The German armoured advance through the Ardennes, May 1940

Columns of tanks cross open hills, infantry ford streams in the woods, and armoured cars, guns and tanks move up into combat.

Several lanes of tanks move side by side across a wide slope; an officer reads a map on a bank, a crewman with headphones looks through twin eyepieces, and tanks marked with crosses climb banks and roll past on their road wheels. Soldiers scramble down wooded slopes and wade through streams in smoke, haul a light gun on spoked wheels into position, fight beside a tank numbered 212 and run past wheeled armoured cars in a meadow. German newsreel footage.

The main German thrust in May 1940 went not through central Belgium, where the Allies expected it, but through the wooded hills of the Ardennes, which the French command held to be unsuitable for large armoured forces. Seven armoured divisions crossed Luxembourg and southern Belgium in three days and reached the Meuse between Dinant and Sedan on 12 and 13 May.