When was France taken back from Germany?
Art and World War II
France was occupied by Nazi Germany from 22 June 1940 until early May 1945. An occupying power endeavours to normalise life as far as is possible since this optimises the maintenance of order and minimises the costs of occupation. The Germans decreed that life, including artistic life should resume as before (the war). There were exceptions. Jews were targeted, and their art collections confiscated. Some of this consisted of modern, degenerate art which was partly destroyed, although some was sold on the international art market. Masterpieces of European art were taken from these collectors and French museums and were sent to Germany. Known political opponents were also excluded and overtly political art was forbidden.
Hermann Budzislawski
Having prevaricated between defiance and appeasement over the German occupation of Czechoslovakia during 1938, when the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939 the French government (like the British) promptly declared war against Germany. Apart from the impressively underwhelming "Saar Offensive" it would be another eight months before the military aspects of war began to unfold in France, but in the meantime the government took action on the home front. Large numbers of political exiles and other German Jews who had fled to France to escape government persecution at home were promptly redefined as enemy aliens, arrested, and in a somewhat chaotic exercise taken to internment camps in the south of the country. Before the end of Hermann Budzislawski was among the detainees. However, in 1940 he was able to escape detention with help from the New York–based Emergency Rescue Committee, and fled to Portugal (which remained neutral during World War II). In October 1940, helped by the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, he emigrated to the United States.
Françoise Frenkel
Françoise Frenkel spent the next nine months in Paris where Simon Raichenstein was already living. Sources speculate that wife and husband must have met up during this time, but Frenkel's own written record is completely silent on that question. With horror, Frenkel followed the news from Poland during the Autumn/Fall of 1939, desperately hoping for some sign of life from her widowed mother there. On 10 May 1940 German forces invaded France and on 22 June 1940 an armistice was agreed between the French and German governments. Northern France was to be directly occupied by Germany while a Free zone in the south of the country was to be administered by a semi-autonomous puppet government (which during the next four years became progressively less autonomous).
French–German enmity
On the remote Eastern end of the German Empire, the Memel territory was separated from the rest of East Prussia and occupied by France before being annexed by Lithuania. In response to the German failure to pay reparations under the Treaty of Versailles in 1923, France returned with the Occupation of the Ruhr area of Germany, the center of German coal and steel production, until 1925. Also, the French-dominated International Olympic Committee banned Germany from the Olympic Games of 1920 and 1924, which illustrates the French desire to isolate Germany.
Rape during the liberation of France
The Liberation of Paris followed on 25 August. Except for German forces penned in the south-west (e.g., around Bordeaux) or in ports, the majority of German troops were pushed back to the Siegfried Line by the end of 1944. After the war, the repatriation for demobilisation of the troops took time. Even in 1946, months after VE-day there were still about 1.5 million troops in Europe. The housing and management of the thousands of troops awaiting embarkation on a ship for home was a problem.
History of Metz
However, after the Battle of France in 1940 during the Second World War, the city was annexed once more by the German Third Reich into a Reichsgau named Westmark. As a symbol of the German annexation, Chancellor Adolf Hitler celebrated Christmas 1940 at the former bergamt of the Imperial District of Metz, but local people largely rejected the German occupation. Multiple French Resistance cells were active during this period in the region of Metz, such as the Mario and the Derhan groups, whose activities included collecting arms for the Liberation, distributing flyers, helping prisoners and resisters, and sabotage. Several "resistants" were detained and tortured in the Fort of Queuleu in Metz and Jean Moulin died in Metz's railway station while on a train in transit to Germany. In 1944, the attack on the city by the U.S. Third Army under the command of General George S. Patton faced heavy resistance from the defending German forces. The Battle of Metz lasted for several weeks and Metz was finally captured by the Americans in November 1944, and the city reverted to France after the war.
Heidesheim am Rhein
From the end of the 18th on into the latter half of the 19th century, the Castle Mill's ownership history raises more questions than it answers: on 21 October 1793, French Revolutionary troops occupied Electoral Mainz; on 4 November 1797, France annexed the Rhine's left bank; on 9 February 1801 the German Empire ceded the area to France in the Treaty of Lunéville. Noble and ecclesiastical holdings were seized for the French State and publicly auctioned. Whether or not the Castle Mill met with this fate, it was restored on 25 June 1804 by Napoleon to Count Philipp Franz von der Leyen (d. 1829), and he later sold it – no later than 1820 – when the prince was getting rid of his last holdings on the Middle Rhine, only to acquire Schloss Waal (a castle in Ostallgäu) a few years later.
Battle of France
On 10 January 1940, a German aircraft carrying a staff officer with the "Luftwaffe" plans for an offensive through central Belgium to the North Sea, force-landed near Maasmechelen (Mechelen) in Belgium. The documents were captured but Allied intelligence doubted that they were genuine. In the full moon period in April 1940, another Allied alert was called for a possible attack on the Low Countries or Holland, an offensive through the Low Countries to outflank the Maginot Line from the north, an attack on the Maginot Line or an invasion through Switzerland. None of the contingencies anticipated the German attack through the Ardennes but after the loss of the "Luftwaffe" plans, the Germans assumed that the Allied appreciation of German intentions would have been reinforced. "Aufmarschanweisung" N°3, "Fall Gelb" an amendment to the plan on 30 January, was only a revision of details but on 24 February, the main German effort was switched south to the Ardennes. Twenty divisions (including seven panzer and three motorised divisions) were transferred from "Heeresgruppe B" opposite Holland and Belgium to "Heeresgruppe A" facing the Ardennes. French military intelligence uncovered a transfer of German divisions from the Saar to the north of the Moselle but failed to detect the redeployment from the Dutch frontier to the Eiffel–Moselle area.
French prisoners of war in World War II
On 10 May 1940, the Germans launched the invasion of France through neutral Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The rapid German advance, using the new Blitzkrieg doctrine, outflanked the Allied forces and advanced rapidly into France. By the end of May, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg had surrendered and the British were evacuating their forces from Dunkirk. In total, around 100,000 French soldiers were killed in action. German forces reached Paris on 14 June. The trauma from the German victories caused a period of division within the government of the Third Republic. German commanders finally met with French officials on 18 June who sought a cessation of hostilities, with the goal being an armistice with Germany. Chief among the new government leaders was the new Prime Minister, Marshal Philippe Pétain, a French war hero of World War I and often known simply as "The Marshal" ("Le Maréchal").
History of Germany
Europe was racked by two decades of war revolving around France's efforts to spread its revolutionary ideals, and the opposition of reactionary royalty. War broke out in 1792 as Austria and Prussia invaded France, but were defeated at the Battle of Valmy (1792). The German lands saw armies marching back and forth, bringing devastation (albeit on a far lower scale than the Thirty Years' War, almost two centuries before), but also bringing new ideas of liberty and civil rights for the people. Prussia and Austria ended their failed wars with France but (with Russia) partitioned Poland among themselves in 1793 and 1795. The French took control of the Rhineland, imposed French-style reforms, abolished feudalism, established constitutions, promoted freedom of religion, emancipated Jews, opened the bureaucracy to ordinary citizens of talent, and forced the nobility to share power with the rising middle class. Napoleon created the Kingdom of Westphalia (1807–1813) as a model state. These reforms proved largely permanent and modernized the western parts of Germany. When the French tried to impose the French language, German opposition grew in intensity. A Second Coalition of Britain, Russia, and Austria then attacked France but failed. Napoleon established direct or indirect control over most of western Europe, including the German states apart from Prussia and Austria. The old Holy Roman Empire was little more than a farce; Napoleon simply abolished it in 1806 while forming new countries under his control. In Germany Napoleon set up the "Confederation of the Rhine," comprising most of the German states except Prussia and Austria.
France–Germany relations
A new government under Marshal Philippe Pétain surrendered, and German forces occupied most of the country. A minority of the French forces escaped abroad and continued the fight under General Charles de Gaulle (the “Free French” or “Fighting French”). On the other hand, the French Resistance conducted sabotage operations inside German-occupied France. To support the invasion of Normandy of 1944, various groups increased their sabotage and guerrilla attacks; organizations such as the Maquis derailed trains, blew up ammunition depots, and ambushed Germans, for instance at Tulle. The 2nd SS Panzer Division "Das Reich" came under constant attack and sabotage on their way across the country to Normandy, suspected the village of Oradour-sur-Glane of harboring terrorists, arms and explosives. In retaliation they decided to shoot all men, and burn alive all women and children in the church.
History of French foreign relations
In 1938 Germany demanded control of the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. That small country had a defense alliance with France but militarily its position was hopeless. The Munich conference of September 29–30, 1938, was a summit meeting of leaders from Germany, Italy Britain and France. The Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia were not invited. The British and French wanted peace—or at least enough delay to allow them to try to catch up to German military superiority. Britain did not control French actions, but London had more influence on Paris than vice versa. The leading French voice for cooperating with British Prime Chamberlain in appeasement was foreign minister Georges Bonnet. He was a "munichois"—that is, a defeatist and pacifist who sensed that France would lose to Germany in a war. He wanted to abandon the alliances with Poland and Russia and allow Germany a free hand in the east so it would ignore France. After a short conference Hitler got his way—the agreement allowed Germany to peacefully absorb the Sudetenland. In March, 1939, Germany took over Bohemia and Moravia, and turned Slovakia into a puppet state. The British and French finally realized that appeasement did not produce peace.
Nancy, France
Nancy and other areas of France were occupied by German forces from 1940. During the Lorraine Campaign of World War II, Nancy was liberated from Nazi Germany by the U.S. Third Army in September 1944, at the Battle of Nancy.
