Army in World War I on the Western Front. In World War II, he was a general, commanding the French First Army, which advanced into Belgium during the Battle of ...
) and Ninth Army (
André Corap André Georges Corap (, 15 January 1878 – 15 August 1953) was a General in the French Army who fought in World War II. He commanded the 9th Army during the battle of France in 1940. Early life Corap was born in Pont Audemer, Normandy. His fat ...
) were ready to advance to the Dyle Line, by pivoting on the right (southern) Second Army. The Seventh Army would take over west of Antwerp, ready to move into Holland and the Belgians were expected to delay a German advance, then retire from the Albert Canal to the Dyle, from Antwerp to Louvain. On the Belgian right, the BEF was to defend about of the Dyle from Louvain to Wavre with nine divisions and the First Army, on the right of the BEF, was to hold with ten divisions from Wavre across the Gembloux Gap to Namur. The gap from the Dyle to Namur north of the Sambre, with
Maastricht Maastricht ( , , ; li, Mestreech ; french: Maestricht ; es, Mastrique ) is a city and a municipality in the southeastern Netherlands. It is the capital and largest city of the province of Limburg. Maastricht is located on both sides of the ...
and
Mons Mons (; German and nl, Bergen, ; Walloon and pcd, Mont) is a city and municipality of Wallonia, and the capital of the province of Hainaut, Belgium. Mons was made into a fortified city by Count Baldwin IV of Hainaut in the 12th century. T ...
on either side, had few natural obstacles and was a traditional route of invasion, leading straight to Paris. The Ninth Army would take post south of Namur, along the Meuse to the left (northern) flank of the Second Army. The Second Army was the right (eastern) flank army of the 1st Army Group, holding the line from
Pont à Bar Dom-le-Mesnil () is a commune in the Ardennes department in northern France. Population See also *Communes of the Ardennes department The following is a list of the 449 communes of the Ardennes department of France. The communes coop ...
west of Sedan to
Longuyon Longuyon () is a commune in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in the Grand Est region of north-eastern France. The inhabitants are called ''Longuyonnais''. Geography Longuyon is located at the confluence of the Chiers and Crusnes rivers and so ...
. GQG considered that the Second and Ninth armies had the easiest task of the army group, dug in on the west bank of the Meuse on ground that was easily defended and behind the Ardennes, a considerable obstacle, the traversing of which would give plenty of warning of a German attack in the centre of the French front. After the transfer from the strategic reserve of the Seventh Army to the 1st Army Group, seven divisions remained behind the Second and Ninth armies and more could be moved from behind the Maginot Line. All but one division were either side of the junction of the two armies, GQG being more concerned about a possible German attack past the north end of the Maginot Line and then south-east through the Stenay Gap, for which the divisions behind the Second Army were well placed.


Breda variant

If the Allies could control the Scheldt Estuary, supplies could be transported to Antwerp by ship and contact established with the Dutch Army along the river. On 8 November, Gamelin directed that a German invasion of the Netherlands must not be allowed to progress around the west of Antwerp and gain the south bank of the Scheldt. The left flank of the 1st Army Group was reinforced by the Seventh Army, containing some of the best and most mobile French divisions, which moved from the general reserve by December. The role of the army was to occupy the south bank of the Scheldt and be ready to move into Holland and protect the estuary by holding the north bank along the Beveland Peninsula (now the
Walcheren Walcheren () is a region and former island in the Dutch province of Zeeland at the mouth of the Scheldt estuary. It lies between the Eastern Scheldt in the north and the Western Scheldt in the south and is roughly the shape of a rhombus. The two ...
Zuid-Beveland Zuid-Beveland (; "South Beveland") is part of the province of Zeeland in the Netherlands north of the Western Scheldt and south of the Eastern Scheldt. Topography It is a former island, now peninsula, crossed by the Canal through Zuid-Bevelan ...
–Noord-Beveland
peninsula A peninsula (; ) is a landform that extends from a mainland and is surrounded by water on most, but not all of its borders. A peninsula is also sometimes defined as a piece of land bordered by water on three of its sides. Peninsulas exist on all ...
) in the ''Holland Hypothesis''. On 12 March 1940, Gamelin discounted dissenting opinion at GQG and decided that the Seventh Army would advance as far as Breda, to link with the Dutch. Georges was told that the role of the Seventh Army on the left flank of the Dyle manoeuvre would be linked to it and Georges notified Billotte that if it were ordered to cross into the Netherlands, the left flank of the army group was to advance to
Tilburg Tilburg () is a city and municipality in the Netherlands, in the southern province of North Brabant. With a population of 222,601 (1 July 2021), it is the second-largest city or municipality in North Brabant after Eindhoven and the seventh-larg ...
if possible and certainly to Breda. The Seventh Army was to take post between the Belgians and Dutch by passing the Belgians along the Albert Canal and then turning east, a distance of , when the Germans were only distant from Breda. On 16 April, Gamelin also made provision for a German invasion of the Netherlands but not Belgium, by changing the deployment area to be reached by the Seventh Army; the Escaut Plan would only be followed if the Germans forestalled the French move into Belgium.


Allied intelligence

In the winter of 1939–40, the Belgian consul-general in
Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...
had anticipated the angle of advance that Manstein was planning. Through intelligence reports, the Belgians deduced that German forces were concentrating along the Belgian and Luxembourg frontiers. In March 1940,
Swiss Swiss may refer to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina *Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses *Swiss-system tournament, in various games and sports *Swiss Internation ...
intelligence detected six or seven ''Panzer'' divisions on the German-Luxembourg-Belgian border and more motorised divisions were detected in the area. French intelligence were informed through aerial reconnaissance that the Germans were constructing
pontoon bridge A pontoon bridge (or ponton bridge), also known as a floating bridge, uses float (nautical), floats or shallow-draft (hull), draft boats to support a continuous deck for pedestrian and vehicle travel. The buoyancy of the supports limits the maxi ...
s about halfway over the
Our River The Our (; , ) is a river in Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany. It is a left-hand tributary of the river Sauer/Sûre. Its total length is . The source of the Our is in the High Fens in southeastern Belgium, near Manderfeld. It flows southwards, ...
on the Luxembourg–German border. On 30 April, the French military attaché in
Bern german: Berner(in)french: Bernois(e) it, bernese , neighboring_municipalities = Bremgarten bei Bern, Frauenkappelen, Ittigen, Kirchlindach, Köniz, Mühleberg, Muri bei Bern, Neuenegg, Ostermundigen, Wohlen bei Bern, Zollikofen , website ...
warned that the centre of the German assault would come on the Meuse at Sedan, sometime between 8 and 10 May. These reports had little effect on Gamelin, as did similar reports from neutral sources such as the
Vatican Vatican may refer to: Vatican City, the city-state ruled by the pope in Rome, including St. Peter's Basilica, Sistine Chapel, Vatican Museum The Holy See * The Holy See, the governing body of the Catholic Church and sovereign entity recognized ...
and a French sighting of a line of German armoured vehicles on the Luxembourg border trailing back inside Germany.


Prelude


German Army

Germany had mobilised 4,200,000 men of the '' Heer'' (German Army), 1,000,000 of the ''
Luftwaffe The ''Luftwaffe'' () was the aerial-warfare branch of the German ''Wehrmacht'' before and during World War II. Germany's military air arms during World War I, the ''Luftstreitkräfte'' of the Imperial Army and the '' Marine-Fliegerabtei ...
'' (German Air Force), 180,000 of the ''
Kriegsmarine The (, ) was the navy of Germany from 1935 to 1945. It superseded the Imperial German Navy of the German Empire (1871–1918) and the inter-war (1919–1935) of the Weimar Republic. The was one of three official branches, along with the a ...
'' (German Navy) and 100,000 of the ''
Waffen-SS The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscripts from both occup ...
'' (military arm of the Nazi Party). When consideration is made for those in Poland, Denmark and Norway, the Army had 3,000,000 men available for the offensive starting on 10 May 1940. These manpower reserves were formed into 157 divisions. Of these, 135 were earmarked for the offensive, including 42 reserve divisions. The German forces in the west in May and June deployed some 2,439 tanks and 7,378 guns. In 1939–40, 45 per cent of the army was at least 40 years old and 50 per cent of all the soldiers had just a few weeks' training. The German Army was far from motorised; ten per cent of their army was motorised in 1940 and could muster only 120,000 vehicles, compared with the 300,000 of the French Army. All of the British Expeditionary Force was motorised. Most of the German logistical transport consisted of horse-drawn vehicles. Only 50 per cent of the German divisions available in 1940 were fit for operations, often being worse equipped than the German army of 1914 or their equivalents in the British and French Armies. In the spring of 1940, the German Army was semi-modern; a small number of the best-equipped and "''elite'' divisions were offset by many second and third rate divisions". Army Group A, commanded by Gerd von Rundstedt, comprised divisions, including seven ''Panzer'' and was to execute the main movement effort through the Allied defences in the Ardennes. The manoeuvre carried out by the Germans is sometimes referred to as a ''"Sichelschnitt"'', the German translation of the phrase "sickle cut" coined by
Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...
after the event. It involved three armies (the 4th,
12th 12 (twelve) is the natural number following 11 and preceding 13. Twelve is a superior highly composite number, divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6. It is the number of years required for an orbital period of Jupiter. It is central to many systems ...
and
16th 16 (sixteen) is the natural number following 15 and preceding 17. 16 is a composite number, and a square number, being 42 = 4 × 4. It is the smallest number with exactly five divisors, its proper divisors being , , and . In English speech, ...
) and had three ''Panzer'' corps. The XV had been allocated to the 4th Army but the XLI (Reinhardt) and the XIX (Guderian) were united with the XIV Army Corps of two motorised infantry divisions on a special independent operational level in '' Panzergruppe Kleist'' (XXII Corps). Army Group B (
Fedor von Bock Moritz Albrecht Franz Friedrich Fedor von Bock (3 December 1880 – 4 May 1945) was a German who served in the German Army during the Second World War. Bock served as the commander of Army Group North during the Invasion of Poland in ...
), comprised divisions including three armoured, was to advance through the Low Countries and lure the northern units of the Allied armies into a pocket. It was composed of the 6th and
18th 18 (eighteen) is the natural number following 17 and preceding 19. In mathematics * Eighteen is a composite number, its divisors being 1, 2, 3, 6 and 9. Three of these divisors (3, 6 and 9) add up to 18, hence 18 is a semiperfect number. ...
Armies. Army Group C, (General
Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb Wilhelm Josef Franz Ritter von Leeb (5 September 1876 – 29 April 1956) was a German field marshal and war criminal in World War II. Leeb was a highly decorated officer in World War I and was awarded the Military Order of Max Joseph which gra ...
) comprising 18 divisions of the 1st and 7th Armies, was to prevent a flanking movement from the east and with launching small holding attacks against the Maginot Line and the upper
Rhine ), Surselva, Graubünden, Switzerland , source1_coordinates= , source1_elevation = , source2 = Rein Posteriur/Hinterrhein , source2_location = Paradies Glacier, Graubünden, Switzerland , source2_coordinates= , so ...
.


