In
1939, a group of senior German
Army officers, including Erich
von Manstein and
Franz
Halder, devised a plan to inflict a major defeat on the
French
Army in northern France.
The Manstein
Plan,
as it became known, included a attack through southern Belgium
that avoided the Maginot
Line.
The ultimate objective was to reach the
Channel coast and to force the French government to surrender.
Adolf
Hitler gave his approval to the Manstein
Plan on
17th February, 1940, but it was not activated until the 10th May,
when the Luftwaffe
bombed Dutch and Belgian airfields and the German Army captured
Moerdijk and Rotterdam. Fedor
von Bock and
the 9th Panzer Division, using its Blitzkreig
strategy,
advanced quickly into the Netherlands. Belgium was also invaded
and the French 7th Army moved forward to help support the Dutch
and Belgian forces.
The
7th Panzer Division under Erwin
Rommel and the 19th Corps commanded by Heinz
Guderian and the 6th and 8th Panzers led by Gerd
von Rundstedt, went through the heavily wooded and
semi-mountainous area of the Ardennes, an area, north of the
Maginot
Line.
The French military had wrongly believed that the Ardennes was
impassable to tanks. Seven panzer
divisions reached the Meuse River at Dinant on 12th May and the
following day the French government was forced to abandon Paris.
German
forces led by Paul
von Kliest, Erwin
Rommel, Heinz
Guderian and Gerd
von Rundstedt advanced towards the Channel. Except for a
counterattack by 4th Armoured Division led by Charles
De Gaulle, at Montcornet (17th May) and Laon
(27th-29th May) the German forces encountered very little
resistance.
Winston
Churchill now ordered the implementation of Operation
Dynamo, a plan to evacuate of troops and equipment from
the French port of Dunkirk,
that had been drawn up by General John
Gort, the Commander in Chief of the British
Expeditionary Force (BEF). Between 27th May and 4th June,
1940, a total of 693 ships brought back 338,226 people back to
Britain. Of these 140,000 were members of the French
Army. All heavy equipment was abandoned and left in
France.
The
French
Army tried to hold the line along the Somme and the
Aisne. Now clearly outnumbered, the troops were forced to
withdraw to the Loire.
Paul
Reynaud and his government now left the French capital and
moved to Tours. On 14th June, the Germans occupied Paris. Reynaud
now realized that the German offensive could not be halted and
suggested that the government should move to territories it owned
in North Africa. This was opposed by his vice-premier,
Henri-Philippe
Petain, and the supreme commander of the armed forces,
General Maxime
Weygand. They insisted that the government should remain in
France and seek an armistice.
Outvoted,
Reynaud resigned and President Albert
Lebrun, appointed Petain as France's new premier. He
immediately began negotiations with Adolf
Hitler and on 22nd June signed an armistice with Germany.
The terms of the agreement divided France
into occupied and unoccupied zones, with a rigid demarcation line
between the two. The Germans would directly control three-fifths
of the country, an area that included northern and western France
and the entire Atlantic coast. The remaining section of the
country would be administered by the French government at Vichy
under Marshal Henri-Philippe
Petain.
Other
provisions of the armistice included the surrender of all Jews
living in France to the Germans. The French
Army was disbanded except for a force of 100,000 men
to maintain domestic order. The 1.5 million French soldiers
captured by the Germans were to remain prisoners of war. The
French government also agreed to stop members of its armed forces
from leaving the country and instructed its citizens not to fight
against the Germans. Finally, France had to pay the occupation
costs of the German troops.
An
estimated 390,000 soldiers were killed defending France
whereas around 35,000 German soldiers lost their lives during the
invasion.
(1)
Adolf
Hitler, Directive No. 13 (23rd May, 1940)
The
next object of our operations is to annihilate the French,
English and Belgian forces which are surrounded by Artois and
Flanders, by a concentric attack by our northern flank and by the
swift seizure of the Channel coast in this area.
(2)
General Franz
Halder, German chief of staff, kept a diary during May,
1940.
24th May, 1940: The left-wing, which
consists of armoured and motorized forces and has no enemy in
front of it, will be stopped dead in its tracks upon direct order
from the Fuhrer. The finishing off of the encircled enemy army is
to be left to the Luftwaffe.
30th
May, 1940: Bad weather has grounded the Luffwaffe and now we must
stand by and watch countless thousands of the enemy getting away
to England under our noses.
