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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.
On 16 August 1940, count Franz von Wolff-Metternich, who was responsible of the conservation of the French art collections under the Kunstschutz principle, arrived in Paris to oversee France's art collection, but the museum was almost empty.
17-18 May: Antwerp and Brussels would fall to Germany; the Allies were forced to retreat to the coastline of France. 20 May: General Maxime Weygand replaces General Maurice-Gustave Gamelin as supreme Allied commander due to major losses across France.
In 1939 and 1940, France faced a united, determined, and technologically-sophisticated enemy. Although it was desperately important for France to match its enemy's traits with determination and unity of its own, French national leaders instead frittered away their final months before the catastrophe in a round of internal hostility, intrigue and backbiting, which led to the restoration of ...
[20] [21] The fall of the monument resulted in several nobles fleeing France, and violent attacks on the wealthy. [22] The Elephant of the Bastille was erected to mark the fall of the Bastille, designed by Napoleon as a symbol to his own victories, which he had constructed from the guns of his enemies at Battle of Friedland. [23]
[a] Many people in 1940 found the fall of France unexpected and earth shaking. Alexander notes that Belgium and the Netherlands fell to the German army in a matter of days and the British were soon driven back to the British Isles, But it was France's downfall that stunned the watching world.
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Looting of a church during the Revolution, by Swebach-Desfontaines (c. 1793). The aim of a number of separate policies conducted by various governments of France during the French Revolution ranged from the appropriation by the government of the great landed estates and the large amounts of money held by the Catholic Church to the termination of Christian religious practice and of the religion ...