Hitler dictates terms
On 21 June 1940, early in the second year of World War Two, the French president, Marshall Philippe Pétain, sued for peace with Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. In the course of the negotiations Pétain - victor of the battle of Verdun in World War One - agreed to cede three-fifths of French territory to German control.
In one of history's great ironies, Hitler insisted that the armistice be signed in the very railway car in which Germany had been compelled to admit defeat at the end of World War One. He was in a good position to dictate such terms.
It had taken only a few short weeks for the Wehrmacht (the German army), under his control, to crush the army of the French Third Republic . His well-trained and organised troops had also caused France's Allies, in the form of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), to beat an ignominious retreat from continental Europe.
Thus between 10 May and 21 June 1940, the Wehrmacht had accomplished what the army of Kaiser Wilhelm II had not managed to do in four years of desperate fighting in World War One.
Allies unprepared
The Maginot Line: the Allies expected a protracted, defensive war © Across the English Channel, a stunned British military establishment struggled to determine how it was that events had so quickly gone so horribly wrong. The BEF had sailed for France believing that they and their French ally were well equipped and well trained to fight a modern war. In truth, as events proved, they were completely unprepared to face Hitler's Wehrmacht.
During World War One, the armies of the two Allies had dug in for what became a long, drawn-out conflict. And in 1940, influenced by this experience, the British and French leaders of World War Two were still expecting to fight a war in which the defensive would dominate. With this approach in mind, the French army was sent to man France's heavily fortified border with Germany, the Maginot Line, and to await a German attack. The BEF was sent to join the line of French troops defending the border with Belgium.
... they were completely unprepared to face Hitler's Wehrmacht ...
They expected that battles would develop slowly and be dominated by 'traditional' arms - those of the infantry and the artillery. Although the two armies had more than 3,500 tanks between them, these were largely cast in a supporting role.
The events in May and June 1940 proved that this outdated vision of war could not have been further from reality. This time, unlike the Allies, the Germans intended to fight the war offensively, and win quickly.
German tactics
At dawn on 10 May, the Germans began an invasion of Belgium and the Netherlands. Accordingly, convinced that they were facing a repeat of the German strategy of 1914, Allied commanders moved the bulk of their forces from the Franco-Belgian border into defensive positions within Belgium to await the continuation of the German attack. In so doing, they fell right into Hitler's trap.
Rather than repeating the World War One Schlieffen Plan, the Germans in 1940 advanced with their main thrust through the Ardennes Forest, in order to smash the vulnerable flank of the Allies. As 29 German divisions advanced through the Netherlands and Belgium in the north, 45 further divisions, including about 2,400 tanks in 7 divisions, burst through the Allied right flank and drove towards the English Channel.
... the German advance south from Belgium was swift and decisive.
By 21 May, this thrust had reached the Channel and encircled 35 Allied divisions, including the BEF. Although the French army put up token resistance for several more weeks, their spirit was broken and the German advance south from Belgium was swift and decisive.
Despite desperate attempts by Winston Churchill to bolster French resolve, the defeat of the British and French armies in May effectively spelled the end of French resistance. The Allied armies, completely unprepared for the rapid, mobile operations of the Germans, had simply been out-fought at every turn.
Font: bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo
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