defenses like a harvester’s sickle cut through soft stalks of grass or grain.
OKH set up a new “panzer group” of five armored and four motorized divisions under General Ewald von Kleist containing Guderian’s 19th Corps, Hans Reinhardt’s 41st Corps, and Gustav von Wietersheim’s 14th Motorized Corps. These were to be
At the same time Bock’s Army Group B remained strong enough, with three armies, to attack into northern Belgium and Holland. Bock had the remaining three panzer divisions—two in the 16th Corps under Erich Hoepner to lead his assault, and one (the 9th under Alfred Hubicki) detailed for the Holland operation.
It was a radical and astonishing transformation and the best military decision Adolf Hitler ever made. By shifting the
Meanwhile the situation in the Allied camp was changing dramatically. French Premier Edouard Daladier could not summon the courage to dismiss General Maurice Gamelin, the French commander in chief, who was proving to be incompetent.
The French parliament was angry with Daladier because the Allies had done nothing to help Finland, while the Germans were massing on the frontiers of the Low Countries. On March 18, 1940, he lost a vote of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies. Paul Reynaud formed a new government, but had to accept Daladier as minister of defense, and Daladier held on to Gamelin.
This did not sit well with Reynaud, and he resigned, but the president of the republic, Albert Lebrun, induced him to run the government on a provisional basis. Thus France at the moment of its highest need found itself saddled with a weak and indecisive government.
A few weeks later in Britain, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain could not present a convincing explanation for the Norwegian fiasco to the House of Commons, and his support, already weak because of his appeasement of Hitler, evaporated. On the evening of May 9, 1940, Labour Party leaders Arthur Greenwood and Clement Attlee refused to form a unified government with the Conservatives so long as Chamberlain remained chief of the Conservative Party. This forced his resignation.
The next day, the very day the Germans attacked in the west, Winston Churchill—the strongest and most eloquent voice in England against Hitler—seized the rudder of a unity government. Chamberlain belonged to it as Lord President (a job with little power), Lord Halifax led the Foreign Office, and Anthony Eden switched from the Colonial Office to the War Ministry. Attlee became Lord Privy Seal and deputy premier, while Greenwood became minister without portfolio. Churchill demanded for himself the newly formed Ministry of Defense. From then on, he could make agreements with the chiefs of staff over the head of the minister of war.
The German forces arrayed on the frontiers of Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg on May 10, 1940, presented a tremendously different picture from armies that had gone before. Ordinary infantry divisions were noticeably absent. These traditional orthodox mainstays that marched to battle and fought on foot had been preempted. In the campaign about to erupt, they were too slow to have decisive jobs. The real agents of victory were in part a few airborne troops attached to the northern group, but mainly the new German
The campaign in the west was going to be decided by only part of these fast troops—seven panzer divisions in Army Group A—a force representing only 8 percent of total German strength. The three panzer divisions of Army Group B were to play important roles. But the actual disruption of the Allied position took place in the first phase of the campaign, and the seven armored divisions in Army Group A were the instruments.
The Luftwaffe had an important task in assisting the panzers. Messerschmitt 109 Bf fighters were to destroy enemy aircraft, and the bombers, principally Stukas, were to give ground support on the battle line.
Behind the fast troops on the German right or northern flank were twenty-five infantry divisions. Stacked up behind Army Group A in the middle were thirty-eight infantry divisions. Their job was to fill out the corridor that the “panzer wedge” was to open. In the south along the Maginot Line were eighteen infantry divisions in Army Group C under Wilhelm von Leeb, with only a holding job.
The Allies had 3,370,000 men in 143 divisions—nine of them British, twenty-two Belgian, eight Dutch, the remainder French. The Germans committed 3 million men in 141 divisions. The Allies had almost 14,000 cannons, the Germans just over 7,000. However, the Allied guns were principally field artillery pieces designed to assist infantry. The Allies possessed too few guns required for the war about to be fought: antiaircraft and antitank weapons.
The Allies had more armor, about 3,400 tanks to the Germans’ 2,700. But Allied armor was mostly spread out among the infantry divisions, whereas all German tanks were concentrated into the ten panzer divisions.
Only in the air was Germany clearly superior: 4,000 first-line aircraft to 3,000 Allied planes. Worse, many Allied planes were obsolete and their bombers were designed to strike area or general objectives, not targets on the battlefields as were the 400 Stukas. The French thought they could use medium bombers as “hedge hoppers” to attack enemy troops. But when they tried it they found the bombers were extremely vulnerable to ground fire.
The French had only sixty-eight Dewoitine 520 fighters, their only craft with performance approaching that of the 520 Messerschmitt 109 Bfs. The British Royal Air Force held back in England the competitive Spitfire, though a few Hurricanes were in France and could challenge the Messerschmitt on only slightly inferior terms.
While the Germans were placing their faith in a new type of warfare based on fast-moving tanks supported by dive-bombers, the French (and to a large degree the British) were aiming to fight World War I all over again.
The French army was by far the strongest challenge, but its doctrine required a continuous front, strongly manned by infantry and backed up by artillery. The French expected the enemy to attack this front fruitlessly and wear down his strength. Only when the enemy was weakened and finally stopped did doctrine permit the French army to go over to the offensive. An attack was always to be a
When the infantry attack started it had to come behind a massive artillery barrage. The foot soldiers could advance only 1,500 meters before stopping to allow the artillery to shift its fires. After several such bounds, they had to stop until the guns could be moved forward.
All this required a great deal of time. A training exercise in 1938, for example, took eight days of preparation for an attack that was to last two days.
Guderian, who was fully aware of the enemy’s battle system, was confident that the speed of the panzer advance would preclude the French from ever having time to mount a counterattack. The situation would change by the hour, and the French would never catch up. This meant to Guderian that the panzers did not have to worry about their flanks. They would reach the English Channel and victory before the French could even begin to react.
The German high commanders, who thought more like their French opposite numbers than like Guderian, were not so sure. Out of these conceptual differences much conflict would emerge.
3 THE DEFEAT OF FRANCE
TRUE TO THEIR PLAN, THE GERMANS DELIVERED THEIR FIRST BLOWS IN HOLLAND and northern Belgium. The strikes were so sensational and convincing that they acted like a pistol in starting the Allies’ dash
