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Battle of France - World War II: A History from Beginning to End
Discover the remarkable history of the Battle of France...
That France and Germany were enemies in 1940 was not news to anyone. That Germany was bitter at the terms of its surrender at the end of World War I was hardly a surprise. That another war would follow all too soon was apparent to many. Yet no one could have expected that Germany’s rise to military power under the leadership of Adolf Hitler would have given birth to such an evil regime.
The churning resentment that Hitler and many other Germans felt against its enemies, particularly France, was destined to sow the seeds for vengeance that would see the Nazis storm across the Low Countries in an accelerated quest to destroy the French Army and then to occupy France. To achieve such a victory in only 46 days was an alarming feat; would Hitler’s Third Reich achieve its stated goal of lasting one thousand years as Germany took its place as the master of Europe? The Battle of France was much more than merely a military objective; it was the culmination of a quest for revenge on the part of the Nazis that would imperil the future of democracy all over the world.
Discover a plethora of topics such as
So if you want a concise and informative book on the Battle of France, simply scroll up and click the "Buy now" button!
That France and Germany were enemies in 1940 was not news to anyone. That Germany was bitter at the terms of its surrender at the end of World War I was hardly a surprise. That another war would follow all too soon was apparent to many. Yet no one could have expected that Germany’s rise to military power under the leadership of Adolf Hitler would have given birth to such an evil regime.
The churning resentment that Hitler and many other Germans felt against its enemies, particularly France, was destined to sow the seeds for vengeance that would see the Nazis storm across the Low Countries in an accelerated quest to destroy the French Army and then to occupy France. To achieve such a victory in only 46 days was an alarming feat; would Hitler’s Third Reich achieve its stated goal of lasting one thousand years as Germany took its place as the master of Europe? The Battle of France was much more than merely a military objective; it was the culmination of a quest for revenge on the part of the Nazis that would imperil the future of democracy all over the world.
Discover a plethora of topics such as
So if you want a concise and informative book on the Battle of France, simply scroll up and click the "Buy now" button!
42 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 18, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 5, 2022
A good introduction to the subject of not only battle of France but of WWII as well, written succinctly, perhaps with a US high school readership in mind, but not dumbed down.
*****
Table of Contents
*****
Introduction
The Maginot Line
The Phoney War
Shattered Scandinavian Neutrality
Dunkirk and the Surrender of the Low Countries
The Invasion of France
Surrender at Compiegne
Vichy France: The British Attack the French Navy
Aftermath: French Resistance
*****
REVIEW
*****
Introduction
*****
Succinct introduction.
"The enmity between France and Germany did not spring up fresh from the blood-soaked battlefields of World War I. Roman General Julius Caesar wrote of it in his Commentaries on the Gallic War more than 2,000 years ago. By the time of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, when the German states defeated France and claimed Alsace-Lorraine as German territory, accord seemed impossible.
"Europe itself teemed with unresolved resentments against one another; borders were hostile, and monarchies shared bloodlines and tangled alliances that would complicate the realms when, in 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was assassinated by a Serb. Austria-Hungary and Germany were allies; Serbia and the Russian Empire were allies; France and Great Britain were allies, and off to war they went. Along the way, borders shifted and monarchies toppled, and the social order would never be the same."
"As Adolf Hitler rose to power and proceeded to launch a reign of terror against his political enemies—Jews, Slavs, Communists, homosexuals, and anyone who did not accept his strident rhetoric and brutal tactics—he began to take over neighboring regions: the Anschluss in Austria and the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. European governments and diplomats timidly protested but did not interfere. When Hitler went on to invade Poland in 1939, France and Great Britain declared war on Germany but did not go to Poland’s aid."
"Then, in the spring of 1940, the German blitzkrieg struck, overpowering the Scandinavian nations of Denmark and Norway in April and in May, the Low Countries of the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium. This time, the Allies had to respond by sending troops. Hitler’s battle plan was divided into two operations: The Fall Gelb or Case Yellow stage was intended to push the French out of their stronghold. Fall Rot or Case Red, two months later, was designed to reinforce the superiority of the Germans in the area.
