By May 21, 1940, France was broken. German armored forces, breaking through the dense Ardennes Forest and driving toward French ports along the English Channel had broken the hinge between the British Expeditionary Force and French forces fighting in northern France and Belgium; and the main body of the French army fighting further toward the south. Desperate to sever the German spearhead, British and French tanks and infantry launched an assault at Arras. Their effort failed in its objective—but just may have helped to save the British army.
In its original conception, the plan was for a combined force under Major General Harold Franklyn, consisting of the British 5th and 50th Divisions, supported by the 1st Army Tank Brigade and some French tank forces, to attack southward from the old WWI battlefields of Vimy Ridge and Arras, while larger French forces under their new commander, General Maxime Weygand, attacked generally to the north—pressuring the Germans from opposite directions and ideally chopping their forces in two. Just two days before the coordinated attack was to begin, however, Weygand cancelled his part in it, forcing Franklyn to mostly go it alone. In response, he reduced his objectives to simply pushing the Germans back from Arras.
