X-Nico

unusual facts about Fall of France



Britain at Bay

The film opens with images of rural and urban Britain, and then depicts the rise of Nazi Germany through newsreel footage, including the recent Fall of France.

Georges Marchais

After the fall of France, he appears to have enrolled in Nazi Germany to work in the Messerschmitt aircraft manufacturing plant, as he left for Germany before the establishment of the STO system, by which French workers were compelled to work in German plants.

German Type IXB submarine

After being commissioned and deployed, all of the Type IXB submarines built prior to the fall of France were stationed in the German port city of Wilhelmshaven while those who were commissioned following the capture of numerous French ports during the Battle of France were stationed in Lorient.

Great Polish Map of Scotland

After the Fall of France in May 1940 Black Barony, which had become a hotel in 1926, was requisitioned for use as a Staff College for training officers of the Polish forces stationed in Scotland.

La Pallice

During the Fall of France, on 19 June 1940, approximately 6,000 Polish soldiers in exile under the command of Stanisław Sosabowski

Tadeusz Sawicz

After the fall of France, like many other Polish pilots he did not surrender and took a Bloch MB.152 across the Mediterranean to Algeria, from where he went to Casablanca in Morocco and via Gibraltar to Great Britain, arriving on 17 July.


see also

Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

Ernest was in France during the Franco-Prussian War and wrote a memoir of his experiences My days of adventure; the fall of France, 1870-71 which also contains an auto-biographical introduction.

George Montbard

In My Days of Adventure; The Fall of France, 1870–71, Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, who had hired Montbard as an illustrator, writes that at that time Montbard "was a Republican—in fact, a future Communard" and did not appreciate an unexpected meeting in the street with Napoleon III, who took an interest in the sketch he was making.

Louis Zukofsky

Especially the sections of "A" written shortly before World War II are political: Section 10 for example, published in 1940, is an intense and horrifying response to the fall of France.

Small Heath, Birmingham

The fall of France had not been anticipated in Government planning and the encirclement of a large part of the British Expeditionary Force into the Dunkirk pocket resulted in a hasty evacuation of that part of the B.E.F following the abandonment of their equipment.

SNCASE SE.200

Four SE.200s were under construction at Marignane at the outbreak of the Second World War, and work on them continued after the fall of France, along with a fifth machine now started.

Stephen McGill

At this point the Second World War was under way in Europe so, following the fall of France to the Germans in June 1940, Father McGill, as a British citizen, had to make his escape via Marseille and Spain to avoid internment as an enemy alien.