The German left hook had destroyed the Allied armies in Belgium.

The fall of Paris was now inevitable.

Was the fall of France?

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

Music of the 20th century. Episode 324, Plan Red.

Last time, I described to you Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk.

Today, we're going to look at what came next.

And to begin, I invite you to consider the position of the recently appointed

commander of the French army, General Maxim Vagam. The situation is dire. The French units that

charged into Belgium to meet the Germans have been destroyed. The soldiers have either been

taken prisoner or are in England.

Either way, their arms and equipment are gone. They represented close to half of the French

army, about 50 divisions, and the better half at that. What remained amounted to 64 French army divisions, plus a single British division that had avoided the encirclement.

With these units, Vagand had to organize a defensive line from Cé d'Anne to the English Channel, a distance of nearly a thousand kilometers, against an advancing army of 142 divisions.

The French soldiers were in a state of shock over what had befallen them. The Germans were

drunk with success and setting their sights on Paris. Overhead, the RAF was gone, and the Luftwaffe dominated the sky.

The screams of a Juncker's 87 dive bomber delivering its munitions to a target on the ground

was the very last sound heard by too many young French soldiers, while the survivors learned

to fear that awful mechanical cry.

Um, sound effect warning, I guess.

On the plus side, the French had also learned their artillery guns and their tanks were superior to German weapons.

They were beginning to learn how to use this to their advantage, although they had far fewer guns and tanks than before.

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