In 1939,
a group of senior German Army officers,
including Erich von Manstein
and Franz
Halder, devised a plan to inflict a major defeat on the French
Army in northern France. The Manstein
Plan, as it became known, included a attack through southern Belgium
that avoided the Maginot Line. The ultimate
objective was to reach the Channel coast and to force the French government
to surrender.
Adolf
Hitler gave his approval to the Manstein Plan on
17th February, 1940, but it was not activated until the 10th May,
when the Luftwaffe bombed Dutch and
Belgian airfields and the German Army captured Moerdijk and Rotterdam.
Fedor von Bock and
the 9th Panzer Division, using its Blitzkreig
strategy,
advanced quickly into the Netherlands. Belgium was also invaded and
the French 7th Army moved forward to help support the Dutch and Belgian
forces.
The 7th
Panzer Division under Erwin Rommel and
the 19th Corps commanded by Heinz Guderian
and the 6th and 8th Panzers led by Gerd
von Rundstedt, went through the heavily wooded and semi-mountainous
area of the Ardennes, an area, north of the Maginot
Line. The French military had wrongly believed that the Ardennes
was impassable to tanks. Seven panzer
divisions reached
the Meuse River at Dinant on 12th May and the following day the French
government was forced to abandon Paris.
German
forces led by Paul von Kliest, Erwin
Rommel, Heinz Guderian and Gerd
von Rundstedt advanced towards the Channel. Except for a counterattack
by 4th Armoured Division led by Charles
De Gaulle, at Montcornet (17th May) and Laon (27th-29th May) the
German forces encountered very little resistance.
Winston
Churchill now ordered the implementation of Operation Dynamo,
a plan to evacuate of troops and equipment from the French port of
Dunkirk, that had been drawn up by General
John Gort, the Commander in Chief of the
British Expeditionary Force (BEF). Between
27th May and 4th June, 1940, a total of 693 ships brought back 338,226
people back to Britain. Of these 140,000 were members of the French
Army. All heavy equipment was abandoned and left in France.
General Maxime
Weygand, the Supreme Allied Commander, tried to hold the line
along the Somme and the Aisne. Now clearly outnumbered, the French
Army was forced to withdraw to the Loire. The Germans occupied
Paris on 14th June and two days later, Paul
Reynaud, the French prime minister, was replaced by Henri-Philippe
Petain, who quickly accepted German peace terms.
Under the terms of the
armistice northern France and the regions north of Vichy came under
German occupation. The French government, led by Henri-Philippe
Petain, moved to Vichy and remained
at liberty along with the French Navy
and an army of 100,000 men.
During the defence of France
nearly 2 million French soldiers were taken prisoner. An estimated
390,000 soldiers were killed defending France whereas around 35,000
German soldiers had lost their lives during the invasion.
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