The Battle of France was a major campaign of World War II that occurred from 10 May to 25 June 1940 when Nazi Germany launched an invasion of France through the Ardennes forest of Belgium. The campaign was an example of blitzkrieg warfare, the German strategy masterminded by Erich von Manstein, who used his "sickle stroke" tactics to advance through the Netherlands and Belgium and strike into northern France. In just over one month, the Germans occupied France and ended the war on the Western Front for four years.
The planning for campaign had been in the works since late 1939, when World War II broke out. The Germans had engaged in a "Phony War" standoff with the French Army after the invasion of Poland, and the French built the Maginot Line to protect their country from attack. However, the line ended along the border with Belgium so as to not offend Belgian neutrality. In the spring of 1940, the Wehrmacht began a massive offensive through the Low Countries, occupying the Netherlands and Belgium after making maximum use of their Luftwaffe air force, their panzer tanks, and their mobilized infantry. In May 1940, the Germans wheeled into northern France from Belgium, and the French counterattacks at Arras and Abbeville were beaten back. The Germans would proceed to overrun much of the country, and the United Kingdom's British Expeditionary Force was put in a precarious situation as it found itself retreating towards the English Channel. The British and French evacuated from the cities of Dunkirk in the north and Bayonne in the south as the Germans overran the rest of France, and the Germans set up a dictatorship known as "Vichy France" in the south, while the north of the country was occupied.
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