Officials in France had long thought a German invasion would come directly across the French-German border.
In anticipation of this, they created a 200-mile-long defensive barrier called the Maginot Line.
German forces, however, simply went around the northern end of the line, and then pushed toward Paris. On June 22, just six weeks after the invasion began, France surrendered.
Before the Germans could completely close in, however, the troops were evacuated by Allied naval vessels, assisted by hundreds of small civilian boats that had sailed across the English Channel from Britain.
#: German forces soon trapped more than 300,000 British, French, and Belgian troops in Dunkirk, a seaport near the northern tip of France.
:: the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east only weeks after Germany invaded from the West.