(3)
Arthur
Harris wrote about the
invasion of France in his book Bomber Command
(1947)
Before the war the French
were promised that the whole of the R.A.F.'s bomber force would
be used to resist an invasion of France, and that all our bomber
squadrons should operate, in the
event of invasion, under the
general direction of the French High Command. This included, not
only the Advanced Air Striking Force of short-range bombers which
was actually based in France, but also the longer-range bombers
in England. The French had been much afraid, before the war, that
the English would proceed at once to the strategic bombing of
German industries and leave the air support of the French army to
the French; this was naturally an alarming prospect, the French
air force being what it was, but they were reassured, and
promised everything we could give them. At the same time we had
to warn them not to hope for too much from the bombers. We knew
that the enemy would have vastly superior numbers of aircraft,
that most of our bases would have to be far from the battle-front
because we should not have the facilities for handling even a
force of medium bombers in France, and that the Germans would
have at their disposal an immense and therefore at that time an
indestructible network of communications. Nevertheless the French
continued to expect much from the bombing of railways behind the
German lines and were inclined to think, when our bombing proved
as
ineffectual as we had said it would be, that this was
because the R.A.F., in spite of all its promises, had
concentrated on targets east of the Rhine.
(4)
In his diary George
VI recorded his thoughts
on the German invasion of France.
23rd
May, 1940: Baron Newall (Marshall of the Royal Air Force) came in
the evening. He had just left a Chiefs of Staff meeting with the
Prime Minister and he told me that the situation in France was
critical. Viscount Gort (commander of the British Expeditionary
Force in France) had sent a message to say that he was short of
food and ammunition. Owing to the rapid advance of the German
tanks and motored divisions, his lines of communication had been
cut through Amiens, and food had to be sent to France from here
by air. German tanks had reached Boulogne, and had captured a
fort above the town and were shelling the harbour. Newall was
sorry to come with such a gloomy account and said that the French
command must have "gone to seed" behind the Maginot
Line.
This
news was so worrying that I sent a message to Winston asking him
to to come and see me after dinner. The Prime Minister came at
10.30 p.m. He told me that if the French plan made out by Maxine
Weygand (French military commander) did not come off, he would
have to order the British Expeditionary Force back to England.
This operation would mean the loss of all guns, tanks, ammunition
and all stores in France. The question was whether we could get
the troops back from Calais and Dunkirk. The very thought of
having to order this movement is appalling, as the loss of life
will probably be immense.
(5)
General Charles
De Gaulle, attempted to halt the German invasion of France at
Abbeville. He wrote about these events in his book, The Call
to Honour (1955)
By
the evening (28th May, 1940) the objective was reached. Only Mont
Caubert still held out. There were a great many dead from both
sides on the field. Our tanks had been sorely tried. Barely a
hundred were still in working order. But all the same, an
atmosphere of victory hovered over the battlefield. Everyone held
his head high. The wounded were smiling. The guns fired gaily.
Before us, in a pitched battle, the Germans had retired.
Alas!
In the course of the Battle of France, what other ground had been
or would be won, except this strip of fourteen kilometres deep?
If the State had played its part; if, while there was time, it
had directed its military system towards enterprise, not
passivity; if our leaders had in consequence had at their
disposal the instruments for shock and manoeuvre which had been
often suggested to the politicians and to the High Command; then
our arms would have had their chance, and France would have found
her soul again
(6)
Erwin
Rommel, led the 7th Panzer Division that broke through French
defences in May, 1940.
The way to the west was
now open. The moon was up and for the time being we could expect
no real darkness. I had already given orders, in the plan for the
breakthrough, for the leading tanks to scatter the road and
verges with machine and anti-tank gunfire at intervals during the
drive to Avesnes, which I hoped would prevent the enemy from
laying mines.
The
tanks now rolled in a long column through the line of
fortifications and on towards the first houses, which had been
set alight by our fire. Occasionally an enemy machine-gun or
antitank gun fired, but none of their shots came anywhere near
us.
Troops
lay bivouacked beside the road, military vehicles stood parked in
farmyards and in some places on the road itself. Civilians and
French troops, their faces distorted with terror, lay huddled in
the ditches, alongside hedges and in every hollow beside the
road. We passed refugee columns, the carts abandoned by their
owners, who had fled in panic into the fields.
On
we went, at a steady speed, toward our objective. Every so often
a quick glance at the map by a shaded light and a short wireless
message to Divisional HQ to report the position and thus the
success of 25th Panzer Regiment. Every so often a look out of the
hatch to assure myself that there was still no resistance and the
contact was being maintained to the rear. The flat countryside
lay spread out around us under the cold light of the moon.
We
were through the Maginot Line! It was hardly conceivable.
Twenty-two years before we had stood for four and a half years
before this selfsame enemy and had won victory after victory and
yet finally lost the war. And now we had broken through the
renowned Maginot Line and were driving deep into enemy territory.
(7)
In his book, Their Finest Hour, Winston
Churchill, reported on how he heard from Paul
Reynaud how France had been defeated during the Western
Offensive.
