History of the Second World War (14 page)

An order came from Panzer Group Headquarters to halt the advance and confine the troops to the bridgehead gained. I would not and could not put up with this order, as it meant forfeiting surprise and all our initial success.*

* p. 177.

After a lively argument on the telephone with Kleist, the latter agreed ‘to permit the continuation of the advance for another twenty-four hours — in order to widen the bridgehead’.

The utmost advantage was taken of this cautious permission, and full rein was given to the panzer divisions. The westward drive of Guderian’s three panzer divisions converged with that of Reinhardt’s two divisions from the Montherme crossing, and also with those of Hoth’s two divisions from the crossings near Dinant. It produced a spreading collapse of French resistance, and swept through an empty space.

By the night of the 16th the westward drive had gone more than fifty miles farther, towards the Channel, and reached the Oise. Yet once again the brake was applied, not by the enemy, but from above.

The higher commanders on the German side were amazed at the ease with which the Meuse had been overcome, and could hardly believe their luck. They still expected a heavy French counterstroke against their flank. Hitler shared these apprehensions. In consequence he put a curb on the advance — halting it for two days, so that the infantry corps could come up and form a flank shield along the Aisne.

After the matter had been referred to higher quarters, Guderian was reinstated, and given qualified permission to carry on strong reconnaissance.

‘Strong reconnaissance’ as interpreted by Guderian had an elastic meaning and enabled him to maintain a considerable degree of offensive pressure during the two days’ interval before the infantry corps of the 12th Army had begun to form a strong flank shield on the Aisne and he was allowed to race all out for the Channel coast.

So much time had been gained in the preceding stages and so much dislocation had been caused on the opposing side, that the pause on the Oise had no serious effect on the German prospects. Even so, it revealed a significant difference of time-sense on the German side. The gap between the new school and old school there was greater than that between the Germans and the French.

Gamelin, writing at the end of the war, said of the Germans’ strategic exploitation of the Meuse crossing:

It was a remarkable manoeuvre. But had it been entirely foreseen in advance? I do not believe it — any more than that Napoleon had foreseen the manoeuvre of Jena, or Moltke that of Sedan [in 1870]. It was a perfect utilisation of circumstances. It showed troops and a command who knew how to manoeuvre, who were organised to operate quickly — as tanks, aircraft, and wireless permitted them to do. It is perhaps the first time that a battle has been won, which became decisive, without having had to engage the bulk of the forces.*

According to General Georges, who was the executive Commander-in-Chief of the battlefront, it was reckoned that the planned obstructions in Belgian Luxembourg were likely ‘to retard for at least four days’ the Germans’ arrival on the Meuse. General Doumenc, the Chief of Staff, said:

Crediting our enemies with our own procedure, we had imagined that they would not attempt the passage of the Meuse until after they had brought up ample artillery: the five or six days necessary for that would have easily given us time to reinforce our own dispositions.*

* p. 181.

It is remarkable how closely these French calculations corresponded to those made in the higher quarters on ‘the other side of the hill’. It can be seen that the French military chiefs had justification — more justification than was apparent immediately after the event — for their basic assumptions about the German offensive. But they had left out of the reckoning an individual factor — Guderian. His adoption of the theory of deep strategic penetration by armoured forces operating independently, his fervent conviction of its practicability, and his consequent impulsion in stretching subordination upset the calculations of the French High Command to an extent that the German High Command would never have done of its own volition. It is clear that Guderian and his tankmen pulled the German Army along after them, and thereby produced the most sweeping victory in modern history.

The issue turned on the time-factor at stage after stage. French counter-movements were repeatedly thrown out of gear because their timing was too slow to catch up with the changing situations, and that was due to the fact that the German van kept on moving faster than the German High Command had contemplated.

The French had based their plans on the assumption that an assault on the Meuse would not come before the ninth day. That was the same time-scale the German chiefs had in mind originally, before Guderian intervened. When it was upset, worse was to follow. The French commanders, trained in the slow-motion methods of 1918, were mentally unfitted to cope with panzer pace, and it produced a spreading paralysis among them.

One of the few men on the Allied side who realised the danger in time was the new French Prime Minister, M. Paul Reynaud. As an outside critic before the war, he had urged his countrymen to develop armoured forces. Understanding their effect all too clearly, he telephoned Mr Churchill early on the 15th, to say: ‘We have lost the battle.’

Churchill’s reply was: ‘All experience shows that the offensive will come to an end after a while. I remember the 21st of March, 1918. After five or six days they have to halt for supplies and the opportunity for counterattack is presented. I learned all this at the time from the lips of Marshal Foch himself.’* Next day he flew over to Paris, and there argued against any withdrawal of the Allied armies in Belgium. Even as it was, Gamelin was too slow in pulling them back. He now planned a deliberate counter-offensive in the 1918 way — with massed infantry divisions. Churchill continued to pin his faith to this. It was unfortunate that Gamelin’s mind remained in an out-of-date groove, as he had more capacity for action than anyone in France.

* Churchill:
The Second World War,
vol. II, pp. 38-9.

That day, too, Reynaud made a move to replace Gamelin — summoning Weygand, Foch’s old assistant, from Syria. Weygand did not arrive until the 19th, so that for three days the Supreme Command was in a state of suspense. On the 20th Guderian reached the Channel, cutting the communications of the Allied armies in Belgium. Moreover, Weygand was even more out-of-date than Gamelin, and continued to plan on 1918 lines. So hope of recovery faded.