"Undeterred by Germany’s military modernization and technological advantage, France felt that it had provided its nation and its army with more than adequate protection. The French were confident that the impregnable Maginot Line would hold off the German invasion until troops could reinforce the area. The Germans, however, were well aware of the French battle plan. They bypassed the Maginot Line and, because they had already invaded and conquered the Low Countries by swiftly crossing the Ardennes region, they were able to encircle the Allied forces at Dunkirk. The French troops in the south lacked the means to hold off the swift advance of the Germans, who reached Paris on June 14."
"The year 1940 was a bleak one for the Allies. With the United States maintaining its neutral stance, only Great Britain was left to stand against the seemingly indestructible menace of the Nazi war machine.
"Meanwhile, the French Resistance emerged to covertly work with the Allies by helping Allied soldiers who were trapped and at risk of discovery by the Germans. They provided the Allies with intelligence information on the movements of the German forces and also conducted acts of sabotage designed to impede German movements. Although the army had been defeated and the nation was occupied, the members of the French Resistance took enormous risks as they fought back against the Nazis.
"The day after France surrendered, a junior officer named Charles de Gaulle, who was stationed in London, delivered a forceful message defying the notion that France had given up. In his “Appeal of 18 June,” he urged his countrymen to continue the fight against the Germans. Based in London, the Free French Forces would go on to join with the Allies on the battlefield as the Free French maintained a government in exile to counter the puppet Vichy Regime.
"The fall of France alerted the world that the fight for freedom and democracy would not be a spectator sport. The Second World War would earn the grim title of the most devasting conflict in the history of human civilization, causing the deaths of more than 75 million people, or three percent of the global population recorded in the year 1940. No one could have guessed on that June day in 1940 when France surrendered to Germany, that the nations of the world were about to be engulfed in a conflagration that would forever alter the nature of war."
*****
The Maginot Line
Author quotes appropriately at beginning.
"“The trouble with the Maginot Line was that it was in the wrong places. The classical invasion route to France which the Germans had taken since the earliest tribal days—for nearly two millennia—lay through Belgium. This was the shortest way and the easiest, for it lay through level land with few rivers of any consequence to cross.”
"—William Shirer"
He remains succinct.
"Following the surrender of Germany on November 11, 1918, in a railroad car in Compiegne Forest north of Paris, Marshal Ferdinand Foch said, “This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years.” Foch, who felt that the punitive terms leveled against Germany were still too lenient, was prescient in his remarks. The First World War ended in 1918; the Second World War began on September 1, 1939; Foch was only off by a year in his dim forecast.
"The French had suffered enormously during the four years of World War I, particularly in eastern France. More than one million French citizens had been killed in the war; more than four million had been wounded. The land itself was scarred by the fighting. Foch’s remarks were not dismissed by the French, who knew they had to devise a means to prevent the Germans from inflicting such an assault against their country another time.
"Marshal Joseph Joffre was the first to propose such a defense, and Marshal Petain agreed with him. But the support was not unanimous; Charles de Gaulle, who would go on to lead the Free French Forces in World War II, felt that the military would be better served if the government invested in modern aircraft and armor. His instincts told him that the next war would require equipment that was engineered for speed and mobility, with substantial air support to provide assistance. Yet the Old Guard felt that such a direction would be too aggressive, and younger voices such as those espousing de Gaulle’s theories were ignored."
"Named for France’s Minister of War Andre Maginot, the Maginot Line was 280 miles (450 kilometers) long and approximately 12 to 16 miles (20-25 kilometers) in depth, running along the eastern French border. The line, constructed out of concrete, iron, and steel, was to serve a multitude of purposes to protect the French. The contested Alsace-Lorraine regions, which had been returned to France as part of the German terms of surrender after World War I, possessed industrial value for its iron ore deposits and its iron-making and steel-making plants. Germany had claimed the region as a prize after defeating France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and would covet their possession again."
"There was no need, said General Philippe Petain, to extend the line past the Ardennes region to the north. The forest was its own barrier, and he was confident that it was impenetrable. The caveat was to ensure that if an invading force came through the Ardennes, it would be destroyed by a pincer attack."
"In addition to the Maginot Line, the Meuse River, whose route ran from France through Belgium and the Netherlands before emptying into the North Sea, was a natural barrier against the threat of an invasion from the Germans. Together, the French authorities assured themselves, the Maginot Line and the Meuse River would hold off the Germans long enough for French forces to arrive on the scene in time to keep the enemy from entering France.
