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Battle of France

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: World War II

   Battle of France
   Part of World War II

     Date   10 May 1940 – 22 June 1940
   Location France
    Result  Decisive Axis victory
   Combatants
   France
   United Kingdom
   Canada
   Poland
   Belgium
   Netherlands
   Luxembourg Germany

   Italy
   Commanders
   Maurice Gamelin, Maxime Weygand (French)
   Lord Gort ( British Expeditionary Force)
   H.G. Winkelman (Dutch) Gerd von Rundstedt (Army Group A)
   Fedor von Bock (Army Group B)
   Wilhelm von Leeb (Army Group C)
   H.R.H. Umberto di Savoia (Army Group West)
   Strength
   144 divisions
   13,974 guns
   3,384 tanks
   3,099 aircraft
   Total: 2,862,000 141 German divisions
   32 Italian divisions
   7,378 guns
   2,445 tanks
   5,446 aircraft
   Total: 3,350,000 Germans
   700,000 Italians
   Casualties
   360,000 dead or wounded
   1,900,000 captured 45,000 dead
   110,000 wounded
                      Western Front (World War II)
   France - The Netherlands - Dunkirk - Britain - Dieppe -
   Villefranche-de-Rouergue - Normandy - Dragoon - Arnhem - Scheldt -
   Hurtgen Forest - Aachen - Bulge - Plunder - Varsity - Aintree

   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. 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.
   French Supreme Commander Maurice Gamelin
   Enlarge
   French Supreme Commander Maurice Gamelin

   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.
   The evolution of German plans for the invasion of France.
   Enlarge
   The evolution of German plans for the invasion of France.

   The crash in Belgium of a light plane, on 10 January 1940, carrying two
   German officers with a copy of the then-current invasion plan forced
   Hitler to scrap the plan and search for an original alternative. The
   final plan for Fall Gelb (Case Yellow) had been suggested by General
   Erich von Manstein, then serving as Chief of Staff to Gerd von
   Rundstedt, but had been initially rejected by the German General Staff.
   It proposed a deep penetration further south of the original route,
   which took advantage of the speed of the unified Panzer divisions to
   separate and encircle the opposing forces. It had the virtue of being
   unlikely (from a defensive point of view) as the Ardennes were heavily
   wooded and implausible as a route for a mechanized invasion. It had the
   considerable virtue of not having been intercepted by the Allies (for
   no copies were being carried about) and of being dramatic, which seems
   to have appealed to Hitler.

   Von Manstein's aggressive plan was to break through the weak Allied
   centre with overwhelming force, trap the forces to the north in a
   pocket, and drive on to Paris. The plan benefitted from an Allied
   response close to how they would have responded in the original case;
   namely, that a large part of French and British strength was drawn
   north to defend Belgium and Picardy. To help ensure this result, the
   German Army Group B was still expected to attack Belgium and the
   Netherlands in order to draw Allied forces eastward into the developing
   encirclement, as well as obtaining bases for a later attack on Britain.

   The Allied General Staff and key statesmen, after capturing the
   original invasion plans, were initially jubilant that they had
   potentially won a key victory in the war before the campaign was even
   fought. Contrarily, General Gamelin and Lord Gort, the commander of the
   British Expeditionary Force, were shaken into realizing that whatever
   the Germans came up with instead would not be what they had initially
   expected. More and more Gamelin became convinced that the Germans would
   try to attempt a breakthrough by concentrating their mechanized forces.
   They could hardly hope to break the Maginot Line on his right flank or
   to overcome the allied concentration of forces on the left flank. That
   only left the centre. But most of the centre was covered by the river
   Meuse. Tanks were useless in defeating fortified river positions.
   However at Namur the river made a sharp turn to the east, creating a
   gap between itself and the river Dyle. This Gembloux Gap, ideal for
   mechanized warfare, was a very dangerous weak spot. Gamelin decided to
   concentrate half of his armoured reserves there. Of course the Germans
   might try to overcome the Meuse position by using infantry. But that
   could only be achieved by massive artillery support, the build-up of
   which would give Gamelin ample warning.

Forces and dispositions

   The German Army was divided into three army groups:
     * Army Group A, composed of 45½ divisions including seven armored
       commanded by Gerd von Rundstedt, was to deliver the decisive blow,
       cutting a "Sichelschnitt" ('Sickle Cut'), as Winston Churchill
       later called it, through the Allied defenses in the Ardennes
       spearheaded by three Panzer corps trying to create the pocket.
     * Army Group B, composed of 29½ divisions including three armored
       under Fedor von Bock, was tasked with breaking through the Low
       Countries and pushing the northern units of the Allied armies into
       a pocket.
     * Army Group C, composed of 19 divisions under Wilhelm von Leeb, was
       charged with preventing a flanking movement from the east, and with
       launching holding attacks against the Maginot Line and the upper
       Rhine.

