1062 Ch. 26 • World War IIof their forces and—at least some—in the Third Republic itself. French
tanks were as good as those of Germany but lacked sufficient fuel and
were dispersed among infantry divisions, instead of concentrated in tank
divisions as in the German army. French communications networks along
the front were inadequate. After eight months of “phony war,” many peo
ple in France were uncertain as to why they might be once again fighting
Germany.
Compounding serious military problems, the British and French govern
ments were already sniping at each other. The French resented the fact
that their ally sent a relatively small British Expeditionary Force to France;
the British government seemed willing to defend France down to the last
Frenchman. On the other hand, the French had irritated their British coun
terparts by opposing Allied bombing of Germany, fearing that the expected
swift reprisals would strike them, not Britain.
On May 10, 1940, the “phony war” in the west suddenly ended. In a
carefully rehearsed attack, German gliders landed troops who captured a
massive Belgian fortress. Airborne divisions took the airport and central
bridges of the Dutch port of Rotterdam; German bombers then destroyed
ships, docks, and the heart of the old city, killing 40,000 people. The Ger
man assault on France began through the Ardennes Forest on the Belgian
border; ten tank divisions pushed seventy miles into France. German planes,
controlling the air, swept down on French troops and destroyed half the
planes of the British Royal Air Force in three days. Mussolini, a portly vul
ture circling above the wounded French prey, declared war on France on
May 10, but an Italian army managed to advance only about a hundred
yards across the border toward Nice.
French commanders then foolishly sent most of their armored reserves
into the Netherlands while German tanks, having reached the Meuse River
in eastern France, now turned west and moved toward the English Channel.
They were vulnerable to an Allied counterattack, but only a minor chal
lenge by a tank column commanded by French General Charles de Gaulle
(1890—1970) slowed the German drive to the Channel. Instead of attack
ing, British troops retreated from Belgium into France, heading toward the
Channel. German columns reached the Channel on May 21, 1940, cutting
the Allied forces in half. The Netherlands surrendered on May 15, Belgium
on May 28. By now the roads of northern France were choked, not only
with retreating British and French troops, but with Belgian and French
refugees fleeing the battle zones, strafed by German planes.
France’s defeat was now only a matter of time. British troops, joined by
remnants of the French forces, managed to hold off the German army, mak
ing possible the evacuation of 340,000 British and French troops at the end
of May and early June 1940 from Dunkirk by every available British vessel,
including fishing trawlers and pleasure craft. The German army wheeled to
confront the French troops still uselessly defending the Maginot Line. The
French government left Paris for Bordeaux, as it had in 1870. The German