"The French held war games in 1938 to test their hypothesis that an armored attack by Germany through the Ardennes would be impossible. The Ardennes was, they were assured, impenetrable. The Maginot Line would keep the Germans out. France was safe from invasion, they believed."
*****
The Phoney War
"The starting date for the Second World War is generally agreed to have been September 1, 1939, when the German forces under the authority of Adolf Hitler invaded Poland. The month before, Germany and the Soviet Union had signed a Non-Aggression Pact, agreeing that they would not engage in conflict with one another for ten years. The pact was sweetened for the Soviet Union by Germany’s agreement that Joseph Stalin would be allowed to invade Poland from the east and claim the territory for the Russians, while Germany conquered western Poland. Neither Germany nor the Soviet Union actually believed that it would be ten years before they faced one another in combat, but the Soviets needed time to ready their military, and the Germans did not want Russian interference in their plans for Europe."
"Germany was bound by severe reparations and restrictions on its military, but after the start of the Great Depression, the nations of the world were struggling to manage their own economies and had little thought or time for what was happening beyond their borders. So it was that the militaries of Germany, as well as Japan and Italy, began to build up their strength, manufacturing weapons and devising plans of conquest.
"Germany had lost 13 percent of its land and all of its overseas colonies after the armistice, and disillusioned Germans looked to the Nazi Party to restore the nation’s glory. Ignoring the terms of the original peace treaty, Hitler militarized Germany without retaliatory consequences from the Allied nations, eventually occupying the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia in 1938."
" ... Spain was split by a violent civil war. Japan, intent on becoming the dominant power in the Pacific, invaded Manchuria in 1931. By 1937, Germany, Japan, and Italy had come together to sign the Anti-Comintern Pact."
" ... Hoping that giving Hitler the Sudetenland would sate his hunger for more land, the European powers sought to avoid war. But the green light of the Munich Agreement did exactly the opposite, as it assured Adolf Hitler that he could achieve Germany’s need for more land and no one would stand in his way. The Sudetenland wasn’t enough; the annexation of Austria wasn’t enough. Hitler began to build up the German Navy in order to be able to compete with British control of the Atlantic. He continued through 1939 to grab the lands belonging to other nations, including the rest of Czechoslovakia and a section of Lithuania, the Memelland."
Most of his subsequent actions were not only planned well ahead, and announced to his generals well ahead of being put in action, with dates thereof declared, but were not really a surprise if one read his published book and took it seriously.
That no one of political importance did so was chiefly due to wishful thinking and hoping that a bone might keep the fog occupied while world sought to recover from aftereffects of the Great War, as WWI was until then referred to, including depression.
"Finally, alarmed by German demands on Danzig and Italy’s conquering of Albania, Great Britain and France vowed to provide protection to Poland. Germany accused the British and Poles of conspiring to encircle the German nation. On August 23, 1939, while German troops were already beginning to mobilize along the border of Poland, Germany’s Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop signed a Non-Aggression Pact with Soviet Russia, which outlined the respective countries’ spheres of influence: Germany would claim western Poland and Lithuania; the Soviet Union would invade eastern Poland and claim Estonia, Latvia, Finland, and Bessarabia."
" ... on September 1, 1939, Germany incited border incidents as a pretext for invading Poland. The British command to stop the fighting was ignored. On September 3, France and the United Kingdom declared war on Germany."
"Six months of uneasy peace, named the Phoney War, ensued. During this time, while German U-boats were sinking Allied merchant vessels, the Germans sought to find out whether there was any interest on the part of the Allies in finding a diplomatic solution to the threat of war, one that would allow Germany to maintain its conquered lands. The Germans, of course, had no intention of limiting their conquests to the nations they had seized thus far."
"On April 9, 1940, the Nazis, determined to safeguard the vital shipments of iron ore which they received from Sweden and which the Allies were seeking to block, proceeded with their plans to invade Norway and Denmark. One month later, on May 10, 1940, the German offensive against the Low Countries began. But the Germans were not going to stop there. Their ultimate destination was France."
"The Germans were well aware that the Maginot Line would prove a formidable barrier to their invading forces, but they decided to go by another route, through the Ardennes region, a forested area which, the Allies were confident, was virtually impregnable to the German forces. The German tanks would prove them wrong."