May: Low Countries and Northern France

   The disposition of forces and the 1940 campaign in France and the Low
   countries.
   Enlarge
   The disposition of forces and the 1940 campaign in France and the Low
   countries.

   Germany launched its offensive, Fall Gelb, on the night prior to and
   principally on the morning of 10 May. During the night German forces
   occupied Luxembourg, and in the morning German Army Group B ( Bock)
   launched a feint offensive into the Netherlands and Belgium. German
   Fallschirmjäger (paratroopers) from the 7th Flieger and 22. Luftlande
   Infanteriedivision under Kurt Student executed surprise landings at The
   Hague, on the road to Rotterdam and against the Belgian Fort Eben-Emael
   on its opening day with the goal of facilitating AG B's advance.

   The Allied command reacted immediately, sending forces north to combat
   a plan that, for all the Allies could expect, resembled the earlier
   Schlieffen plan. This move north committed their best forces,
   diminished their fighting power through loss of readiness and their
   mobility through loss of fuel. That evening French troops crossed the
   Dutch border.

   The French and British air command was less effective than their
   generals had anticipated, and the Luftwaffe quickly obtained air
   superiority, depriving the Allies of key reconnaissance abilities and
   disrupting Allied communication and coordination.

   While the German invaders secured all the strategically vital bridges
   in and toward Rotterdam, which penetrated "Fortress Holland" and
   bypassed the Water Line, an attempt to seize the Dutch seat of
   government, The Hague, ended in complete failure. The airfields
   surrounding the city (Ypenburg, Ockenburg, and Valkenburg) were taken
   with heavy casualties on 10 May, only to be lost on the very same day
   to furious counterattacks launched by the two Dutch reserve infantry
   divisions. The Dutch would capture or kill 1,745 Fallschirmjäger,
   transporting 1,200 prisoners to England.

   The French marched north to establish a connection with the Dutch army,
   which came under attack from German Fallschirmjäger, but simply not
   understanding German intentions they failed to block German armored
   reinforcements of the 9th Panzer Division from reaching Rotterdam on 13
   May. The Dutch, their poorly equipped army largely intact, surrendered
   on 14 May after the Germans bombed Rotterdam. However the Dutch troops
   in Zeeland and the colonies continued the fight while Queen Wilhelmina
   established a government-in-exile in Britain.

   Fort Eben-Emael, the fortresses looking over the river Maas and the
   Albert Canal, the first Belgian defensive line, had been seized by
   German paratroopers using gliders on 10 May, allowing their forces to
   cross the bridges over the Albert Canal inwards the heartland of
   Belgium. The Belgian forces withdrew in an organized manner to the
   KW-line, their main line of defense and also known as the Dyle-line,
   where they installed themselves with the British Expeditionary Force
   and the French Army. This was according Gamelin's plan in the north.
   The expected major tank battle took place in the Gembloux Gap between
   the French 2nd DLM and 3rd DLMs (Division Légère Mécanique, "Mechanized
   Light Division") and the German 3rd and 4th Panzer Divisions of Erich
   Hoepner's XVI Panzer Corps, costing both sides about 100 vehicles; the
   German offensive in Belgium seemed stalled for a moment. But this was a
   feint.