Communications

Wireless proved essential to German success in the battle. German tanks had radio receivers that allowed them to be directed by platoon command tanks, which had voice communication with other units. Wireless allowed tactical control and far quicker improvisation than the opponent. Some commanders regarded the ability to communicate to be the primary method of combat and radio drills were considered to be more important than gunnery. Radio allowed German commanders to co-ordinate their formations, bringing them together for a mass firepower effect in attack or defence. The French numerical advantage in heavy weapons and equipment, which was often deployed in "penny-packets" (dispersed as individual support weapons) was offset. Most French tanks also lacked radio and orders between infantry units were typically passed by telephone or verbally. The German communications system permitted a degree of communication between air and ground forces. Attached to ''Panzer'' divisions were the ''Fliegerleittruppen'' (tactical air control troops) in wheeled vehicles. There were too few
Sd.Kfz. 251 The Sd.Kfz. 251 (''Sonderkraftfahrzeug 251'') half-track was a World War II German armored personnel carrier designed by the Hanomag company, based on its earlier, unarmored Sd.Kfz. 11 vehicle. The Sd.Kfz. 251 was designed to transport the ''Panz ...
command vehicles for all of the army but the theory allowed the army in some circumstances to call ''Luftwaffe'' units to support an attack. ''Fliegerkorps'' VIII, equipped with
Junkers Ju 87 The Junkers Ju 87 or Stuka (from ''Sturzkampfflugzeug'', "dive bomber") was a German dive bomber and ground-attack aircraft. Designed by Hermann Pohlmann, it first flew in 1935. The Ju 87 made its combat debut in 1937 with the Luftwaffe's Con ...
dive-bombers (''Stukas''), was to support the dash to the Channel if Army Group A broke through the Ardennes and kept a Ju 87 and a fighter group on call. On average, they could arrive to support armoured units within 45–75 minutes of orders being issued.


Tactics

The German army conducted
combined arms Combined arms is an approach to warfare War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme vio ...
operations of mobile offensive formations, with well-trained artillery, infantry, engineer and tank formations, integrated into ''Panzer'' divisions. The elements were united by wireless communication, which enabled them to work together at a quick tempo and exploit opportunities faster than the Allies. ''Panzer'' divisions could conduct reconnaissance, advance to contact or defend and attack vital positions and weak spots. Captured ground would be occupied by infantry and artillery as pivot points for further attacks. Although many German tanks were outgunned by their opponents, they could lure Allied tanks onto the divisional anti-tank guns. The avoidance of tank-versus-tank engagements conserved German tanks for the next stage of the offensive, units carrying supplies for three to four days' operations. The ''Panzer'' divisions were supported by motorised and infantry divisions. German tank battalions () were to be equipped with the ''Panzerkampfwagen'' III and ''Panzerkampfwagen'' IV tanks but shortages led to the use of light ''Panzerkampfwagen'' II and even lighter ''Panzerkampfwagen'' I instead. The German Army lacked a heavy tank like the French
Char B1 The Char B1 was a French heavy tank manufactured before World War II. The Char B1 was a specialised break-through vehicle, originally conceived as a self-propelled gun with a 75 mm howitzer in the hull; later a 47 mm gun in a turr ...
; French tanks were better designs, more numerous, with superior armour and armament but slower and with inferior mechanical reliability than the German designs. Although the German Army was outnumbered in artillery and tanks, it possessed some advantages over its opponents. The newer German ''Panzers'' had a crew of five: commander, gunner, loader, driver, and mechanic. Having a trained individual for each task allowed a logical division of labour. French tanks had smaller crews; the commander had to load the main gun, distracting him from observation and tactical deployment. The Germans enjoyed an advantage through the theory of ''
Auftragstaktik Mission-type tactics ( German: ''Auftragstaktik'', from ''Auftrag'' and ''Taktik''; also known as mission command in the US and UK) is a form of military tactics in which the emphasis is placed on the outcome of a mission rather than the specif ...
'' (mission command) by which officers,
NCOs A non-commissioned officer (NCO) is a military officer who has not pursued a commission. Non-commissioned officers usually earn their position of authority by promotion through the enlisted ranks. (Non-officers, which includes most or all enli ...
and men were expected to use their initiative and had control over supporting arms, rather than the slower, top-down methods of the Allies.


''Luftwaffe''

Army Group B had the support of 1,815 combat, 487 transport aircraft and 50 gliders; 3,286 combat aircraft supported Army Groups A and C. The ''Luftwaffe'' was the most experienced, well-equipped and well-trained air force in the world. The combined Allied total was 2,935 aircraft, about half the size of the ''Luftwaffe''. The ''Luftwaffe'' could provide close support with
dive-bomber A dive bomber is a bomber aircraft that dives directly at its targets in order to provide greater accuracy for the bomb it drops. Diving towards the target simplifies the bomb's trajectory and allows the pilot to keep visual contact through ...
s and
medium bomber A medium bomber is a military bomber Fixed-wing aircraft, aircraft designed to operate with medium-sized Aerial bomb, bombloads over medium Range (aeronautics), range distances; the name serves to distinguish this type from larger heavy bombe ...
s but was a broadly based force, intended to support national strategy and could carry out operational, tactical and
strategic bombing Strategic bombing is a military strategy used in total war with the goal of defeating the enemy by destroying its morale, its economic ability to produce and transport materiel to the theatres of military operations, or both. It is a systematica ...
operations. Allied air forces were mainly intended for army co-operation but the ''Luftwaffe'' could fly
air superiority Aerial supremacy (also air superiority) is the degree to which a side in a conflict holds control of air power over opposing forces. There are levels of control of the air in aerial warfare. Control of the air is the aerial equivalent of c ...
missions, medium-range
interdiction Interdiction is a military term for the act of delaying, disrupting, or destroying enemy forces or supplies en route to the battle area. A distinction is often made between strategic and tactical interdiction. The former refers to operations whose e ...
, strategic bombing and close air support operations, depending on circumstances. It was not a ''Panzer'' spearhead arm, since in 1939 fewer than 15 per cent of ''Luftwaffe'' aircraft were designed for close support as this was not its main role.


Flak

The Germans also had an advantage in anti-aircraft guns (''Fliegerabwehrkanone'' 'Flak''. The totals of 2,600 heavy ''Flak'' guns and 6,700 and . Light ''Flak'' refers to the number of guns in the German armed forces, including the anti-aircraft defence of Germany and the equipment of training units. (A 9,300-gun ''Flak'' component with the field army would have needed more troops than the British Expeditionary Force.) The 88 mm Flak had an
elevation The elevation of a geographic location is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational surface (see Geodetic datum § Vert ...
of −3° to +85° and could therefore be used in a
direct fire Direct fire or line-of-sight fire refers to firing of a ranged weapon whose projectile is launched directly at a target within the line-of-sight of the user. The firing weapon must have a sighting device and an unobstructed view to the target, w ...
role, i.e. against panzers. The armies which invaded the west had 85 heavy and 18 light batteries belonging to the ''Luftwaffe'', 48 companies of light ''Flak'' integral to divisions of the army and 20 companies of light ''Flak'' allocated as army troops, a reserve in the hands of HQs above corps HQs, altogether about 700 and 180 guns manned by ''Luftwaffe'' ground units and 816 guns manned by the army.


Allies

France had spent a higher percentage of its
GNP The gross national income (GNI), previously known as gross national product (GNP), is the total domestic and foreign output claimed by residents of a country, consisting of gross domestic product (GDP), plus factor incomes earned by foreign ...
from 1918 to 1935 on its military than other
great power A great power is a sovereign state that is recognized as having the ability and expertise to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess military and economic strength, as well as diplomatic and soft power inf ...
s and the government had added a large rearmament effort in 1936. France mobilised about one-third of the male population between the ages of 20 and 45, bringing the strength of its armed forces to 5,000,000. Only 2,240,000 of these served in army units in the north. The British contributed a total strength of 897,000 men in 1939, rising to 1,650,000 by June 1940. Dutch and Belgian manpower reserves amounted to 400,000 and 650,000, respectively.


Armies

The French Army had 117 divisions, of which 104 (including 11 in reserve) were for the defence of the north. The British contributed 13 divisions in the BEF, three of which were untrained and poorly-armed labour divisions. Twenty-two Belgian, ten Dutch and two
Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
divisions were also part of the Allied order of battle. British artillery strength amounted to 1,280 guns, Belgium fielded 1,338 guns, the Dutch 656 guns and France 10,700 guns, giving an Allied total of about 14,000 guns, 45 per cent more than the Germans. The French Army was also more motorised than its opponent, which still relied on horses. Although the Belgians, British and Dutch had few tanks, the French had 3,254, outnumbering the Germans. The French mechanised light and heavy armoured divisions ( DLM and DCr) were new and not thoroughly trained. Reserve B Divisions were composed of reservists above 30 years old and ill-equipped. A serious qualitative deficiency was a lack of anti-aircraft artillery, mobile anti-tank artillery and wireless, despite the efforts of Gamelin to produce mobile artillery units. Only 0.15 per cent of military spending between 1923 and 1939 had been on radio and other communications equipment; to maintain signals security, Gamelin used telephones and couriers to communicate with field units. French tactical deployment and the use of mobile units at the
operational level In the field of military theory, the operational level of war (also called operational art, as derived from russian: оперативное искусство, or operational warfare) represents the level of command that connects the details of ...
of war was also inferior to that of the Germans. The French had 3,254 tanks on the north-eastern front on 10 May, against 2,439 German tanks. Much of the armour was distributed for infantry support, each army having a tank
brigade A brigade is a major tactical military formation that typically comprises three to six battalions plus supporting elements. It is roughly equivalent to an enlarged or reinforced regiment. Two or more brigades may constitute a division. Br ...
() of about ninety light infantry tanks. With so many tanks available, the French could still concentrate a considerable number of light, medium and heavy tanks in armoured divisions, which in theory were as powerful as German panzer divisions. Only French heavy tanks generally carried wireless but these were unreliable, hampering communication and making tactical manoeuvre difficult, compared to German units. In 1940, French military theorists still mainly considered tanks as infantry support vehicles and French tanks were slow (except for the
SOMUA S35 The SOMUA S35 was a French cavalry tank of the Second World War. Built from 1936 until 1940 to equip the armoured divisions of the Cavalry, it was for its time a relatively agile medium-weight tank, superior in armour and armament to its French ...
) compared to their German rivals, enabling German tanks to offset their disadvantages by out-manoeuvring French tanks. On several occasions, the French were not able to achieve the same tempo as German armoured units. The state of training was also unbalanced, with the majority of personnel trained only to man static fortifications. Very little training for mobile action was carried out between September 1939 and May 1940.


