| World War II erupted on 10th May, 1940. Ten German armoured
divisions and 117 infantry divisions seized Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg.
Soon after, seven tank divisions moved easily through the hilly. Ardenned
Forest, and razed France to the ground which was considered to be the unbreakable
wall of Europe. The Allied war strategists thought that the forest was impassable.
When the British troops, under the leadership of Gen. Govt, made an attempt
to stop the advancing German forces, for the first time, they realized the
superiority of the Nazi weapons. In fact, the Allied troops had been equipped
with weapons of World War I which were very inferior to the modern German
arms. The puzzling aspect of the helplessness of 3,90,000 English Channel,
was that they had been waiting for a german attack after consolidating in
eight months the 250-mile-long Maginot Line with the World War I-type slit
trenches and concreted pillboxes. The troops were so confident that they
wandered freely, drank and sang and danced in the village cafes and made
friends with the local girls. And the Germans knowingly encouraged with
lightheartedness of the British soldiers. Not only this, when some French
housewives complained through a newspaper that they could not obtain cosmetics,
the Germans bombarded cosmetics for women of those villages. |