The Centre

   In the centre, German Army Group A smashed through the Belgian infantry
   regiments and French Light Divisions of the Cavalry (Divisions Légères
   de Cavalerie) advancing into the Ardennes, and arrived at the Meuse
   River near Sedan on the night of 12–13 May. On 13 May the Germans
   forced three crossings near Sedan. Instead of slowly massing artillery
   as the French expected, the Germans replaced the need for traditional
   artillery by using the full might of their bomber force to punch a hole
   in a narrow sector of the French lines by carpet bombing (punctuated by
   dive bombing). Sedan was held by the 55th French Infantry Division (55e
   DI), a grade “B” reserve division. The forward elements of the 55e DI
   held their positions through most of the 13th, initially repulsing
   three of the six German crossing attempts; however, the German air
   attacks had disrupted the French supporting artillery batteries and
   created an impression among the troops of the 55e DI that they were
   isolated and abandoned. The combination of the psychological impact of
   the bombing, the generally slowly expanding German lodgments, deep
   penetrations by some small German infantry units and the lack of air or
   artillery support eventually broke down the 55e DI’s resistance and
   much of the unit went into rout by the evening of 13–14 May. The German
   aerial attack of 13 May, with 1215 bomber sorties, the heaviest air
   bombardment the world had yet witnessed, is considered to have been
   very effective and key to the successful German river crossing. It was
   the most effective use of tactical air power yet demonstrated in
   warfare. The disorder begun at Sedan was spread down the French line by
   groups of haggard and retreating soldiers. During the night some units
   in the last prepared defence line at Bulson were panicked by the false
   rumour that German tanks were already behind their positions. On 14 May
   two French tank battalions and supporting infantry from the 71st North
   African Infantry Division (71e NADI) counter-attacked the German
   bridgehead without success. The attack was partially repulsed by the
   first German armor and anti-tank units which had been rushed across the
   river as quickly as possible at 7:20 A.M. on pontoon bridges. On 14 May
   every available Allied light bomber was employed in an attempt to
   destroy the German pontoon bridges; but, despite incurring the highest
   single-day action losses in the entire history of the British and
   French air forces, they failed to destroy these targets. Despite the
   failure of numerous quickly planned counterattacks to collapse the
   German bridgehead, the French Army was successful in re-establishing a
   continuous defensive position further south; on the west flank of the
   bridgehead however, French resistance began to crumble.

   The commander of the French Second Army, General Huntzinger,
   immediately took effective measures to prevent a further weakening of
   his position. An armoured division (3rd Division Cuirassée de Réserve)
   and a motorized division blocked further German advances around his
   flank. However the commander of XIX Panzer Corps, Heinz Guderian,
   wasn't interested in Huntzinger's flank. Leaving for the moment 10th
   Panzer Division at the bridgehead to protect it from attacks by 3rd
   DCR, he moved his 1st and 2nd Panzer Divisions sharply to the west on
   15 May, undercutting the flank of the French Ninth Army by 40 km and
   forcing the 102nd Fortress Division to leave its positions that had
   blocked XVI Panzer Corps at Monthermé. While the French Second Army had
   been seriously mauled and had rendered itself impotent, now Ninth Army
   began to disintegrate completely, for in Belgium also its divisions,
   not having had the time to fortify, had been pushed back from the river
   by the unrelenting pressure of German infantry, allowing the impetuous
   Erwin Rommel to break free with his 7th Panzer Division. A French
   armoured division (1st DCR) was sent to block him but, advancing
   unexpectedly fast, he surprised it while refueling on 15 May and
   dispersed it, despite some losses caused by the heavy French tanks.

Blitzkrieg

   The German Blitzkrieg offensive of mid-May, 1940.
   Enlarge
   The German Blitzkrieg offensive of mid-May, 1940.

   The Battle of France is often hailed as the first historical instance
   of the Blitzkrieg tactic. Blitzkrieg can be defined as defeating the
   enemy by means of a strategic envelopment executed by mechanized forces
   leading to his operational collapse. Von Manstein certainly had had a
   strategic envelopment in mind. However the three dozen infantry
   divisions that followed the Panzer Corps were not there merely to
   consolidate their gains. It was to be the other way around. In the eyes
   of the German High Command the Panzer Corps now had fulfilled a
   precisely circumscribed task. Their motorized infantry component had
   secured the river crossings, their tank regiments had conquered a
   dominant position. Now they had to consolidate, allowing the infantry
   divisions to position themselves for the real battle: perhaps a classic
   Kesselschlacht when the enemy should stay in the north, perhaps an
   encounter fight when he should try to escape to the south. In both
   cases an enormous mass of German divisions, both armoured and infantry,
   would cooperate to annihilate the enemy, in accordance with established
   doctrine. The Panzer Corps were not to bring about the collapse of the
   enemy by themselves alone. They should halt.

   On 16 May, however, both Guderian and Rommel disobeyed their explicit
   direct orders in an act of open insubordination against their superiors
   and moved their divisions many kilometers to the west, as fast as they
   could push them. Guderian reached Marle, 80 kilometers from Sedan;
   Rommel crossed the river Sambre at Le Cateau, a hundred kilometers from
   his bridgehead, Dinant. While nobody knew the whereabouts of Rommel (he
   had advanced so quickly that he was out of range for radio contact,
   earning his 7th Panzer Division the nickname Gespenster-Division,
   "Ghost Division"), an enraged von Kleist flew to Guderian on the
   morning of 17 May and after a heated argument relieved him of all
   duties. However, von Rundstedt would have none of it and refused to
   confirm the order.