Deployment

The French Army comprised three army groups; the 2nd and 3rd Army Groups defended the Maginot Line to the east; the 1st Army Group (General Gaston Billotte) was on the western (left) flank, ready to move into the Low Countries. Initially positioned on the left flank near the coast, the Seventh Army, reinforced by a (DLM, mechanised light division), was intended to move to the Netherlands via Antwerp. To the south of the Seventh Army were the motorised divisions of the BEF, which would advance to the Dyle Line on the right flank of the Belgian army, from Leuven (Louvain) to Wavre. The First Army, reinforced by two DLM and with a (DCR, Armoured Division) in reserve, would defend the Gembloux Gap between Wavre and Namur. The southernmost army involved in the move forward into Belgium was the French Ninth Army, which had to cover the Meuse sector between Namur to the north of Sedan.
Lord Gort Field Marshal John Standish Surtees Prendergast Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort, (10 July 1886 – 31 March 1946) was a senior British Army officer. As a young officer during the First World War, he was decorated with the Victoria Cross for his acti ...
, commander of the BEF, expected to have two or three weeks to prepare for the Germans to advance to the Dyle but the Germans arrived in four days. The Second Army was expected to form the "hinge" of the movement and remain entrenched. It was to face the elite German armoured divisions in their attack at Sedan. It was given low priority for manpower, anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons and air support, consisting of five divisions; two were over-age reservist divisions and the
3rd North African Division The 3rd North African Infantry Division was a French Army formation during World War II. History During the Battle of France in May 1940 the division was made up of the following units: *12th Zouaves Regiment *14th Algerian Tirailleurs Regime ...
. Considering their training and equipment, they had to cover a long front and formed a weak point of the French defence system. GQG had anticipated that the Ardennes forest would impassable to tanks, even though Belgian army and French intelligence warned them of long armour and transport columns crossing the Ardennes and being stuck in a huge traffic-jam for some time. French
war games A wargame is a strategy game in which two or more players command opposing armed forces in a realistic simulation of an armed conflict. Wargaming may be played for recreation, to train military officers in the art of strategic thinking, or to s ...
in 1937 and 1938 had shown that the Germans could penetrate the Ardennes; Corap called it "idiocy" to think that the enemy could not get through. Gamelin ignored the evidence, as it was not in line with his strategy.


Air forces

The ''
Armée de l'Air The French Air and Space Force (AAE) (french: Armée de l'air et de l'espace, ) is the air and space force of the French Armed Forces. It was the first military aviation force in history, formed in 1909 as the , a service arm of the French Army; ...
'' had
RAF Fighter Command RAF Fighter Command was one of the commands of the Royal Air Force. It was formed in 1936 to allow more specialised control of fighter aircraft. It served throughout the Second World War. It earned near-immortal fame during the Battle of Britai ...
680 and
RAF Bomber Command RAF Bomber Command controlled the Royal Air Force's bomber forces from 1936 to 1968. Along with the United States Army Air Forces, it played the central role in the strategic bombing of Germany in World War II. From 1942 onward, the British bo ...
could contribute about Some Allied types, like the
Fairey Battle The Fairey Battle is a British single-engine light bomber that was designed and manufactured by the Fairey Aviation Company. It was developed during the mid-1930s for the Royal Air Force (RAF) as a monoplane successor to the Hawker Hart and Hi ...
, were approaching obsolescence. In the fighter force, only the British
Hawker Hurricane The Hawker Hurricane is a British single-seat fighter aircraft of the 1930s–40s which was designed and predominantly built by Hawker Aircraft Ltd. for service with the Royal Air Force (RAF). It was overshadowed in the public consciousness by ...
, the US
Curtiss Hawk 75 The Curtiss P-36 Hawk, also known as the Curtiss Hawk Model 75, is an American-designed and built fighter aircraft of the 1930s and 40s. A contemporary of the Hawker Hurricane and Messerschmitt Bf 109, it was one of the first of a new generation ...
and the
Dewoitine D.520 The Dewoitine D.520 was a French fighter aircraft that entered service in early 1940, shortly after the beginning of the Second World War. The D.520 was designed in response to a 1936 requirement from the French Air Force for a fast, modern fi ...
were a match for the German
Messerschmitt Bf 109 The Messerschmitt Bf 109 is a German World War II fighter aircraft that was, along with the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, the backbone of the Luftwaffe's fighter force. The Bf 109 first saw operational service in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War an ...
, the D.520 being more manoeuvrable although being slightly slower. On 10 May 1940, only 36 D.520s had been delivered. The Allies outnumbered the Germans in
fighter aircraft Fighter aircraft are fixed-wing military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat. In military conflict, the role of fighter aircraft is to establish air superiority of the battlespace. Domination of the airspace above a battlefield ...
, with 81 Belgian, 261 British and 764 French fighters (1,106) against 836 German Bf 109s. The French and British had more aircraft in reserve. In early June 1940, the French aviation industry was producing a considerable number of aircraft, with an estimated reserve of nearly 2,000 but a chronic lack of spare parts crippled this fleet. Only about 599 (29 per cent) were serviceable, of which 170 were bombers. The Germans had six times more medium bombers than the French. Despite its disadvantages, the ''Armée de l'Air'' performed far better than expected, destroying 916 enemy aircraft in air-to-air combat, a kill ratio of 2.35:1. Almost a third of the French victories were accomplished by French pilots flying the Curtiss Hawk 75, which accounted for 12.6 per cent of the French single-seat fighter force.


Anti-aircraft defence

In addition to 580 machine guns assigned to civilian defence, the French Army had 1,152 anti-aircraft guns, with 200 auto-cannon in the process of delivery and 688 guns and 24 guns, the latter having problems with barrel wear. There were also forty First World War-vintage anti-aircraft guns available. The BEF had ten regiments of QF 3.7-inch (94 mm) heavy anti-aircraft guns, the most advanced in the world and regiments of
Bofors 40 mm Bofors 40 mm gun is a name or designation given to two models of 40 mm calibre anti-aircraft guns designed and developed by the Swedish company Bofors: *Bofors 40 mm L/60 gun - developed in the 1930s, widely used in World War II and into the 1990s ...
light anti-aircraft guns, about 300 heavy and 350 light anti-aircraft guns. The Belgians had two heavy anti-aircraft regiments and were introducing Bofors guns for divisional anti-aircraft troops. The Dutch had 84 , 39 elderly , seven , 232 anti-aircraft guns and several hundred First World War-vintage Spandau M.25 machine guns on anti-aircraft mountings.


Battle


Northern front

At 21:00 on 9 May, the code word was relayed to all German army divisions, beginning . Security was so tight that many officers, due to the constant delays, were away from their units when the order was sent. German forces occupied
Luxembourg Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small lan ...
virtually unopposed. Army Group B launched its
feint Feint is a French term that entered English via the discipline of swordsmanship and fencing. Feints are maneuvers designed to distract or mislead, done by giving the impression that a certain maneuver will take place, while in fact another, or e ...
offensive during the night into the Netherlands and Belgium. On the morning of 10 May, (paratroopers) from the 7th ''Flieger'' Division and 22nd ''Luftlande'' Division (
Kurt Student Kurt Arthur Benno Student (12 May 1890 – 1 July 1978) was a German general in the Luftwaffe during World War II. An early pioneer of airborne forces, Student was in overall command of developing a paratrooper force to be known as the ''Fallschi ...
) executed surprise landings at
The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital of ...
, on the road to Rotterdam and against the Belgian Fort Eben-Emael which helped the advance of Army Group B. The French command reacted immediately, sending the 1st Army Group north in accordance with Plan D. This move committed their best forces, diminishing their fighting power by the partial disorganisation it caused and their mobility by depleting their fuel stocks. By the time the French Seventh Army crossed the Dutch border, they found the Dutch already in full retreat and withdrew into Belgium to protect Antwerp.


Invasion of the Netherlands

The ''Luftwaffe'' effort over the Netherlands comprised 247 medium bombers, 147 fighters, 424 Junkers Ju 52 transports and 12 Heinkel He 59 seaplanes. The Dutch Air Force, (''Militaire Luchtvaartafdeling'', ML), had a strength of 144 combat aircraft, half of which were destroyed on the first day. The remainder of the ML was dispersed and accounted for only a handful of ''Luftwaffe'' aircraft shot down. The ML managed 332 sorties, losing 110 aircraft. The German 18th Army captured bridges during the Battle of Rotterdam, bypassing the The Dutch Water Line, New Water Line from the south and penetrating Fortress Holland. A separate operation organised by the ''Luftwaffe'', the Battle for The Hague, failed. Airfields around (Ypenburg, Ockenburg and Valkenburg) were captured in a costly success, with many transport aircraft lost but the Dutch army re-captured the airfields by the end of the day. Ninety-six aircraft in all were lost to Dutch artillery-fire. ''Luftwaffe'' operations had cost 125 Ju 52s destroyed and 47 damaged, a 50 per cent loss. The airborne operation also cost 50 per cent of the German paratroopers: 4,000 men, including 20 per cent of its NCOs and 42 per cent of its officers; of these casualties, 1,200 were made prisoners of war and evacuated to Britain. The French Seventh Army failed to block the German armoured reinforcements from the 9th Panzer Division (Wehrmacht), 9th ''Panzer'' Division, which reached Rotterdam on 13 May. That same day in the east, following the Battle of the Grebbeberg, in which a Dutch counter-attack to contain a German breach failed, the Dutch retreated from the Grebbe line to the New Water Line. The Dutch Army, still largely intact, surrendered in the evening of 14 May after the Rotterdam Blitz, Bombing of Rotterdam by Heinkel He 111 medium bombers of Kampfgeschwader 54, ''Kampfgeschwader'' 54 (Bomber Wing 54); an act which has remained controversial. The Dutch Army considered its strategic situation to have become hopeless and feared destruction of other Dutch cities. The capitulation document was signed on 15 May but Dutch forces continued fighting in the Battle of Zeeland with Seventh Army and in the Dutch empire, colonies. Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, Queen Wilhelmina established a government in exile in Britain. Dutch casualties amounted to 2,157 army, 75 air force and 125 Navy personnel; 2,559 civilians were also killed.


Invasion of Belgium

The Germans quickly established air superiority over Belgium. Having completed thorough Aerial reconnaissance in World War II, photographic reconnaissance, they destroyed 83 of the 179 aircraft of the within the first 24 hours of the invasion. The Belgians flew 77 operational missions but this contributed little to the air campaign. The ''Luftwaffe'' was assured air superiority over the Low Countries. Because Army Group B's composition had been so weakened compared to the earlier plans, the feint offensive by the 6th Army was in danger of stalling immediately, since the Belgian defences on the Albert Canal position were very strong. The main approach route was blocked by Fort Eben-Emael, a large fortress then generally considered the most modern in Europe, which controlled the junction of the Meuse and the Albert Canal. Delay might endanger the outcome of the entire campaign, because it was essential that the main body of Allied troops be engaged before Army Group A established bridgeheads. To overcome this difficulty, the Germans resorted to unconventional means in the Battle of Fort Eben-Emael. In the early hours of 10 May, DFS 230 gliders landed on top of the fort and unloaded assault teams that disabled the main gun cupolas with hollow charges. The bridges over the canal were seized by German paratroopers. The Belgians launched considerable counterattacks which were broken up by the ''Luftwaffe''. Shocked by a breach in its defences just where they had seemed the strongest, the Belgian Supreme Command withdrew its divisions to the KW-line five days earlier than planned. Similar operations against the bridges in the Netherlands, at Maastricht, failed. All were blown up by the Dutch and only one railway bridge was taken, which held up the German armour on Dutch territory for a short time. The BEF and the French First Army were not yet entrenched and the news of the defeat on the Belgian border was unwelcome. The Allies had been convinced Belgian resistance would have given them several weeks to prepare a defensive line at the Gembloux Gap. The XVI ''Panzerkorps'' (General Erich Hoepner) consisting of the 3rd Panzer Division (Wehrmacht), 3rd ''Panzer'' Division and the 4th Panzer Division (Wehrmacht), 4th ''Panzer'' Division, was launched over the newly captured bridges in the direction of the Gembloux Gap. This seemed to confirm the expectations of the French Supreme Command that the German ''Schwerpunkt'' (point of main effort, centre of gravity) would be at that point. Gembloux was located between Wavre and Namur, on flat, ideal tank terrain. It was also an unfortified part of the Allied line. To gain time to dig in there, René Prioux, commanding the Cavalry Corps of the French First Army, sent the 2nd DLM and 3rd DLM towards the German armour at Hannut, east of Gembloux. They would provide a screen to delay the Germans and allow sufficient time for the First Army to dig in.


