10 May 1940 The Battle of France began

The main goal of Hitler's campaign to the west was to win France, on whose side many soldiers from the former Czechoslovakia and Poland fought. However, Germany was successful and took other countries as well. The long-awaited offensive began on May 10, 1940.

And it made bold use of air attack and paratroopers. Within four days, they crushed the Dutch and spared the Belgians a crippling blow. The bulk of the French Army and the British Expeditionary Corps headed for Belgium to counter what they considered the main German advance.

But Hitler and his generals eventually adopted a plan proposed by Erich von Manstein for a strong tank strike south through the Ardennes forests, which were considered impenetrable. "Three columns of German tanks and motorized infantry emerged from the Ardennes and crossed the Meuse River on 13 May. With air support from Stuka dive-bombers, they broke completely through the French lines and rolled north to the coast Channel, threatening to cut off the Allied armies in Belgium," R. G. Grant in his book Battles.

After repelling a counterattack by de Gaule's 4th Armoured Division at Laon and British tanks at Arras, the Germans reached the sea on 22 May. Having lost most of the other ports, the Allied armies retreated to Dunkirk. "Even this refuge could have fallen, but Hitler's decision to halt the advance of armoured troops for two days allowed the Allies to prepare a defensive perimeter. Allied naval forces, supported by small civilian vessels, carried out an impromptu evacuation of the underground units under constant air attacks. At the time of the fall of Dunkirk on 4 June, some 338,000 troops had been taken, two-thirds of them British," Grant adds.

Although the remaining French forces resisted the Italians heavily, their armies crumbled each time they clashed with the Germans due to a collapse in morale. Thus, the fall of Paris on June 14 was followed by a surrender signed in the same railway carriage that had been used to sign the Armistice in 1918. And the result? Two-thirds of France was occupied by Germany, the rest was under the collaborationist government of Marshal Philippe Pétain, based in Vichy.

The summer of 1940 was the most difficult period not only for France, but also for Great Britain and indeed the whole free world. In the days between the surrender of France and October 1940, the future course of the Second World War was decided without exaggeration. The Battle of Britain, however, was Nazi Germany's first ever defeat and, as the invasion of Normandy three years later proved, a fatal one.

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