Franco-Prussian War
The German states proclaimed their union as the German Empire under the Prussian king Wilhelm I, finally uniting Germany as a nation-state. The Treaty of Frankfurt of 10 May 1871 gave Germany most of Alsace and some parts of Lorraine, which became the Imperial territory of Alsace-Lorraine ("Reichsland Elsaß-Lothringen"). The German conquest of France and the unification of Germany upset the European balance of power that had existed since the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and Otto von Bismarck maintained great authority in international affairs for two decades. French determination to regain Alsace-Lorraine and fear of another Franco-German war, along with British apprehension about the balance of power, became factors in the causes of World War I.
Souffelweyersheim
On 2 September 1939, the inhabitants of the communes in front of the Maginot line were evacuated to the valley of the Bruche River. On 3 September 1939, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and France declared war on Germany. On 9 September, the evacuated inhabitants embarked on a second journey to the South of France. They did not return to Alsace, which was occupied by the Germans from August 1940 until liberation 
on 23 November 1944 by the French 2nd Armoured Division of General Leclerc.
History of France
French foreign policy was based on a fear of Germany—whose larger size and fast-growing economy could not be matched—combined with a revanchism that demanded the return of Alsace and Lorraine. At the same time, in the midst of the Scramble for Africa, French and British interest in Africa came into conflict. The most dangerous episode was the Fashoda Incident of 1898 when French troops tried to claim an area in the Southern Sudan, and a British force purporting to be acting in the interests of the Khedive of Egypt arrived. Under heavy pressure the French withdrew securing Anglo-Egyptian control over the area. The status quo was recognised by an agreement between the two states acknowledging British control over Egypt, while France became the dominant power in Morocco, but France suffered a humiliating defeat overall.
Allied-occupied Germany
The Saargebiet, an important area of Germany because of its large deposits of coal, was turned into the Saar protectorate. The Saar was disengaged from the French zone on 16 February 1946. In the speech Restatement of Policy on Germany on 6 September 1946 the U.S. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes stated the U.S.' motive in detaching the Saar from Germany as "The United States does not feel that it can deny to France, which has been invaded three times by Germany in 70 years, its claim to the Saar territory."
History of Germany
Disputes between France and Prussia increased. In 1868, the Spanish queen Isabella II was expelled by a revolution, leaving that country's throne vacant. When Prussia tried to put a Hohenzollern candidate, Prince Leopold, on the Spanish throne, the French angrily protested. In July 1870, France declared war on Prussia (the Franco-Prussian War). The debacle was swift. A succession of German victories in northeastern France followed, and one French army was besieged at Metz. After a few weeks, the main army was finally forced to capitulate in the fortress of Sedan. French Emperor Napoleon III was taken prisoner and a republic hastily proclaimed in Paris. The new government, realising that a victorious Germany would demand territorial acquisitions, resolved to fight on. They began to muster new armies, and the Germans settled down to a grim siege of Paris. The starving city surrendered in January 1871, and the Prussian army staged a victory parade in it. France was forced to pay indemnities of 5 billion francs and cede Alsace-Lorraine. It was a bitter peace that would leave the French thirsting for revenge.
Free France
On 10 May 1940, Nazi Germany invaded France and the Low Countries, rapidly defeating the French, Belgian, Dutch and British armies. During the six-week Battle of France, German armoured units attacked in a surprise thrust through the Ardennes and surrounded Allied units that had advanced into Belgium. Facing certain defeat, the British decided to remove the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), along with several French divisions, from mainland France in the Dunkirk evacuation. Between 27 May and 4 June, around 200,000 British soldiers and 140,000 French troops were evacuated from the beaches to safety in England.
Dunkirk evacuation
After Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, France and the British Empire declared war on Germany and imposed an economic blockade. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was sent to help defend France. After the Phoney War of October 1939 to April 1940, Germany invaded Belgium, the Netherlands, and France on 10 May 1940. Three of their panzer corps attacked through the Ardennes and drove northwest to the English Channel. By 21 May German forces had trapped the BEF, the remains of the Belgian forces, and three French field armies along the northern coast of France. Commander of the BEF, General Viscount Gort, immediately saw evacuation across the Channel as the best course of action, and began planning a withdrawal to Dunkirk, the closest good port.
French prisoners of war in World War II
During negotiations for the Armistice of 22 June 1940, the Vichy French government adopted a policy of collaboration in hopes for German concessions allowing repatriation. The Germans nevertheless deferred the return of prisoners until the negotiation of a final peace treaty, which never occurred due to the United Kingdom's refusal to surrender and Germany's loss in the Battle of Britain. The absence of a large proportion of the male population of France also had important consequences on the position of women in occupied France and charity fundraising on behalf of the prisoners played an important role in French daily life until late in the occupation. Limited repatriation of certain classes of POWs did occur from 1940 and the government was keen to encourage the return of prisoners, even launching the unpopular "relève" system in order to exchange prisoners of war for French labourers going to work in Germany. Nevertheless, many prisoners remained in German captivity until the defeat of Germany in 1945. Prisoners who returned to France, either by repatriation or through escaping, generally found themselves stigmatised by the French civilian population and received little official recognition.
SS Île de France
"Île de France" was the last civilian ship to leave France before the outbreak of war. It departed from Le Havre on the morning of September 3, 1939, just hours before France and the United Kingdom declared war on Germany. (The last ship to leave Europe during the war would be the paquebot Jamaique that left in May 1940 from Bordeaux to South America). The "Île de France" carried 1,777 passengers, 400 more than her usual number. Most of the passengers were Americans, many of whom were tourists clamouring to leave France before the war broke out. During the voyage, the passengers were not only inconvenienced by the overcrowded conditions, but their activities were limited because the ship sailed with her lights extinguished. Other ships were not so lucky. The "Île de France" arrived in New York harbor on September 9, and while she was crossing the Atlantic Ocean, 16 vessels were sunk by torpedoes, mines, or gunfire.
Military history of France during World War II
Although tactically successful, as the advance in German territory reached 8 km, the Saar operation was abandoned on 12 September when the Anglo French Supreme War Council decided that all offensive actions were to be halted immediately. This SWC was composed of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Lord Chatfield as the British delegation while Prime Minister Édouard Daladier and General Maurice Gamelin formed the French delegation. As a result of the deliberations, General Gamelin ordered the French troops to withdraw to the Maginot Line in France, leaving Poland to its own fate facing the Germans and Soviets all alone; the latter entering Poland on 17 September. On 16 October, German general Erwin von Witzleben started a counter-offensive against France entering its territory a few kilometers and the last covering French forces left Germany the following day to defend their country.
France–Americas relations
Following the war, France was again occupied with European and colonial matters, and especially with the threat of German rearmament. Following the Fall of France in 1940, France was represented by two rival governments that attempted to gain international recognition, and maintain relations with the New World. The conflict between the Free French movement and the Vichy regime came to the Americas with the 1941 capture of the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon by the Free French. As in the last world war, the eventual entry of the United States into the conflict signaled the approach of the majority of Latin American states. On 21 July 1940 the Pan American Union created a regional defence pact in the Americas to keep out Axis forces, but few Latin American nations sent troops to Europe. The greatest impact of France's ties to the New World during the war, and perhaps in all of French history, were the contributions of the American and Canadian forces that landed in Normandy during D-Day, and participated in the subsequent Liberation of France. In fact, General de Gaulle landed at Juno Beach, where the Canadians had first come ashore.
Western Front (World War I)
The German Army came within of Paris but at the First Battle of the Marne (6–12 September), French and British troops were able to force a German retreat by exploiting a gap which appeared between the 1st and 2nd Armies, ending the German advance into France. The German Army retreated north of the Aisne River and dug in there, establishing the beginnings of a static western front that was to last for the next three years. Following this German retirement, the opposing forces made reciprocal outflanking manoeuvres, known as the Race for the Sea and quickly extended their trench systems from the Swiss frontier to the North Sea. The territory occupied by Germany held 64 percent of French pig-iron production, 24 percent of its steel manufacturing and 40 percent of the coal industry – dealing a serious blow to French industry.
World War II
On 10 June, Italy invaded France, declaring war on both France and the United Kingdom. The Germans turned south against the weakened French army, and Paris fell to them on 14June. Eight days later France signed an armistice with Germany; it was divided into German and Italian occupation zones, and an unoccupied rump state under the Vichy Regime, which, though officially neutral, was generally aligned with Germany. France kept its fleet, which the United Kingdom attacked on 3July in an attempt to prevent its seizure by Germany.
History of France
Such an event was more than France could possibly accept. Relations between France and Germany deteriorated, and finally the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) broke out. German nationalism united the German states, with the exception of Austria, against Napoleon III. The French Empire was defeated decisively at Metz and Sedan. Emperor Louis Napoleon III surrendered himself and 100,000 French troops to the German troops at Sedan on 1–2 September 1870.
Naval history of World War II
When France fell in June 1940, Germany made the soldiers into POWs but allowed Vichy France to keep its powerful fleet, the fourth largest in the world. France sent its warships to its colonial ports or to ports controlled by Britain. The British fought one of the main squadrons in the attack on Mers-el-Kébir, Algeria (near Oran), on 3 July 1940. The attack killed 1300 men and sank one or badly damaged three of the four battleships at anchor. The Vichy government was angry indeed but did not retaliate and maintained a state of armed neutrality in the war. The British seized warships in British harbors, and they eventually became part of the Free French Naval Forces. When Germany occupied all of France in November 1942, Vichy France had assembled at Toulon about a third of the warships it had started with, amounting to 200,000 tons. Germany tried to seize them; the French officers then scuttled their own fleet.