About half-past seven in
the morning of the 15th (May 1940) I was woken up with the news
that Paul Reynaud was on the telephone at my bedside. He spoke in
English, and evidently under stress. "We have been
defeated." As I did not immediately respond he said again:
"We are beaten; we have lost the battle." I said:
"Surely it can't have happened so soon?" But he
replied: "The front is broken near Sedan."
(8)
After the war General Guenther
Blumentritt wrote
about the defeat of France
in June 1940.
In the 1940 campaign the French
fought bravely, but they were no longer the French of 1914-18 of
Verdun and the Somme. The British fought much more stubbornly, as
they did in 1914-18. The Belgians in part fought gallantly; the
Dutch, only a few days. We had superiority in the air combined
with more up-to-date tanks than the French. Above all, the German
tank troops were more mobile, quicker and better at in-fighting,
and able while in movement to turn wherever required by their
leader. This, the French at that time were unable to do. They
still thought and fought more in the tradition of the First World
War. They were not up to date either in leadership or in wireless
control. When they wanted to change direction on the move, they
had to halt first, give fresh orders, and only then were they
able to start again. Their tank tactics were out of date-but they
were brave!
(9)
General Harold
Alexander served under
General John
Gort who gave him the task of planning the rear guard action
that enabled the British
Expeditionary Force to be evacuated from Dunkirk.
At
Charleville, on 24 May, when the B.E.F. was absolutely ripe for
the plucking, Hitler informed his astonished generals that
Britain was 'indispensable' to the world and that he had
therefore resolved to respect her integrity and, if possible,
ally himself with her. Perhaps a less fanciful explanation of
Hitler's attitude is supplied by Ribbentrop's representative at
the Fuhrer's headquarters, who has left on record the comment:
"Hitler personally intervened to allow the British to
escape. He was convinced that to destroy their army would be to
force them to fight to the bitter end."
On
the military side the facts are clearer. On 23 May Field-Marshal
von Rundstedt, commanding Army Group A, halted
General
Guderian's XIX Army Corps when two of its panzer divisions were
heading for Dunkirk, not twenty miles distant and with little or
no opposition ahead. The British counter-attack at Arras on 21
May, though undertaken by no more than two mixed columns, each
comprising a tank battalion, an infantry battalion, a field
battery, an anti-tank battery, and a machine-gun company, had
caused him some concern. He therefore called the halt in order to
"allow the situation to clarify itself and keep our forces
concentrated". The panzers had just reached the Channel, and
the success of this British counterattack engendered the fear of
a larger operation that would cut them off from their supporting
infantry. The next morning he received a visit from the Fuhrer,
who confirmed the stop order. The panzers were not to be risked
in a possibly flooded area but preserved for future
operations-presumably against the French Army. On the other hand,
the Luftwaffe's 'field of action' was not to be restricted.
Actually,
on the available evidence, there can be little doubt that it was
at the particular instance of the Luftwaffe's commander-in-chief,
Field-Marshal Goering, that in the upshot the B.E.F. Was "left
to the Luftwaffe". Guderian was to write, bitterly, of the
first day of the evacuation, 26 May: "We watched the
Luftwaffe attack. We saw also the armada of great and little
ships, by means of which the British were evacuating their
forces." Guderian's bitterness was shared by the whole of
the German Army High Command.
(10)
Sonia
Tomara, New
York Tribune (14th
June, 1940)
For four days and four nights I
have shared the appalling hardship of 5,000,000 French refugees
who are now fleeing down all the roads of France leading to the
south. My story is the typical story of nine-tenths of these
refugees.
I
left Paris Monday night, June 10, in a big car which was to take
me, my sister, Irene Tomara, and a Canadian doctor, William
Douglas, who has been working with the American and civilian
refugees. We loaded our car with whatever we could carry. We had
enough gasoline to take us at least to Bordeaux. It was quite
dark when we left. All days cars had been going toward the
southern gates of Paris. Just as we departed dark clouds rose
above the town, obscuring the rising crescent of the moon. I
thought at first it was a storm. Then I understood it was a smoke
screen the French had laid down to save the city from bombing.
We
drove across the Seine bridge and in complete darkness past the
Montparnasse station, in which a desperate crowd was camping. We
found the so-called Italian Gate and drove past it, risking all
the time the chance of being hit by trucks. But all went well for
about fifteen miles. Then, as we started up the first hill, the
gears of our car refused to work and the car would not move.
We
managed to pull off the road and park. We were in a small suburb
of Paris. As nothing could be done during the dark hours, we
rolled into our sleeping bags in a ditch alongside the road and
tried to sleep. But cars roared by us incessantly. Then came an
air-raid alarm. Then the cars started again.
