France 1940

In the spring of 1940, the Germans launched a military offensive in France and the Low Countries that married superb intelligence, the latest military thinking, and new technology to achieve in just six weeks what their fathers had failed to achieve in all four years of the First World War.

In the spring of 1940, the Germans launched a military offensive in France and the Low Countries that married superb intelligence, the latest military thinking, and new technology. It was a stunning victory, altering the balance of power in Europe in one stroke, and convincing the entire world that the Nazi war machine was unstoppable. But as Lloyd Clark, a leading British military historian and academic, argues, much of our understanding of this victory, and blitzkrieg itself, is based on myth.

Employing new research from both German and French sources, the author examines the role that the French Atlantic ports played for the Kriegsmarine during the Second World War.