Just before dawn on 10 May 1940 the largest concentration of motorised vehicles in history roared into action. After months of quiet it was the start of Hitler’s invasion of the West. What followed was a stunning combination of new tactics and new technologies that left Britain and France – two world superpowers – reeling. Within 6 weeks the latter would sign a humiliating armistice, ensuring that almost all of continental Europe had fallen under the grip of Nazi rule.
But why did France fall so quickly? In this documentary Dan Snow tells the story of the 6 weeks that led to the Fall of France in 1940 and how its outcome helped shape the course of the 20th century.
Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free exclusive podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsely, Mary Beard and more. Watch, listen and read history wherever you are, whenever you want it. Available on all devices: Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Android TV, Samsung Smart TV, Roku, Xbox, Chromecast, and iOs & Android.
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What a waste of time. 23:23 minutes of very conventional narrative and film footage, yet the "Real Reason France Collapsed" is never specifically identified. Nor is there any reference to the any of the new research on this topic. Disappointing.
Horribly boring re-tell on Wikipedia 🙁
It’s certainly lucky that the Nazis didn’t maintain their truce with Stalin. They could have consolidated their power , built up more air power and eventually invaded UK. The Japanese should not have attacked Pearl Harbor. USA would have stayed neutral.
A very different fare awaited the Germans in Russia .
The reason the French had no strategic reserve was Gamelin's idiotic Breda Variant, which sent some of France's best units to the Breda River, where they hoped to meet up with the retreating Dutch Army. The French didn't bother to inform the British of this brainstorm, which was why Churchill was shocked at his meeting in Paris. The Germans should have been defeated, with the panzer spearhead cutoff by a French counterattack. The reason Hitler and Von Rundstedt kept on insisting the advance slow down was because German infantry units were mostly horse drawn and could not keep up with the panzers pace, thus the panzers "lines of communication" were vulnerable to attack. There were numerous other reasons for the French failure: command style, belief that set piece battles would be fought as opposed to the German's more fluid concepts, etc. but it should have never come to that.
Simple answer, they did not want their precious Paris to come to any harm.
Operation Dynamo ran from 26th May to 4th June.
The 51st Infantry Division though was the last British unit to surrender on 12 June. More than 100,000 French forces were ferried off the beaches at Dunkirk but only 3000 elected to stay and join Charles de Gaulle's Free French army in England.
Operation Aerial then evacuated another 191,000 Allied military forces and civilians of which around 40,000 were French, from the ports in western France between 15 to 25 June.
Hitler AND Stalin's Invasion of Poland.
One of them was my Father, who was saved at Dunkirk.
The Germans were high on speed too. The German soldiers could fight and advance for 3 days in a row without sleeping.
More french troops died fighting FOR Hitler, than against him. Keep that in mind while listening to this heroic account.
Cheese eaters !!
He mentions the "heroic efforts of the Royal Navy£ during the evacuation. Neglected to mention all the small little civilian ships and other small craft that got involved as well. They also deserve much credit for their efforts and sacrifice.
Germany got inside of the decision loop and so the French couldn`t react to events fast enough, thanks to the distrust of radio.
you forgot something important ! every countries from 39 to 42 had their butts kicked by Germans ! including Brits and Russians !French performed poorly, but is easier to defend when you have no direct border !
its funny how the fall of france had nothing to do with the british army or the british general staff – remember they had been in france from 1939 – should they have been doing some thinking? Did they flee?
4 years of nazi ocupation means nothing compared to +50 yrs of soviet ocupation in eastern europe..
Needs more maps less walk and talk.
This was in reply to some poster who claimed his nazi grandfather fought the French in the Ardennes and the French ran away when they saw German tanks. In light of such propaganda BS, here are the details of some the French battles in Belgium. The details here are far more objective and accurate. If this sheds new light on your view WW2 and the French, I'd encourage to read actual accounts of French and the German soldiers who faced them instead of reading the same regurgitated and biased info you find in way too many anglophone history books.
