Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
Concept
Italian occupation of France
Summary
Italian-occupied France (Occupazione italiana della Francia meridionale; Zone d’occupation italienne en France) was an area of south-eastern France and Monaco occupied by Fascist Italy between 1940 and 1943 in parallel to the German occupation of France. The occupation had two phases, divided by Case Anton in November 1942 in which the Italian zone expanded significantly. Italian forces retreated from France in September 1943 in the aftermath of the fall of the Fascist regime in Italy, and German Wehrmacht forces occupied the abandoned areas until the Liberation (Operation Dragoon, 1944).
The initial Italian occupation of France territory occurred in June 1940; it was then expanded in November 1942.
The German offensive against the Low Countries and France began on 10 May and by the middle of May German forces were on French soil. By the start of June, British forces were evacuating from the pocket in Northern France. On 10 June 1940, Italy declared war against the French and British. Ten days later, the Italian army invaded France. On 24 June 1940, after the Fall of France, Italy and France signed the Franco-Italian Armistice, two days after the cessation of hostilities between France and Germany, agreeing upon an Italian zone of occupation.
This initial zone of occupation annexed officially to the Kingdom of Italy was and contained 28,500 inhabitants. The largest town contained within the initial Italian zone of occupation was Menton. The main city inside the "demilitarized zone" of from the former border with the Italian Alpine Wall was Nice.
In November 1942, in conjunction with Case Anton, the German occupation of most of Vichy France, the Royal Italian Army (Regio Esercito) expanded its occupation zone. Italian forces took control of Toulon and all of Provence up to the river Rhône, with the island of Corsica (claimed by the Italian irredentists). Nice and Corsica were to be annexed to Italy (as had happened in 1940 with Menton), in order to fulfil the aspirations of Italian irredentists (including local groups such as the Nizzardo Italians and the Corsican Italians).
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.