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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.
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.
2 September: Tensions began to flare with Germany as Britain and France put Germany on notice for the invasion of Poland. 3 September: France declared war on Nazi Germany. 7 September: French forces engage in light skirmishes with German forces near Saarbrücken. 10 September: British forces arrived to reinforce the French.
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 "Big Three" Allies of World War II, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States, all fought Germany in World War II, but Soviet Union fighting on the Eastern Front played no direct role in the liberation of France, but the second front contributed to Nazi defeat.
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.
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 ...
The Siegfried Line campaign was a phase in the Western European campaign of World War II, which involved actions near the German defensive Siegfried Line.. This phase spanned from the end of the Battle of Normandy, or Operation Overlord and the pursuit across northern France, which ended on 15 September 1944, and concluded with the opening of the German Ardennes counteroffensive, better known ...