   It has proven difficult to explain the actions of both generals. Rommel
   was forced to commit suicide by Hitler before the end of the war and
   thus never could clarify his behaviour in full freedom. After the war,
   Guderian claimed to have acted on his own initiative, essentially
   inventing Blitzkrieg on the spot. Some historians have since considered
   this an empty boast, denying any fundamental divide within
   contemporaneous German operational doctrine, downplaying the conflict
   as a mere difference of opinion about timing and pointing out that
   Guderian's claim is inconsistent with his professed role as the prophet
   of Blitzkrieg even before the war. However his prewar writings in fact
   explicitly reject strategic envelopment by mechanized forces alone as a
   generally sufficient means to cause operational collapse. Also, there
   is no explicit reference to such tactics in the German battle plans.

Allied reaction

   The Panzer Corps now slowed their advance considerably but had put
   themselves in a very vulnerable position. They were stretched out,
   exhausted and low on fuel; many tanks had broken down. There now was a
   dangerous gap between them and the infantry. A determined attack by a
   fresh large mechanized force could have cut them off and wiped them
   out.

   The French High Command, however, was reeling from the shock of the
   sudden offensive and was stung by a sense of defeatism. On the morning
   of 15 May French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud telephoned newly minted
   Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill and said "We
   have been defeated. We are beaten; we have lost the battle." Churchill,
   attempting to console Reynaud, reminded the Prime Minister of the times
   the Germans had broken through allied lines in World War I only to be
   stopped. However, Reynaud was inconsolable.

   Churchill flew to Paris on 16 May. He immediately recognized the
   gravity of the situation when he observed that the French government
   was already burning its archives and preparing for an evacuation of the
   capital. In a sombre meeting with the French commanders, Churchill
   asked General Gamelin, "Where is the strategic reserve?" which had
   saved Paris in the First World War. "There is none," Gamelin replied.
   Later, Churchill described hearing this as the single most shocking
   moment in his life. Churchill asked Gamelin when and where the general
   proposed to launch a counterattack against the flanks of the German
   bulge. Gamelin simply replied "inferiority of numbers, inferiority of
   equipment, inferiority of methods".

   Gamelin was right; most reserve divisions had by now been committed.
   The only armoured division still in reserve, 2nd DCR, attacked on 16
   May. However the French armoured divisions of the Infantry, the
   Divisions Cuirassées de Réserve, were – despite their name – very
   specialized breakthrough units, optimized for attacking fortified
   positions. They could be quite useful for defense, if dug in, but had
   very limited utility for an encounter fight: they could not execute
   combined infantry–tank tactics as they simply had no important
   motorized infantry component; they had poor tactical mobility as the
   heavy Char B1 bis, their main tank in which half of the French tank
   budget had been invested, had to refuel twice a day. So 2nd DCR divided
   itself in a covering screen, the small subunits of which fought bravely
   – but without having any strategic effect.

   Of course, some of the best units in the north had yet seen little
   fighting. Had they been kept in reserve they could have been used for a
   decisive counter strike. But now they had lost much fighting power
   simply by moving to the north; hurrying south again would cost them
   even more. The most powerful allied division, the 1st DLM (Division
   Légère Mécanique, "light" in this case meaning "mobile"), deployed near
   Dunkirk on 10 May, had moved its forward units 220 kilometers to the
   northeast, beyond the Dutch city of 's-Hertogenbosch, in 32 hours.
   Finding that the Dutch had already retreated to the north, it had
   withdrawn and was now moving to the south. When it would reach the
   Germans again, of its original 80 SOMUA S 35 tanks only three would be
   operational, mostly as a result of breakdown.

   Nevertheless, a radical decision to retreat to the south, avoiding
   contact, could probably have saved most of the mechanized and motorized
   divisions, including the BEF. However, that would have meant leaving
   about thirty infantry divisions to their fate. The loss of Belgium
   alone would be an enormous political blow. Besides, the Allies were
   uncertain about German intentions. They threatened in four directions:
   to the north, to attack the allied main force directly; to the west, to
   cut it off; to the south, to occupy Paris and even to the east, to move
   behind the Maginot Line. The French decided to create a new reserve,
   among which a reconstituted 7th Army, under General Touchon, using
   every unit they could safely pull out of the Maginot Line to block the
   way to Paris.

