PARIS, FRANCE. —The Nazi invasion of France began on May 12, 1940, when German troops stormed the northwest corners of the Maginot Line, previously alleged by the French military command to be an impregnable defence of their eastern border.
A week later, Belgium, on France’s northern border, had also been conquered. This in itself made Allied defence of France untenable.
In the early stages of World War II, a large force of British and French soldiers were cut off in northern France at the harbour city of Dunkirk by a German armoured advance to the Channel coast at Calais, and trapped at Dunkirk.
Beginning in late May 1940, a mass evacuation of Dunkirk was carried out by Allied troops under the name Operation Dynamo. The Battle of Dunkirk was conducted from May 26, 1940, to June 4, 1940.
Over a period of nine days, 338,226 French and British soldiers were taken from Dunkirk, France and the surrounding beaches by a quickly assembled fleet of about seven hundred vessels.
Once northern France was essentially abandoned, the Germans continued their relentless march through the rest of France. In the early morning hours of June 14, 1940, they marched into Paris, during which French troops retreated to prevent Paris from being completely destroyed.
Two million citizens of Paris had already fled.
The Nazi troops later hoisted the swastika on the Eiffel Tower.
