![]() On 5 June, the Germans began a new offensive from their positions on the Somme. They crossed the River Oise on 17 May and reached Abbeville, near the Channel coast, on 20 May, cutting off the Allied armies in Belgium.įor reasons still not clear, Hitler demanded a pause in the fighting, which gave the Allies enough opportunity to evacuate around 340,000 troops from Dunkirk and a further 220,000 from other French ports. The narrow breach this created widened rapidly, allowing General Heinz Guderian's German tanks to pour through. On 11 May the French cavalry retreated over the River Semois on 13 May the Germans crossed the River Meuse into France at Sedan, aided by waves of dive-bombers. The Germans advanced against France through the Ardennes Forest, which the French had considered to be impassable to tanks. ![]() ![]() Although this was reinforced by French and British divisions, it was abandoned on 15 May, and Belgium sued for peace on 27 May. German tanks rolled west and the Belgians retreated to the Dyle Line, which ran from the Franco-Belgian border in the south to the River Maas in the Netherlands. In Belgium, German airborne troops landed on 10 May and the Belgian front was broken the next day. By 12 May, German forces were on the outskirts of Rotterdam, and Holland surrendered on 14 May. On, German forces advanced into neutral Holland, with parachutists capturing strategic bridges and landing at airfields around The Hague. More than half of France's 800,000 troops were confined to manning the defensive Maginot Line, a line of fortifications facing Germany from the Swiss to the Belgian frontiers. Two young French refugees fleeing the German advance into France ©Although Hitler's armies were smaller than those of his opponents, the Germans had both air superiority and imagination.
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