When
dawn came we tried to get the car going. It would not start. We
waited for hours for a mechanic, while cars passed at the rate of
twenty a minute. Then we learned there were no mechanics. They
had all been called into the army. But the driver of a truck
stopped and inspected the car. He said it could not be repaired
on the road.
We
tried to buy a little truck that could take our luggage. Finally
the gendarmes on the road took pity on us and stopped a military
truck, asking its driver to tow us. Fortunately we had a chain.
We started off at noon on the road to Fontainebleau. At that time
the road was a dense stream of army and factory trucks carrying
big machines. We drove all day, and at 8 p.m. got into
Fontainebleau.
In
Fontainebleau we located a garage. The mechanic looked at the car
and said it could not be repaired in less than two days. "We
have no men to repair it, anyway," the manager of the garage
said. "We work only for the army." We passed the night
at a hotel and in the morning started to look for a truck that
could tow us. Douglas found a youngster who had a country truck,
but no gasoline. He was going back to Paris. We promised him
gasoline and he said he would take us to Orleans and then drive
to Paris.
We
were abandoning our car, which was worth at least 40,000 francs
(approximately $875), but money had ceased to have significance.
We reloaded our bags on the truck, which had no top, and sat on
them. It was 5 p.m. We drove five miles without difficulty and
then got into a stream of refugees and army cars. Refugees
blocked the road by trying to get past the main line of cars,
thus interfering with oncoming traffic.
At
10 p.m. we had driven less than fifteen miles from Fontainebleau.
The boy driving our car was in despair. He wanted to turn back to
Paris, but we would not let him. We saw thousands of cars by the
roadsides, without gasoline or broken down.
We
drove on in the night. Presently the road cleared, but we were
off our route. Soldiers had detoured traffic to permit movement
of military cars. We were driving south instead of toward
Orleans. In a small village we turned off and started at a good
speed through the dead of night, with lights turned off. It was
fantastic. The clouds parted and the moon came up. The country
seemed phantom-like. There were piles of stones in front of each
village we passed, and peasants with rifles guarded these
barricades. They looked at our papers and let us pass.
We
arrived before the Orleans station at 3 a.m. on Thursday. After
three nights and two days we had made only seventy miles. The
scene near the station was appalling. People lay on the floor
inside and the town square was filled. We piled our baggage and
waited until daylight.
There
was nothing to eat in the town, no rooms in the hotels, no cars
for sale or hire, no gasoline anywhere. Yet a steady stream of
refugees was coming in, men, women and children, all desperate,
not knowing where to go or how.
I
walked around and found a truck that was fairly empty. I talked
to the driver, offering him money to take me to Tours. He would
take us near Tours. For food, we had only a little wine, some
stale bread and a can of ham.
The
scene of the refugees around the station was the most horrible I
had ever seen, worse than the refugees in Poland. Fortunately,
there was no bombing. Had there been any attacks it would have
been too ghastly for words. Children were crying. There was no
milk, no bread. Yet social workers were doing their best and
groups were led away all the time, but new ones continued to
arrive.
All
morning we sought means of transportation. There was none. I
decided to go to Tours. I started to walk in the rain with my
typewriter and sleeping bag, at last getting a lift in a car
which moved slowly through a mob of refugees moving in the
opposite direction. In Tours, I learned that the government had
left. Also gone were most newspapermen, but a press wireless
operator and the French censor were still there.
As
I finish this story there is a German air raid. The sound of
bombs is terrific. I hope the German bombers have not hit at the
road which leads to the south, for there refugees are packed in
fleeing crowds.
The
catastrophe that has befallen France has no parallel in human
history. Nobody knows how or when it will end. Like the other
refugees, and there are millions of us, I do not know tonight
when I shall sleep in a bed again, or how I shall get out of this
town.
(11)
Lieutenant-General Khozin, of the Red
Army, wrote about the German
Army in the book, Strategy and Tactics of the
Soviet-German War (1943)
The claim that the
German Army is "invincible" is a myth invented by the
Nazi rulers. The easy victories of 1939 and 1940, on which the
German militarists now preen themselves, were won not so much by
their own forces as by base treachery in the countries against
which they fought.
It
is common knowledge that some members of the former French
government were connected with German agents and deliberately led
their army and people to defeat.
In
the main drive against the Allies in Holland, Belgium and
Luxemburg on May 10, 1940, the Germans used 107 infantry and 10
tank divisions, while the Allies used 63 infantry divisions, 4
light mechanized and 6 cavalry divisions. These Allies belonged
to four different armies - the French, British, Belgian and Dutch
- which actually were not under one command. Moreover, some of
these armies were disunited by deep-rooted political friction and
conflicting opinions on operations and strategy.
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