   Colonel Charles de Gaulle, in command of France's hastily formed 4th
   Armored Division, attempted to launch an attack from the south and
   achieved a measure of success that would later accord him considerable
   fame and a promotion to Brigadier General. However, de Gaulle's attacks
   on 17 and 19 May did not significantly alter the overall situation.

To the Channel

   While the Allies did little either to threaten them or escape from the
   danger they posed, the Panzer Corps used 17 and 18 May to refuel, eat,
   sleep, and get some more tanks in working order. On 18 May Rommel made
   the French give up Cambrai by merely feinting an armoured attack.

   On 19 May German High Command grew very confident. The Allies seemed
   incapable of coping with events. There appeared to be no serious threat
   from the south – indeed General Franz Halder, Chief of Army General
   Staff, toyed with the idea of attacking Paris immediately to knock
   France out of the war in one blow. The Allied troops in the North were
   retreating to the river Escaut, their right flank giving way to the 3rd
   and 4th Panzer Divisions. It would be foolish to remain inactive any
   longer, allowing them to reorganize their defense or escape. Now it was
   time to bring them into even more serious trouble by cutting them off.
   The next day the Panzer Corps started moving again, smashed through the
   weak British 18th and 23rd Territorial Divisions, occupied Amiens and
   secured the westernmost bridge over the river Somme at Abbeville,
   isolating the British, French, Dutch, and Belgian forces in the north.
   In the evening of 20 May a reconnaissance unit from 2nd Panzer Division
   reached Noyelles, a hundred kilometers to the west. There they could
   see the estuary of the Somme flowing into The Channel.

Weygand Plan

   On 20 May also, French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud dismissed Maurice
   Gamelin for his failure to contain the German offensive, and replaced
   him with Maxime Weygand, who immediately attempted to devise new
   tactics to contain the Germans. More pressing however was his strategic
   task: he formed the Weygand Plan, ordering to pinch off the German
   armoured spearhead by combined attacks from the north and the south. On
   the map this seemed a feasible mission: the corridor through which von
   Kleist's two Panzer Corps had moved to the coast was a mere 40
   kilometers wide. On paper Weygand had sufficient forces to execute it:
   in the north the three DLM and the BEF, in the south de Gaulle's 4th
   DCR. These units had an organic strength of about 1,200 tanks and the
   Panzer divisions were very vulnerable again, the mechanical condition
   of their tanks rapidly deteriorating. But the condition of the Allied
   divisions was far worse. Both in the south and the north they could in
   reality muster but a handful of tanks. Nevertheless Weygand flew to
   Ypres on 21 May trying to convince the Belgians and the BEF of the
   soundness of his plan.

   That same day, 21 May, a detachment of the British Expeditionary Force
   under Major-General Harold Edward Franklyn had already attempted to at
   least delay the German offensive and, perhaps, to cut the leading edge
   of the German army off. The resulting Battle of Arras demonstrated the
   ability of the heavily armoured British Matilda tanks (the German 37mm
   anti-tank guns proved ineffective against them) and the limited raid
   overran two German regiments. The panic that resulted (the German
   commander at Arras, Erwin Rommel, reported being attacked by 'hundreds'
   of tanks, though there were only 58 at the battle) temporarily delayed
   the German offensive. Rommel had to rely on 88mm anti-aircraft and
   105mm field guns firing over open sights to halt these attacks. German
   reinforcements pressed the British back to Vimy Ridge the following
   day.

   Although this attack wasn't part of any coordinated attempt to destroy
   the Panzer Corps, the German High Command panicked a lot more than
   Rommel. For a moment they feared to have been ambushed, that a thousand
   Allied tanks were about to smash their elite forces. But the next day
   they had regained confidence and ordered Guderian's XIX Panzer Corps to
   press north and push on to the Channel ports of Boulogne and Calais, in
   the back of the British and Allied forces to the north.

   That same day, 22 May, the French tried to attack south to the east of
   Arras, with some infantry and tanks, but by now the German infantry had
   begun to catch up and the attack was, with some difficulty, stopped by
   the 32nd Infantry Division.

   The first attack from the south could only be launched on 24 May when
   7th DIC, supported by a handful of tanks, failed to retake Amiens. This
   was a rather weak effort; however on 27 May the British 1st Armoured
   Division, hastily brought over from England, attacked Abbeville in
   force but was beaten back with crippling losses. The next day de Gaulle
   tried again with the same result. But by now even complete success
   couldn't have saved the forces in the north.

