Editing Free France (section)

==Campaigns in France and Germany 1944–1945==
{{Main|Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine|Western Allied invasion of Germany}}
[[File:SC 332472 - French tankers of the 2nd French Armored Division look over at Utah Beach from the deck of LST -517. They are soon to land at the Normandy beachhead. (50067541103).jpg|thumb|French tankers of the [[2nd Armored Division (France)|2nd French Armored Division]] in August 1944]]
By September 1944, the Free French forces stood at 560,000 (including 176,500 White French from North Africa, 63,000 metropolitan French, 233,000 Maghrebis and 80,000 from Black Africa).{{sfnp|Muracciole|1996|p=67}}<ref name="Benjamin Stora 1995">Benjamin Stora, " L'Armée d'Afrique : les oubliés de la libération ", TDC, no 692, 15 mars 1995, Paris, CNDP, 1995.</ref> The GPRF set about raising new troops to participate in the [[Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine|advance to the Rhine]] and the [[Western Allied invasion of Germany|invasion of Germany]], using the FFI as [[En cadre|military cadre]]s and manpower pools of experienced fighters to allow a very large and rapid expansion of the French Liberation Army. It was well equipped and well supplied despite the economic disruption brought by the occupation thanks to Lend-Lease, and their number rose to 1 million by the end of the year. French forces were fighting in [[Alsace-Lorraine]], the [[Alps]], and besieging the heavily fortified [[Submarine pen#France|French Atlantic coast submarine bases]] that remained Hitler-mandated [[Atlantic pockets|stay-behind "fortresses"]] in ports along the Atlantic coast like [[La Rochelle]] and [[Saint-Nazaire]] until the German capitulation in May 1945.

Also in September 1944, the Allies having outrun their [[military logistics|logistic]] tail (the "[[Red Ball Express]]"), the front stabilised along Belgium's northern and eastern borders and in Lorraine. From then on it moved at a slower pace, first to the [[Siegfried Line]] and then in the early months of 1945 to the [[Rhine]] in increments. For instance, the [[1 Army Corps (France)#World War 2|Ist Corps]] seized the [[Belfort Gap]] in a [[coup de main]] offensive in November 1944, their German opponents believing they had entrenched for the winter.

[[File:Serment de Koufra 2 mars 1941.JPG|thumb|right|A plaque commemorating the [[Battle of Kufra (1941)#Oath of Kufra|Oath of Kufra]] in near [[Strasbourg Cathedral|the cathedral]] of [[Strasbourg]]]]
The French 2nd Armoured Division, tip of the spear of the Free French forces that had participated in the Normandy Campaign and liberated Paris, went on to [[French 2nd Armoured Division#Alsace .26 Lorraine|liberate Strasbourg]] on 23 November 1944, thus fulfilling the [[Battle of Kufra (1941)#Oath of Kufra|Oath of Kufra]] made by its commanding officer General Leclerc almost four years earlier. The unit under his command, barely above [[Company (military unit)|company]] size when it had captured the Italian fort, had grown into a full-strength armoured division.

The spearhead of the Free [[French First Army]] that had landed in Provence was the [[1 Army Corps (France)#World War 2|Ist Corps]]. Its leading unit, the [[French 1st Armoured Division]], was the first Western Allied unit to reach the Rhône (25 August 1944), the Rhine (19 November 1944) and the [[Danube]] (21 April 1945). On 22 April 1945, it captured Sigmaringen in Baden-Württemberg, where the last Vichy regime exiles, including Marshal Pétain, were hosted by the Germans in one of the ancestral castles of the [[Hohenzollern]] dynasty.

They participated in stopping [[Operation Nordwind]], the very last German major offensive on the western front in January 1945, and in collapsing the [[Colmar Pocket]] in January–February 1945, capturing and destroying most of the German [[19th Army (Wehrmacht)|XIXth Army]]. Operations by the First Army in April 1945 encircled and captured the German [[XVIII SS Corps]] in the [[Black Forest]], and cleared and occupied south-western Germany. At the end of the war, the motto of the French First Army was {{lang|fr|Rhin et Danube}}, referring to the two great German rivers that it had reached and crossed during its combat operations.

In May 1945, by the [[End of World War II in Europe|end of the war in Europe]], the Free French forces comprised 1,300,000 personnel, and included [[List of French divisions in World War II#Divisions of Free France.2C the Tunisian Campaign.2C and the Army of Liberation|around forty division]]s making it the fourth largest Allied army in Europe behind the Soviet Union, the US and Britain.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Talbot|first1=C. Imlay|last2=Duffy Toft|first2=Monica|title=The Fog of Peace and War Planning: Military and Strategic Planning Under Uncertainty|publisher=Routledge, 2007|isbn=9781134210886|page=227|date=24 January 2007}}</ref> The GPRF sent an [[French Far East Expeditionary Corps|expeditionary force]] to the Pacific to retake French Indochina from the Japanese, but [[Surrender of Japan|Japan surrendered]] and [[Viet Minh]] took advantage by the successful [[August Revolution]] before they could arrive in theatre.

At that time, General [[Alphonse Juin]] was the [[chief of staff]] of the [[French army]], but it was General [[François Sevez]] who represented France at [[Reims]] on 7 May, while General [[Jean de Lattre de Tassigny]] led the French delegation at Berlin on [[V-E day]], as he was the commander of the French First Army. At the [[Yalta Conference]], Germany had been divided into Soviet, American and British occupation zones, but France was then given an occupation zone in Germany, as well as in Austria and in the city of [[Berlin]]. It was not only the role that France played in the war which was recognised, but its important strategic position and significance in the [[Cold War]] as a major democratic, capitalist nation of Western Europe in holding back the influence of communism on the continent.

Approximately 58,000 men were killed fighting in the Free French forces between 1940 and 1945.<ref>Sumner and Vauvillier 1998, p. 38</ref>