WWII 1939: France, Britain

Adolf Hitler today completed German military preparations for any emergency.

LONDON, May 10, 1940 (UP) - Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigned tonight and Winston Churchill agreed to form a new government.

Germany's war machine drove relentlessly forward in Northern France and Belgium Saturday night, and military headquarters in Berlin said the long-promised blitzkrieg against Great Britain would be launched in the "very near future" with an "absolutely secret weapon."

By JOSEPH W. GRIGG JR., United Press Staff Correspondent

By F.H. FISHER, United Press Staff Correspondent

BERLIN, June 3, 1940 (UP) -- The German war machine will strike smashing blows against Great Britain and France without halting for any "breathing spell" after completing the annihilation of the Allied remnants holding out in Dunkirk, Nazi military spokesmen said tonight.

PARIS, June 3, 1940 (UP) - Waves of German bombing planes raided Paris today, killing 48 persons, damaging many buildings and narrowly missing United States Ambassador William C. Bullitt. One hundred and fifty-five planes took part in the raid.

LONDON, June 5, 1940 (UP) -- A French artillery captain, one of the last of Dunkirk's defenders to escape from the advancing Germans, reached the English coast today after 24 hours of rowing in the choppy Channel, with a story of thousands left stranded on the city's blood-stained and bullet-raked beach.

TOURS, France, June 14, 1940 (UP) - French troops abandoned Paris to the Germans for the second time in 70 years today. They retired on both sides of the city and left it for the Germans to enter at their will.

BERLIN, June 14, 1940 (UP) -- German troops rolled into the streets of Paris from the northwest today and swung triumphantly down the famous Champs Eylsees in the hear of the French capital, it was stated in authorized German sources.

BERLIN, June 14, 1940 (UP) - Germany, with her troops clattering down the Champs Elysee in Paris and smashing ahead on all French fronts, asserted tonight that the total military collapse of France is imminent and that the direct attack on Great Britain will be launched shortly.

BERLIN, June 15, 1940 (UP) -- German troops breached the Maginot Line "on a wide front" tonight and captured the town and citadel of Verdun where the French watchword -- "They shall not pass!"-- was written in the blood of a million men from 1914 to 1918.

LONDON, June 17, 1940 (UP) -- Great Britain, its empire and its national life at stake, faced Germany and Italy alone today with the threat of an imminent German invasion and the possibility that the French fleet, second most powerful in Europe, might be turned against it.

BERLIN, July 6, 1940 (UP) - Adolf Hitler returned to a conqueror's welcome in Berlin today after eight weeks in the field at the head of German armies which overran the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Belgium and France and now are preparing for blitzkrieg against England.

BERLIN, July 19, 1940 (UP) -- Adolf Hitler today addressed an "appeal to reason" to Great Britain to avert "destruction of a great world empire," but he made it clear that rejection would mean an attack with all of the forces at the command of the Axis powers.