The author overlooks the other two prongs in that paragraph summing up how Germans overcame the formidable Maginot Line and its fortifications. German forces did go around via low countries, and most vital, used extensive air power coupled with paratroopers, not only disabling the forces defending fortifications along the Maginot Line, but destroying them.
*****
Shattered Scandinavian Neutrality
"In 1939, after the German invasion of Poland, Winston Churchill, a new member of the British war cabinet, suggested that placing mines in Norwegian waters would require the ships carrying ore from Sweden to Germany to use the North Sea instead, where they could be intercepted by the British Navy. But Prime Minister Chamberlain was reluctant, fearing that such a bold move by the British would be unpopular in the United States, which was still a neutral country."
"In April 1940, Germany’s ambassador to Denmark informed the Danish foreign minister that German troops were on their way to protect Denmark from attack by the French and British. If Denmark resisted, Copenhagen would be bombed. Regardless of the fact that the year before, Denmark and Germany had signed a nonaggression pact, Hitler’s overarching campaign plans required the use of Denmark’s bases for Germany’s military. He knew that the Danish forces could not possibly challenge Germany’s might. The Danes knew it as well.
"Two days after the German ships set forth to invade Denmark, the Royal Navy left Scapa Flow and headed for Scandinavia. By April 8, the British minefields were in place in the Vestfjorden in Norway. These would slow down but ultimately fail to stop the German invasion."
"Danish capitulation did provide the country with some advantages. The Danes were allowed to maintain their independence in Danish political matters. The occupation would be more lenient than what other occupied countries would be subjected to. Because of this, most of Denmark’s Jews were safely removed to Sweden, out of harm from the German Final Solution for the extermination of the Jews."
" ... Norwegians presented a stiff defense of their capital as they sank the German cruiser Blücher. By the end of the day, however, after the Germans parachuted into Oslo, the city fell to the Nazis. Fighting continued in other parts of Norway, but within two days, the Germans had taken the main cities of the country."
"Alerted to the presence of German ships in Norwegian waters, Norway was able to evacuate its government and royal family before the invasion. Norway never actually surrendered to the Germans, and the Norwegians maintained a government-in-exile based in London during the war. At the same time, the Quisling government, supportive of the Nazi regime, ruled in Norway."
" ... As Chamberlain tried to rally his tottering government, Adolf Hitler, encouraged by the lackluster Allied efforts in Norway, was sending tanks, aircraft, and troops into the Low Countries.
"As a result, Chamberlain resigned. Winston Churchill became prime minister on the day when Europe faced a military threat from an enemy seeking revenge for its defeat in the First World War."
*****
Dunkirk and the Surrender of the Low Countries
" ... Dutch neutrality had kept the Netherlands out of the First World War and had avoided actions which might have caused friction against Germany. ... In order to dodge the barrier posed by the Maginot Line, the Germans planned to avoid the eastern border of France and instead advance through the Netherlands and Belgium. The plan had an added advantage which would enable the Germans to prevent the Allies from setting up an operations base on the European mainland."
" ... The British Expeditionary Force, better trained and better armed, was positioned south of the border between Belgium and France. The British and French forces combined had 750,000 troops ready to reinforce the armies of Belgium and the Netherlands, along with an Allied air force, although the latter did not match the numbers of the German Luftwaffe."
" ... while the Dutch citizens perceived increased military activity, they didn’t realize that invasion was imminent. On the morning of May 10, 1940, when they spotted German bombers flying toward the North Sea, they assumed the planes were heading to Britain. But once they were over the North Sea, the German planes, after a 180-degree turn, circled back toward the Netherlands.
"Hitler had an alibi for his attack. Britain and France, he accused, planned to attack the Ruhr Area via the Netherlands and Belgium. Germany had to protect its borders. Hitler was proficient in manufacturing excuses as a pretext for German aggression and had accomplished it with success before."
The alibi was only for US media and people; his own nation was happy Invading and colonising any of rest of Europe or world. But the fraudulent propaganda also served to divide people of France and UK, by giving those willing to believe it, an excuse to go on clamouring for a treaty.
" ... Netherlands surrendered on May 15, submitting to occupied rule under the German Reich. For the Jews living in the Netherlands, many of whom—like ....
*****
Table of Contents
*****
Introduction
The Maginot Line
The Phoney War
Shattered Scandinavian Neutrality
Dunkirk and the Surrender of the Low Countries
The Invasion of France
Surrender at Compiegne
Vichy France: The British Attack the French Navy
Aftermath: French Resistance
*****
REVIEW
*****
Introduction
*****
Succinct introduction.