Battles of Hannut and Gembloux

The Battle of Hannut (12–13 May) was the largest tank battle yet fought, with about 1,500 armoured fighting vehicles involved. The French knocked out about 160 German tanks for a loss of 105 machines including 30 Somua S35 tanks. The Germans were left in control of the battlefield after the French made a planned withdrawal and were able to repair many of their knocked-out tanks. The net German loss amounted to 20 tanks of the 3rd ''Panzer'' Division and 29 of the 4th ''Panzer'' Division. Prioux had achieved a tactical and operational success for the French by fulfilling his objective of delaying the panzer divisions until the First Army had time to arrive and dig in. The German attack had engaged the First Army to the north of Sedan, which was the most important objective that Hoepner had to achieve but had failed to forestall the French advance to the Dyle or to destroy the First Army. On 14 May, having been held up at Hannut, Hoepner attacked again, against orders, in the Battle of Gembloux (1940), Battle of Gembloux. This was the only occasion when German tanks frontally attacked a fortified position during the campaign. The 1st Moroccan Division (1939), 1st Moroccan Division repulsed the attack and another 42 tanks of the 4th ''Panzer'' Division were knocked out, 26 being written off. This second French defensive success was nullified by events further south at Sedan.


Central front


Ardennes

The advance of Army Group A was to be delayed by Belgian motorised infantry and French mechanised cavalry divisions (DLC, ''Divisions Légères de Cavalerie'') advancing into the Ardennes. The main resistance came from the Belgian 1st ''Chasseurs Ardennais'', the 1st Cavalry Division, reinforced by engineers and the French 5th Light Cavalry Division (France), 5e ''Division Légère de Cavalerie'' (5th DLC). The Belgian troops blocked roads, held up the 1st Panzer Division at Bodange for about eight hours and then retired northwards too quickly for the French, who had not arrived. The Belgian barriers proved ineffective when not defended; German engineers were not disturbed as they dismantled the obstacles. The French had insufficient anti-tank capacity to block the surprisingly large number of German tanks they encountered and quickly gave way, withdrawing behind the Meuse. The German advance was hampered by the number of vehicles trying to force their way along the poor road network. ''Panzergruppe Kleist'' had more than 41,140 vehicles, which had only four march routes through the Ardennes. French reconnaissance aircrews had reported German armoured convoys by the night of 10/11 May but this was assumed to be secondary to the main attack in Belgium. On the next night, a reconnaissance pilot reported that he had seen long vehicle columns moving without lights; another pilot sent to check reported the same and that many of the vehicles were tanks. Later that day, photographic reconnaissance and pilot reports were of tanks and bridging equipment. On 13 May, ''Panzergruppe Kleist'' caused a traffic jam about long from the Meuse to the Rhine on one route. While the German columns were sitting targets, the French bomber force attacked the Germans in northern Belgium during the Battle of Maastricht and had failed with heavy losses. In two days, the bomber force had been reduced from 135 to 72. On 11 May, Gamelin ordered reserve divisions to begin reinforcing the Meuse sector. Because of the danger the ''Luftwaffe'' posed, movement over the rail network was limited to night-time, slowing the reinforcement. The French felt no sense of urgency, as they believed the build-up of German divisions would be correspondingly slow; the French Army did not conduct river crossings unless assured of heavy artillery support. While they were aware that the German tank and infantry formations were strong, they were confident in their strong fortifications and artillery superiority. The capabilities of the French units in the area were dubious; in particular, their artillery was designed for fighting infantry and they were short of anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns. The German advance forces reached the Meuse line late in the afternoon of 12 May. To allow each of the three armies of Army Group A to cross, three bridgeheads were to be established, at Sedan in the south, Monthermé to the north-west and Dinant further north. The first German units to arrive hardly had local numerical superiority; the German artillery had an average of 12 rounds per gun per day, while French artillery had 30 rounds per gun per day.


Battle of Sedan

At Sedan, Ardennes, Sedan, the Meuse Line consisted of a strong defensive belt deep, laid out according to the modern principles of zone defence on slopes overlooking the Meuse valley. It was strengthened by 103 Pillbox (military), pillboxes, manned by the 147th Fortress Infantry Regiment. Deeper positions were held by the 55th Infantry Division (France), 55th Infantry Division, a grade "B" reserve division. On the morning of 13 May, the 71st Infantry Division (France), 71st Infantry Division was inserted to the east of Sedan, allowing the 55th Infantry Division to narrow its front by a third and deepen its position to over . The division had a superiority in artillery to the German units present. On 13 May, ''Panzergruppe Kleist'' forced three crossings near Sedan, executed by the 1st Panzer Division (Wehrmacht), 1st ''Panzer'' Division, 2nd Panzer Division (Wehrmacht), 2nd ''Panzer'' Division and 10th Panzer Division (Wehrmacht), 10th ''Panzer'' Division. These groups were reinforced by the elite Infantry Regiment Großdeutschland, Infantry Regiment ''Großdeutschland''. Instead of slowly massing artillery as the French expected, the Germans concentrated most of their air power (lacking artillery) on smashing a hole in a narrow sector of the French lines by carpet bombing and Dive bomber, dive bombing. Guderian had been promised extraordinarily heavy air support during a continual eight-hour air attack, from 08:00 am until dusk. The ''Luftwaffe'' executed the heaviest air bombardment the world had yet witnessed and the most intense by the Germans during the war. Two ''Sturzkampfgeschwader'' (dive bomber wings) attacked, flying 300 sorties against French positions. A total of 3,940 sorties were flown by nine ''Kampfgeschwader'' (Bomber Groups). Some of the forward pillboxes were undamaged and the garrisons repulsed the crossing attempts of the 2nd ''Panzer'' Division and 10th ''Panzer'' Division. The morale of the troops of the 55th Infantry Division further back was broken by the air attacks and French gunners fled. The German infantry, at a cost of a few hundred casualties, penetrated up to into the French defensive zone by midnight. Even by then, most of the infantry had not crossed. Much of this success was due to the actions of just six German platoons, mainly assault engineers. The disorder that had begun at Sedan spread further. At 19:00 on 13 May, troops of the 295th Regiment of the 55th Infantry Division were holding the last prepared defensive line at the Bulson ridge behind the river. They were panicked by alarmist rumours that German tanks were already behind them and fled, creating a gap in the French defences before any tanks had crossed the river. This "Panic of Bulson" also involved the divisional artillery. The Germans had not attacked their position and would not do so until 12 hours later, at 07:20 on 14 May. Recognising the gravity of the defeat at Sedan, General Gaston-Henri Billotte, commander of the 1st Army Group, whose right flank pivoted on Sedan, urged that the bridges across the Meuse be destroyed by air attack. He was convinced that "over them will pass either victory or defeat!". That day, every available Allied light bomber was employed in an attempt to destroy the three bridges but lost about 44 per cent of the Allied bomber strength for no result.


Collapse on the Meuse

Guderian had indicated on 12 May that he wanted to enlarge the bridgehead to at least . His superior, General Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist, Ewald von Kleist, ordered him, on behalf of Hitler, to limit his moves to a maximum of before consolidation. At 11:45 on 14 May, Rundstedt confirmed this order, which implied that the tank units should now start to dig in. Guderian was able to get Kleist to agree on a form of words for a "reconnaissance in force", by threatening to resign and behind-the-scenes intrigues. Guderian continued the advance, despite the halt order. In the original Manstein Plan, as Guderian had suggested, secondary attacks would be carried out to the south-east, in the rear of the Maginot Line. This would confuse the French command and occupy ground where French counter-offensive forces would assemble. This element had been removed by Halder but Guderian sent the 10th ''Panzer'' Division and Infantry Regiment ''Großdeutschland'' south over the Stonne plateau. The commander of the French Second Army, General Charles Huntziger, intended to carry out a counter-attack at the same spot by the ''3rd Armoured Division (France, 1940), 3e Division Cuirassée'' (3e DCR, 3rd Armoured Division). The intended attack would eliminate the bridgehead. Both sides attacked and counter-attacked from 15 to 17 May. Huntziger considered this at least a defensive success and limited his efforts to protecting the flank. Success in the Battle of Sedan (1940)#Battle of Stonne, Battle of Stonne and the recapture of Bulson would have enabled the French to defend the high ground overlooking Sedan and bombard the bridgehead with observed artillery-fire, even if they could not take it. Stonne changed hands 17 times and fell to the Germans for the last time on the evening of 17 May. Guderian turned the 1st ''Panzer'' Division and the 2nd ''Panzer'' Division westwards on 14 May, which advanced swiftly down the Somme valley towards the English Channel. On 15 May, Guderian's motorised infantry fought their way through the reinforcements of the new French Sixth Army (France), Sixth Army in their assembly area west of Sedan, undercutting the southern flank of the French Ninth Army. The Ninth Army collapsed and surrendered ''en masse''. The 102nd Fortress Division, its flanks unsupported, was surrounded and destroyed on 15 May at the Monthermé bridgehead by the 6th Panzer Division (Wehrmacht), 6th ''Panzer'' Division and 8th Panzer Division (Wehrmacht), 8th ''Panzer'' Division without air support. The French Second Army had also been seriously damaged. The Ninth Army was also giving way because they did not have time to dig in, as Erwin Rommel had broken through French lines within 24 hours of the battle's beginning. The 7th Panzer Division (Wehrmacht), 7th ''Panzer'' Division raced ahead. Rommel refused to allow the division rest and they advanced by day and night. The division advanced in 24 hours. Rommel lost contact with General Hermann Hoth, having disobeyed orders by not waiting for the French to establish a new line of defence. The 7th ''Panzer'' Division continued to advance north-west to Avesnes-sur-Helpe, just ahead of the 1st and 2nd ''Panzer'' divisions. The French 5th Motorized Division (France), 5th Motorised Infantry Division had bivouacked in the path of the German division, with its vehicles neatly lined up along the roadsides and the 7th ''Panzer'' Division dashed through them. The slow speed, overloaded crews and lack of battlefield communications undid the French. The 5th Panzer Division (Wehrmacht), 5th ''Panzer'' Division joined in the fight. The French inflicted many losses on the division. However, they could not cope with the speed of the German mobile units, which closed fast and destroyed the French armour at close range. The remaining elements of the 1st Armoured Division (France, 1940), 1st DCR, resting after losing all but 16 of its tanks in Belgium, were also engaged and defeated. The 1st DCR retired with three operational tanks, while defeating only 10 per cent of the 500 German tanks. By 17 May, Rommel claimed to have taken 10,000 prisoners while suffering only 36 losses. Guderian was delighted with the fast advance and encouraged XIX ''Korps'' to head for the channel, continuing until fuel was exhausted. Hitler worried that the German advance was moving too fast. Halder recorded in his diary on 17 May, Through deception and different interpretations of orders to stop from Hitler and Kleist, the front line commanders ignored Hitler's attempts to stop the westward advance to Abbeville.