Departments of France
The department of "Bas-Rhin" and parts of "Meurthe", "Moselle", "Vosges" and "Haut-Rhin" were ceded to the German Empire in 1871, following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. A small part of "Haut-Rhin" remained French, however, and became known as the "Territoire de Belfort", and the remaining parts of "Meurthe" and "Moselle" were merged into a new "Meurthe-et-Moselle" department. When France regained the ceded departments after World War I, the "Territoire de Belfort" was not re-integrated into Haut-Rhin. In 1922, it became France's 90th department. Likewise, the Lorraine departments were not changed back to their original boundaries, and a new "Moselle" department was created in the regained territory, with slightly different boundaries from the pre-war department of the same name.
Diplomatic history of World War II
When Germany began its attack on France in April 1940, British troops and French troops again fought side by side, but defeat came quickly. The Royal Navy evacuated 198,000 British and 140,000 French soldiers in the Dunkirk evacuation in late May/early June 1940. Tens of thousands of tanks, trucks and artillery guns were left behind, as well as all of the radios, machine guns, rifles, tents, spare parts and other gear. The new Prime Minister Winston Churchill pledged that Britain would continue to fight for France's freedom, even if it must do so alone. After Mers el Kebir, Britain recognised Free France as its ally and the legitimate government of France.
French Third Republic
A change of fortunes in the late summer and autumn of 1918 led to the defeat of Germany in World War I. The most important factors that led to the surrender of Germany were its exhaustion after four years of fighting and the arrival of large numbers of troops from the United States beginning in the summer of 1918. Peace terms were imposed on Germany by the Big Four: Great Britain, France, the United States, and Italy. Clemenceau demanded the harshest terms and won most of them in the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Germany was largely disarmed and forced to take full responsibility for the war, meaning that it was expected to pay huge war reparations. France regained Alsace-Lorraine, and the German industrial Saar Basin, a coal and steel region, was occupied by France. The German African colonies, such as Kamerun, were partitioned between France and Britain. From the remains of the Ottoman Empire, Germany's ally during World War I that also collapsed at the end of the conflict, France acquired the Mandate of Syria and the Mandate of Lebanon.
French Revolution
The new-born Republic followed up on this success with a series of victories in Belgium and the Rhineland in the fall of 1792. The French armies defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Jemappes on 6 November, and had soon taken over most of the Austrian Netherlands. This brought them into conflict with Britain and the Dutch Republic, which wished to preserve the independence of the southern Netherlands from France. After the French king's execution in January 1793, these powers, along with Spain and most other European states, joined the war against France. Almost immediately, French forces suffered defeats on many fronts, and were driven out of their newly conquered territories in the spring of 1793. At the same time, the republican regime was forced to deal with rebellions against its authority in much of western and southern France. But the allies failed to take advantage of French disunity, and by the autumn of 1793 the republican regime had defeated most of the internal rebellions and halted the allied advance into France itself.
20th-century events
With the disaster in the Low Countries, France, considered at the time to have had the finest army in the world, lasted only four weeks, with Paris being occupied on June 14. Three days later, Marshal Philippe Pétain surrendered to the Germans. The debacle in France also led to one of the war's greatest mysteries, and Hitler's first great blunder, Dunkirk, where a third of a million trapped British and French soldiers were evacuated by not only British war boats, but every boat the army could find, including fishing rafts. Hitler refused to "risk" his panzers on an action at Dunkirk, listening to the advice of Air Minister Hermann Göring and allowing the "Luftwaffe", or German Air Force, to handle the job. The irony of this was that the escaped men would form the core of the army that was to invade the beaches of Normandy in 1944. Hitler did not occupy all of France, but about three-quarters, including all of the Atlantic coast, allowing Marshal Pétain to remain as dictator of an area known as Vichy France. However, members of the escaped French Army formed around General Charles de Gaulle to create the Free French forces, which would continue to battle Hitler in the stead of an independent France. At this moment, Italy, under Benito Mussolini, declared war on the Allies on June 10, thinking that the war was almost over, but he managed only to occupy a few hundred yards of French territory. Throughout the war, the Italians would be more of a burden to the Nazis than a boon, and would later cost them precious time in Greece.
French Army in World War I
Germany marched through neutral Belgium as part of the Schlieffen Plan to invade France, and by August 23 had reached the French border town of Maubeuge, whose true significance lay within its forts. Maubeuge was a major railway junction and was consequently a protected city. It had 15 forts and gun batteries, totaling 435 guns, along with a permanent garrison of 35,000 troops, a number enhanced by the British Expeditionary Force. The BEF and the French Fifth Army retreated on August 23, and the town was besieged by German heavy artillery starting on August 25. The fortress was surrendered on September 7 by General Fournier, who was later court-martialed, but exonerated, for the capitulation.
France–Germany border
The border can be traced back to the 17th century, and the various treaties following the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), starting with the treaty of Westphalia (1648) and the treaty of Nijmegen (1678–1679), marking the Rhine as the frontier between the Kingdom of France, and the different German states. The actual border was determined in the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The border then changed after the French defeat during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), where the French Third Republic was forced to yield Alsace-Lorraine to the new German Empire in 1871. The territory was then restituted to France 48 years later after the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. The border changed again in 1941 when Nazi Germany de facto annexed the region (without any international legal recognition, nor treaty). The actual border was re-established after the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
Unification of Germany
Napoleon III had tried to secure territorial concessions from both sides before and after the Austro-Prussian War, but despite his role as mediator during the peace negotiations, he ended up with nothing. He then hoped that Austria would join in a war of revenge and that its former allies—particularly the southern German states of Baden, Württemberg, and Bavaria—would join in the cause. This hope would prove futile since the 1866 treaty came into effect and united all German states militarily—if not happily—to fight against France. Instead of a war of revenge against Prussia, supported by various German allies, France engaged in a war against all of the German states without any allies of its own. The reorganization of the military by von Roon and the operational strategy of Moltke combined against France to great effect. The speed of Prussian mobilization astonished the French, and the Prussian ability to concentrate power at specific points—reminiscent of Napoleon I's strategies seventy years earlier—overwhelmed French mobilization. Utilizing their efficiently laid rail grid, Prussian troops were delivered to battle areas rested and prepared to fight, whereas French troops had to march for considerable distances to reach combat zones. After a number of battles, notably Spicheren, Wörth, Mars la Tour, and Gravelotte, the Prussians defeated the main French armies and advanced on the primary city of Metz and the French capital of Paris. They captured Napoleon III and took an entire army as prisoners at Sedan on 1 September 1870.
History of Provence
After the defeat of France by Germany in June 1940, France was divided into an occupied zone and unoccupied zone, with Provence in the unoccupied zone. Parts of eastern Provence were occupied by Italian soldiers. Collaboration and passive resistance gradually gave way to more active resistance, particularly after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 and the Communist Party became active in the French Resistance. Jean Moulin, the deputy of Charles de Gaulle, the leader of the Free France resistance movement, parachuted into Eygalières in the Bouches-du-Rhône on January 2, 1942 to unite the diverse resistance movements in all of France against the Germans.
Bremen-Verden
In the autumn of 1805, at the beginning of the War of the Third Coalition against France (1805–1806) the French occupational troops left Hanover in a campaign against the Archduchy of Austria. British, Swedish and Russian coalition forces captured Hanover, including Bremen-Verden. In December, the First French Empire, since 1804 France's new form of government, ceded Hanover, which it didn't hold anymore, to Brandenburg-Prussia, which captured it early in 1806. But when the Kingdom of Prussia, after it turned against France, was defeated in the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt (November 11, 1806), France recaptured Hanover, including Bremen-Verden.
Great Retreat
The Battle of the Frontiers is a general name for all of the operations of the French armies until the Battle of the Marne. A series of encounter battles began between the German, French and Belgian armies, on the German-French frontier and in southern Belgium on 4 August 1914. The Battle of Mulhouse (Battle of Alsace ) was the first French offensive of World War I against Germany. The French captured Mulhouse until forced out by a German counter-attack on 11 August and fell back toward Belfort. The main French offensive, the Battle of Lorraine , began with the Battles of Morhange and Sarrebourg () advances by the First Army on Sarrebourg and the Second Army towards Morhange. Château Salins near Morhange was captured on 17 August and Sarrebourg the next day. The German 6th and 7th armies counter-attacked on 20 August, the Second Army was forced back from Morhange and the First Army was repulsed at Sarrebourg. The German armies crossed the border and advanced on Nancy but were stopped to the east of the city.
To the south the French retook Mulhouse on 19 August and then withdrew. On 24 August at the Battle of the Mortagne a limited German offensive in the Vosges, the Germans managed a small advance, before a French counter-attack retook the ground. By 20 August a German counter-offensive in Lorraine had begun and the German 4th and 5th Armies advanced through the Ardennes on 19 August towards Neufchâteau. An offensive by French Third and Fourth armies through the Ardennes began on 20 August, in support of the French invasion of Lorraine. The opposing armies met in thick fog and the French mistook the German troops for screening forces. On 22 August the Battle of the Ardennes began with French attacks, which were costly to both sides and forced the French into a disorderly retreat late on 23 August. The Third Army recoiled towards Verdun, pursued by the 5th Army and the Fourth Army retreated to Sedan and Stenay. Mulhouse was recaptured again by German forces and the Battle of the Meuse caused a temporary halt of the German advance.
Battle of France
On 22 June, the Second Armistice at Compiègne was signed by France and Germany. The neutral Vichy government led by Marshal Philippe Pétain superseded the Third Republic and Germany occupied the north and west coasts of France and their hinterlands. Italy took control of a small occupation zone in the south-east and the Vichy regime retained the unoccupied territory in the south, known as the "zone libre". The Germans occupied the zone under "Fall Anton" in November 1942, until the Allied liberation in the summer of 1944.
