Fortress Europe

In British phraseology, Fortress Europe meant the battle honour accorded to Royal Air Force and Allied squadrons during the war, but to qualify, operations had to be made by aircraft based in Britain against targets in Germany, Italy and other parts of German-occupied Europe, in the period from the fall of France to the Normandy invasion.

[citation needed] Simultaneously, the term Festung Europa was being used by Nazi propaganda, namely to refer to Hitler's and the Wehrmacht's plans to fortify the whole of occupied Europe, in order to prevent an invasion by Allied forces.

This use of the term Fortress Europe was subsequently adopted by correspondents and historians in the English language to describe the military efforts of the Axis powers at defending the continent from the Allies.

[citation needed] Currently, within Europe, the term is used either to describe dumping effect of external borders in commercial matters,[1] or as a pejorative description of the state of immigration into the European Union.

This can be in reference either to attitudes towards immigration, to border fortification policies pursued for instance in the Spanish North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla[2] or to increasing level of externalization of borders that is used to help prevent asylum seekers and other migrants from entering the European Union.