Western Europe · Animated schematic fronts

Second World War – Western Europe

The 1940 campaign, Allied landings and the liberation of Western Europe.

Schematic front lines at dozens of dated moments, simplified by hand from overview maps; movement in between is smoothly interpolated, so this is not a day-by-day reconstruction. Three periods follow one another: the campaign of 1940, the occupation (with the demarcation line until November 1942; that is not a fighting front) and the liberation from 6 June 1944. Encirclements and besieged ports appear as rings, advances as arrows, and army groups and armies as counters placed roughly in their sector. Italy, North Africa, Norway, the air war and the war at sea are not shown; the closing edges of the coloured areas follow the coast only in outline.