Sieg im Westen (Victory in the West) is a 1941 German propaganda film the shows Hitler’s greatest military victory — the Blitzkrieg conquest of Holland, Belgium and France in the spring of 1940.It was produced by the Oberkommando des Heeres, the German Army High Command, rather than the Propaganda Ministry of Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels indeed sabotaged its release in minor ways, delaying its premiere and telling propagandists not to promote it. The prologue consists of the Nazi version of European history and the origins of World War II, and the rest deals with the Blitzkrieg in Western Europe of May and June 1940. The movie was made largely from newsreel footage recut into a documentary. The programme provided states that it is to show the audacity of the German offensive and the superiority of German arms, required because they will not be permitted to live in peace. It did not give Hitler or the Nazi party a central role, thus ensuring its disfavor with Goebbels. The Nazi journal “Der deutsche Film” called Sieg im Westen “the greatest of all German newsreels.” Unlike many other German propaganda films, Sieg im Westen does not belittle the enemy, instead admitting that the French soldiers fought gallantly. The war is presented “from above”; the battles are depicted as smooth forward advances on the map, with results from reports at the front. The “encirclement” of Germany is depicted by showing prisoners of war from far-off countries.
The Battle of France, also known as the Fall of France, was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries during the Second World War. In the six weeks from 10 May 1940, German forces defeated Allied forces by mobile operations and conquered France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, bringing land operations on the Western Front to an end until 6 June 1944. Italy entered the war on 10 June 1940 and invaded France over the Alps.
In Fall Gelb (Case Yellow), German armoured units pushed through the Ardennes and then along the Somme valley, cutting off and surrounding the Allied units that had advanced into Belgium, to meet the expected German invasion. When British, Belgian and French forces were pushed back to the sea by the mobile and well-organised German operation, the British evacuated the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and French divisions from Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo.
German forces began Fall Rot (Case Red) on 5 June. The sixty remaining French divisions and two British divisions made a determined resistance but were unable to overcome the German air superiority and armoured mobility. German tanks outflanked the Maginot Line and pushed deep into France, occupying Paris unopposed on 14 June. After the flight of the French government and the collapse of the French army, German commanders met with French officials on 18 June to negotiate an end to hostilities.
On 22 June, the Second Armistice at Compiègne was signed by France and Germany. The neutral Vichy government led by Marshal Philippe Pétain superseded the Third Republic and Germany occupied the north and west coasts of France and their hinterlands. Italy took control of a small occupation zone in the south-east and the Vichy regime retained the unoccupied territory in the south, known as the zone libre. In November 1942, the Germans occupied the zone under Case Anton (Fall Anton), until the Allied liberation in 1944.
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