{"id":16859,"date":"2024-06-17T10:18:55","date_gmt":"2024-06-17T08:18:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/exodus\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T16:24:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T14:24:06","slug":"exodus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/exodus\/","title":{"rendered":"Exodus"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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The 1940 exodus from France was one of the largest population movements of the 20th century. The advance of German troops in May and June 1940 triggered a massive displacement of Dutch, Belgian, and French people. Eight to ten million French civilians fled\u2014nearly a quarter of the population. <\/div>
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Driven by the terror caused by the advance of German troops, the exodus took on massive proportions, sweeping up a large portion of the populations of northern France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Major French cities were affected: Lille was left with only 20,000 of its 200,000 residents, and Tourcoing with 7,000 of its 82,000. Between eight and ten million French civilians fled to southern France. <\/div>

As early as May 1940, the exodus sent entire families\u2014whether they had cars or not\u2014flooding onto the roads, bringing the movement of Allied forces to a standstill.<\/p>

On June 14, as the Wehrmacht (the Nazi German army) approached Paris, the people of \u00cele-de-France, in turn, fled (two million Parisians, or two-thirds of the population within the city limits). On June 11, the French government had abandoned Paris for Bordeaux. <\/p>

Under attack from the Luftwaffe\u2019s (the German Air Force) Stukas, which strafed and bombed the columns of fleeing people, many civilians were massacred. The death toll is estimated at 100,000. The exodus also resulted in a large number of families being separated. Many lost children would never be reunited with their parents: the French Red Cross estimated the number of such children at 90,000. <\/p>

In July, the Vichy government established a repatriation plan, which was complicated by the disorganization of the railways and the demarcation lines. On July 28, the Germans closed the passage to the occupied zone and, on August 1, 1940, imposed regulations classifying refugees into categories. Returns to the occupied zone were authorized except for communists, Freemasons, \u201cAlsatians and Lorrainers who are not of German race,\u201d members of the Belgian and French armed forces, and foreigners. Jews with valid papers were permitted to cross. On February 1, 1941, the government estimated that 7 million French citizens and 1.2 million Belgians, Dutch, and Luxembourgers had experienced the exodus. The cities in the Free Zone were overwhelmed with refugees (denounced by P\u00e9tain as \u201cfugitives\u201d), who were soon joined by demobilized soldiers in a country in utter turmoil. <\/p>

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References<\/p>

\u2014 Alary, Eric, 2013, 2018, *The Exodus: A Forgotten Tragedy*<\/em>, Paris: Perrin, \u201cTempus\u201d series <\/p>

\u2014 Gu\u00e9no, Jean-Pierre, 2015, *Paroles d\u2019exode: Letters and Testimonies from French People on the Road, May\u2013June 1940*<\/em>, Paris: Librio. *Document* series. <\/p><\/div><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 1940 exodus from France was one of the largest population movements of the 20th century. The advance of German troops in May and June 1940 triggered a massive displacement of Dutch, Belgian, and French people. Eight to ten million French civilians fled\u2014nearly a quarter of the population. Driven by the terror caused by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[155],"tags":[],"salle":[183],"source":[],"zone-geo":[],"class_list":["post-16859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notes","salle-3-1-the-involvement-of-jews-immigrants-in-the-war"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16859"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16862,"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16859\/revisions\/16862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16859"},{"taxonomy":"salle","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/salle?post=16859"},{"taxonomy":"source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/source?post=16859"},{"taxonomy":"zone-geo","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museemrjmoi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/zone-geo?post=16859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}