battle, major, interwar and Second World War
Battle of Arras
Battle of Arras was a battle fought on 21 May 1940 at Arras, in what is now France. It was part of World War II, which ran from 1939 to 1945. The recorded result: German victory.
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Where it sits in World War II
Record
| Date | 21 May 1940 | |
|---|---|---|
| Place | Arras, France 50.250N, 2.700E | |
| Kind | Battle, interwar and Second World War | |
The ground today


The recorded site stands at about 105 m; within 10.0 km the ground runs from 51 to 165 m, 113 m of relief, gently rolling country and today it is 76% cropland, 10% grassland, 9% tree cover.
Elevation from the Copernicus DEM GLO-30 (ESA, Airbus); land cover from ESA WorldCover 2021 (CC BY 4.0), within about 5 km of the recorded site. Computed, not recorded.Nearest engagements
- Siege of Arras 1640, 7.2 km NE
- Siege of Arras 1414, 7.2 km NE
- Siege of Arras 1194, 7.2 km NE
- Battle of Arras 1914, 7.2 km NE
- Battle of Arras 1654, 7.2 km NE
In the same war
- Before: Battle of Montcornet 17 May 1940
- After: Battle of Boulogne 22 May 1940
- All 1155 engagements of World War II
Elsewhere in 1940
- the Blitz United Kingdom
- Bombing of Tokyo Japan
- Japanese invasion of French Indochina Vietnam
- Coventry Blitz United Kingdom
- Hundred Regiments Offensive China
Combat data (CDB90)
| Attacker: BRIT RGT | Defender: GER RGT | |
| Strength | 11,821 | 18,000 |
| Casualties | 410 (2.3%) | |
| Outcome | defender won | |
| Duration | 2 days | |
| Front width | 5 km | |
From the US Army Concepts Analysis Agency Database of Battles (CDB90, battle 659), public domain, in the CC0 tidy edition by Jeffrey B. Arnold. Figures are the database's estimates, compiled in 1990 from published histories, and may differ from the Wikipedia infobox above.
Battle of Arras is one of 4,429 engagements of the 20th century in the atlas and one of 1,495 in present-day France.
Sources
Identity, coordinates, dates and the war from Wikidata Q696839, released under CC0. Result, belligerents, commanders, strength and casualties from the infobox of the English Wikipedia article Battle of Arras (1940), revision 1377436853, read 2026-11-14, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0; the article's text is not reproduced here. Present-day country and state from Natural Earth. Dates before 1582 follow the Julian calendar as recorded.