British and French soldiers taken prisoner in northern France.
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| Conflict | Battle of France | | Date | 10 May � 25 June 1940 | | Location | France, Low Countries | | Result | Decisive Axis victory
* Second Armistice at Compiègne
* German occupation of Luxembourg
* German occupation of the Netherlands
* German occupation of Belgium
* German occupation of France
* Italian occupation of southern France
* French Third Republic replaced by Vichy France | France France
Belgium
Netherlands
United Kingdom
Canada
Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia
Poland Poland
Luxembourg | Nazi Germany Germany
Italy Italy (from 10 June 1940) | France Maurice Gamelin
France Maxime Weygand
United Kingdom Lord Gort (British Expeditionary Force)
Belgium Leopold III
Netherlands Henri Winkelman
Poland Władysław Sikorski | Nazi Germany Gerd von Rundstedt (Army Group A)
Nazi Germany Fedor von Bock (Army Group B)
Nazi Germany Wilhelm von Leeb (Army Group C)
Italy H.R.H. Umberto di Savoia (Army Group West) |
144 divisions,
13,974 guns,
3,383 tanks,
2,935 aircraft
3,300,000 troops
Alps on 20 June
~150,000 French | Germany:
141 divisions,
7,378 guns,
2,445 tanks,
5,638 aircraft
3,350,000 troops
Alps on 20 June
300,000 Italians | 360,000 dead or wounded,
1,900,000 captured
2,233 aircraft | Germany:
27,074 dead,
110,034 wounded and
18,384 missing
in all: 49,000 dead (later stated)
1,236 aircraft lost, 323 damaged
753 tanks
Italy:
1,247 dead or missing,
2,631 wounded,
2,151 hospitalised due to frostbite1 |
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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 on 10 May 1940, which ended the Phoney War. The battle consisted of two main operations. In the first, Fall Gelb (Case Yellow), German armoured units pushed through the Ardennes, to cut off and surround the Allied units that had advanced into Belgium. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and many French soldiers were evacuated from Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo. In the second operation, Fall Rot (Case Red), executed from 5 June, German forces outflanked the Maginot Line to attack the greater French territory. Italy declared war on France on 10 June. The French government fled to the city of Bordeaux, and France's main city of Paris was occupied by the German Wehrmacht on 14 June. On the 17 June, Philippe Pétain publicly announced France would ask for an armistice. On 22 June, an armistice was signed between France and Germany, going into effect on 25 June. For the Axis Powers, 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 an unoccupied zone, the zone libre, in the south. A rump state, Vichy France, administered all three zones according to the terms laid out in the armistice. In November 1942, the Axis forces also occupied the zone libre, and metropolitan France remained under Axis occupation until after the Allied landings in 1944; while the Low Countries remained under German occupation until 1944 and 1945.
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