quality:corruption, structural:reformatting
The Battle of France, also known as the Western Campaign, the French Campaign and the Fall of France, during the Second World War was the German invasion of the Low Countries and France. The invasion plan for the Low Countries and France was called Case Yellow. Fall Rot was planned to finish off the French and British after the evacuation at Dunkirk. The Low Countries and France were defeated and occupied by Axis troops down to the Demarcation line, ending land operations on the Western Front until the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944. On 3 September 1939, France and Britain declared war on Germany, over the German invasion of Poland on 1 September. In early September 1939, France began the limited Saar Offensive but by mid-October had withdrawn to their start lines. German armies invaded Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and France on 10 May 1940. In Fall Gelb, German armoured units made a surprise push through the Ardennes and then along the Somme valley, cutting off and surrounding the Allied units that had advanced into Belgium to meet the German armies there. British, Belgian and French forces were pushed back to the sea by the Germans where the British and French navies evacuated the encircled elements of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and the French and Belgian armies from Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo. German forces began Fall Rot on 5 June 1940. The remaining Allied divisions in France, sixty French and two British, made a determined stand on the Somme and Aisne rivers but were defeated by the German combination of air superiority and armoured mobility. Italy entered the war on the German side on 10 June 1940 and began the Italian invasion of France. German armies outflanked the Maginot Line and pushed deep into France, occupying 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. On 22 June 1940, the Second Armistice at Compiègne was signed by France and Germany. The neutral Vichy government led by Marshal Philippe Pétain replaced the Third Republic and German military occupation began along the French North Sea and Atlantic coasts and their hinterlands. The Italian invasion of France over the Alps took a small amount of ground and after the armistice, Italy occupied a small area in the south-east. The Vichy regime retained the zone libre in the south. Following the Allied invasion of French North Africa in November 1942, in Case Anton, the Germans and Italians took control of the zone until France was liberated by the Allies in 1944.