French Leaders

The French High Command, slow to react because of its strategy of "methodical warfare", reeled from the shock of the German offensive and was overtaken by defeatism. On the morning of 15 May, Prime Minister of France, French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud telephoned the new British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill and said, "We have been defeated. We are beaten; we have lost the battle." Churchill, attempting to offer some comfort to Reynaud, reminded the Prime Minister of all the times the Germans had broken through the Allied lines in the First World War only to be stopped. Reynaud was inconsolable. Churchill flew to Paris on 16 May. He immediately recognised the gravity of the situation when he observed that the French government was already burning its archives and was preparing for an evacuation of the capital. In a sombre meeting with the French commanders, Churchill asked General Gamelin, "Where is the strategic reserve?" referring to the reserve that had saved Paris in the First World War. Gamelin replied: After the war, Gamelin claimed he said "There is no longer any". Churchill later described hearing this as the most shocking moment in his life. Churchill asked Gamelin where and when the general proposed to launch a counter-attack against the flanks of the German bulge. Gamelin simply replied "inferiority of numbers, inferiority of equipment, inferiority of methods".


Allied counter-attacks

Some of the best Allied units in the north had seen little fighting. Had they been kept in reserve, they might have been used in a counter-attack. Pre-war General Staff Studies had concluded that the main reserves were to be kept on French soil to resist an invasion of the Low Countries. They could also deliver a counterattack or "re-establish the integrity of the original front". Despite having a numerically superior armoured force, the French failed to use it properly or to deliver an attack on the vulnerable German bulge. The Germans combined their fighting vehicles in divisions and used them at the point of main effort. The bulk of French armour was scattered along the front in tiny formations. Most of the French reserve divisions had by now been committed. The 1st DCr had been wiped out when it had run out of fuel and the 3rd DCr had failed to take its opportunity to destroy the German bridgeheads at Sedan. The only armoured division still in reserve, the 2nd Armoured Division (France, 1940), 2nd DCr, was to attack on 16 May west of Saint-Quentin, Aisne. The division commander could locate only seven of its twelve companies, which were scattered along a front. The formation was overrun by the 8th ''Panzer'' Division while still forming up and was destroyed as a fighting unit. The 4th Armored Division (France, 1940), 4th DCr, led by de Gaulle, attempted to launch an attack from the south at Montcornet, Aisne, Montcornet, where Guderian had his ''Korps'' headquarters and the 1st ''Panzer'' Division had its rear services. During the Battle of Montcornet, Germans hastily improvised a defence while Guderian rushed up the 10th ''Panzer'' Division to threaten de Gaulle's flank. This flank pressure and dive-bombing by ''Fliegerkorps'' VIII (General Wolfram von Richthofen) broke up the attack. French losses on 17 May amounted to 32 tanks and armoured vehicles but the French had inflicted loss on the Germans. On 19 May, after receiving reinforcements, de Gaulle attacked again and was repulsed with the loss of 80 out of 155 vehicles. ''Fliegerkorps'' VIII attacked French units massing on the German flanks and prevented most counter-attacks from starting. The defeat of the 4th DCr and the disintegration of the French Ninth Army was caused mainly by the ''Fliegerkorps''. The 4th DCr had achieved a measure of success but the attacks on 17 and 19 May had only local effect.


Channel coast

On 19 May, General Edmund Ironside, 1st Baron Ironside, Edmund Ironside, the British Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), conferred with General Lord Gort, commander of the BEF, at his headquarters near Lens, Pas-de-Calais, Lens. He urged Gort to save the BEF by attacking south-west toward Amiens. Gort replied that seven of his nine divisions were already engaged on the Scheldt River and he had only two divisions left to mount such an attack. He then said that he was under the orders of General Billotte, the commander of the French 1st Army Group but that Billotte had issued no orders for eight days. Ironside confronted Billotte, whose own headquarters was nearby and found him apparently incapable of taking action. He returned to Britain, concerned that the BEF was doomed and ordered urgent British anti-invasion preparations of World War II#Field fortifications, anti-invasion measures. The German land forces could not remain inactive any longer, since it would allow the Allies to reorganise their defence or escape. On 19 May, Guderian was permitted to start moving again and smashed through the weak 12th (Eastern) Infantry Division and the 23rd (Northumbrian) Division (both Army Reserve (United Kingdom), Territorial divisions) on the Somme river. The German units occupied Amiens and secured the westernmost bridge over the river at Abbeville. This move isolated the British, French, Dutch and Belgian forces in the north from their supplies. On 20 May, a reconnaissance unit from the 2nd ''Panzer'' Division reached Noyelles-sur-Mer, to the west of their positions on 17 May. From Noyelles, they were able to see the Somme estuary and the English Channel. A huge Pocket (military), pocket, containing the Allied 1st Army Group (the Belgian, British and French First, Seventh and Ninth armies), was created. ''Fliegerkorps'' VIII covered the dash to the channel coast. Heralded as the finest hour of the Ju 87 (''Stuka''), these units responded via an extremely efficient C4ISTAR, communications system to requests for support, which blasted a path for the army. The Ju 87s were particularly effective at breaking up attacks along the flanks of the German forces, breaking fortified positions and disrupting supply line, supply routes. Radio-equipped forward liaison officers could call upon the ''Stuka''s and direct them to attack Allied positions along the axis of advance. In some cases, the ''Luftwaffe'' responded to requests within 10 to 20 minutes. ''Oberstleutnant'' Hans Seidemann, the ''Fliegerkorps'' vIII Chief of Staff, said that "never again was such a smoothly functioning system for discussing and planning joint operations achieved". Closer examination reveals the army had to wait 45–75 minutes for Ju 87 units and ten minutes for Henschel Hs 123s.


Weygand Plan

On the morning of 20 May, Gamelin ordered the armies trapped in Belgium and northern France to fight their way south and link up with French forces attacking northwards from the Somme river. On the evening of 19 May, the French Prime Minister, Paul Reynaud, had sacked Gamelin and replaced him with Maxime Weygand, who claimed his first mission as Commander-in-Chief would be to get a good night's sleep. Gamelin's orders were cancelled and Weygand took several days during the crisis to make courtesy visits in Paris. Weygand proposed a counter-offensive by the armies trapped in the north combined with an attack by French forces on the Somme front, the new French 3rd Army Group (General Antoine-Marie-Benoît Besson). The corridor through which ''Panzergruppe von Kleist'' had advanced to the coast was narrow and to the north were the three DLMs and the BEF; to the south was the 4th DCR. Allied delays caused by the French change of command gave the German infantry divisions time to follow up and reinforce the panzer corridor. Their tanks had also pushed further along the channel coast. Weygand flew into the pocket on 21 May and met Billotte, the commander of the 1st Army Group and King Leopold III of Belgium. Leopold announced that the Belgian Army could not conduct offensive operations, as it lacked tanks and aircraft and that unoccupied Belgium had enough food for only two weeks. Leopold did not expect the BEF to endanger itself to keep contact with the Belgian Army but warned that if it persisted with the southern offensive, the Belgian army would collapse. Leopold suggested the establishment of a beach-head covering Dunkirk and the Belgian channel ports. Gort doubted that the French could prevail. On 23 May, the situation was worsened by Billotte being killed in a car crash, leaving the 1st Army Group leaderless for three days. He was the only Allied commander in the north briefed on the Weygand plan. That day, the British decided to evacuate from the Channel ports. Only two local offensives, by the British and French in the north at Arras, France, Arras on 21 May and by the French from Cambrai in the south on 22 May, took place. ''Frankforce'' (Major-General Harold Franklyn) consisting of two divisions, had moved into the Arras area. Franklyn was not aware of a French push north toward Cambrai and the French were ignorant of a British attack towards Arras. Franklyn assumed he was to relieve the Allied garrison at Arras and cut German communications in the vicinity. He was reluctant to commit the 5th Infantry Division (United Kingdom), 5th Infantry Division and 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division, with the 3rd DLM providing flank protection, in a limited objective attack. Only two British infantry battalions and two battalions of the 1st Army Tank Brigade, with 58 Matilda I (tank), Matilda I and 16 Matilda II tanks and an attached motorcycle battalion, took part in the main attack. The Battle of Arras (1940), Battle of Arras achieved surprise and initial success against overstretched German forces but failed in its objective. Radio communication between tanks and infantry was poor and there was little combined arms co-ordination as practised by the Germans. German defences (including 8.8 cm FlaK 18/36/37/41, ''FlaK'' guns and 10.5 cm leFH 18, field guns) eventually stopped the attack. The French knocked out many German tanks as they retired but the ''Luftwaffe'' broke up the counter-attacks and 60 British tanks were lost. The southern attack at Cambrai also failed, because V Corps had been too disorganised after the fighting in Belgium to make a serious effort. OKH panicked at the thought of hundreds of Allied tanks smashing the best forces but Rommel wanted to continue the pursuit. Early on 22 May, OKH recovered and ordered the XIX ''Panzerkorps'' to press north from Abbeville to the Channel ports. The 1st ''Panzer'' Division advanced to Calais, the 2nd ''Panzer'' Division to Boulogne-sur-Mer, Boulogne and the 10th ''Panzer'' Division to Dunkirk (later, the 1st and 10th ''Panzer'' divisions' roles were reversed). South of the German salient, limited French attacks occurred on 23 May near Peronne and Amiens. French and British troops fought the Battle of Abbeville from 27 May to 4 June but failed to eliminate the German bridgehead south of the Somme.


