battle, major, interwar and Second World War
Battle of Sedan
Battle of Sedan was a battle fought on 13 May 1940 at Sedan, 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 | 13 May 1940 | |
|---|---|---|
| Place | Sedan, France 49.703N, 4.942E | |
| Kind | Battle, interwar and Second World War | |
| Strength | 20,000 men; 300 tanks; 174 artillery pieces; 152 bombers; 250 fighter aircraft | 60,000 men; 41,000 vehicles; 771 tanks; 1,470 aircraft; 141 artillery pieces; 96 rubber boats |
| Casualties and losses | 5,000+ killed, wounded, or captured; 167 aircraft | 5,067 killed or wounded (12–17 May); at least 81 rubber boats |
| Commanders |
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The ground today


The recorded site stands at about 148 m; within 10.0 km the ground runs from 0 to 359 m, 359 m of relief, hilly country and today it is 38% tree cover, 28% grassland, 17% built-up.
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
- Battle of La Marfée 1641, 0.1 km W
- Battle of the Meuse 1914, 0.3 km SE
- Battle of Sedan 1870, 0.5 km SE
- Battle of Bazeilles 1870, 3.7 km SE
- Battle of Stonne 1940, 17 km S
Contested ground: this site was fought over 5 times between 1641 and 1940.
In the same war
- Before: Battle of the Afsluitdijk 12 May 1940
- After: German invasion of the Netherlands 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: GER 19TH PZ CORPS | Defender: FR 2ND ARMY(+) | |
| Strength | 48,000 | 60,000 |
| Casualties | 800 (1.7%) | 5,000 (8.3%) |
| Mission accomplishment, 1 to 10 | 8 | 5 |
| Outcome | attacker won | |
| Duration | 2 days | |
| Front width | 9 km | 9 km |
| Attacker advanced | 10 km | |
From the US Army Concepts Analysis Agency Database of Battles (CDB90, battle 486), 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 Sedan 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 Q269207, released under CC0. Result, belligerents, commanders, strength and casualties from the infobox of the English Wikipedia article Battle of Sedan (1940), revision 1382949448, 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.