Battles and Campaigns / Western Front / Blitzkrieg in the West Then and Now

Product Description
The author presents an account of the Battle of France: the forty-five traumatic days from May 10 to June 24, 1940 that resulted in one of the most remarkable military victories of modern times. During those six weeks, six nations found themselves at war, fighting across four countries. From the polders of the Netherlands in the north to the mountains of the Alps in the south, and from the Rhine valley to the Atlantic coast, Jean Paul Pallud explores every corner of the battlefield, the camera recording the scenes today where 50 years ago Dutch, Belgian, German, French, British and Italian soldiers were locked in mortal combat. Battles great and small are described and illustrated to colour the canvas of both the broad strategy and the individual firefight in Hitler's victorious campaign of Blitzkrieg in the West.

Contents:

PART I AT WAR AGAIN

Peace for our time

The Allies and Poland

France's Sarre Offensive

The Maginot Line

The Allied strategy

Belgium sits on the fence

Plan 'Dyle'

The BEF lands

The German strategy

The opposing forces

 

PART II FALL GELB

Code-word 'Danzig'

The Brandenburg operations

The swoop on Fort Eben-Emael

Airborne assaults in the Ardennes

The Allies move forward

The Fight for the Netherlands

The 6. Armee in Belgium: the feint

The 4. Armee on the Meuse

The 12. Armee on the Meuse

 

PART III THE BREAK-OUT

The XV. Armeekorps and the 9ème Armée

Gruppe von Kleist and the 2ème Armée

The end of the 9ème Armée

Sichelschnitt

Enlarging the breach

Thulin

The 4ème D.C.R: threat from the south

Gort favours evacuation

The Weygand Plan

Belgian Forts

The 7ème Armée on the Somme

The Abbeville bridgehead

The final withdrawal

The BEF withdrawal to the coast

Dunkirk: the evacuation

 

PART IV FALL ROT

The two alternatives

The 4. Armee from the Somme to the Seine

The 6. Armee from the Somme to the Marne

The 12. Armee on the Aisne

The Defeat

Heeresgruppe B from the Seine to the Loire

Gruppe Guderian closes the ring

Heeresgruppe C attacks the Maginot Line

 

PART V THE END

Reynaud plays his last cards

The Battle of the Fortresses

The end in the Vosges

The Final Evacuation

The Alpine Front

The Last Act

The Armistice

The end of the Maginot Line

Counting the cost

Glossary