The Fall of France
Monday, September 7, 2020
On August 31, 1939, Germany staged a "false flag" operation in which Germans disguised as Polish nationals attacked numerous of their own facilities. This created a casus belli to justify invading Poland, which they did the next day, beginning of World War II.
Three days later, France declared war on Germany, and on September 7 launched a limited invasion on Germany's western borders. (This was part of the "Phoney War" of which I've written before.) By mid-October, France had withdrawn to their starting position; the following May and June, Germany took France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. They held these countries without challenge until the Normandy landings four years later.
In the 46 days from May 10 to June 25, 1940, the Germans first pushed Allied forces (British, Belgian and French) back to the sea, forcing the evacuation to Britain from Dunkirk. Beginning June 5, French and British forces began a determined effort to hold the Somme and Aisne departments of northern France, but the Germans defeated them using tanks and air support to supplement their ground troops. On June 14, the Germans marched into Paris unopposed.
Winston Churchill had become British Prime Minister on May 10 of that year. The morning of May 15, he received a phone call from French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud, who told him: "We have been defeated. We are beaten; we have lost the battle." (Remember, this was less than a week after the German push had started.)
Churchill flew to Paris the next day, where he discovered that the French government was already burning its state archives and preparing to evacuate the capital city. He asked the French commanders where their strategic reserve were, and one of the generals replied gloomily, "None." Churchill later described this as giving him the greatest shock of his entire life.
Hitler arranged for the French surrender to be signed in the same place that the Germans had surrendered to the Allies in 1918, in order to regain face from that humiliating experience.