During the 1930s, the French built the Maginot Line, fortifications along the border with Germany. The line was intended to economise on manpower and deter a German invasion across the Franco-German border by diverting it into Belgium, which could then be met by the best divisions of the French Army. The war would take place outside French territory avoiding the destruction of the First World War. The main section of the Maginot Line ran from the Swiss border and ended at Longwy; the hills and woods of the Ardennes region covered the area to the north. General Philippe Pétain declared the Ardennes to be "impenetrable" as long as "special provisions" were taken to destroy an invasion force as it emerged from the Ardennes by a pincer attack. The French commander-in-chief, Maurice Gamelin also believed the area to be safe from attack, noting it "never favoured large operations". French war games held in 1938, of a hypothetical German armoured attack through the Ardennes, left the army with the impression that the region was still largely impenetrable and that this, along with the obstacle of the Meuse River, would allow the French time to bring up troops into the area to counter an attack.
France in the twentieth century
After four years of occupation and strife, Allied forces, including Free France, liberated France in 1944. Paris was liberated on August 25, 1944. On September 10, 1944 Charles de Gaulle installed his provisional government in Paris. This time he remained in Paris until the end of the war, refusing to abandon even when Paris was temporarily threatened by German troops during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. But France could now again participate as a nation in the war. In 1945, the French army numbered 1,300,000 men, 412,000 of whom were fighting in Germany and 40,000 in Italy.
Foreign relations of Vichy France
The armistice after Germany defeated France in June 1940, included numerous provisions, all largely guaranteed by the German policy of keeping 2 million French prisoners of war in Germany, effectively as hostages. Although Vichy France was nominally in control of all of France--apart from Alsace Lorraine--in practice the Germans controlled over half of the country, including the northern and western coasts, the industrial northeast, and the Paris region. The Petain government in Vichy controlled the rest until October 1942, when Germany took it all over. At that point, the Vichy regime became entirely a puppet of the German occupiers. Germany wanted food, minerals, and industrial productions, as well as volunteers to work in German factories. Vichy was allowed to control its foreign colonies—to the extent it could defend them against the Free French—as well as its fleet, to the extent it could defend it against British naval attacks. The small town of Montoire-sur-le-Loir was the scene of two meetings. On October 22, 1940, Pierre Laval met with Hitler to set up a meeting on October 24 between Hitler and Pétain. It ended in a much-publicized handshake between the two, but in fact their discussions had been entirely general and no decisions had been made. Hitler was impressed with Petain's commitment to defend the French Empire. False rumours abounded that France had made major concessions regarding colonies and German control of French ports and the French feet. Vichy France never joined the Axis alliance, however.
International Authority for the Ruhr
In 1947 France removed the Saar from Germany and turned it into a protectorate under French economic control. The area returned to German administration on 1 January 1957 but France retained the right to mine from its coal mines until 1981. French plans for the complete detachment of the Ruhr from Germany met with greater resistance. In September 1946 James F. Byrnes, the United States Secretary of State stated in a Stuttgart speech Restatement of Policy on Germany that the United States would accept the French claims on the Saarland, but that: "the United States will not support any encroachment on territory which is indisputably German or any division of Germany which is not genuinely desired by the people concerned. So far as the United States is aware the people of the Ruhr area and the Rhineland desire to remain united with the rest of Germany. And the United States is not going to oppose their desire."
Pierre Laval
Laval returned to power in April 1942. In a radio speech he gave on 22 June 1942 he outlined his policy objectives, expressing his "desire to re-establish normal and trusting relations with Germany and Italy". He added he "wished for a German victory " because otherwise "Bolshevism [would] establish itself everywhere." Laval had been in power for a mere two months when he was faced with the decision of providing forced workers to Germany. The Reich was short of skilled labour due to its need for troop replacements on the Russian front. Unlike other occupied countries, France was technically protected by the armistice, and its workers could not be simply rounded up for transportation. In the occupied zone, the Germans used intimidation and control of raw materials to create unemployment and thus reasons for French labourers to volunteer to work in Germany. Nazi officials demanded Laval send more than 300,000 skilled workers immediately to factories in Germany. Laval delayed, making a counter-offer of one worker in return for one French POW. The proposal was sent to Hitler, and a compromise was reached: one prisoner of war to be repatriated for every three workers arriving in Germany.
China–France relations
During World War II, Free France and China fought as allied powers against the Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan. After the invasion of France in 1940, although the newly-formed Vichy France was an ally of Germany, it continued to recognize the Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-shek—which had to flee to Chongqing in the Chinese interior after the fall of Nanjing in 1937—rather than the Japanese-sponsored Reorganized National Government of China under Wang Jingwei. French diplomats in China remained accredited to the government in Chongqing.
History of Germany (1945–90)
In the speech Restatement of Policy on Germany, held in Stuttgart on 6 September 1946, the United States Secretary of State James F. Byrnes stated the U.S. motive in detaching the Saar from Germany as "The United States does not feel that it can deny to France, which has been invaded three times by Germany in 70 years, its claim to the Saar territory". The Saar came under French administration in 1947 as the Saar Protectorate, but did return to Germany in January 1957 (following a referendum), with economic reintegration with Germany occurring a few years later.
Foreign relations of Vichy France
The French State, known as Vichy France, proclaimed by Marshal Philippe Pétain after the Fall of France in 1940 before Nazi Germany, was quickly recognized by the Allies, as well as by the Soviet Union, until 30 June 1941 and Operation Barbarossa. However France broke with the United Kingdom after the destruction of the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kebir. Canada maintained diplomatic relations until the occupation of Southern France (Case Anton) by Germany and Italy in November 1942.
French–German enmity
The unification of Germany, excluding Austria, was triggered by the Franco–Prussian War in 1870 and the French defeat. The forces of Prussian and the other German states (excluding Austria) crushed the French armies at the Battle of Sedan. Finally, the Treaty of Frankfurt, reached after a lengthy siege of Paris forced France to cede the Alsace-Lorraine territory (consisting of most of Alsace and a quarter of Lorraine), of which most of the inhabitants spoke German dialects. France had to pay an indemnity of five billion francs to the newly declared German Empire. Thereafter, the German Empire was widely viewed as having replaced France as the leading land power in Europe.
French Resistance
As various cities, towns and villages were liberated in France, the Resistance was usually the most organized force that took over. Many "résistants" were disgusted by the mass influx of new members in the dying days of the struggle, contemptuously calling them the FFS ("Forces Françaises de Septembre"-French Forces of September) or the "Septemberists" for short, as all these people had conveniently only discovered their French patriotism in September 1944. In the middle of 1944, Chaban-Delmas had reported to de Gaulle that the FFI numbered 15, 000 in Paris, but the time of the liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944, between 50, 000-60, 000 people were wearing FFI armbands. The liberation of France began with D-Day on 6 June 1944, but different areas of France were liberated at different times. Strasbourg was not liberated until November 1944, and some of the coastal towns on the English Channel and the Atlantic like Dunkirk were still in German hands when the war ended on 8 May 1945. Ousby observed: "There was no national day for Liberation. Each town and village still celebrates a different day, the gaps between them marking advances that often looked bogged down, pockets of German defense that often turned out to be unexpectedly tough. It proved the bitterest of ends to a bitter war." As France was liberated, many "résistants" enlisted in the French Army, with 75, 000 "résistants" fighting as regular soldiers by November 1944, and by the end of the war, 135, 000 "résistants" were serving with the French forces advancing into Germany. For many resistance leaders who gave themselves the title of captain or colonel, it was quite a comedown to be reduced to a private.
Colmar
The city was conquered by France under King Louis XIV in 1673 and officially ceded by the 1679 Treaties of Nijmegen. With the rest of Alsace, Colmar was annexed by the newly formed German Empire in 1871 as a result of the Franco-Prussian War and incorporated into the Alsace-Lorraine province. It returned to France after World War I according to the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1940, and then reverted to French control after the battle of the "Colmar Pocket" in 1945. Colmar has been continuously governed by conservative parties since 1947, the Popular Republican Movement (1947–1977), the Union for French Democracy (1977–1995) and the Union for a Popular Movement (since 1995), and has had only three mayors during that time.
French destroyer Fleuret
After France surrendered to Germany in June 1940 during World War II, "Fleuret" served with the navy of Vichy France. She was renamed Foudroyant on 1 April 1941 to commemorate a destroyer of that name sunk by the Germans on 1 June 1940 during the Battle of France.
History of Paris
Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, France declared war on Germany. The French defense plan was purely passive; the French army simply waited for the Germans to attack. On 31 August, the French government began to evacuate 30,000 children from Paris to the provinces, the population was issued gas masks, and bomb shelters were constructed in the city squares. The major works of art of the Louvre and other museums were also evacuated to the Loire Valley and other locations, and the architectural landmarks were protected by sandbags. The French Army waited in the fortifications of the Maginot Line, while in Paris the cafés and theatres remained open.
History of France
Vichy France was established on 10 July 1940 to govern the unoccupied part of France and its colonies. It was led by Philippe Pétain, the aging war hero of the First World War. Petain's representatives signed a harsh Armistice on 22 June 1940 whereby Germany kept most of the French army in camps in Germany, and France had to pay out large sums in gold and food supplies. Germany occupied three-fifths of France's territory, leaving the rest in the southeast to the new Vichy government. However, in practice, most local government was handled by the traditional French officialdom. In November 1942 all of Vichy France was finally occupied by German forces. Vichy continued in existence but it was closely supervised by the Germans.
The Vichy regime sought to collaborate with Germany, keeping peace in France to avoid further occupation although at the expense of personal freedom and individual safety. Some 76,000 Jews were deported during the German occupation, often with the help of the Vichy authorities, and murdered in the Nazis' extermination camps.
France–Germany relations
The eventual unification of Germany was triggered by the Franco-German War in 1870 and subsequent French defeat. German forces crushed the French armies at the Battle of Sedan. Finally, in the Treaty of Frankfurt, reached after a lengthy siege of Paris, France was forced to cede the mostly Germanic-speaking Alsace-Lorraine territory (consisting of most of Alsace and a quarter of Lorraine), and pay an indemnity of five billion francs. Thereafter, Germany was the leading land power.
