World War II Day by Day

Sedan, France • May 12, 1940

Great Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany on Septem­ber 3, 1939, on account of Germany’s aggres­sion against its east­ern neighbor Poland 2 days earlier. Both nations honored their guaran­tee to pro­tect Poland’s borders in the event of a German inva­sion. Ten days into May 1940 Germany attacked neu­tral Bel­gium to that country’s west, then swiftly crossed the Franco-Bel­gian fron­tier to cap­ture the French town of Sedan on this date, May 12, 1940. The 46‑day Battle of France (German, Fall Gelb; English, Case Yellow) ended on June 25 with France’s capit­u­la­tion to Adolf Hitler’s Wehr­macht and with the dis­place­ment of sev­er­al mil­lion panicky Pari­sians as well as mil­lions of home­less, fright­ened resi­dents of North­ern France, Bel­gium, the Nether­lands, and Luxem­bourg (2 mil­lion asylum seekers from the Bene­lux coun­tries in May alone) who sought sanc­tu­ary in France beyond the Wehrmacht’s grasping reach.

Even as the invaders moved from Sedan west across North­ern France to the Chan­nel coast and were reported on May 16 to be less than 100 miles/­160 km from Paris, French nation­als, foreign-born resi­dents, and inter­nally dis­placed French­men gen­er­ally believed their nation’s defeat was impos­sible because the mili­tary capa­bil­it­ies of each nation were esti­mated to be roughly equi­va­lent. While more enemy troops and equip­ment spilled over the Franco-Belgian fron­tier French govern­ment offi­cials down­played their country’s dire sit­u­a­tion—all this and more against the back­drop of the hair-raising rescue between May 26 and June 4, 1940, of 338,000 British, French, and Bel­gian sol­diers besieged at the French resort town of Dun­kirk and other ports. In the face of over­whelming odds, a multi­national flo­tilla ranging from small pri­vate craft to large war­ships pulled off the evac­u­ation of all but 90,000 Allied sol­diers and equip­ment in Oper­a­tion Dynamo, aka the “Miracle of Dunkirk.”

Ordinary French citizens and fighting men and the exhausted refu­gees who camped out in train and bus sta­tions, parks, or on the streets were not so easily fooled by govern­ment-con­trolled organs and boule­vard media that the sit­u­a­tion was well in hand. Sure, public flower gardens, shrubs, and trees were still being cared for and side­walk cafes and bistros, bou­lan­ge­ries, patis­se­ries, bou­tiques, and the like were still bus­tling with cus­tomers, yet the public’s nerves were being stretched ever tighter.

On June 3 the Luftwaffe bombed Paris, sparking fears of German terror bombings on the scale of Dutch Rotter­dam almost 3 weeks earlier. On June 6 a French defen­sive line col­lapsed north of Paris, sending troops and more refugees into the French capital. Two days later, June 8, schools in Paris closed, which quick­ened the tempo of Paris depar­tures. On June 10 govern­ment offi­cials in the capi­tal fled their offices for Tours, later Bor­deaux on the Atlan­tic coast, before winding up in Vichy, a spa resort recently emptied of clien­tele. The next day Paris’s gaso­line reserves were set afire. On June 13 the govern­ment declared Paris an “Open City” and thus unde­fended, a decla­ra­tion intended to pro­tect the “City of Light” so long as French troops and resi­dents offered no resis­tance to the advancing enemy. On June 14, a Friday and a black one at that, the German army entered a nearly empty Paris. In an alarmingly short period nearly 3 mil­lion Pari­sians for­sook their res­i­dences, work­places, and cafes. In all, some 15 per­cent or more of the French popu­la­tion—up to 10 mil­lion people, mostly women absent their hus­bands who were either off fighting or interned, in hos­pitals or dead, together with chil­dren and the elderly—clogged roads and high­ways to the south and west hoping to escape poten­tial harm. For hun­dreds of thou­sands of people who were in flight, escaping harm didn’t happen (see photo essay below). French­men called the rapid and chaotic evac­u­a­tion of their cities, towns, and villages “the Exodus” (l’Exode). Little known today, the Paris exodus remains one of the great human tragedies of World War II.

The Battle of France, May 10 to June 25, 1940

Left: Desperate and terrified French refugees flee advancing German troops, their cars, horse-drawn wagons and carts, wheel­barrows, and bicycles loaded with house­hold pos­ses­sions. Despite the stifling sum­mer heat, it was com­mon to see women wearing layered clothing: skirt over skirt (as seen here), skirt over trousers, coats over jackets, gloves, scarves, and hat. To add to the un­folding trag­edy Luft­waffe pilots roared their Junkers Ju‑87 Stuka dive-bombers and Messer­schmitt Bf 109 fighters low over the crowded roads, bombing and strafing defense­less civil­ians and French sol­diers in retreat. Some mothers, deathly afraid and wearied by carrying toddlers, entrusted their chil­dren to passing motorists and mili­tary con­voys, even­tually losing track of them in the ensuing chaos. Heart-rending mes­sages begging for news of lost chil­dren appeared tacked on public buildings and in print media for weeks after­wards. The French Red Cross managed to reunite 90,000 lost children with their parents.

Right: Heading toward the unknown, the former occu­pants of an auto­mobile push their over­loaded vehicle along a rural road in France after it ran out of gas. Lots of refugees had no idea where the column they were in was heading or where they would even­tu­ally end up, espe­cially those from the Low Coun­tries and working-class Pari­sians who had never been out­side the capital. Many of the dis­placed found they had packed too much, and road­sides soon became littered with aban­doned belong­ings, cars, and trucks. Nearly every­one had run out of food inside several days on the road.

Left: A packed Paris train station, June 12, 1940, as panicky Parisians try boarding trains leaving the capi­tal. Two days earlier the govern­ment vacated Paris, signaling to Pari­sians that it was no longer safe to remain in the capi­tal. Almost 3 out of 5 mil­lion Pari­sians clamored to get out of the city. By the time repre­sen­ta­tives of defeat­ist French premier (since June 16, 1940) Marshal Philippe Pétain signed a humil­i­ating armi­stice on June 22, 1940, the German Blitz­krieg had loosed itself across more than half the nation.

Right: One observer of l’Exode reminisced: “People would go to the station with their entire fortunes: baskets, mat­tresses, suit­cases, trunks, strollers, bicycles and caged canaries” and try to load their posses­sions on trains already packed with anxious and weary passen­gers bringing simi­lar items on board. Toilets provided addi­tional seating and storage space. He also recalled that “run­aways and the failed soldiers” often looted homes abandoned by their frightened residents.

Left: Baby in stroller lifted into impossibly crowded train, Paris, June 1940. To avoid German aerial attacks, some trains carrying evac­uees traveled in the evening or night with lights out.

Right: Standing atop the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, German sol­diers and collab­o­ra­tionist French offi­cials attend to mounting the swastika-emblazoned Nazi flag on one of the most recog­niz­able sym­bols of French national pride, June 1940. The French capi­tal endured 4 years of Nazi occu­pa­tion and oppres­sion before its lib­er­ation by U.S., British, and Free French soldiers on August 25, 1944.

How Germany’s Blitzkrieg Defeated France, May–June, 1940