First Army (France)

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The French First Army was a field army of France that fought during World War I and World War II.

1 First World War
2 Second World War
- 2.1 1940
- 2.2 1944-1945
3 Commanders
- 3.1 WWI
- 3.2 WWII
4 References

[edit] First World War

At the beginning of WWI the First Army was put in the charge of General Auguste Dubail and took part, along with the French Second Army, in the Invasion of Lorraine. The First Army intended to take the strongly defended town of Sarrebourg. German Crown Prince Rupprecht, commander of the German Sixth Army, was tasked with stopping the French invasion. The French attack was repulsed by Rupprecht and his stratagem of pretending to retreat and then strongly attacking back. On August 20, Rupprecht launched a big counter-offensive, driving the French armies out. Dubail was replaced in 1915. A frantic 1916 saw four different commanders command the First Army; an even more frantic 1917 saw five different commanders at the helm.

[edit] Second World War

[edit] 1940

During WWII the Army formed part of the forces ranged against the German Army during the Battle of France. When the Wehrmacht invaded France and the Low Countries in 1940, the First Army was one of the many armies including the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) that advanced north to stop the German armies. On May 21, 1940, the First Army was one of the armies trapped at a vast pocket with their backs to the sea that would eventually result in the Dunkirk evacuations. As the Germans moved in, much of the First Army was hopelessly surrounded at Lille but resisted fiercely. By the time of the Dunkirk evacuations of early June it was forced to surrender, though a portion escaped with the British troops. By the end of that month the Western campaign was over, with Germany emerging victorious with a puppet Vichy government led by Marshal Pétain being set up in the southern half of France.

[edit] 1944-1945

French Army B under the command General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny landed in southern France after the Operation Dragoon, the Allied invasion of the area. On September 25, 1944 French Army B was redesignated French First Army. Liberating Marseille, Toulon, and Lyon, it later formed the right flank of the Allied Southern Group of Armies at the southern end of the Allied front line, adjacent to Switzerland. It commanded two corps, the French I and II Corps. The French First Army liberated the southern area of the Vosges Mountains, including Belfort. Its operations in the area of Burnhaupt destroyed the German IV Luftwaffe Korps in November 1944. In February 1945, with the assistance of the U.S. XXI Corps, the First Army collapsed the Colmar Pocket and cleared the west bank of the Rhine River of Germans in the area south of Strasbourg. In March 1945, the First Army fought through the Siegfried Line fortifications in the Bienwald Forest near Lauterbourg. Subsequently, the First Army crossed the Rhine near Speyer and captured Karlsruhe and Stuttgart. Operations by the First Army in April 1945 encircled and captured the German XVIII S.S. Korps in the Black Forest and cleared southwestern Germany. At the end of the war, the motto of the French First Army was Rhin et Danube, referring to the two great German rivers that it had reached and crossed during its combat operations.