Bismarck's main mistake was giving into the Army and to intense public demand in Germany for acquisition of the border provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, thereby turning France into a permanent, deeply-committed enemy. see French–German enmity Theodore Zeldin says, "Revenge and the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine became a principal object of French policy for the next forty years. That Germany was France's enemy became the basic fact of international relations." Bismarck's solution was to make France a pariah nation, encouraging royalty to ridicule its new republican status, and building complex alliances with the other major powers – Austria, Russia, and Britain – to keep France isolated diplomatically.
German Empire
Germany began the war by targeting its chief rival, France. Germany saw France as its principal danger on the European continent as it could mobilize much faster than Russia and bordered Germany's industrial core in the Rhineland. Unlike Britain and Russia, the French entered the war mainly for revenge against Germany, in particular for France's loss of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany in 1871. The German high command knew that France would muster its forces to go into Alsace-Lorraine. Aside from the very unofficial Septemberprogramm, the Germans never stated a clear list of goals that they wanted out of the war.
Franco-Dutch War
In June 1673, the French occupation of Kleve and lack of money temporarily drove Brandenburg-Prussia out of the war in the Peace of Vossem. However, in August, the Dutch, Spain and Austria, supported by other German states, agreed the anti-French Alliance of the Hague, joined by Charles IV of Lorraine in October. In September, William recaptured Naarden, while Münster and Cologne left the war in November; with the war expanding into the Rhineland and Spain, French troops withdrew from the Dutch Republic, retaining only Grave and Maastricht.
History of France
France was part of the Allied force that occupied the Rhineland following the Armistice. Foch supported Poland in the Greater Poland Uprising and in the Polish–Soviet War and France also joined Spain during the Rif War. From 1925 until his death in 1932, Aristide Briand, as prime minister during five short intervals, directed French foreign policy, using his diplomatic skills and sense of timing to forge friendly relations with Weimar Germany as the basis of a genuine peace within the framework of the League of Nations. He realized France could neither contain the much larger Germany by itself nor secure effective support from Britain or the League.
German submarine tender Saar
At the end of the war in 1945 the ship was captured by United States forces at Bremen, and in 1947 the vessel was given to France as war reparations. "Saar" was sailed by a German crew to Cherbourg, where on 17 January 1948 the vessel was recommissioned as "Gustave Zédé" (A641) of the French Navy. The main armament was retained, but the anti-aircraft guns were replaced by two single Bofors 40 mm guns and a quadruple Oerlikon 20 mm cannon. After sea trials, she received further modifications, and on 13 May 1949 arrived at her new home port of Toulon, where the "Groupe d'Action Sous-Marine" (GASM), the French submarine command, was based.
Battle of Mulhouse
The Battle of Mulhouse (), also called the Battle of Alsace (), which began on 7 August 1914, was the opening attack of World War I by the French Army against Germany. The battle was part of a French attempt to recover the province of Alsace, which France had ceded to the new German Empire following defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. The French occupied Mulhouse on 8 August and were then forced out by German counter-attacks on 10 August. The French retired to Belfort, where General Louis Bonneau, the VII Corps commander, was sacked along with the commander of the 8th Cavalry Division. Events further north led to the German XIV and XV corps being moved away from Belfort and a second French offensive by the French VII Corps, reinforced and renamed the French Army of Alsace (General Paul Pau), began on 14 August.
British and French declaration of war on Germany
Negotiations between the Allied powers regarding post-war Europe started on 18 January 1919 in the Salle de l'Horloge at the French Foreign Ministry on the Quai d'Orsay in Paris. Seventy delegates from 27 nations participated in the negotiations. The opposing nations of the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were excluded from the negotiations. At first a "Council of Ten" comprising two delegates each from Britain, France, the United States, Italy and Japan met officially to decide the peace terms. It became the "Big Four" when Japan dropped out and the top person from each of the other four nations met in 145 closed sessions to make all the major decisions to be ratified by the entire assembly. In June 1919, the Allies declared that war would resume if the German government did not sign the treaty they had agreed to among themselves. The government headed by Philipp Scheidemann was unable to agree on a common position, and Scheidemann himself resigned rather than agree to sign the treaty. Gustav Bauer, the head of the new government, sent a telegram stating his intention to sign the treaty if certain articles were withdrawn, including articles 227, 230 and 231. In response, the Allies issued an ultimatum stating that Germany would have to accept the treaty or face an invasion of Allied forces across the Rhine within 24 hours. On 23 June 1919, Bauer capitulated and sent a second telegram with a confirmation that a German delegation would arrive shortly to sign the treaty.
Historiography of the Battle of France
Hitler miscalculated Franco-British reactions to the invasion of Poland in September 1939, because he had not realised that a watershed in public opinion had occurred in mid-1939. May also wrote that the French and British could have defeated Germany in 1938 with Czechoslovakia as an ally and also in late 1939, when German forces in the west were incapable of preventing a French occupation of the Ruhr, which would force a capitulation or a futile German resistance in a war of attrition. France did not invade Germany in 1939, because it wanted British lives to be at risk too and because of hopes that a blockade might force a German surrender without a bloodbath. The French and British also believed that they were militarily superior and guaranteed victory through the blockade or by desperate German attacks. The run of victories enjoyed by Hitler from 1938–1940, could only be understood in the context of defeat being inconceivable to French and British leaders.
May wrote that when Hitler demanded a plan to invade France in September 1939, the German officer corps thought that it was foolhardy and discussed a coup d'état, only backing down when doubtful of the loyalty of the soldiers to them. With the deadline for the attack on France being postponed so often, OKH had time to revise "Fall Gelb" (Case Yellow) for an invasion over the Belgian Plain several times. In January 1940, Hitler came close to ordering the invasion but was prevented by bad weather. Until the Mechelen Incident in January forced a fundamental revision of "Fall Gelb", the main effort ("schwerpunkt") of the German army in Belgium would have been confronted by first-rate French and British forces, equipped with more and better tanks and with a great advantage in artillery. After the Mechelen Incident, OKH devised an alternative and hugely risky plan to make the invasion of Belgium a decoy, with the main effort switched to the Ardennes, to cross the Meuse and reach the Channel coast. May wrote that the alternative plan has been called the Manstein Plan but that Guderian, Manstein, Rundstedt, Halder and Hitler had been equally important in its creation.
National Archaeological Museum (France)
On 24 August 1939, the order was given to close the museum the next day in order to evacuate the collection, dispersed between Chambord and Cheverny. Starting 24 June 1940, the museum was occupied by German troops. Despite the efforts of Raymond Lantier to contain the German occupation, the exhibition room 1 was turned into a meeting room for the German authorities in charge of Île-de-France. Shooting exercises were held in the château’s ditch, and the museum was progressively occupied by troops. Starting 1942, the château suffered damage from bombings, which destroyed some of its stained glasses. 
Following the liberation of France, on 26 August 1944, the French flag was raised above the entrance and on one of the towers, ending the occupation of the museum. During this period, very little was done to the museum (apart from few acquisitions). The collections were repatriated progressively (until 15 Mars 1946), and the museum re-opened on 2 October 1945.
Battle of France
After the withdrawal of the BEF, the German forces began "Fall Rot" (Case Red) on 5 June. The sixty remaining French divisions made a determined resistance but were unable to overcome the German air superiority and armoured mobility. German tanks outflanked the Maginot Line and pushed deep into France. German forces occupied Paris unopposed on 14 June, after the flight of the French government and the collapse of the French army. German commanders met with French officials on 18 June to negotiate an end to hostilities.
Wimmenau
The village was levelled during the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), except for the bell-tower of the Church of Saint Andrew, and was resettled by Swiss immigrants from the Bern area in the mid-seventeenth century. From 1637-1655, there was not a single "bourgeois" (inhabitant paying the citizen tax) in the town, which had 30 "bourgeois" before the war. As with most of the Alsace region, Wimmenau came under the rule of France in 1680. The lack of farmland led to the emigration of many of the commune's inhabitants to the United States and Argentina during the nineteenth century. Alsace became part of the German Empire through the Treaty of Frankfurt in 1871, but was returned to France by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. The town came under German administration again during World War II until it was liberated by American troops on 5–6 December 1944.
French Army in World War I
The Battle of Guise, launched on August 29, was an attempt by the Fifth Army to capture Guise, they succeeded, but later withdrew on August 30. This delayed the German Second Army's invasion of France, but also hurt Lanrezac's already damaged reputation. The First Battle of the Marne was fought between September 6 and September 12. It started when retreating French forces (the Fifth and Sixth armies), stopped south of the Marne River. Victory seemed close, the First German Army was given orders to surround Paris, unaware the French government had already fled to Bordeaux. The First Battle of the Marne was a French victory, but was a bloody one: the French suffered 250,000 casualties, of which 80,000 died, with similar numbers believed for the Germans, and over 12,700 for the British. The German retreat after the First Battle of the Marne halted at the Aisne River, and the Allies soon caught up, starting the First Battle of the Aisne on September 12. It lasted until September 28, it was indecisive, partially due to machine guns beating back infantry sent to capture enemy positions. In the Battle of Le Cateau, fought on August 26–27, the French Sixth Army prevented the British from being outflanked. The first major Allied attack against German forces since the incarnation of trench warfare on the Western Front, the First Battle of Champagne, lasting from December 20, 1914, until March 17, 1915; it was a German victory, due in part to their machine gun battalions and the well-entrenched German forces.
