Armoured Warfare and the Fall of France 1940

A visual account of the fall of France during World War II, featuring images of tanks and other armoured vehicles used by belligerents.

At 21:00 on 9 May 1940, Codeword Danzig was issued alerting Adolf Hitler’s airborne troops that they were about to spearhead an attack on Belgium and the Netherlands. The following day his blitzkrieg rolled forward striking the British Expeditionary Force and the French armies in Belgium and in northern France at Sedan.

The desperate attempts of the allied armies to stem the Nazi tide proved futile and, once their reserves had been exhausted and the remaining forces cut off, Paris lay open. By early June, it was all over—trapped British, Belgian and French troops were forced to evacuate Dunkirk, Calais and Boulogne and the defeated French army agreed to an armistice leaving the country divided in two.

This dramatic story is shown in a sequence of over 150 historic photographs that Anthony Tucker-Jones he has selected for this memorable book. The images he has chosen cover every aspect of this extraordinary campaign, but his main focus is on the vital role played by the armoured fighting vehicles of both sides. The book is a graphic record of the destruction wrought by the Wehrmacht’s lightning offensive through the Low Countries and France.