BEF and the Channel ports


Siege of Calais

In the early hours of 23 May, Gort ordered a retreat from Arras. By now, he had no faith in the Weygand plan, nor in Weygand's proposal at least to try to hold a pocket on the Flemish coast, a so-called ''Réduit de Flandres''. Gort knew that the ports needed to supply such a foothold were already being threatened. That same day, the 2nd ''Panzer'' Division had assaulted Boulogne. The remaining French and British there surrendered on 25 May, although 4,286 men were evacuated by Royal Navy ships. The RAF also provided air cover, denying the ''Luftwaffe'' an opportunity to attack the shipping. The 10th ''Panzer'' Division (Ferdinand Schaal) attacked Calais on 24 May. British reinforcements (the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment, equipped with cruiser tanks and the British 30th Infantry Brigade, 30th Motor Brigade; the latter constituted much of the infantry force that was to have served with British 1st Armoured Division) had been hastily landed 24 hours before the Germans attacked. The defenders held on to the port as long as possible, aware that an early capitulation would free up German forces to advance on Dunkirk. The British and French held the town despite the best efforts of Schaal's division to break through. Frustrated, Guderian ordered that, if Calais had not fallen by 14:00 on 26 May, he would withdraw the 10th ''Panzer'' Division and ask the ''Luftwaffe'' to destroy the town. Eventually, the French and British ran out of ammunition and the Germans were able to break into the fortified city at around 13:30 on 26 May, 30 minutes before Schaal's deadline was up. Despite the French surrender of the main fortifications, the British held the docks until the morning of 27 May. Around 440 men were evacuated. The siege lasted for four crucial days. The delaying action came at a price, about 60 per cent of Allied personnel were killed or wounded.


Halt orders

Frieser wrote that the Franco-British counter-attack at Arras had a disproportionate effect on the Germans because the German higher commanders were apprehensive about flank security. Kleist, the commander of , perceived a "serious threat" and informed Halder that he had to wait until the crisis was resolved before continuing. Colonel-General Günther von Kluge, the 4th Army commander ordered the tanks to halt, with the support of Rundstedt. On 22 May, when the attack had been repulsed, Rundstedt ordered that the situation at Arras must be restored before moved on Boulogne and Calais. At OKW, the panic was worse and Hitler contacted Army Group A on 22 May, to order that all mobile units were to operate either side of Arras and infantry units were to operate to the east. The crisis among the higher staffs of the German army was not apparent at the front and Halder formed the same conclusion as Guderian, that the real threat was that the Allies would retreat to the channel coast too quickly and a race for the channel ports began. Guderian ordered the 2nd Panzer Division to capture Boulogne, the 1st Panzer Division to take Calais and the 10th Panzer division to seize Dunkirk. Most of the BEF and the French First Army were still from the coast but despite delays, British troops were sent from England to Boulogne and Calais just in time to forestall the XIX Corps panzer divisions on 22 May. Frieser wrote that had the panzers advanced at the same speed on 21 May as they had on 20 May, before the halt order stopped their advance for Boulogne and Calais would have fallen. (Without a halt at Montcornet on 15 May and the second halt on 21 May after the Battle of Arras, the final halt order of 24 May would have been irrelevant, because Dunkirk would have already been captured by the 10th Panzer Division.)


Operation Dynamo

The British launched Operation Dynamo, which evacuated the encircled British, French and Belgian troops from the northern pocket in Belgium and Pas-de-Calais, beginning on 26 May. About 28,000 men were evacuated on the first day. The French First Army – the bulk of which remained in Lille – fought the Siege of Lille (1940), Siege of Lille owing to Weygand's failure to pull it back along with other French forces to the coast. The 50,000 men involved capitulated on 31 May. While the First Army was mounting its sacrificial defence at Lille, it drew German forces away from Dunkirk, allowing 70,000 Allied soldiers to escape. Total Allied evacuation stood at 165,000 on 31 May. The Allied position was complicated by Belgian King Leopold III of Belgium, Leopold III's surrender on 27 May, which was postponed until 28 May. The gap left by the Belgian Army stretched from Ypres to Dixmude. A collapse was averted at the Battle of Dunkirk and 139,732 British and 139,097 French soldiers were Dunkirk evacuation, evacuated by sea across the English Channel in Operation Dynamo. Between 31 May and 4 June, another 20,000 British and 98,000 French were saved; about 30,000 to 40,000 French soldiers of the rearguard remained to be captured. The total evacuated was 338,226, including 199,226 British and 139,000 French. During the Dunkirk battle, the ''Luftwaffe'' did its best to prevent the evacuation. It flew 1,882 bombing missions and 1,997 fighter sorties. British losses at Dunkirk made up 6 per cent of their total losses during the French campaign, including 60 precious fighter pilots. The ''Luftwaffe'' failed in its task of preventing the evacuation but inflicted serious losses on the Allied forces. 89 merchantmen (of 126,518 grt) were lost; the navy lost 29 of its 40 destroyers sunk or seriously damaged. The Germans lost around 100 aircraft; the RAF lost 106 fighters. Other sources put ''Luftwaffe'' losses in the Dunkirk area at 240. Confusion still reigned. After the evacuation at Dunkirk, while Paris was enduring a short-lived siege, part of the 1st Canadian Infantry Division was sent to Brittany but was withdrawn after the French capitulation. The 1st Armoured Division (United Kingdom), 1st Armoured Division under General Evans arrived in France in June and fought in the Battle of Abbeville. It did so without some of its infantry, which had earlier been diverted to the defence of Calais. At the end of the campaign, Erwin Rommel praised the staunch resistance of British forces, despite being under-equipped and without ammunition for much of the fighting.


''Fall Rot''

By the end of May 1940, the best and most modern French armies had been sent north and lost in the resulting encirclement; the French had also lost much of their heavy weaponry and their best armoured formations. Overall, the Allies had lost 61 divisions in ''Fall Gelb''. Weygand was faced with the prospect of defending a long front (from Sedan to the channel), with a greatly depleted French Army now lacking significant Allied support. Weygand had only 64 French divisions and the 51st (Highland) Infantry Division available. Weygand lacked the reserves to counter a breakthrough or to replace frontline troops, should they become exhausted from a prolonged battle on a front of . The Germans had 142 divisions and air supremacy, except over the English Channel. The French also had to deal with 1940 exodus and refugee crisis in France, millions of civilian refugees fleeing the war in what became known as (the Exodus). 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 dropped from 23,000 to 800 and Lille from 200,000 to 20,000, while cities in the south such as Pau, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Pau and Bordeaux rapidly grew in population.


Weygand line

The Germans began their second offensive on 5 June on the Somme and the Aisne. During the next three weeks, far from the easy advance the expected, they encountered strong resistance from a rejuvenated French Army. The French armies had fallen back on their lines of supply and communications and were closer to repair shops, supply dumps and stores. About 112,000 French soldiers from Dunkirk were repatriated via the Normandy and Brittany ports, a partial substitute for the lost divisions in Flanders. The French were also able to make good a significant amount of their armoured losses and raised the 1st and 2nd DCR (heavy armoured divisions). The 4th DCR also had its losses replaced. Morale rose and was very high by the end of May 1940. Most French soldiers that joined the line only knew of German success by hearsay. French officers had gained tactical experience against German mobile units and had more confidence in their weapons after seeing that their artillery and tanks performed better than German armour. The French tanks were now known to have better armour and armament. Between 23 and 28 May, the French Seventh and Tenth armies were reconstituted. Weygand decided to implement defence in depth and use delaying tactics to inflict maximum attrition on German units. Small towns and villages were fortified for all-round defence as tactical hedgehogs. Behind the front line, the new infantry, armoured and half-mechanised divisions formed up, ready to counter-attack and relieve the surrounded units, which were to hold out at all costs. The 47 divisions of Army Group B attacked either side of Paris with the majority of the mobile units. After 48 hours, the German offensive had not broken through. On the Aisne, the XVI ''Panzerkorps'' employed over 1,000 AFVs in two ''Panzer'' divisions and a motorised division against the French. German offensive tactics were crude and Hoepner soon lost 80 out of 500 AFVs in the first attack. The 4th Army captured bridgeheads over the Somme but the Germans struggled to get over the Aisne. At Amiens, the Germans were repeatedly driven back by French artillery-fire and realised that French tactics were much improved. The German Army relied on the to silence French artillery, to enable German infantry to inch forward. German progress was made only late on the third day of operations, finally forcing crossings. The French Air Force () attempted to bomb them but failed. German sources acknowledged the battle was "hard and costly in lives, the enemy putting up severe resistance, particularly in the woods and tree lines continuing the fight when our troops had pushed past the point of resistance". South of Abbeville, the French Tenth Army (General Robert Altmayer) was forced to retreat to Rouen and then south over the Seine river. The 7th ''Panzer'' Division forced the surrender of the British 51st (Highland) Division and the French IX Corps on 12 June at Saint-Valery-en-Caux, then crossed the Seine river to race through Normandy, capturing the port of Cherbourg on 18 June. German spearheads were overextended and vulnerable to counter-attack but the denied the French the ability to concentrate and the fear of air attack negated their mass and mobility. On 10 June, the French government declared Paris an open city. The German 18th Army then deployed against Paris. The French resisted the approaches to the capital strongly but the line was broken in several places. Weygand asserted it would not take long for the French Army to disintegrate. On 13 June, Churchill attended a meeting of the Anglo-French Supreme War Council at Tours and suggested a Franco-British Union#World War II (1940), Franco-British Union but this was refused. On 14 June, Paris fell. Parisians who stayed in the city found that in most cases the Germans were extremely well mannered. The situation in the air had also worsened; air superiority had become air supremacy as the came to the verge of collapse. The French had only just begun to make the majority of bomber sorties; between 5 and 9 June (during Operation Paula), over 1,815 sorties, 518 by bombers, were flown. The number of sorties declined as losses were now becoming impossible to replace. After 9 June, French aerial resistance virtually ceased; some surviving aircraft withdrew to
French North Africa French North Africa (french: Afrique du Nord française, sometimes abbreviated to ANF) is the term often applied to the territories controlled by France in the North African Maghreb during the colonial era, namely Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. In ...
. The now "ran riot". Its attacks concentrated on the direct and indirect support of the German Army. The attacked lines of resistance, which then quickly collapsed under armoured attack. The RAF attempted to divert the attention of the with 660 sorties flown against targets over the Dunkirk area but suffered many losses. On 21 June, 37 Bristol Blenheims were destroyed.


Collapse of the Maginot line

To the east, Army Group C was to help Army Group A encircle and capture the French forces on the Maginot line. The goal of the operation was to envelop the Metz region with its fortifications, to prevent a French counter-offensive from the Alsace region against the German line on the Somme. XIX ''Korps'' (Guderian) was to advance to the French border with Switzerland and trap the French forces in the Vosges Mountains while the XVI ''Korps'' attacked the Maginot Line from the west, into its vulnerable rear, to take the cities of Verdun, Toul and Metz. The French had moved the 2nd Army Group from the Alsace and Lorraine to the 'Weygand line' on the Somme, leaving only small forces guarding the Maginot line. After Army Group B had begun its offensive against Paris and into Normandy, Army Group A began its advance into the rear of the Maginot line. On 15 June, Army Group C launched Operation Tiger, a frontal assault across the Rhine and into France. German attempts to break open or into the Maginot line prior to Tiger had failed. One assault lasted for eight hours on the extreme north of the line, costing the Germans 46 dead and 251 wounded for two French were killed (one at Ouvrage Ferme Chappy, Ferme-Chappy and one at Ouvrage Fermont, Fermont fortress). On 15 June, the last well-equipped French forces, including the Fourth Army, were preparing to leave as the Germans struck. The French force now holding the line was exiguous; the Germans greatly outnumbered the French. They could call upon the I ''Armeekorps'' of seven divisions and 1,000 artillery pieces, although most were First World War vintage and could not penetrate the thick armour of the fortresses. Only guns could do the job and 16 were allocated to the operation. To bolster this, and eight railway batteries were also employed. The ''Luftwaffe'' deployed the 5th Air Corps (Germany), ''Fliegerkorps'' V. The battle was difficult and slow progress was made against strong French resistance. Each fortress was overcome one by one. One fortress (Ouvrage Schoenenbourg, Schoenenbourg) fired 15,802 rounds at attacking German infantry. It was the most heavily shelled of all the French positions but its armour protected it from fatal damage. On the day that Tiger was launched, (Operation Little Bear) began. Five divisions of the VII ''Armeekorps'' crossed the Rhine into the Colmar area with a view to advancing to the Vosges Mountains. The force had 400 artillery pieces, reinforced by heavy artillery and mortars. The French 104th Division and 105th Division were forced back into the Vosges Mountains on 17 June. On the same day, XIX ''Korps'' reached the Swiss border the Maginot defences were cut off from the rest of France. Most units surrendered on 25 June and the Germans claimed to have taken 500,000 prisoners. Some main fortresses continued the fight, despite appeals for surrender. The last only capitulated on 10 July, after a request from Georges and only then under protest. Of the 58 main fortifications on the Maginot Line, ten were captured by the ''Wehrmacht''.


