At dawn on 10 May 1940 German troops, tanks and aircraft poured into the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, ending eight months of near silence on the Western Front. Airborne troops seized bridges, airfields and the Belgian fortress of Eben-Emael, and the British and French armies rushed north into Belgium to meet what they took to be the main blow. The real one was coming through the Ardennes. That evening Winston Churchill became prime minister of Britain. Within six weeks France had fallen.
The end of the Phony War
Britain and France had been at war with Germany since September 1939, but little fighting took place in the west until May 1940. Britannica describes how the British and French, expecting a repeat of the German plan of 1914, prepared to meet an attack through central Belgium. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum says the same: Allied commanders believed the Germans would come through central Belgium as in the First World War and rushed forces to the Franco-Belgian border to meet them.1
The German plan, as finally shaped by Erich von Manstein, was built to exploit that belief. Britannica explains that Army Group B would invade the Netherlands and Belgium and draw the Allied armies forward, while Army Group A, which it puts at 1.5 million men and more than 1,500 tanks, would drive through the wooded hills of the Ardennes, bypassing the Maginot Line. It puts total German strength in May 1940 at some 3.5 million men, more than 5,500 aircraft and 10 panzer divisions.2
Bridges, airfields and a fortress
On the first morning German paratroopers landed in the Netherlands and seized key bridges, airfields and positions around Rotterdam, The Hague and Amsterdam. Britannica singles out the long bridge over the Meuse at Moerdijk, which paratroopers took on the first day and held until German ground forces arrived.3
In Belgium the Germans crossed the Albert Canal near Maastricht on the first day. Britannica describes how they first neutralized Eben-Emael, the largest of the Belgian forts guarding the canal, with a predawn assault by glider-borne troops who landed on top of the fort and wrecked its turrets and casemates with shaped charges. Britannica adds that the Germans kept the details so secret that the Allies suspected treachery. By noon on 11 May the garrison had surrendered and the road to Liège lay open.4
Into the trap
Within hours British and French troops left their prepared positions in northern France and hurried north across Belgium. The French Ninth Army moved up from the area of Sedan, where the Maginot Line proper ended, trusting the Ardennes to cover its flank. Britannica calls the belief that the Ardennes were impassable to tanks the foundation of Germany's success and France's downfall. The main German attack came through the Ardennes in southeastern Belgium and northern Luxembourg.5
In London the same day ended a political crisis. Neville Chamberlain's government had been badly shaken by the failure in Norway. Britannica writes that within hours of the German attack Chamberlain announced his resignation, and that by evening Churchill had been confirmed as prime minister at the head of a unity government. The British government's own history of its prime ministers records that Churchill succeeded Chamberlain in 1940 at the head of an all-party coalition.6
Six weeks
The Netherlands surrendered on 14 May, the day German bombers devastated the center of Rotterdam. German tanks crossed the Meuse on 13 May, broke through near Sedan and raced west, reaching the English Channel on 20 May and cutting the Allied armies in two. Among them was Erwin Rommel's 7th Panzer Division, which crossed the Meuse near Dinant; his career is told in our biography of Rommel.7
Belgium surrendered at the end of May, and more than 300,000 British and French troops were evacuated from the beaches around Dunkirk, a story told in our article on the Dunkirk evacuation. Paris fell on 14 June, and France signed an armistice with Germany on 22 June. Britannica dates the end of the Battle of France to 25 June 1940.8