World War II
On 6 June 1944 (known as D-Day), after three years of Soviet pressure, the Western Allies invaded northern France. After reassigning several Allied divisions from Italy, they also attacked southern France. These landings were successful, and led to the defeat of the German Army units in France. Paris was liberated on 25 August by the local resistance assisted by the Free French Forces, both led by General Charles de Gaulle, and the Western Allies continued to push back German forces in western Europe during the latter part of the year. An attempt to advance into northern Germany spearheaded by a major airborne operation in the Netherlands failed. After that, the Western Allies slowly pushed into Germany, but failed to cross the Ruhr river in a large offensive. In Italy, Allied advance also slowed due to the last major German defensive line.
History of France
Paris fell to the Germans on 14 June 1940, but not before the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk, along with many French soldiers.
France in the twentieth century
In 1914, the territory of France was different from today's France in two important ways: most of Alsace and the northeastern part of Lorraine had been annexed by Germany in 1870 (following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871), and the North-African country of Algeria had been established as an integral part of France (department) in 1848. Alsace-Lorraine would be restored at the end of World War I (only to be lost again, temporarily, to the Germans a second time during World War II).
German military administration in occupied France during World War II
Alsace-Lorraine, which had been annexed after the Franco-Prussian war in 1871 by the German Empire and returned to France after the First World War, was re-annexed by the Third Reich (thus subjecting their male population to German military conscription.) The departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais were attached to the military administration in Belgium and Northern France, which was also responsible for civilian affairs in the wide "zone interdite" along the Atlantic coast. Another "forbidden zone" were areas in north-eastern France, corresponding to Lorraine and roughly about half each of Franche-Comté, Champagne and Picardie. War refugees were prohibited from returning to their homes, and it was intended for German settlers and annexation in the coming Nazi New Order ("Neue Ordnung").
French entry into World War I
France entered World War I on August 3, 1914, when Germany declared war. France played only a small part in the diplomatic crisis of July 1914–its top leaders were out of the country from July 15 to July 29, when most of the critical decisions were taken. Austria and Germany deliberately acted to prevent the French and Russian leadership from communicating during the last week in July. But this made little difference as French policy in strong support of Russia had been locked in. Germany realized that a war with Russia meant a war with France, and so its war plans called for an immediate attack on France – through Belgium – hoping for a quick victory before the slow-moving Russians could become a factor. France was a major military and diplomatic player before and after the July crisis, and every power paid close attention to its role. Historian Joachim Remak says:
Jean Leune
In response to the German invasion of Poland, France declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, and Leune was mobilised as a Reserve Officer that same month. On 10 May 1940, Germany began its invasion of the Low Countries and France in what became known as the Battle of France. After the armistice was signed on 22 June 1940, France was divided into a German occupation zone in the north and west and a "Zone Libre" (Free Zone) in the south. Leune was demobilised at the end of 1940 and he remained in the Free Zone until July 1942. Leune continued to serve his country as a "sous-lieutenant" in the French Resistance. The Vichy authorities arrested him on 15 January 1943 and on 6 October 1943 they sentenced him to a year in prison and a fine of 1,200 francs for "actes de nature à nuire à la Défense nationale." In March 1944 he was taken by the Germans and placed in detention at the Drancy internment camp, and then transferred to the Compiègne internment camp. On 10 May 1944 he left the Compiègne internment camp by train headed towards the Buchenwald concentration camp. Leune died from suffocation on 13 May 1944 on board the train convoy travelling from Compiègne to Buchenwald. His body was burned in the crematory at Buchewald on 15 May 1944.
French destroyer Tigre
On 27 November 1942, the ship was captured almost intact by the Germans when they occupied Toulon and was turned over to the Italians on 14 December. The "Regia Marina" redesignated her as "FR23" and she recommissioned on 19 January 1943 after Pierre Laval, head of Vichy France, agreed to transfer her on 11 January; she sailed to Taranto on 13 April where the Italians used her as a transport in Italian waters. She was still not fully operational when Italy surrendered on 8 September and the ship was turned over to the Free French at Bizerte, French North Africa, on 28 October. "Tigre" was recommissioned on 15 December, but her repairs at Bizerte and, later, Casablanca, took until March 1944. A few Oerlikon light AA guns were installed while she was being repaired. She escorted convoys in the Mediterranean until she began a lengthy reconstruction at Oran, French North Africa, that lasted until 3 February 1945. While escorting a convoy from Corsica to Algiers, the ship was damaged by splinters from two near-misses on 20 April 1944. While in Oran, "Tigre"s forward boiler and funnel were replaced by additional oil tanks, that increased her range to at , and additional accommodation for her crew. Her depth charge chutes were sealed off and a pair of British-style racks were installed, each holding nine depth charges as well as four, later two, depth-charge throwers and additional depth charges. One set of torpedo tubes were removed in compensation. Her anti-aircraft suite now consisted of two single mounts for Bofors and ten single Oerlikon light AA guns. "Tigre" was then assigned to the French-controlled task force, known as Flank Force, that provided naval gunfire support for Allied forces operating near the Italian-French border and protected the Allied flank against German naval forces in Genoa and La Spezia, Italy.
Battle of France
The occupation of the various French zones continued until November 1942, when the Allies began Operation Torch, the invasion of Western North Africa. To safeguard southern France, the Germans enacted "Case Anton" and occupied Vichy France. In June 1944, the Western Allies launched Operation Overlord, followed by the Operation Dragoon on the French Mediterranean coast on 15 August. This threatened to cut off German troops in western and central France, and most began to retire toward Germany. (The fortified French Atlantic U-boat bases remained as pockets until the German capitulation.) On 24 August 1944, Paris was liberated, and by September 1944 most of the country was in Allied hands.
The Free French provisional government declared the re-establishment of a provisional French Republic to ensure continuity with the defunct Third Republic. It set about raising new troops to participate in the advance to the Rhine and the Western Allied invasion of Germany by using the French Forces of the Interior as military cadres and manpower pools of experienced fighters to allow a very large and rapid expansion of the French Liberation Army ("Armée française de la Libération"). It was well equipped and well supplied despite the economic disruption brought by the occupation thanks to Lend-Lease and grew from 500,000 men in the summer of 1944 to over 1,300,000 by V-E day, making it the fourth largest Allied army in Europe.
Metz
Metz remained German until the end of World War I, when it reverted to France. However, after the Battle of France during the Second World War, the city was annexed once more by the German Third Reich. In 1944, the attack on the city by the U.S. Third Army freed the city from German rule and Metz reverted one more time to France after World War II.
Timeline of the Battle of France
The Timeline of the battle of France or the Fall of France covers the period during World War 2 from the first military actions between Germany and France and to the armistice signed by France. In about six weeks from May 10, 1940 through June 25, 1940 Nazi Germany had also conquered Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg, adding these four countries to its third Reich.
Nazi Germany planned to use forces that would distract the Allies that would enter Belgium which would make French and British troops leave their current position. Germany would also use a second force to navigate the Ardennes Forest and move around the Maginot Line. Germany had a very simple and strategic plan take the Netherlands and Luxembourg before invading France and Belgium. The plan focused on eliminating any resistance that remained, capturing Paris, crossing the English Channel and then invading Great Britain.
Military history of France
After the exile of Napoleon, the freshly restored Bourbon monarchy helped the absolute Bourbon king of Spain to recover his throne during the French intervention in Spain. To restore the prestige of the French monarchy, disputed by the Revolution and the First Empire, Charles X engaged in the military conquest of Algeria in 1830. This marked the beginning of a new expansion of the French colonial empire throughout the 19th century. In that century, France remained a major force in continental affairs. After the July Revolution, the liberal king Louis Philippe I victoriously supported the Spanish and Belgian liberals. The French later inflicted a defeat on the Habsburgs in the Franco-Austrian War of 1859, a victory which led to the unification of Italy in 1861, after having triumphed over Russia with other allies in the Crimean War. Detrimentally, however, the French army emerged from these victories in an overconfident and complacent state. France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War led to the loss of Alsace-Lorraine and the creation of a united German Empire, both results representing major failures in long-term French foreign policy and sparking a vengeful, nationalist revanchism meant to earn back former territories. The Dreyfus Affair, however, mitigated these nationalist tendencies by prompting public skepticism about the competence of the military.
Battle of France
On 10 October 1939, Britain refused Hitler's offer of peace and on 12 October, France did the same. Colonel-General Franz Halder (Chief of the General Staff of OKH), presented the first plan for "Fall Gelb" (Case Yellow) on 19 October. This was the pre-war codename of plans for a campaign in the Low Countries: the "Aufmarschanweisung N°1, Fall Gelb" (Deployment Instruction No. 1, Case Yellow). Halder's plan has been compared to the Schlieffen Plan, the name given to the German strategy of 1914 in the First World War. It was similar in that both plans entailed an advance through the middle of Belgium. "Aufmarschanweisung N°1" envisioned a frontal attack, sacrificing a projected half million German soldiers to attain the limited goal of throwing the Allies back to the River Somme. Germany's strength for 1940 would then be spent; only in 1942 could the main attack against France begin. When Hitler raised objections to the plan and instead advocated for a decisive armoured breakthrough as had happened in the invasion of Poland, Halder and Brauchitsch attempted to dissuade him, arguing that while the fast-moving mechanised tactics were all well and good against a "shoddy" Eastern European army, they would not work against a first-rate military like the French.
Édouard Alphonse James de Rothschild
During the German occupation of France in World War II, the Nazis seized some of the best racehorses in the country, shipping more than six hundred of them to Germany for racing and/or breeding. Among the horses stolen was Édouard de Rothschild's champion Brantôme who was sent to the German National Stud. The horse was repatriated at the end of the war in 1945 and became a leading sire.
