Battle of Gembloux (1940) 1940
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Date | 14 May 1940 – 15 May 1940 | Wikidata |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1940 | Wikidata P580 (start time) |
| Era | World War II era (1939–1945) | derived from year |
| Location | Belgium | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Europe | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | World War II | Wikidata P361 |
| Coordinates | 50.6000, 4.6660 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
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. The French Corps de Cavalerie (Général René Prioux), advanced to Hannut, to screen the deployment of the rest of the First Army at Gembloux, by delaying a German advance.
After the Battle of Hannut, some 35 km (22 mi) to the north-east, the French retired towards Gembloux and the principal defensive position for the French on the Belgian front.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Battle of Gembloux (1940) (revision 1370110799), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
Nearby battles
- Battle of Gembloux (1578) 1578 · 8 km
- Battle of Ligny 1815 · 12 km
- Battle of Wavre 1815 · 14 km
- Battle of Fleurus (1690) 1690 · 15 km
- Battle of Fleurus (1622) 1622 · 15 km
- Battle of Quatre Bras 1815 · 15 km
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- Siege of Warsaw (1939) 1939
- Action in the Strait of Otranto 1940
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All 178 battles of the World War II →
Browse more: battles in Belgium · Europe · World War II era battles