Second BEF evacuation

The evacuation of the second BEF took place during Operation Aerial between 15 and 25 June. The , with complete domination of the French skies, was determined to prevent more Allied evacuations after the Dunkirk . 1 was assigned to the Normandy and Brittany sectors. On 9 and 10 June, the port of Cherbourg was subject to of German bombs, while Le Havre received 10 Bombing of France during World War II, bombing attacks that sank 2,949 Gross register tonnage, GRT of Allied shipping. On 17 June, Junkers Ju 88s—mainly from 30—sank a "10,000 tonne ship", the 16,243 GRT liner off St Nazaire, killing about 4,000 Allied troops and civilians. This was nearly double the British killed in the battle of France, yet the failed to prevent the evacuation of 190,000–200,000 Allied personnel.


Battle of the Alps

Kingdom of Italy, Italy declared war on France and Britain on 10 June but it was not prepared for war and made little impact during the last two weeks of fighting in the Italian invasion of France. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was aware of this and sought to profit from the German success. Mussolini felt the conflict would soon end and he reportedly said to the Army's Chief-of-Staff, Marshal Pietro Badoglio, "I only need a few thousand dead so that I can sit at the peace conference as a man who has fought". In a two-week battle, the Army of the Alps#20th Century, Army of the Alps (General René Olry) mostly repelled the numerically superior Italian Army. When the armistice took effect on 25 June, only the town of Menton and a few alpine passes had been gained by Mussolini's army.


Armistice

Discouraged by his cabinet's hostile reaction to a British proposal for a Franco-British union#World War II (1940), Franco-British union to avoid defeat and believing that his ministers no longer supported him, Reynaud resigned on 16 June. He was succeeded by Pétain, who delivered a radio address to the French people announcing his intention to ask for an armistice with Germany. When Hitler received word from the French government that they wished to negotiate an armistice, he selected the Forest of Compiègne as the site for the negotiations. Compiègne had been the site of the Armistice with Germany (Compiègne), 1918 Armistice, which ended the First World War with a humiliating defeat for Germany; Hitler viewed the choice of location as a supreme moment of revenge for Germany over France. On 21 June 1940, Hitler visited the site to start the negotiations, which took place in the same railway carriage in which the 1918 Armistice was signed. It had just been removed from a museum building and placed on the spot where it was located in 1918. Hitler sat in the same chair in which Marshal Ferdinand Foch had sat when he faced the defeated German representatives. After listening to the reading of the preamble, Hitler left the carriage in a calculated gesture of disdain for the French delegates and negotiations were turned over to Wilhelm Keitel, the Chief of Staff of OKW. The armistice was signed on the next day at 18:36 (French time), by General Keitel for Germany and Huntziger for France. The armistice and cease-fire went into effect two days and six hours later, at 00:35 on 25 June, once the Franco-Italian Armistice had also been signed, at 18:35 on 24 June, near Rome. On 27 June, German troops occupied the coast of the Basque Country between France and Spain.


Aftermath


Analysis

The title of Ernest R. May, Ernest May's book ''Strange Victory: Hitler's Conquest of France'' (2000) nods to an earlier analysis, ''Strange Defeat'' (1946) by the historian Marc Bloch (1886–1944), a participant in the battle. May wrote that Hitler had better insight into the French and British governments than vice-versa and knew that they would not go to war over Austria and Czechoslovakia, because he concentrated on politics rather than the state and national interest. From 1937 to 1940, Hitler gave his views on events, their importance and his intentions, then defended them against contrary opinion from the likes of the former Chief of the General Staff Ludwig Beck and Ernst von Weizsäcker. Hitler sometimes concealed aspects of his thinking but he was unusually frank about priority and his assumptions. May referred to John Wheeler-Bennett (1964), May asserted that in Paris, London and other capitals, there was an inability to believe that someone might ''want'' another world war. He wrote that, given public reluctance to contemplate another war and a need to reach consensus about Germany, the rulers of France and Britain were ''reticent'' (to resist German aggression), which limited dissent at the cost of enabling assumptions that suited their convenience. In France, Édouard Daladier withheld information until the last moment and in September 1938 presented the Munich Agreement to the French cabinet as a ''fait accompli'', thus avoiding discussions over whether Britain would follow France into war or if the military balance was really in Germany's favour or how significant it was. The decision for war in September 1939 and the plan devised in the winter of 1939–1940 by Daladier for war with the USSR followed the same pattern. Hitler miscalculated Franco-British reactions to the invasion of Poland in September 1939, because he had not realised that a shift in public opinion had occurred in mid-1939. May wrote that the French and British could have defeated Germany in 1938 with Czechoslovakia as an ally and also in late 1939, when German forces in the West were incapable of preventing a French occupation of the Ruhr, which would have forced a capitulation or a futile German resistance in a war of attrition. France did not invade Germany in 1939 because it wanted British lives to be at risk too and because of hopes that a blockade might force a German surrender without a bloodbath. The French and British also believed that they were militarily superior, which guaranteed victory. The run of victories enjoyed by Hitler from 1938 to 1940 could only be understood in the context of defeat being inconceivable to French and British leaders. May wrote that when Hitler demanded a plan to invade France in September 1939, the German officer corps thought that it was foolhardy and discussed a coup d'état, only backing down when doubtful of the loyalty of the soldiers to them. With the deadline for the attack on France being postponed so often, OKH had time to revise (Case Yellow) for an invasion over the Belgian Plain several times. In January 1940, Hitler came close to ordering the invasion but was prevented by bad weather. Until the Mechelen incident in January forced a fundamental revision of ''Fall Gelb'', the main effort () of the German army in Belgium would have been confronted by first-rate French and British forces, equipped with more and better tanks and with a great advantage in artillery. After the Mechelen Incident, OKH devised an alternative and hugely risky plan to make the invasion of Belgium a decoy, switch the main effort to the Ardennes, cross the Meuse and reach the Channel coast. May wrote that although the alternative plan was called the Manstein Plan, Guderian, Manstein, Rundstedt, Halder and Hitler had been equally important in its creation. War games held by (Major-General) Kurt von Tippelskirch, the chief of army intelligence and Oberst Ulrich Liss of (FHW, Foreign Armies West), tested the concept of an offensive through the Ardennes. Liss thought that swift reactions could not be expected from the "systematic French or the ponderous English" and used French and British methods, which made no provision for surprise and reacted slowly when one was sprung. The results of the war games persuaded Halder that the Ardennes scheme could work, even though he and many other commanders still expected it to fail. May wrote that without the reassurance of intelligence analysis and the results of the war games, the possibility of Germany adopting the ultimate version of would have been remote. The French Dyle-Breda variant of the Allied deployment plan was based on an accurate prediction of German intentions, until the delays caused by the winter weather and shock of the Mechelen Incident, led to the radical revision of . The French sought to assure the British that they would act to prevent the using bases in the Netherlands and the Meuse valley and to encourage the Belgian and Dutch governments. The politico-strategic aspects of the plan ossified French thinking, the Phoney War led to demands for Allied offensives in Scandinavia or the Balkans and the plan to start a war with the USSR. French generals thought that changes to the Dyle-Breda variant might lead to forces being taken from the Western Front. French and British intelligence sources were better than the German equivalents, which suffered from too many competing agencies but Allied intelligence analysis was not as well integrated into planning or decision-making. Information was delivered to operations officers but there was no mechanism like the German system of allowing intelligence officers to comment on planning assumptions about opponents and allies. The insularity of the French and British intelligence agencies meant that had they been asked if Germany would continue with a plan to attack across the Belgian plain after the Mechelen Incident, they would not have been able to point out how risky the Dyle-Breda variant was. May wrote that the wartime performance of the Allied intelligence services was abysmal. Daily and weekly evaluations had no analysis of fanciful predictions about German intentions. A May 1940 report from Switzerland that the Germans would attack through the Ardennes was marked as a German spoof. More items were obtained about invasions of Switzerland or the Balkans, while German behaviour consistent with an Ardennes attack, such as the dumping of supplies and communications equipment on the Luxembourg border or the concentration of ''Luftwaffe'' air reconnaissance around Sedan and Charleville-Mézières, was overlooked. According to May, French and British rulers were at fault for tolerating poor performance by the intelligence agencies; that the Germans could achieve surprise in May 1940, showed that even with Hitler, the process of executive judgement in Germany had worked better than in France and Britain. May referred to ''Strange Defeat'' (Marc Bloch, 1940), that the German victory was a "triumph of intellect", which depended on Hitler's "methodical opportunism". May further asserted that, despite Allied mistakes, the Germans could not have succeeded but for outrageous good luck. German commanders wrote during the campaign and after, that often only a small difference had separated success from failure. Prioux thought that a counter-offensive could still have worked up to 19 May but by then, roads were crowded with Belgian refugees when they were needed for redeployment and the French transport units, which performed well in the advance into Belgium, failed for lack of plans to move them back. Gamelin had said "It is all a question of hours." but the decision to sack Gamelin and appoint Weygand, caused a two-day delay.