Allied-occupied Germany
Despite its being one of the Allied Powers, the French Republic was at first not granted an occupation zone in Germany. Later, however, the British and American governments recognised the role of France during the war, and agreed to cede some western parts of their zones of occupation to the French Army. In April and May 1945, the French 1st Army had captured Karlsruhe and Stuttgart, and conquered a territory extending to Hitler's Eagle's Nest and the westernmost part of Austria. In July, the French relinquished Stuttgart to the Americans, and in exchange were given control over cities west of the Rhine such as Mainz and Koblenz. All this resulted in two barely contiguous areas of Germany along the French border which met at just a single point along the River Rhine. It included the Saargebiet, which was disentangled from it on 16 February 1946. By 18 December 1946 customs controls were established between the Saar area and allied occupied Germany. The French zone ceded further areas adjacent to the Saar (in mid-1946, early 1947, and early 1949).
History of Alsace
The Franco-Prussian War, which started in July 1870, saw France defeated in May 1871 by the Kingdom of Prussia and other German states. The end of the war led to the unification of Germany. Otto von Bismarck annexed Alsace and northern Lorraine to the new German Empire in 1871. France ceded more than 90% of Alsace and one-fourth of Lorraine, as stipulated in the treaty of Frankfurt. Unlike other members states of the German federation, which had governments of their own, the new "Imperial territory of Alsace-Lorraine" was under the sole authority of the Kaiser, administered directly by the imperial government in Berlin. Between 100,000 and 130,000 Alsatians (of a total population of about a million and a half) chose to remain French citizens and leave "Reichsland Elsaß-Lothringen", many of them resettling in French Algeria as Pieds-Noirs. Only in 1911 was Alsace-Lorraine granted some measure of autonomy, which was manifested also in a flag and an anthem (Elsässisches Fahnenlied). In 1913, however, the Saverne Affair (French: Incident de Saverne) showed the limits of this new tolerance of the Alsatian identity.
During the First World War, to avoid ground fights between brothers, many Alsatians served as sailors in the Kaiserliche Marine and took part in the Naval mutinies that led to the abdication of the Kaiser in November 1918, which left Alsace-Lorraine without a nominal head of state. The sailors returned home and tried to found an independent republic. While Jacques Peirotes, at this time deputy at the "Landrat Elsass-Lothringen" and just elected mayor of Strasbourg, proclaimed the forfeiture of the German Empire and the advent of the French Republic, a self-proclaimed government of Alsace-Lorraine declared its independence as the "Republic of Alsace-Lorraine". French troops entered Alsace less than two weeks later to quash the worker strikes and remove the newly established Soviets and revolutionaries from power. With the arrival of the French soldiers, many Alsatians and local Prussian/German administrators and bureaucrats cheered the re-establishment of order.
SS State of Burgundy
At Hitler’s request a plan was produced after the fall of France in 1940 that would provide for the outright annexation into Germany of a large strip of Eastern France by reducing it to its late medieval borders with the Holy Roman Empire. This memo, produced by the Reich Interior Ministry forms the basis for the so-called "northeast line" which separated the 'forbidden zone' of German occupied France from the rest of the areas under military control. It proposed the deportation of its French inhabitants and the settlement of a million German peasants. He considered these areas, as well as Wallonia to be "in reality German" and should therefore be re-integrated.
Rosi Wolfstein
War resumed, for France and Germany in September 1939. For eight months life in France felt little changed, but in May 1940 Germany invaded from the north. During the six weeks that it took for the German army to over-run the northern half of the country, the government set about identifying as enemy aliens thousands of German refugees who had, for reasons of politics and/or race, fled to Paris from Nazi Germany. On 2 September 1940 Wolfstein and Frölich were arrested, detained and in due course placed in internment camps in the far south of the country. Wolfstein was accompanied by a report from the Paris police dated January 1941 and describing her as a "communist journalist and propagandist, dangerous to public order" (""journaliste et propagandiste communiste dangereuse pour l'ordre public"") . Detention facilities where she was held included Rieucros and finally Bompard. Paul Frölich was held at Vernet and Bassens.
Resistance in the German-occupied Channel Islands
On 10 May 1940, Nazi Germany invaded France and the Low Countries. The "Blitzkrieg" (Lightning War) tactics took the Western powers by surprise. By the time of the resignation of the French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud on 16 June, it was obvious that Germany victory in the Battle of France was inevitable. In the Channel Islands, civilians worried about the consequences of remaining on the Islands but, to avoid panic, were told by the authorities to stay put. Senior officials were ordered to stay in order to maintain order and to keep the Government functioning. On the 15 June, the British government decided to demilitarise the Islands, evacuating the British garrisons and leaving them undefended. The Germans were not informed however. Evacuation boats for civilians only became available on 20 June and again, to stop a panic, people were still told to remain where they were and that only women and children should be taken. Only when the Lieutenant Governors of the islands evacuated were the recommendation relaxed. The last official ships sailed on 23 June.
Economic history of France
To aid the rebuilding of the French economy, the value of stolen resources were recovered from defeated Germany under the Monnet Plan. As part of this policy, German factories were disassembled and moved to France, and the coal-rich industrial Saar Protectorate was occupied by France, as had been done post-World War I, in the Territory of the Saar Basin. Thus in the 1947–1956 period, France benefited from the resources and production of the Saar, and continued to extract coal from the Warndt coal deposit until 1981. The Saarland reunited with Germany in 1957, and resolution of its situation led to the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community, precursor to the European Union, which played a significant role in Europe and France's economy in the later post-war period.
Military history of France during World War II
In August 1943, the de Gaulle and Giraud forces merged in a single chain of command subordinated to Anglo-American leadership, meanwhile opposing French forces on the Eastern Front were subordinated to Soviet or German leaderships. This in-exile French force together with the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) played a variable-scale role in the eventual liberation of France by the Western Allies and the defeat of Vichy France, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Japanese empire. Vichy France fought for control over the French overseas empire with the Free French forces, which were aided by Britain and the U.S. By 1943, all of the colonies, except for Indochina, had joined the Free French cause.
Military history of Germany
The French plans were largely based on a static defense behind the Maginot Line – a series of formidable defensive forts along the French-German border. German General Erich von Manstein thought on an idea which led eventually to the approval of a "Sichelschnitt" ('Sickle Cut') plan to the conquest of France. On 10 May 1940 the Germans bypassed the Maginot Line by launching another "Blitzkrieg" through neutral Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands, drawing the Allied forces out. The main thrust of the Battle of France attack however was through the Ardennes which were to that time believed impenetrable to tanks. The British Expeditionary Force and other allied units were driven back to the coast at Dunkirk, but managed to escape with most of their troops when Germany made a mistaken decision not to attack with tanks. In June 1940, with French troops encircled and cut off in the north, France asked for an armistice that allowed Germany to control most of the French coast and left Vichy France under German domination.
French nationalism
After Napoleon's defeat and downfall, French nationalism from the 19th to early 20th century took on an assertive and extreme patriotism that supported military force to achieve its political goals. During World War I France pursued irredentist claims on the region of Alsace-Lorraine that had been lost to Germany at the end of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. French national pride was damaged in World War I by the long, drawn out war with Germany fought on its soil; especially in World War II when the French government surrendered to Germany in 1940; and after France lost many of its colonies due to decolonization after World War II.
Racism in France
In 1939, France declared war against Germany after the German invasion of Poland. Many tensions arose within the government, separating supporters of the war effort from its dissidents. Marshal Pétain became Council President after Paul Reynaud stepped down from office due to the harsh climate that the French government was experiencing. Pétain left Paris and traveled to Vichy (a free zone) with his government. With the support of Pierre Laval, he obtained full powers from the National Assembly to create a new constitution for the French state, putting an end to the 3rd Republic.
Battle of France
Hitler miscalculated Franco-British reactions to the invasion of Poland in September 1939, because he had not realised that a shift in public opinion had occurred in mid-1939. May wrote that the French and British could have defeated Germany in 1938 with Czechoslovakia as an ally and also in late 1939, when German forces in the West were incapable of preventing a French occupation of the Ruhr, which would have forced a capitulation or a futile German resistance in a war of attrition. France did not invade Germany in 1939 because it wanted British lives to be at risk too and because of hopes that a blockade might force a German surrender without a bloodbath. The French and British also believed that they were militarily superior, which guaranteed victory. The run of victories enjoyed by Hitler from 1938 to 1940 could only be understood in the context of defeat being inconceivable to French and British leaders.
Fort Louvois
After the First World War, the French military abandoned the fort. On 14 June 1929 it was declared a historical monument.
Nevertheless, on 10 September 1944 it underwent shelling during the liberation of Marennes. The German army took possession of the fort but withdrew within a day due to the Allied advance. Free French forces then occupied the fort, only to come under fire from the Château d'Oléron, which was still in the hands of the German Army. The bombardment destroyed the guardhouse, the barracks, and much of the keep. After the liberation of France, scaffolding had to be erected on the tower's north-west face to prevent the tower's collapse.
French–German enmity
The desire for revenge ("esprit de revanche") against Germany, particularly for the recovery of the "lost provinces" of Alsace and Lorraine (whose importance was summed up by the French politician Léon Gambetta in the phrase: "Never speak of them; never forget them!") remained strong in France over the next 50 years and was the key French war aim in World War I. The Allied victory saw France regain Alsace-Lorraine and briefly resume its old position as the leading land power on the European continent. France was the leading proponent of harsh peace terms against Germany at the Paris Peace Conference.
Battle of France
In 1939, Britain and France offered military support to Poland in the likely case of a German invasion. In the dawn of 1 September 1939, the German Invasion of Poland began. France and the United Kingdom declared war on 3 September, after an ultimatum for German forces to immediately withdraw their forces from Poland was not answered. Following this, Australia (3 September), New Zealand (3 September), South Africa (6 September) and Canada (10 September) declared war on Germany. While British and French commitments to Poland were met politically, the Allies were not in a position to render meaningful military assistance to the Poles in a timely manner. Even if Allied military intervention in Poland had been feasible, it would have come at the risk of drawing the Soviet Union into the war on Germany's side due to the recently-signed German-Soviet non-aggression pact and subsequent Soviet invasion of eastern Poland. As a result, the Allies settled on a long-war strategy and mobilised for defensive land operations against Germany, while a trade blockade was imposed and the pre-war re-armament was accelerated, ready for an eventual invasion of Germany.