"The enmity between France and Germany did not spring up fresh from the blood-soaked battlefields of World War I. Roman General Julius Caesar wrote of it in his Commentaries on the Gallic War more than 2,000 years ago. By the time of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, when the German states defeated France and claimed Alsace-Lorraine as German territory, accord seemed impossible.
"Europe itself teemed with unresolved resentments against one another; borders were hostile, and monarchies shared bloodlines and tangled alliances that would complicate the realms when, in 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was assassinated by a Serb. Austria-Hungary and Germany were allies; Serbia and the Russian Empire were allies; France and Great Britain were allies, and off to war they went. Along the way, borders shifted and monarchies toppled, and the social order would never be the same."
"As Adolf Hitler rose to power and proceeded to launch a reign of terror against his political enemies—Jews, Slavs, Communists, homosexuals, and anyone who did not accept his strident rhetoric and brutal tactics—he began to take over neighboring regions: the Anschluss in Austria and the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. European governments and diplomats timidly protested but did not interfere. When Hitler went on to invade Poland in 1939, France and Great Britain declared war on Germany but did not go to Poland’s aid."
"Then, in the spring of 1940, the German blitzkrieg struck, overpowering the Scandinavian nations of Denmark and Norway in April and in May, the Low Countries of the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium. This time, the Allies had to respond by sending troops. Hitler’s battle plan was divided into two operations: The Fall Gelb or Case Yellow stage was intended to push the French out of their stronghold. Fall Rot or Case Red, two months later, was designed to reinforce the superiority of the Germans in the area.
"Undeterred by Germany’s military modernization and technological advantage, France felt that it had provided its nation and its army with more than adequate protection. The French were confident that the impregnable Maginot Line would hold off the German invasion until troops could reinforce the area. The Germans, however, were well aware of the French battle plan. They bypassed the Maginot Line and, because they had already invaded and conquered the Low Countries by swiftly crossing the Ardennes region, they were able to encircle the Allied forces at Dunkirk. The French troops in the south lacked the means to hold off the swift advance of the Germans, who reached Paris on June 14."
"The year 1940 was a bleak one for the Allies. With the United States maintaining its neutral stance, only Great Britain was left to stand against the seemingly indestructible menace of the Nazi war machine.
"Meanwhile, the French Resistance emerged to covertly work with the Allies by helping Allied soldiers who were trapped and at risk of discovery by the Germans. They provided the Allies with intelligence information on the movements of the German forces and also conducted acts of sabotage designed to impede German movements. Although the army had been defeated and the nation was occupied, the members of the French Resistance took enormous risks as they fought back against the Nazis.
"The day after France surrendered, a junior officer named Charles de Gaulle, who was stationed in London, delivered a forceful message defying the notion that France had given up. In his “Appeal of 18 June,” he urged his countrymen to continue the fight against the Germans. Based in London, the Free French Forces would go on to join with the Allies on the battlefield as the Free French maintained a government in exile to counter the puppet Vichy Regime.
"The fall of France alerted the world that the fight for freedom and democracy would not be a spectator sport. The Second World War would earn the grim title of the most devasting conflict in the history of human civilization, causing the deaths of more than 75 million people, or three percent of the global population recorded in the year 1940. No one could have guessed on that June day in 1940 when France surrendered to Germany, that the nations of the world were about to be engulfed in a conflagration that would forever alter the nature of war."
*****
The Maginot Line
Author quotes appropriately at beginning.
"“The trouble with the Maginot Line was that it was in the wrong places. The classical invasion route to France which the Germans had taken since the earliest tribal days—for nearly two millennia—lay through Belgium. This was the shortest way and the easiest, for it lay through level land with few rivers of any consequence to cross.”
"—William Shirer"
He remains succinct.
"Following the surrender of Germany on November 11, 1918, in a railroad car in Compiegne Forest north of Paris, Marshal Ferdinand Foch said, “This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years.” Foch, who felt that the punitive terms leveled against Germany were still too lenient, was prescient in his remarks. The First World War ended in 1918; the Second World War began on September 1, 1939; Foch was only off by a year in his dim forecast.