The battles in Belgium from the onset were clearly brutal… The French actually won both the Battles at Hannut and Gembloux. At Hannut, the French had about 380 tanks from their 2&3rd light mechanized divisions. The Germans had about 680 tanks (about 150 were Panzer 3/4, the rest being Panzer 1/2) led by General Hopner. Hopner targeted the French general Langlois 's position which was made up of the about 140 Hotchkiss and 80 Somua S35 . The short 37mm cannon on the French Hotchkiss couldn't penetrate the Panzer 3/4's armor, while the German Panzer 1/2/3 couldn't penetrate French Somua tanks' armor. Plenty of French Somua tanks had over 30 impact points from the German's 20 and 37mm rounds. German Colonel Neumann would later state " The tenacity of the French, despite the heavy losses, made so that the combat remained indecisive and that General Hopner ignored where the bulk of the French forces were" . At the end of the battle of Hannut, 164 German tanks were destroyed, and 105 French tanks were also destroyed. Half of the French tanks were destroyed by the Luftwaffe. The majority of the German tanks were destroyed by the Somua tanks. (this data is from both German and French sources).German WW2 expert Karl Heinz Frieser even stated " From a tactical standpoint, it was a total success for General Prioux (French general that oversaw General Langlois division) "
General Prioux ordered the 2 divisions (Infantry/mechanized infantry/artillery) to guard a 8 miles front at Gembloux. Those divisions (34K men) walked 80 miles in 3 days to block 500 Panzers, 40k German soldiers and the VIII corp of the Luftwaffe. The French were really ill equipped to deal with the Luftwaffe and even resorted to shooting at the Stukas with light machine guns. The battles around Gembloux were both with infantry and tanks. What gave the German a huge headache was the French artillery that the Luftwaffe was unable to destroy. French artillery destroyed about 50 German tanks.
At the infantry level, it wasn't pretty… in one French bataillon had 74 men left out of 700, while a German bataillon was completely erased… there was even a bayonet charge of the French 7 th regiment against German machine guns. All of that in 2 days… Hoepner took such as beating that he concluded his army wasn't battle ready for the following day. That French defense line held all the way.
West of Gembloux , in the region of Dyle, both the French and the British stopped the 18th German infantry division despite the German air superiority The German tried to split the French division in two at Limal, but also failed.
The French troops were then redeployed to go on fighting in the Meuse region, where 7 French divisions would face 40 German Divisions. About 1500 German planes (stuka/bombers) would target the French artillery and just pounded the with airstrikes/bombing runs. The bombing runs would sometimes last as long as 5 hours of constant bombing. WW2 German historian KH Frieser stated that " The massive bombing on Sedan on May 13th represents the most violent event on the Western Campaign. From both French and British accounts, the psychological shock of that bombing was equal to the first use of chemical weapon in WW1." (The Luftwaffe had about 1300 bombing runs in just a few hours..)
I could go on and on, but suffice to say that the French fought fiercely, without a shadow of a doubt.
Furthermore, to state that the French has much more equipment than the German is utter non-sense.
Here are some basic facts (1939) : Germany population 81m vs France 40m., salaried workers 21.5m vs 11.5m, industrial workers 14m vs 5.5m, steel production 14mt vs 8mt. Now that we have looked at the overall key figures which clearly shows the German advantage over France, let's switch to the military stats.
The allied had 124 divisions involved (UK had 10 infantry divisions and 1 tank division, Belgian army; 12 infantry divisions, Dutch army 8 infantry divisions, the rest were French infantry and mechanized divisions. The German lined up 136 divisions including 10 Panzer divisions. The French had 6 Mechanized divisions, but that is misleading since the German division contained 220-330 tanks vs the French divisions which had 130-160 tanks.