BEF at Dunkirk

   BEF retreat at Dunkirk
   Enlarge
   BEF retreat at Dunkirk

   In the early hours of 23 May Gort ordered a retreat from Arras. He had
   no faith in the Weygand plan nor in the proposal of the latter to at
   least try to hold a pocket on the Flemish coast, a Réduit de Flandres.
   The ports needed to supply such a foothold were already threatened.
   That day the 2nd Panzer Division assaulted Boulogne. The British
   garrison in Boulogne surrendered on the 25th, although 4,368 troops
   were evacuated.

   The 10th Panzer Division attacked Calais, beginning on 24 May.
   Reinforcements (3rd Royal Tank Regiment, equipped with cruiser tanks,
   and the British 30th Motor Brigade) had been hastily landed before the
   Germans attacked. The Siege of Calais lasted four days, before the last
   French troops were evacuated on 27 May.

   While the 1st Panzer Division was ready to attack Dunkirk on 25 May,
   Hitler ordered it to halt on 24 May. This remains one of the most
   controversial decisions of the entire war. Hermann Göring had convinced
   Hitler the Luftwaffe could prevent an evacuation; von Rundstedt had
   warned him that any further effort by the armoured divisions would lead
   to a much prolonged refitting period. Attacking cities wasn't part of
   the normal task for armoured units under any operational doctrine.

   Encircled, the British, Belgian and French launched Operation Dynamo
   and Operation Ariel, evacuating Allied forces from the northern pocket
   in Belgium and Pas-de-Calais, beginning on 26 May (see Battle of
   Dunkirk). The Allied position was complicated by King Léopold III of
   Belgium's surrender the following day, which was postponed until 28
   May.

   Confusion still reigned however, as after the evacuation at Dunkirk and
   while Paris was enduring its short-lived siege, part of the 1st
   Canadian Infantry Division were sent to Normandy (Brest) and moved 200
   miles inland toward Paris before they heard that Paris had fallen and
   France had capitulated. They retreated and re-embarked for England.

June: France

   The German offensive in June sealed the defeat of the French.
   Enlarge
   The German offensive in June sealed the defeat of the French.

   The best and most modern French armies had been sent north and lost in
   the resulting encirclement; the French had lost much of their heavy
   weaponry and their best armored formations. Weygand was faced with the
   prospect of defending a long front (stretching from Sedan to the
   Channel), with a greatly depleted French Army now lacking significant
   Allied support. 60 divisions were required to man the 600 km long
   frontline, Weygand had only 64 French and one remaining British
   division available. Therefore, unlike the Germans, he had no
   significant reserves to counter a breakthrough or to replace frontline
   troops, should they become exhausted from a prolonged battle. Should
   the frontline be pushed further south, it would inevitably get too long
   for the French to man it. Some elements of the French leadership had
   openly lost heart, particularly as the British were evacuating the
   Continent. The Dunkirk evacuation was a blow to French morale as it was
   seen as an act of abandonment. Adding to this grave situation Italy
   declared war on France and Britain on 10 June.

   The Germans renewed their offensive on 5 June on the Somme. An attack
   broke the scarce reserves that Weygand had put between the Germans and
   the capital, and on 10 June the French government fled to Bordeaux,
   declaring Paris an open city. Churchill returned to France on 11 June,
   meeting the French War Council in Briare. The French requested Britain
   supply all available fighter squadrons to aid in the battle. With only
   25 squadrons remaining Churchill refused, believing at this point that
   the decisive battle would be fought over Britain (see Battle of
   Britain). Churchill, at the meeting, obtained assurances from French
   admiral François Darlan that the fleet would not fall into German
   hands. On 14 June Paris, the capture of which had so eluded the German
   Army in the First World War, after having been declared an open city,
   fell to the Wehrmacht, marking the second time in less then 100 years
   that Paris had been captured by German forces (the former occurring
   during the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War).

   The evacuation of the second BEF took place during Operation Ariel
   during the 15th - 25th of June.
   German Nazi parading in the deserted Champs-Élysées avenue, Paris, June
   1940.
   Enlarge
   German Nazi parading in the deserted Champs-Élysées avenue, Paris, June
   1940.

   Fighting continued in the east until General Pretelat, commanding the
   French Second Army group, was forced to surrender on 22 June.

Aftermath

   France formally surrendered to the German armed forces on 25 June in
   the same railroad car at Compiègne that Germany in 1918 had been forced
   to surrender in. This railway car was lost in allied air raids on the
   German capital of Berlin later in the war. Paul Reynaud, France's Prime
   Minister, was forced to resign due to his refusal to agree to
   surrender. He was succeeded by Maréchal Philippe Pétain, who announced
   to the French people via radio his intention to surrender.

