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In World War II, the Battle of France, also known as the Fall of France, was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries, executed 10 May 1940, which ended the Phony War. more...

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German armored units pushed through the Ardennes, outflanking the Maginot Line and unhinging the Allied defenders. Paris was occupied and the French government fled to Bordeaux on 14 June. France capitulated on 25 June after the French Second Army Group was forced to surrender on 22 June. For the Axis, the campaign was a spectacular victory.

France was divided into a German occupation zone in the north and west, a small Italian occupation zone in the southeast and a collaborationist government in the south, Vichy France. The British Expeditionary Force and many French soldiers were evacuated from Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo. France remained under German occupation until after the Allies defeated the German forces in France following the Allied landings on D-Day in 1944.

Prelude

Following the Invasion of Poland of the preceding year, a period of inaction called the Phony War occurred between the major powers. Hitler originally planned for an invasion as early as 12 November, 1939, however was convinced by his generals to postpone the invasion until the following year. The overall aim was the defeat of the Western European nations as a preliminary step to the conquest of territory in the East, thus avoiding a two-front war. In April 1940, the Germans launched an attack on the neutral countries of Denmark and Norway for strategic reasons. The British, French, and Free Poles responded by launching an Allied campaign in Norway in support of the Norwegians.

Neither the French nor the British anticipated such a rapid defeat in Poland, and the quick German victory, relying on a new form of mobile warfare, disturbed generals in London and Paris. However the Allies, still assuming they would be able to contain the enemy, anticipated a war similar to the First World War, and believed that even without an Eastern Front the Germans could be defeated by blockade, as they had previously. This sentiment was more widely shared in London than in Paris, which had suffered a greater loss of life and material devastation in the First World War. The French leadership, in particular Édouard Daladier (Prime Minister of France since 1938) held a larger respect for the gap between France's human and economic resources vis-a-vis those of Germany, than British counterparts.

The Supreme Commander of France's army, Maurice Gamelin, like the rest of the French government, was expecting a campaign from the Germans that in the strategic sense would mirror the First World War. The Von Schlieffen Plan, Gamelin believed, was to be repeated with a reasonably close degree of accuracy, and even though important parts of the French army in the 1930s had been designed to wage offensive warfare, it would be preferable to confront such a threat defensively, as the French military staff believed its country was not equipped militarily or economically to launch a decisive offensive initially. It would be better to wait until 1941 to fully exploit the combined allied economic superiority over Germany. To confront the expected German plan — which rested on a move into the Low Countries outflanking the fortified Maginot Line — Gamelin intended to send the best units of the French army along with the British Expeditionary Force north to halt the Germans at the KW-line, a defensive line that is following the river Dyle, east of Brussels until a decisive victory could be achieved with the support of the united British, Belgian, French and Dutch armies. The original German plan closely resembled Gamelin's expectations.

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