Battle of Gembloux

1940 CE.

Shown on the map at 50.600°, 4.666°.

The Battle of Gembloux (or Battle of the Gembloux Gap) was fought between French and German forces in May 1940 during the Second World War. On 10 May 1940, The Wehrmacht, invaded Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Belgium under the operational plan Fall Gelb (Case Yellow). Allied armies responded with the Dyle Plan (Breda variant), intended to halt the Germans in Belgium, believing it to be the main German thrust. The Allies committed their best and most mobile to an advance into Belgium on 10 May and on 12 May, the Germans began the second part of Fall Gelb, the Manstein Plan an advance through the Ardennes, to reach the English Channel and cut off the Allied forces in Belgium. Unaware that the German invasion of the Low Countries was a decoy, the French Army intended to halt the German advance into central Belgium and France on two defensive positions at the towns of Hannut and Gembloux. The French First Army, the most powerful Allied army, was to defend the Gembloux–Wavre axis.

Text from the Wikipedia article Battle of Gembloux (1940), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

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