Occupation

France was divided into a German occupation zone in the north and west and a (free zone) in the south. Both zones were nominally under the sovereignty of the French rump state headed by Pétain that replaced the Third Republic; this rump state is often referred to as Vichy France. De Gaulle, who had been made an Undersecretary of National Defence by Reynaud in London at the time of the armistice, refused to recognise Pétain's Vichy government as legitimate. He delivered the Appeal of 18 June, the beginning of Free French Forces, Free France. The British doubted Admiral François Darlan's promise not to allow the French fleet at Toulon to fall into German hands by the wording of the armistice conditions. They feared the Germans would seize the fleet, docked at ports in Vichy France and North Africa and use them in an invasion of Britain (Operation Sea Lion). Within a month, the Royal Navy conducted the Attack on Mers-el-Kébir against French ships at Oran. The British Chiefs of Staff Committee had concluded in May 1940 that if France collapsed, "we do not think we could continue the war with any chance of success" without "full economic and financial support" from the United States. Churchill's desire for American aid led in September to the Destroyers for Bases agreement that began the Atlantic Charter the wartime Anglo-American partnership. The occupation of the various French zones continued until November 1942, when the Allies began Operation Torch, the invasion of Western North Africa. To safeguard southern France, the Germans enacted ''
Case Anton Case Anton (german: link=no, Fall Anton) was the military occupation of France carried out by Germany and Italy in November 1942. It marked the end of the Vichy regime as a nominally-independent state and the disbanding of its army (the severel ...
'' and occupied Vichy France. In June 1944, the Western Allies launched Operation Overlord, followed by the Operation Dragoon on the French Mediterranean coast on 15 August. This threatened to cut off German troops in western and central France and most began to retire toward Germany. (The fortified French Submarine pen#France, Atlantic U-boat bases remained as Atlantic pockets, pockets until the German capitulation.) On 24 August 1944, liberation of Paris, Paris was liberated and by September 1944 most of the country was in Allied hands. The free France, Free French provisional government declared the re-establishment of a GPRF, provisional French Republic to ensure continuity with the defunct Third Republic. It set about raising new troops to participate in the Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine, advance to the Rhine and the Western Allied invasion of Germany by using the French Forces of the Interior as En cadre, military cadres and manpower pools of experienced fighters to allow a very large and rapid expansion of the French Liberation Army (''Armée française de la Libération''). It was well equipped and well supplied despite the economic disruption brought by the occupation thanks to Lend-Lease and grew from 500,000 men in the summer of 1944 to over 1,300,000 by V-E day, making it the fourth largest Allied army in Europe. The 2nd Armored Division (France), 2e Division Blindée (2nd Armoured Division), part of the Free French forces that had participated in the Normandy Campaign and had liberated Paris, went on to French 2nd Armoured Division#Alsace & Lorraine, liberate Strasbourg on 23 November 1944, fulfilling the Battle of Kufra (1941)#Oath of Kufra, Oath of Kufra made by General Philippe Leclerc, Leclerc almost four years earlier. The unit under his command, barely above Company (military unit), company size when it had captured the Italian fort, had grown into an armoured division. The 1 Army Corps (France), I Corps was the spearhead of the Free French First Army (France), First Army that had landed in Provence as a part of Operation Dragoon. Its leading unit, the 1st Armored Division (France), 1re Division Blindée, was the first Western Allied unit to reach the Rhône (25 August), the Rhine (19 November) and the Danube (21 April 1945). On 22 April, it captured the Sigmaringen enclave in Baden-Württemberg, where the last Vichy regime exiles were hosted by the Germans in one of the ancestral castles of the Hohenzollern dynasty. By the end of the war, some 580,000 French citizens had died (40,000 of these were killed by the western Allied forces during the bombardments of the first 48 hours of Operation Overlord). Military deaths were 55,000–60,000 in 1939–40. Some 58,000 were killed in action from 1940 to 1945 fighting in the Free French forces. Some 40,000 ''malgré-nous'' ("against our will", citizens of the re-annexed Alsace-Lorraine province drafted into the Wehrmacht) became casualties. Civilian casualties amounted to around 150,000 (60,000 by aerial bombing, 60,000 in the resistance and 30,000 murdered by German occupation forces). Prisoners of war and deportee totals were around 1,900,000; of these, around 240,000 died in captivity. An estimated 40,000 were prisoners of war, 100,000 racial deportees, 60,000 political prisoners and 40,000 died as slave labourers.


Casualties and losses

German casualties are hard to determine but commonly accepted figures are: 27,074 killed, 111,034 wounded and 18,384 missing.''L'Histoire'', No. 352, April 2010 ''France 1940: Autopsie d'une défaite'', p. 59. German deaths may have been as high as 45,000 men, due to non-combat causes, such as death from wounds and missing who were later listed as dead. The battle cost the 28 per cent of its front line strength; some 1,236–1,428 aircraft were destroyed (1,129 to enemy action, 299 in accidents), 323–488 were damaged (225 to enemy action, 263 in accidents), making 36 per cent of the strength lost or damaged. casualties amounted to 6,653 men, including 4,417 aircrew; of these 1,129 were killed and 1,930 were reported missing or captured, many of whom were liberated from French prison camps upon the French capitulation. Italian casualties amounted to 631 or 642 men killed, 2,631 wounded and 616 reported missing. A further 2,151 men suffered from frostbite during the campaign. The official Italian numbers were compiled for a report on 18 July 1940, when many of the fallen still lay under snow and it is probable that most of the Italian missing were dead. Units operating in more difficult terrain had higher ratios of missing to killed but probably most of the missing had died. According to the French Defence Historical Service, 85,310 French military personnel were killed (including 5,400 Maghrebis); 12,000 were reported missing, 120,000 were wounded and French prisoners of war in World War II, 1,540,000 prisoners (including 67,400 Maghrebis) were taken. Some recent French research indicates that the number of killed was between 55,000 and 85,000, a statement of the French Defence Historical Service tending to the lower end. In August 1940, 1,540,000 prisoners were taken into Germany, where roughly 940,000 remained until 1945, when they were liberated by advancing Allied forces. At least 3,000 Senegalese Tirailleurs were murdered after being taken prisoner. While in captivity, 24,600 French prisoners died; 71,000 escaped; 220,000 were released by various agreements between the Vichy government and Germany; several hundred thousand were paroled because of disability and/or sickness. Air losses are estimated at 1,274 aircraft destroyed during the campaign. French tank losses amount to 1,749 tanks (43 per cent of tanks engaged), of which 1,669 were lost to gunfire, 45 to mines and 35 to aircraft. Tank losses are amplified by the large numbers that were abandoned or scuttled and then captured. The BEF suffered or died of wounds, and missing or taken prisoner. About 64,000 vehicles were destroyed or abandoned and 2,472 guns were destroyed or abandoned. RAF losses from 10 May – 22 June, amounted to 931 aircraft and 1,526 casualties. The Allied naval forces also lost 243 ships to bombing in Dynamo. Belgian losses were 6,093 killed, 15,850 wounded and more than 500 missing. Those captured amounted to 200,000 men whom 2,000 died in captivity. The Belgians also lost 112 aircraft. The Dutch Armed forces lost 2,332 killed and 7,000 wounded.Goossens, Balance Sheet
waroverholland.nl
/ref> Polish losses were around 5,500 killed or wounded and 16,000 prisoners, nearly 13,000 troops of the 2nd Infantry Division were interned in Switzerland for the duration of the war.


Popular reaction in Germany

Hitler had expected a million Germans to die in conquering France; instead, his goal was accomplished in just six weeks with only 27,000 Germans killed, 18,400 missing and 111,000 wounded, little more than a third of the German casualties in the Battle of Verdun during World War I. The unexpectedly swift victory resulted in a wave of euphoria among the German population and a strong upsurge in war-fever. Hitler's popularity reached its peak with the celebration of the French capitulation on 6 July 1940. On 19 July, during the 1940 Field Marshal Ceremony at the Kroll Opera House in Berlin, Hitler promoted 12 generals to the rank of field marshal. *
Walther von Brauchitsch Walther Heinrich Alfred Hermann von Brauchitsch (4 October 1881 – 18 October 1948) was a German field marshal and the Commander-in-Chief (''Oberbefehlshaber'') of the German Army during World War II. Born into an aristocratic military family ...
, Commander in Chief of the Army * Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the ''Oberkommando der Wehrmacht'' (''OKW'') *
Gerd von Rundstedt Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt (12 December 1875 – 24 February 1953) was a German field marshal in the '' Heer'' (Army) of Nazi Germany during World War II. Born into a Prussian family with a long military tradition, Rundstedt entered th ...
, Commander in chief of
Army Group A Army Group A (Heeresgruppe A) was the name of several German Army Groups during World War II. During the Battle of France, the army group named Army Group A was composed of 45½ divisions, including 7 armored panzer divisions. It was responsible ...
*
Fedor von Bock Moritz Albrecht Franz Friedrich Fedor von Bock (3 December 1880 – 4 May 1945) was a German who served in the German Army during the Second World War. Bock served as the commander of Army Group North during the Invasion of Poland in ...
, Commander in chief of
Army Group B Army Group B (German: ') was the title of three German Army Groups that saw action during World War II. Operational history Army Group B first took part in the Battle of France in 1940 in Belgium and the Netherlands. The second formation of ...
* Wilhelm von Leeb, Commander in chief of Army Group C * Günther von Kluge, Commander of the 4th Army (Wehrmacht), 4th Army * Wilhelm List, Commander of the 12th Army (Wehrmacht), 12th Army * Erwin von Witzleben, Commander of the 1st Army (Wehrmacht), 1st Army * Walther von Reichenau, Commander of the 6th Army (Wehrmacht), 6th Army * Albert Kesselring, Commander of Luftflotte 2 (Air Fleet 2) * Erhard Milch, Inspector General of the Luftwaffe * Hugo Sperrle, Commander of the Luftflotte 3 (Air Fleet 3) This number of promotions to what had previously been the highest rank in the ''Wehrmacht'' (Hermann Göring, Commander in chief of the Luftwaffe and already a Field Marshal, was elevated to the new rank of ''Reichsmarschall'') was unprecedented. In the First World War, Kaiser Wilhelm II, German Emperor, Wilhelm II had promoted only five generals to Field Marshal.


Witness accounts

* ''From Lemberg to Bordeaux'' (''Von Lemberg bis Bordeaux''), written by Leo Leixner, a journalist and war correspondent, is a witness account of the battles that led to the fall of Poland and France. In August 1939, Leixner joined the Wehrmacht as a war reporter, was promoted to sergeant and in 1941 published his recollections. The book was originally issued by Franz Eher Nachfolger, the central publishing house of the Nazi Party. * ''Tanks Break Through!'' (''Panzerjäger Brechen Durch!''), written by Alfred-Ingemar Berndt, a journalist and close associate of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, is a witness account of the battles that led to the fall of France. When the 1940 attack was in the offing, Berndt joined the Wehrmacht, was sergeant in an anti-tank division and afterward published his recollections. The book was originally issued by Franz Eher Nachfolger, the central publishing house of the Nazi Party, in 1940. * Escape via Berlin (''De Gernika a Nueva York''), written by José Antonio Aguirre (politician), José Antonio Aguirre, president of the Basque Country, describes his passage through occupied France and Belgium on his way to exile. Aguirre supported the loyalist side during the Spanish Civil war and was forced to exile in France, where the German invasion took him by surprise. He joined the wave of refugees trying to flee France and finally managed to escape to the United States through a long journey involving disguise.


See also

* British Expeditionary Force order of battle (1940) * Polish Army in France (1939–40) * Historiography of the Battle of France * Military history of France during World War II * List of French World War II military equipment * List of British military equipment of World War II * List of Belgian military equipment of World War II * List of Dutch military equipment of World War II * List of German military equipment of World War II * Timeline of the Battle of France * Western Front (World War II)


Notes


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Further reading

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External links

* In

(Official Nazi propaganda account of the Battle of France)
The invasion of Holland in May 1940
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