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The Battle of France (French: bataille de France; 10 May – 25 June 1940), also known as the Western Campaign (German: Westfeldzug), the French Campaign (Frankreichfeldzug, campagne de France) and the Fall of France, during the Second World War was the German invasion of the Low Countries (Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands) and France.
Guard (Vichy France) Scuttling of the French fleet in Toulon. Service du travail obligatoire - the provision of French citizens as forced labour in Germany. Axis occupation of France: German occupation of France during World War II - 1940–1944 in the northern zones, and 1942–1944 in the southern zone. The Holocaust in France.
France had lots of armed forces in World War II, in part due to the German occupation. In 1940, General Maurice Gamelin commanded the French Army, headquartered in Vincennes on the outskirts of Paris. It consisted of 117 divisions, with 94 committed to the northeastern front and a commander, General Alphonse Georges, at La Ferte-sous-Jouarre.
The first vehicles with the original engine and gun numbered 400; about half of the remainder was built or refitted with the L/35 SA 38 gun. Five H 35's were exported. Of the Char 2C two vehicles had been cannibalised. The 1580 FT 17's were all of the machine gun type. During the Fall of France they equipped units with an organic strength of ...
The liberation of Paris (French: libération de Paris) was a battle that took place during World War II from 19 August 1944 until the German garrison surrendered the French capital on 25 August 1944. Paris had been occupied by Nazi Germany since the signing of the Armistice of 22 June 1940 , after which the Wehrmacht occupied northern and ...
27 May: Allies enter Narvik. 28 May: King Leopold of Belgium had ordered his army to surrender to the German forces, which gave the Allies the needed time to evacuate from Dunkirk . With Belgium under complete German control, Germany planned to move toward the French coast to completely eliminate the Allied forces.
That left the rest of France, including the remaining two-fifths of southern and eastern metropolitan France, Overseas France and North Africa unoccupied, and under the control of a collaborationist French government based at the city of Vichy, and headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain.
France did not invade Germany in 1939, because it wanted British lives to be at risk too and because of hopes that a blockade might force a German surrender without a bloodbath. The French and British also believed that they were militarily superior and guaranteed victory through the blockade or by desperate German attacks.