World War 2
The fall of France
On the 10th of May 1940, the very day Winston Churchill became British Prime Minister, Germany attacked Holland and Belgium, catching the British and French deployed in three army groups behind the French frontier.
A German Stuka Bomber preparing for take off. Although the Stuka terrorized raw French troops during the Battle of France, its weaknesses were also exposed, notably its vulnerability when pulling out a steep dive. It was withdrawn from the Battle of Britain in mid-August 1940, after suffering heavy losses at the hands of the RAF Fighter Command. Later in the war the Stuka was adapted to an anti-shipping role and performed sterling service on the Eastern Front as a heavily armed 'tank-buster'
The British and French high command had expected the major German offensive thrust to be directed through the Low Countries, as they did in 1914, and indeed, that was the original German intention. But the plan had been changed, and maximum pressure was now to be applied not in the north but through the heavily wooded Ardennes, which the allies had thought impenetrable by tanks. France’s supposedly impregnable Maginot Line was simply outflanked.
By the 14th of May, German tanks had crossed the Meuse at Sedan and were sweeping north to trap huge numbers of French and British troops in northern France and Belgium. German armour reached the English Channel on the 20th, and a week later the BEF, which had fallen back to the English ports, began its evacuations from Dunkirk. The destruction of the allied forces had been entrusted to the Luftwaffe by Hitler, who was preoccupied with the elimination of the remaining French Armies south of the Somme and still fearful of an Allied counterstroke against his armour in an area cut by canals and threatened with flooding. The Luftwaffe failed in its task, in furious Air battles over Dunkirk it lost 156 aircraft and the RAF 106.
When operation Dynamo ended on the 4th of June, some 338’000 troops - 225'000 of them British - had been taken off the beaches. The next day the Germans began mopping up remaining French resistance. An armistice was signed on the 22nd, and four days later the fighting ceased. Italy had joined in, and declared war on Britain and France on the 10th of June.