Battle of France facts for kids

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Battle of France

British and French soldiers taken prisoner in Northern France.

Date	10 May – 25 June 1940
Location	France, Low Countries
Result	Decisive German victory

Belligerents

Axis:
Germany

Italy (from June 10)

Allies:
France
United Kingdom
Belgium
Netherlands

Canada

Poland

Czechoslovakia

Luxembourg

Commanders and leaders

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)

Maurice Gamelin

Maxime Weygand

Charles de Gaulle

Lord Gort
(British Expeditionary Force)

Leopold III

Henri Winkelman

Władysław Sikorski

Strength

Germany:
141 divisions
7,378 guns
2,445 tanks
5,638 aircraft
3,350,000 troops
Alps on 20 June
300,000 Italians

144 divisions
13,974 guns
3,383 tanks
2,935 aircraft
3,300,000 troops
Alps on 20 June
~150,000 French

Casualties and losses

Germany:
28,225 dead (possibly as high as 49,000)
113,152 wounded
13, 307 missing

1,290 aircraft lost (10 May to 24 June 1940)
1,097 aircrew killed, 1395 injured, 1930 missing
795 tanks
Italy:
1,247 dead or missing,
2,631 wounded,
2,151 hospitalised due to frostbite¹

360,000 dead or wounded,
1,900,000 captured
1029 RAF aircraft, 1274 french aircraft

¹ Italian forces were involved in fighting in the French Alps, where severe sub-zero temperatures are common, even during the summer.

In World War II, the Battle of France, also called the Fall of France, was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries, from 10 May 1940, and ended the Phoney War. The battle was made up of two parts. In the first, called Fall Gelb in German (called Case Yellow in English), German tank units pushed through the Ardennes, to circle the Allied units that moved into Belgium. Most of the British Expeditionary Force and many French soldiers escaped to England from Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo.

In the second part of the battle, called Fall Rot in German (Case Red in English), from 5 June, German armed forces circled the Maginot Line to attack the rest of France. Italy started its own invasion of southeastern France on 10 June. The French government left Paris for Bordeaux, and the Germans took Paris on 14 June. After the French Second Army Group surrendered on 22 June, France gave up as a country on 25 June. For the Axis, the Battle of France was a big win.

France was split into a German-occupied part in the north and west, a small Italian-occupied part in the southeast, and a satellite state part in the south, called Vichy France. Southern France was taken over on 10 November 1942 and France was run by Germany until after the Allied return in 1944; the Low Countries were set free in 1944 and 1945.

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

Alexander, Martin. Republic in Danger, General Maurice Gamelin and the Politics of French Defence, 1933-1940, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. An examination of Gamelin’s career and French military preparations during the 1930s. Highly complimentary work stressing French rational preparations for the war.

This was the first detailed account of the B.E.F. in France. The fight for survival finished with the return from France in the little ships

Bloch, Marc. Strange Defeat, A Statement of Evidence Written in 1940, Hopkins, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1968. Written in 1940 by a veteran of the campaign. Considered one of the early key works on understanding how the French saw this defeat. Writer killed in 1943 by Gestapo due to resistance work.

Six nations locked in aerial combat - September 1939 to June 1940.

Doughty, Robert Allan. The Seeds of Disaster: The Development of French Army Doctrine, 1919-1939, Archon, 1986. Examination of errors the French made in military doctrine during the inter-war years and how this, not defeatism or lack of quality equipment, led to the defeat of 1940.
Doughty, Robert Allan. The Breaking Point: Sedan and the Fall of France, 1940. Archon, 1990. Classic study on the events of 13 and 14 May.
Gerard, Lt. Robert M. Tank-Fighter Team, 1943
Horne, Alistair. To Lose a Battle, 1940, Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1969. Narrative account of the Fall of France in 1940. Very readable but also dated in terms of its non-critical acceptance of the defeatism argument.
Keisling, Eugenia C. Arming Against Hitler: France and the Limits of Military Planning. UP of Kansas, 1996. Study stressing the weaknesses of the French reserve, mobilization and training system. Rejects the defeatism interpretation.
Maier, Klaus A. Germany and the Second World War: Germany's Initial Conquests in Europe. Oxford UP, 1991. English translation of a thorough collective German academic study, giving a detailed account of all events.
May, Ernest R. Strange Victory: Hitler's Conquest of France. Hill & Wang, 2001. A modern account for the general public focusing on politics, strategy and intelligence.
Mosier, John. The Blitzkrieg Myth: How Hitler and the Allies Misread the Strategic Realities of World War II. HarperCollins, 2003. Strongly revisionist interpretation, denying that the concept of Blitzkrieg can even be applied to this campaign.
Shepperd, Alan. France 1940, Blitzkrieg in the West; Osprey Campaign Series #3, Osprey Publishing, 1990.
Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941. Johns Hopkins UP, 2002. In the period just before the surrender, Shirer worked for CBS News under Edward R Murrow, moving around Europe as events dictated. This is his written account of the period.
Young, Robert J. In Command of France: French Foreign Policy and Military Planning, 1933-1940, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978.

Images for kids

French soldiers in underground bunkers on the Maginot Line during the Phoney War
French soldier in the German village of Lauterbach in Saarland
The evolution of German plans for Fall Gelb, the invasion of the Low Countries
The classic characteristic of what is commonly known as "blitzkrieg" is a highly mobile form of infantry and armour, working in combined arms. (German armed forces, June 1942)
British troops of the 2nd BEF move up to the front, June 1940
Men of the 1st Royal Welch Fusiliers fire Boys anti-tank rifles near Etaples, February 1940
Curtiss H-75A1 of the 3rd flight of Groupe de Chasse II/5 Armée de l'Air, June 1940
Belgian anti-aircraft gun, circa 1940
Rotterdam city centre after the bombing
An abandoned Belgian T-13 tank destroyer is inspected by German soldiers.
Two SOMUA S35 tanks photographed near Dunkirk, May 1940
The German advance until noon, 16 May 1940
Rommel in 1940. Both Rommel and Guderian ignored the OKW directives to halt after breaking out of the Meuse bridgeheads. The decision proved crucial to the German success.
The German advance up to 21 May 1940
Winston Churchill visited France several times during the battle in an attempt to help bolster French morale
Situation from 21 May – 4 June 1940
Calais in ruins
Matilda II photographed in Britain (H9218)
British and French troops evacuated from Dunkirk arrive at Dover.
The German offensive to the Seine River between 4 and 12 June
War refugees on a French road
French prisoners are marched into internment.
German troops in Paris
British troops on their way to Brest, June 1940
On 21 June 1940, near Compiègne in France, Hitler (hand on hip) staring at Marshal Foch's statue before starting the negotiations for the armistice, to be signed the next day by Keitel, Hitler being absent. The Glade of the Armistice was soon destroyed together with all commemorative monuments (except Foch's statue) by the Germans.
Hitler tours Paris with architect Albert Speer (left) and sculptor Arno Breker (right), 23 June 1940
A German military medic providing first aid to a wounded soldier

Battle of France facts for kids

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