The German had the upper hand in logistics (specifically in tank support), modern radios, etc. Of the 3000 tanks France had, 2400 tanks were the Hotchkiss, Renault,FCM type which were very slow and with the purpose of taking on machine gun nests and anti-tanks. The 37mm gun that these tanks were equipped with couldn't penetrate tank armor more than 15mm at 400-600 yards. Over 2000 Germans (out of 3000) tanks had 20-30mm thick armor. So that left the French with only about 600 tanks that could go against the Panzer 3/4 and the Skoda 38t. The top German tanks (Panzer 4, qt: 366) matched the top French tank (Bis1, qt 280)
I'm not going to go any further to demonstrate that the Germans had better equipment, from tanks and airpower to small arms and artillery, since it would be a very looong post.
Enough to say that France was in no way better armed or had superior weapons. It's simply and FACTUALLY not true.
The real reason was their men were cowards.
Because they always get beat!!!
Aa far as I am concerned, the Germans let the British Formel flee as they still dreamed of a GermanBritish alliance against the Bolshewiks… There should not be any doubt, that the Germans could have extermined the entire support force if they wanted to…
So what is the real reason?
France held out for a month against the most modern, and well commanded army the world had yet seen. All while the French government was in complete internal disarray, and then in flight. The question should be 'How did the French hold out so long? ". Answer: the professionalism of the individual French officers who fought on, and the bravery of the French soldiers and airmen.
Because they are cowards
Old but gold: why are the boulevards of France lined with trees? So the German army can march in the shade…
France "collapsed" so quickly because French society, especially the French ruling class were divided between the nationalists, led by DeGaulle and the fascists and nazi sympathizers. There were more fascist sympathizers than there were French nationalists and many of these were in the army and in positions of political power. The story that the Germans simply outsmarted the entire French army which was caught sitting on its hands in bunkers under the Maginot Line was an after the fact excuse invented to explain away all the. embarrassing facts
The almost instant demise of the French army was not a function of the 'fat' rank and file soldiers but a total failure of leadership at almost all levels, from the military to gov't ministers. Most of the French air force was parked in the south throughout the war and became part of the German invasion force for Barbarossa. Half of France's tanks, which were superior to the Germans', never saw action. The definitive history of this disaster is "The Collapse of the Third Republic" by William Shirer. It was the French ruling class, who hated their socialist gov't more than they feared the Germans, who lost this war.
My mother used to say that for world war one men went on singing.for the second ,they went crying.it was too soon,they were not ready🥺😊😊🇲🇫
9:50 "Frankly, useless"
I see what you did there 😉
WW2 was won by the soviet soldiers who fought the Nazis ON THE GROUND. The UK and the US just bombed civilans from 10,000 feet up in the air, killing women and children. And the US GOT RICH FROM WW2.
You downplay the role of the USSR in forcing the collapse of the Polish army, and the French Communist "5th column" sabotaging the French forces supply lines and providing the Nazis with intelligence through the USSR.
Because Frenchmen are born cowards that's why. Period.
Looks like Western Europe acted as USSR was expected to act.
The roots of this defeat go back to the politics of the 1920's though.
Outdated tanks and bad leadership imo
A conspiracist would say it all went to a Globalist plan. Probably drawn up five years before, like the current war in Ukraine or even the genocide in Gaza.
Rommel the secret weapon!
https://kkrva.se/wp-content/uploads/Artiklar/092/kkrvaht_2_2009_8.pdf
What a joy to find a documentary video that is not repetitive error ridden AI dreck! This video is concise, engaging, and well crafted. I learned a lot. Thank-you. Bravo!!! 💐
Because? French.
Humiliating as much as Singapore 1942? british waving white flags?
I remember an old workmate of mine in the 1960s who told me what a debacle the retreat to Dunkirk was, he jokingly said we were running that fast we were passing the bullets
Great video. Excellent! Thanks
Was it because they were French?
I'm English…it's against the law here to say anything nice about them.
As a Franco-American, that was a tough listen.
Good informative video.shame at the lost of all thoses young lifes, on either side,allies or axis .
French also surrendered during the Falklands war,its just a habit
The Frence needed to sign their version of the Balfour declaration, before going to war …
yes just what the world waited for: another WW2 Documentary !
He forgot to mention that communism had spread in the french army such that the will to fight was low.