French–German enmity
There was debate among the other Allies as to whether France should share in the occupation of the defeated Germany because of fears that the long Franco–German rivalry might interfere with the rebuilding of Germany. Ultimately the French were allowed to participate and from 1945 to 1955, French troops were stationed in the Rhineland, Baden-Württemberg, and part of Berlin, and these areas were put under a French military governor. The Saar Protectorate was allowed to rejoin West Germany only in 1957.
Luise Kraushaar
The resumption of war in September 1939 was followed, between Germany and France, by several months of political paralysis and uncertainty in France, but in May 1940 the German invasion of France moved matters on. A political response in both Britain and France involved identifying large numbers of politically and race-defined refugees from Nazi Germany as enemy aliens and arresting them. Kraushaar was arrested in May 1940 and detained by the French authorities at the Gurs internment camp in the south of the country. Fellow internees included and , exiled German communists who had been based with Kraushaar in France ever since the three women had been sent to Paris from Moscow at the end of 1935. The three were able to team up together at the internment camp where, as Kraushaar subsequently recalled, Irene Wosikowski, a committed sportswoman, organised other internees to become more physically active whether they liked it or not. Their stay in the camp was brief, however, as by he end of June 1940 had escaped to Toulouse. They joined a unit in the French Resistance. Working with German resistance members such as Kurt Hälker, and Arthur Eberhard, who were serving inside the German army of occupation, the group was able to collect important operational information and pass it to the British and American military.
Wolf-Dietrich Wilcke
The Battle of France, the German invasion of France and the Low Countries, began on 10 May 1940. On 18 May 1940, he engaged in aerial combat with eight French Curtiss P-36 Hawk fighter aircraft and was shot down west of Rethel. His victor may have been "sous lieutenant" Camille Plubeau. Wilcke bailed out and was taken prisoner of war. Following the armistice with France, he and Mölders, who had also been a prisoner of war, returned to the unit on 30 June 1940. Wilcke was promoted to "Hauptmann" the next day and again took command of 7. "Staffel". On 11 July 1940, he was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class.
On 13 August 1940, during the Battle of Britain, Wilcke replaced "Hauptmann" Harro Harder as "Gruppenkommandeur" of the III. "Gruppe". Harder had been last seen at 1:35 pm on 12 August and was reported as missing in action following combat east of the Isle of Wight. The day of his appointment, Wilcke almost lost his life as well, when he was forced to bail out after engine failure over the English Channel. He was rescued that night by a Dornier Do 18 flying boat. III. "Gruppe" flew a bomber escort mission targeting London on 30 August. Wilcke destroyed a barrage balloon on the morning mission and claimed his fourth victory, a Supermarine Spitfire in the vicinity of Dover during his second mission of the day. On 1 September 1940, on another bomber escort mission that started at 11:20 am, Wilcke claimed his fifth victory, a Hawker Hurricane, south of London. He claimed his sixth victory, probably a Fairey Swordfish biplane, on 11 September over the Channel between Dover and Calais.
Italian occupation of France
The initial Italian occupation of France territory occurred in June 1940; it was then expanded in November 1942.
The German offensive against the Low Countries and France began on 10 May and by the middle of May German forces were on French soil. By the start of June, British forces were evacuating from the pocket in Northern France. On 10 June 1940, Italy declared war against the French and British. Ten days later, the Italian army invaded France. On 24 June 1940, after the Fall of France, Italy and France signed the Franco-Italian Armistice, two days after the cessation of hostilities between France and Germany, agreeing upon an Italian zone of occupation.
Operation Aerial
Some equipment was embarked on the evacuation ships but lack of reliable information about the progress of the German Army towards the coast, rumours and alarmist reports, led some operations to be terminated early and much equipment was destroyed or left behind. The official evacuation ended on 25 June, in conformity with the terms of the Armistice of 22 June 1940 agreed by the French and German authorities but informal departures continued from French Mediterranean ports until 14 August. From the end of Operation Dynamo at Dunkirk, Operation Cycle from Le Havre, elsewhere along the Channel coast and the termination of Operation Aerial, another were rescued, bringing the total of military and civilian personnel returned to Britain during the Battle of France to British troops.
18th-century history of Germany
Europe was racked by two decades of war revolving around France's efforts to spread its revolutionary ideals, as well as to annex Belgium and the Rhine's Left Bank to France and establish puppet regimes in the Netherlands, Germany and Italy. The French revolutionaries' open and strident republicanism led to the conclusion of a defensive alliance between Austria and Prussia on 7 February 1792. The alliance also declared that any violation of the borders of the Empire by France would be a cause for war. The extremists among the French revolutionaries saw war as a chance to defeat their domestic opponents and embarrass the king, whose Austrian wife, Marie-Antoinette, was Emperor Leopold II's sister. They demanded that Austria not only disarm but abandon all alliances directed against France. Upon Leopold II's refusal, France declared war on Austria and Prussia on 20 April. Austria and Prussia then invaded France, but were defeated at the Battle of Valmy (1792). The German lands saw armies marching back and forth, bringing devastation (albeit on a far lower scale than the Thirty Years' War, almost two centuries before), but also bringing new ideas of liberty and civil rights for the people. Prussia and Austria ended their failed wars with France but (with Russia) partitioned Poland among themselves in 1793 and 1795. The French took control of the Rhineland, imposed French-style reforms, abolished feudalism, established constitutions, promoted freedom of religion, emancipated Jews, opened the bureaucracy to ordinary citizens of talent, and forced the nobility to share power with the rising middle class. Napoleon created the Kingdom of Westphalia (1807–1813) as a model state. These reforms proved largely permanent and modernized the western parts of Germany. When the French tried to impose the French language, German opposition grew in intensity. A Second Coalition of Britain, Russia, and Austria then attacked France but failed. Napoleon established direct or indirect control over most of western Europe, including the German states apart from Prussia and Austria. The old Holy Roman Empire was little more than a farce; Napoleon simply abolished it in 1806 while forming new countries under his control. In Germany Napoleon set up the "Confederation of the Rhine," comprising most of the German states except Prussia and Austria.
France
In 1940, France was invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany. Metropolitan France was divided into a German occupation zone in the north and Vichy France, a newly established authoritarian regime collaborating with Germany, in the south, while Free France, the government-in-exile led by Charles de Gaulle, was set up in London. From 1942 to 1944, about 160,000 French citizens, including around 75,000 Jews, were deported to death camps and concentration camps in Germany and occupied Poland. On 6 June 1944 the Allies invaded Normandy and in August they invaded Provence. Over the following year the Allies and the French Resistance emerged victorious over the Axis powers and French sovereignty was restored with the establishment of the Provisional Government of the French Republic (GPRF). This interim government, established by de Gaulle, aimed to continue to wage war against Germany and to purge collaborators from office. It also made several important reforms (suffrage extended to women, creation of a social security system). The GPRF laid the groundwork for a new constitutional order that resulted in the Fourth Republic, which saw spectacular economic growth ("les Trente Glorieuses"). France was one of the founding members of NATO (1949).
France–United Kingdom relations
After guaranteeing the independence of Poland, both declared war on Germany on the same day, 3 September 1939, after the Germans ignored an ultimatum to withdraw from the country. When Germany began its attack on France in 1940, British troops and French troops again fought side by side. Eventually, after the Germans came through the Ardennes, it became more possible that France would not be able to fend off the German attack. The final bond between the two nations was so strong that members of the British cabinet had proposed a temporary union of the two countries for the sake of morale: the plan was drawn up by Jean Monnet, who later created the Common Market. The idea was not popular with a majority on either side, and the French government felt that, in the circumstances, the plan for union would reduce France to the level of a British Dominion. When London ordered to withdraw the English expeditionary corps from France without telling the French and Belgium forces and then refused to provide France a real air support the proposal was definitely turned down. Later The Free French resistance, led by Charles de Gaulle, were formed in London, after de Gaulle gave his famous 'Appeal of the 18th of June', broadcast by the BBC. De Gaulle declared himself to be the head of the one and only true government of France, and gathered the Free French Forces around him.
Ruhr Question
As early as the beginning of the 1920s, the "Ruhrfrage" was an important subject of dispute between France and Germany. From the French perspective, the region and a big portion of the industries of the Rhein and Ruhr, such as the arms industry of Krupp in Essen and Rheinmetall in Düsseldorf, was known as the "Armory of Germany". After France had suffered at the hands of this "armory" in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and the First World War of 1914-1918, the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 resulted in the creation of a "security glacis" against Germany in the form of the cessation of the Left Bank of the Rhine, extensive demilitarization, armament restrictions, and the Allied occupation of the Rhineland. In addition, France was able to achieve considerable reparations from Germany after the first World War. If the German Reich could not meet the requirements of the reparations, the negotiation terms of the threatened to divide the Ruhr through forced occupation. At this time, the Ruhr was known as the "Rhine-Westphalian coal and industrial area", including Lippe in the north, Dortmund in the east, and Düsseldorf in the south. Germany defaulted on reparations, causing France and Belgium to occupy the cities of Düsseldorf, Duisburg, and Ruhrort in 1921 and the remaining Ruhr area stretching east to Dortmund in 1923. The occupation of the Ruhr, including control of the factories and coal mines, lasted until the agreement of the Dawes Plan in 1924. The confiscated of Düsseldorf served as the command center of the occupation of the Ruhr until the French withdrew on August 25th, 1925.