"The French had suffered enormously during the four years of World War I, particularly in eastern France. More than one million French citizens had been killed in the war; more than four million had been wounded. The land itself was scarred by the fighting. Foch’s remarks were not dismissed by the French, who knew they had to devise a means to prevent the Germans from inflicting such an assault against their country another time.
"Marshal Joseph Joffre was the first to propose such a defense, and Marshal Petain agreed with him. But the support was not unanimous; Charles de Gaulle, who would go on to lead the Free French Forces in World War II, felt that the military would be better served if the government invested in modern aircraft and armor. His instincts told him that the next war would require equipment that was engineered for speed and mobility, with substantial air support to provide assistance. Yet the Old Guard felt that such a direction would be too aggressive, and younger voices such as those espousing de Gaulle’s theories were ignored."
"Named for France’s Minister of War Andre Maginot, the Maginot Line was 280 miles (450 kilometers) long and approximately 12 to 16 miles (20-25 kilometers) in depth, running along the eastern French border. The line, constructed out of concrete, iron, and steel, was to serve a multitude of purposes to protect the French. The contested Alsace-Lorraine regions, which had been returned to France as part of the German terms of surrender after World War I, possessed industrial value for its iron ore deposits and its iron-making and steel-making plants. Germany had claimed the region as a prize after defeating France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and would covet their possession again."
"There was no need, said General Philippe Petain, to extend the line past the Ardennes region to the north. The forest was its own barrier, and he was confident that it was impenetrable. The caveat was to ensure that if an invading force came through the Ardennes, it would be destroyed by a pincer attack."
"In addition to the Maginot Line, the Meuse River, whose route ran from France through Belgium and the Netherlands before emptying into the North Sea, was a natural barrier against the threat of an invasion from the Germans. Together, the French authorities assured themselves, the Maginot Line and the Meuse River would hold off the Germans long enough for French forces to arrive on the scene in time to keep the enemy from entering France.
"The French held war games in 1938 to test their hypothesis that an armored attack by Germany through the Ardennes would be impossible. The Ardennes was, they were assured, impenetrable. The Maginot Line would keep the Germans out. France was safe from invasion, they believed."
*****
The Phoney War
"The starting date for the Second World War is generally agreed to have been September 1, 1939, when the German forces under the authority of Adolf Hitler invaded Poland. The month before, Germany and the Soviet Union had signed a Non-Aggression Pact, agreeing that they would not engage in conflict with one another for ten years. The pact was sweetened for the Soviet Union by Germany’s agreement that Joseph Stalin would be allowed to invade Poland from the east and claim the territory for the Russians, while Germany conquered western Poland. Neither Germany nor the Soviet Union actually believed that it would be ten years before they faced one another in combat, but the Soviets needed time to ready their military, and the Germans did not want Russian interference in their plans for Europe."
"Germany was bound by severe reparations and restrictions on its military, but after the start of the Great Depression, the nations of the world were struggling to manage their own economies and had little thought or time for what was happening beyond their borders. So it was that the militaries of Germany, as well as Japan and Italy, began to build up their strength, manufacturing weapons and devising plans of conquest.
"Germany had lost 13 percent of its land and all of its overseas colonies after the armistice, and disillusioned Germans looked to the Nazi Party to restore the nation’s glory. Ignoring the terms of the original peace treaty, Hitler militarized Germany without retaliatory consequences from the Allied nations, eventually occupying the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia in 1938."
" ... Spain was split by a violent civil war. Japan, intent on becoming the dominant power in the Pacific, invaded Manchuria in 1931. By 1937, Germany, Japan, and Italy had come together to sign the Anti-Comintern Pact."
" ... Hoping that giving Hitler the Sudetenland would sate his hunger for more land, the European powers sought to avoid war. But the green light of the Munich Agreement did exactly the opposite, as it assured Adolf Hitler that he could achieve Germany’s need for more land and no one would stand in his way. The Sudetenland wasn’t enough; the annexation of Austria wasn’t enough. Hitler began to build up the German Navy in order to be able to compete with British control of the Atlantic. He continued through 1939 to grab the lands belonging to other nations, including the rest of Czechoslovakia and a section of Lithuania, the Memelland."
Most of his subsequent actions were not only planned well ahead, and announced to his generals well ahead of being put in action, with dates thereof declared, but were not really a surprise if one read his published book and took it seriously.