   France was divided into a German occupation zone in the north and west
   and a nominally independent state in the south, to be based in the spa
   town of Vichy, dubbed Vichy France. The new French state, headed by
   Pétain, accepted its status as a defeated nation and attempted to buy
   favour with the Germans through accommodation and passivity. Charles de
   Gaulle, who had been made an Undersecretary of National Defense by Paul
   Reynaud, in London at the time of the surrender, made his Appeal of 18
   June. In this broadcast he refused to recognize the Vichy government as
   legitimate and began the task of organizing the Free French forces. A
   number of French colonies abroad – (French Guiana, French Equatorial
   Africa) – joined de Gaulle rather than the Vichy government.

   The British began to doubt Admiral Darlan's promise to Churchill not to
   allow the French fleet at Toulon to fall into German hands by the
   wording of the armistice conditions; they therefore attacked French
   naval forces in Africa and Europe (see Destruction of the French Fleet
   at Mers-el-Kebir) which led to feelings of animosity and mistrust
   between the former French and British allies.

Casualties

German

   Approximately 27,074 Germans were killed and 111,034 were wounded, with
   a further 18,384 missing for total German casualties of 156,000 men.

Allied

   In exchange, they had destroyed the French, Belgian, Dutch, Polish and
   British armies. Total allied losses including the capture of the French
   army amounted to 2,292,000. Casualties, killed or wounded, were as
   follows:
     * France - 90,000 killed, 200,000 wounded and approximately 1,800,000
       imprisoned. In August, 1940 1,575,000 prisoners were taken into
       Germany where roughly 940,000 remained until 1945 when they were
       liberated by advancing Allied forces. While in German captivity
       24,600 French prisoners died, 71,000 escaped, 220,000 were released
       due to various agreements between the Vichy government and Germany,
       and several hundred thousand were paroled due to disability and/or
       sickness. Most prisoners spent their time in captivity as slave
       labourers.
     * Britain - 68,111
     * Belgium - 23,350
     * The Netherlands - 9,779
     * Poland - 6,092

Historiography

   The great controversy of the Battle of the France focuses on causes for
   the catastrophic defeat suffered by the French army, and to a lesser
   extent, the Allies in general.

