Zone interdite

[3] At the end of May 1940 (before the Armistice), Hitler instructed Wilhelm Stuckart, State Secretary in the Ministry of Interior, to make proposals for a new western frontier.

[3] The refugees who had fled the German advance during the Battle of France were not initially allowed to return to the territory, but passes were gradually issued for workers in short-staffed occupations.

[3] Land redistribution to German peasants was however not immediately possible because of the limited quantity of potential settlers,[3] a problem exacerbated by the ever-increasing manpower needs of the Wehrmacht.

In any event, the German forces guarding the line were insufficient in number to prevent the return of the territory's inhabitants, and thus by the end of 1940 only about a million of them were still missing (amounting roughly to one-seventh of the pre-war population).

[3] After the start of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, the German ambitions to expand the Reich westward beyond annexation of Alsace-Lorraine and Luxembourg were temporarily abandoned.

Occupied France during World War II, showing German and Italian occupation zones , the zone occupée , the zone libre , the Military Administration in Belgium and Northern France , annexed Alsace-Lorraine , and the zone interdite .