That no one of political importance did so was chiefly due to wishful thinking and hoping that a bone might keep the fog occupied while world sought to recover from aftereffects of the Great War, as WWI was until then referred to, including depression.
"Finally, alarmed by German demands on Danzig and Italy’s conquering of Albania, Great Britain and France vowed to provide protection to Poland. Germany accused the British and Poles of conspiring to encircle the German nation. On August 23, 1939, while German troops were already beginning to mobilize along the border of Poland, Germany’s Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop signed a Non-Aggression Pact with Soviet Russia, which outlined the respective countries’ spheres of influence: Germany would claim western Poland and Lithuania; the Soviet Union would invade eastern Poland and claim Estonia, Latvia, Finland, and Bessarabia."
" ... on September 1, 1939, Germany incited border incidents as a pretext for invading Poland. The British command to stop the fighting was ignored. On September 3, France and the United Kingdom declared war on Germany."
"Six months of uneasy peace, named the Phoney War, ensued. During this time, while German U-boats were sinking Allied merchant vessels, the Germans sought to find out whether there was any interest on the part of the Allies in finding a diplomatic solution to the threat of war, one that would allow Germany to maintain its conquered lands. The Germans, of course, had no intention of limiting their conquests to the nations they had seized thus far."
"On April 9, 1940, the Nazis, determined to safeguard the vital shipments of iron ore which they received from Sweden and which the Allies were seeking to block, proceeded with their plans to invade Norway and Denmark. One month later, on May 10, 1940, the German offensive against the Low Countries began. But the Germans were not going to stop there. Their ultimate destination was France."
"The Germans were well aware that the Maginot Line would prove a formidable barrier to their invading forces, but they decided to go by another route, through the Ardennes region, a forested area which, the Allies were confident, was virtually impregnable to the German forces. The German tanks would prove them wrong."
The author overlooks the other two prongs in that paragraph summing up how Germans overcame the formidable Maginot Line and its fortifications. German forces did go around via low countries, and most vital, used extensive air power coupled with paratroopers, not only disabling the forces defending fortifications along the Maginot Line, but destroying them.
*****
Shattered Scandinavian Neutrality
"In 1939, after the German invasion of Poland, Winston Churchill, a new member of the British war cabinet, suggested that placing mines in Norwegian waters would require the ships carrying ore from Sweden to Germany to use the North Sea instead, where they could be intercepted by the British Navy. But Prime Minister Chamberlain was reluctant, fearing that such a bold move by the British would be unpopular in the United States, which was still a neutral country."
"In April 1940, Germany’s ambassador to Denmark informed the Danish foreign minister that German troops were on their way to protect Denmark from attack by the French and British. If Denmark resisted, Copenhagen would be bombed. Regardless of the fact that the year before, Denmark and Germany had signed a nonaggression pact, Hitler’s overarching campaign plans required the use of Denmark’s bases for Germany’s military. He knew that the Danish forces could not possibly challenge Germany’s might. The Danes knew it as well.
"Two days after the German ships set forth to invade Denmark, the Royal Navy left Scapa Flow and headed for Scandinavia. By April 8, the British minefields were in place in the Vestfjorden in Norway. These would slow down but ultimately fail to stop the German invasion."
"Danish capitulation did provide the country with some advantages. The Danes were allowed to maintain their independence in Danish political matters. The occupation would be more lenient than what other occupied countries would be subjected to. Because of this, most of Denmark’s Jews were safely removed to Sweden, out of harm from the German Final Solution for the extermination of the Jews."
" ... Norwegians presented a stiff defense of their capital as they sank the German cruiser Blücher. By the end of the day, however, after the Germans parachuted into Oslo, the city fell to the Nazis. Fighting continued in other parts of Norway, but within two days, the Germans had taken the main cities of the country."
"Alerted to the presence of German ships in Norwegian waters, Norway was able to evacuate its government and royal family before the invasion. Norway never actually surrendered to the Germans, and the Norwegians maintained a government-in-exile based in London during the war. At the same time, the Quisling government, supportive of the Nazi regime, ruled in Norway."
" ... As Chamberlain tried to rally his tottering government, Adolf Hitler, encouraged by the lackluster Allied efforts in Norway, was sending tanks, aircraft, and troops into the Low Countries.
