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France was one of the largest military powers to come under occupation as part of the Western Front in World War II.The Western Front was a military theatre of World War II encompassing Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Germany.
France's colonial empire at the start of World War II stretched from territories and possessions in Africa, the Middle East (Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon), to ports in India, Indochina, the Pacific islands, and territories in North and South America. France retained control of its colonial empire, and the terms of the armistice shifted the ...
Free French forces won control, helped by Britain and the United States, and used it to attack Nazi-occupied France. All French colonies except Indochina eventually joined the Free French. [ 3 ] The number of Free French troops grew with their successes in North Africa and the invasion of Italy by the Army of Africa .
The European balance of power is a tenet in international relations that no single power should be allowed to achieve hegemony over a substantial part of Europe. During much of the Modern Age, the balance was achieved by having a small number of ever-changing alliances contending for power, [1] which culminated in the World Wars of the early 20th century.
While horrific, the mortality rate was lower than in other occupied countries (e.g. 75 percent in the Netherlands) and, because the majority of the Jews were recent immigrants to France (mostly exiles from Germany), more Jews lived in France at the end of the occupation than did approximately 10 years earlier when Hitler formally came to power.
To a large extent, modern France lies within clear limits of physical geography.Roughly half of its margin lies on sea coasts: one continuous coastline along "La Manche" ("the sleeve" or English Channel) and the Atlantic Ocean forming the country's north-western and western edge, and a shorter, separate coastline along the Mediterranean Sea forming its south-eastern edge.
In World War II, Charles de Gaulle and the Free French took control of the overseas colonies one-by-one and used them as a base from which they prepared to liberate France. Historian Tony Chafer argues that: "In an effort to restore its world-power status after the humiliation of defeat and occupation, France was eager to maintain its overseas ...
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.