   Some of the suggested causes of the Allied defeat were:
     * Military factors:
          + Treason. This theory was very popular at the time of events. A
            Fifth column was supposed to be cooperating with a host of
            disguised German agents. After the war this was conclusively
            shown to have been a case of mass hysteria, but such stories
            are still repeated in some popular accounts.
          + Equipment imbalances. In most ways the Allied and German
            armies were comparably equipped. Both had roughly the same
            number of tanks and motorized divisions. In armor protection
            and penetrating power of main armament many of the French and
            British tanks were actually superior to their German
            counterparts. While German small arms may have been somewhat
            superior to Allied equipment, the Allies had a significant
            advantage in artillery. The German advantages did not lie in
            having an overall better equipped army, but rather, in
            superior operational and tactical combat performances.
          + Defensive attitude: French overreliance on the Maginot Line, a
            chain of forts built along most of the Franco-German border.
            It is undisputed that the French left the strategic initiative
            to the Germans; however, the purpose of the Maginot Line was
            not to serve as a cover-all defense, but to force the Germans
            to engage French mechanized forces in the Low Countries. In
            this regard it was successful and served its purpose.
          + Poor strategy: General Gamelin's decision to send his
            best-trained and equipped forces north to defend against
            invasion through the Low Countries, combined with Hitler's
            decision, against the advice of the German General Staff, to
            adopt the Manstein plan after an aircraft that was carrying a
            copy of the original invasion plan crashed in Belgium due to a
            navigational error.
          + The totally mistaken belief by the French military that the
            Ardennes forest formed a barrier to a modern, mechanized army
            which would so slow its progress that an effective defense
            could be organized before a serious threat could develop (this
            was the case for example in the Soviet-Finnish Winter War). As
            a result the Maginot Line defenses were not extended to that
            region, and only second-line forces were put there.
          + Outdated tactics. It is often assumed that there was a neglect
            of tank warfare by the French, exemplified by the rejection of
            Colonel Charles de Gaulle's tank warfare tactics by the French
            high command. The French had built a larger number of modern
            tanks than the Germans and these were on average better armed
            and armoured. Also it is untrue that they were divided among
            the infantry in "penny-packets" or even individually assigned
            to infantry units as support vehicles; even the independent
            tank battalions were combined in Groupements and allocated at
            army level. However, the French suffered from an inflexible
            division in infantry tanks and cavalry tanks: ironically the
            former were insufficiently trained to cooperate with the
            infantry and so couldn't execute modern combined arms tactics.
            In theory the operational doctrine of both armies was based on
            partly mechanized maneuver warfare; in practice the French
            shied away from it, while the best German field commanders
            were so bold as to let it develop into pure Blitzkrieg if the
            situation allowed.
          + Communication difficulties. The French communication system
            relied almost entirely on the public telephone network rather
            than two-way mobile radio used by the Germans. The telephone
            lines were often cut by military action (at the time sabotage
            was assumed) and often the only way of sending messages to the
            front was by dispatch rider. Allied commanders complained that
            they often had no information for days and when it did arrive,
            it was hopelessly out of date. Gamelin was criticized for
            making Château de Vincennes his HQ, despite the fact it lacked
            either radio or telephone communications and relied upon
            motorcycle courier. However the German High Command had poor
            control of the battle also — although in their case it worked
            to their benefit.
          + Command. The German Army relied on mission-type tactics, which
            allowed small-unit commanders to exercise a great deal of
            initiative in accordance with the objectives of higher
            headquarters. In contrast, French officers were trained to
            await guidance from higher headquarters before acting. This
            explains why the communications difficulties experienced by
            both sides worked to the benefit of the German Army. The
            German command structure passed information in both directions
            much faster than the French system. Combined with the high
            degree of initiative expected of German commanders, the result
            was a much faster decision cycle on the German side. French
            commanders repeatedly issued out-of-date orders.
          + Quality and guidance of German troops in combat. The French
            population was much smaller and more aged: they were forced to
            draft a lot of elder men to form so-called "B" (reserve)
            divisions, which they then could not train or staff properly
            as most professional instructors and officers were needed to
            man the "A"-divisions. These divisions were placed at
            positions where enemy attacks appeared unlikely, such as the
            Ardennes (the 55th Infantry was a "B"-division).To compensate
            for the lack of capability, French infantry doctrine stressed
            the importance of methodical procedure, leading to
            inflexibility. The Germans too had many insufficiently trained
            reserve divisions; but those infantry units used for the
            breakthrough all consisted of young and well-trained men.
            Their officers on the tactical and operational level were
            considered the best in the world.
     * WW1 and demographics
          + Intense French losses during World War I caused an inability
            for the French to regenerate the resources necessary to defend
            France in 1940.
          + Demographics. France has experienced highly atypical
            population growth relative to the rest of the Western world
            since the 19th century. During the early 20th century, France
            experienced almost no population growth, while Germany was
            growing rapidly. In conjunction with France's very high
            casualties in WWI, this caused crippling problems for the
            French military. The conscripts of the French army were
            ideally between 20 and 25, meaning that in 1940 they had to be
            drawn from the generation born between 1915 and 1920. In these
            years the birthrate was extremely low, because of millions of
            French men being away from home fighting WWI. Due to the
            comparatively rigid (at first non-existing) French home-leave
            regime France was affected far worse than other European
            countries. The French military referred to this population-gap
            and its effect on the number of available conscripts in the
            late thirties and early forties as the empty years.
     * Social and political factors:
          + More controversially, defeatism (or a lack of willingness to
            fight) among the French and particularly French leaders. This
            hypothesis was very popular in France itself with such books
            as Strange Defeat by Marc Bloch. American journalists, being
            neutrals at the time, observed much of this on both sides: the
            German populace was not enthusiastic about the war either.
            Most German generals were opposed to the campaign.
          + On a related issue, a number of French military and political
            leaders had been reactionaries hostile to the French Republic,
            and preferring a monarchy or an authoritarian regime in the
            mould of that of Francisco Franco. Many were sympathetic to
            the anti-Communist and antisemitic ideology of Nazi Germany.
            It would thus be no surprise if some chose not to fight the
            invasion, or even to collaborate with it. Many of such
            reactionaries in fact collaborated with the Vichy France
            regime, which was lauded by Charles Maurras as a "divine
            surprise". However it has never been shown this supposed
            treacherous attitude had any meaningful impact on the outcome
            of the campaign.
          + Similarly, the attitude of the French Communists under Maurice
            Thorez had been anti-war since the signing of the
            Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact the previous year, but it is difficult
            to prove that this had any significant effect on the French
            war effort. After the German invasion of Russia the following
            year, the Communists became prominent in the resistance to
            German occupation.

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