"As a result, Chamberlain resigned. Winston Churchill became prime minister on the day when Europe faced a military threat from an enemy seeking revenge for its defeat in the First World War."
*****
Dunkirk and the Surrender of the Low Countries
" ... Dutch neutrality had kept the Netherlands out of the First World War and had avoided actions which might have caused friction against Germany. ... In order to dodge the barrier posed by the Maginot Line, the Germans planned to avoid the eastern border of France and instead advance through the Netherlands and Belgium. The plan had an added advantage which would enable the Germans to prevent the Allies from setting up an operations base on the European mainland."
" ... The British Expeditionary Force, better trained and better armed, was positioned south of the border between Belgium and France. The British and French forces combined had 750,000 troops ready to reinforce the armies of Belgium and the Netherlands, along with an Allied air force, although the latter did not match the numbers of the German Luftwaffe."
" ... while the Dutch citizens perceived increased military activity, they didn’t realize that invasion was imminent. On the morning of May 10, 1940, when they spotted German bombers flying toward the North Sea, they assumed the planes were heading to Britain. But once they were over the North Sea, the German planes, after a 180-degree turn, circled back toward the Netherlands.
"Hitler had an alibi for his attack. Britain and France, he accused, planned to attack the Ruhr Area via the Netherlands and Belgium. Germany had to protect its borders. Hitler was proficient in manufacturing excuses as a pretext for German aggression and had accomplished it with success before."
The alibi was only for US media and people; his own nation was happy Invading and colonising any of rest of Europe or world. But the fraudulent propaganda also served to divide people of France and UK, by giving those willing to believe it, an excuse to go on clamouring for a treaty.
" ... Netherlands surrendered on May 15, submitting to occupied rule under the German Reich. For the Jews living in the Netherlands, many of whom—like ....
April 4, 2022
The Germans Were in a Hurry
Although Battle of France is concise even short the author manages to offer a useful overview of the conflict. Because Germany ran over France,Belgium and the Netherlands the conflict is practically ignored in typical histories of the beginning of WW II. Consequently students of WW II are seldom exposed to the fact that combat as developed by the Germans had not been seen before. Too military leaders usually respond to a new conflict as they responded to their last conflict. Such was the response to the German onslaught by Belgium, Netherlands and the French. By the time the US entered the war it had five years to study the German techniques of warfare to its advantage. The Battle of France as presented by Hourly History offers a good beginning to its study.
Although Battle of France is concise even short the author manages to offer a useful overview of the conflict. Because Germany ran over France,Belgium and the Netherlands the conflict is practically ignored in typical histories of the beginning of WW II. Consequently students of WW II are seldom exposed to the fact that combat as developed by the Germans had not been seen before. Too military leaders usually respond to a new conflict as they responded to their last conflict. Such was the response to the German onslaught by Belgium, Netherlands and the French. By the time the US entered the war it had five years to study the German techniques of warfare to its advantage. The Battle of France as presented by Hourly History offers a good beginning to its study.
March 6, 2022
The French Military prepared for the next war as though nothing had Changed from WWI
A very informative summarization of the hows and whys the much larger French Army was defeated within six weeks by a smaller but much more technologically superior German Army.
A very informative summarization of the hows and whys the much larger French Army was defeated within six weeks by a smaller but much more technologically superior German Army.
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July 2, 2023How the French Resistance played a vital in World War II
A brief synopsis of the Battle of France. This book is full of important dates and cities during the invasion of Hitler's army. A very good read.
A brief synopsis of the Battle of France. This book is full of important dates and cities during the invasion of Hitler's army. A very good read.
July 28, 2021
A good review of the battle for France.
November 23, 2021
Another well written book from the library of Hourly History. However, more than half the book is about the events that led to the Battle of France instead of the battle itself
May 26, 2023
Really really short. Gave me a new understanding. Expected it to go to the end of the war but just went to the country’s surrender to the Nazis.
April 7, 2024
Good for overview
The book is not very deep, but it gives you the fundamental to continue with more in-depth books later on.
The book is not very deep, but it gives you the fundamental to continue with more in-depth books later on.
July 7, 2024
Battle of France - World War II: A History from Beginning to End is a short introduction to another aspect of World War II. It is a pretty good book.
January 10, 2025
Another great summary of WW2 battles. Interesting reading, accurate analysis and always on point [when it's this short and suppose that's a given]. Highly recommended.
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