D. Answer As a
way of protect-
ing their inde-
pendence.
540 C
HAPTER 16
THE PHONY WAR
For the next several months after the fall of Poland,
French and British troops on the Maginot Line, a system of fortifica-
tions built along France’s eastern border (see map on p. 538), sat
staring into Germany, waiting for something to happen. On the
Siegfried Line a few miles away German troops stared back. The
blitzkrieg had given way to what the Germans called the sitzkrieg
(“sitting war”), and what some newspapers referred to as the
phony war.
After occupying eastern Poland, Stalin began annexing the
Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Late in 1939, Stalin
sent his Soviet army into Finland. After three months of fighting,
the outnumbered Finns surrendered.
Suddenly, on April 9, 1940, Hitler launched a surprise invasion
of Denmark and Norway in order “to protect [those countries’] freedom
and independence.” But in truth, Hitler planned to build bases along the
coasts to strike at Great Britain. Next, Hitler turned against the Netherlands,
Belgium, and Luxembourg, which were overrun by the end of May. The phony
war had ended.
France and Britain Fight On
France’s Maginot Line proved to be ineffective; the German army threatened to
bypass the line during its invasion of Belgium. Hitler’s generals sent their tanks
through the Ardennes, a region of wooded ravines in northeast France, thereby
avoiding British and French troops who thought the Ardennes were impassible.
The Germans continued to march toward Paris.
THE FALL OF FRANCE
The German offensive trapped almost 400,000 British
and French soldiers as they fled to the beaches of Dunkirk on the French side of
the English Channel. In less than a week, a makeshift fleet of fishing trawlers, tug-
boats, river barges, pleasure craft—more than 800 vessels in all—ferried about
330,000 British, French, and Belgian troops to safety
across the Channel.
A few days later, Italy entered the war on the side of
Germany and invaded France from the south as the
Germans closed in on Paris from the north. On June 22,
1940, at Compiègne, as William Shirer and the rest of the
world watched, Hitler handed French officers his terms of
surrender. Germans would occupy the northern part of
France, and a Nazi-controlled puppet government, head-
ed by Marshal Philippe Pétain, would be set up at Vichy,
in southern France.
After France fell, a French general named Charles
de Gaulle fled to England, where he set up a govern-
ment-in-exile. De Gaulle proclaimed defiantly, “France
has lost a battle, but France has not lost the war.”
THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN
In the summer of 1940, the
Germans began to assemble an invasion fleet along the
French coast. Because its naval power could not compete
with that of Britain, Germany also launched an air war at
the same time. The Luftwaffe began making bombing
D
▼
For months there
was nothing much
to defend against,
as the war turned
into a sitzkrieg
endured by
soldiers such as
this French one
on the Maginot
Line.
Children watch with wonder and fear as the battling British
and German air forces set the skies of London aflame.
▼
Background
Hitler demanded
that the surrender
take place in the
same railroad car
where the French
had dictated terms
to the Germans in
World War I.
MAIN IDEA
MAIN IDEA
D
Analyzing
Motives
How did Hitler
rationalize the
German invasion
of Denmark and
Norway?