In sum, the Allied leaders did things too late or did the wrong thing, and in the end did nothing effective to avert disaster.

The escape of the British Expeditionary Force in 1940 was largely due to Hitler’s personal intervention. After his tanks had overrun the north of France and cut off the British army from its base, Hitler held them up just as they were about to sweep into Dunkirk — which was the last remaining port of escape left open to the British. At that moment the bulk of the B.E.F. was still many miles distant from the port. But Hitler kept his tanks halted for three days.

His action preserved the British forces when nothing else could have saved them. By making it possible for them to escape he enabled them to rally in England, continue the war, and man the coasts to defy the threat of invasion. Thereby he produced his own ultimate downfall, and Germany’s, five years later. Acutely aware of the narrowness of the escape, but ignorant of its cause, the British people spoke of ‘the miracle of Dunkirk’.

How did he come to give the fateful halt order, and why? It remained a puzzle in many respects to the German generals themselves, and it will never be possible to learn for certain how he came to his decision and what his motives were. Even if Hitler had given an explanation it would hardly be reliable. Men in high position who make a fatal mistake rarely tell the truth about it afterwards, and Hitler was not one of the most truth-loving of great men. It is more likely that his evidence would confuse the trail. It is also quite likely that he could not have given a true explanation even if he had wished, because his motives were apt to be so mixed and his impulses so changeable. Moreover, all men’s recollection tends to be coloured by what happens later.

In prolonged exploration of this critical event, sufficient evidence has emerged for the historian to be able to piece together not only the chain of events but what seems a reasonably probable chain of causation leading up to the fateful decision.

After cutting the lines of supply to the Allied left wing in Belgium, Guderian’s panzer corps had reached the sea near Abbeville on the 20th. Then he wheeled north, heading for the Channel ports and the rear of the British Army — which was still in Belgium, facing the frontal advance of Bock’s infantry forces. On Guderian’s right in this northward drive was Reinhardt’s panzer corps, which was also part of Kleist’s group.

On the 22nd, Boulogne was isolated by his advance, and on the next day Calais. This stride brought him to Gravelines, barely ten miles from Dunkirk — the British Expeditionary Force’s last remaining port of escape. Reinhardt’s panzer corps also arrived on the canal line Aire-St Omer-Gravelines. But there the continuation of the drive was stopped by orders from above. The panzer leaders were told to hold their forces back behind the line of the canal. They bombarded their superiors with urgent queries and protests, but were told that it was ‘the Fuhrer’s personal order’.

Before probing deeper into the roots of that saving intervention let us see what was happening on the British side, and follow the course of that grand-scale escape.

On the 16th General Lord Gort, the Commander-in-Chief, brought the B.E.F. a step back from its advanced line in front of Brussels. But before it arrived in its new position on the Scheldt, that position had been under-mined by Guderian cutting the B.E.F’s communications far to the south. On the 19th the Cabinet heard that Gort was ‘examining a possible withdrawal towards Dunkirk if that were forced upon him’. The Cabinet, however, sent him orders to march south into France and force his way through the German net that had been flung across his rear — though they were told that he had only four days’ supplies and ammunition sufficient for one battle.

These instructions accorded with the new plan which Gamelin, the French Commander-in-Chief, had belatedly made and issued that morning. In the evening Gamelin was sacked and replaced by Weygand, whose first act was to cancel Gamelin’s order, while he studied the situation. After three days’ further delay he produced a plan similar to his predecessor’s. It proved no more than a paper plan.

Meanwhile Gort, though arguing that the Cabinet’s instructions were impracticable, had tried an attack southward from Arras with two of his thirteen divisions and the only tank brigade that had been sent to France. When this counterstroke was launched on the 21st it had boiled down to an advance by two weak tank battalions followed by two infantry battalions. The tanks made some progress but were not backed up, the infantry being shaken by dive-bombing. The neighbouring French First Army was to have co-operated, with two of its thirteen divisions, but its actual contribution was slight. During these days the French were repeatedly paralysed by the moral effect of the German dive-bombers and the swift manoeuvring tanks.

It is remarkable, however, what a disturbing effect this little armoured counterstroke had on some of the German higher commanders. For a moment it led them to think of stopping the advance of their own tank spearheads. Rundstedt himself described it as ‘a critical moment’, saying: ‘For a short time it was feared that our armoured divisions would be cut off before the infantry divisions could come up to support them.’* Such an effect showed what a vital difference to the issue might have been made if this British riposte had been made with two armoured divisions instead of merely two tank battalions.

* Forecasting the very situation that arose in 1940, it had been urged from 1935 on in
The Times,
and other quarters, that Britain’s military effort should be concentrated on providing a stronger air force and two to three armoured divisions for a counterstroke against any German breakthrough in France, instead of sending an expeditionary force composed of infantry divisions — of which the French had plenty. This principle was accepted by the Cabinet at the end of 1937, but discarded early in 1939 in favour of building an expeditionary force of the familiar pattern. By May 1940, thirteen infantry divisions (including three ‘labour’ divisions) in all had been sent to France, without a single armoured division, but proved unable to do anything to save the situation.

After the flash-in-the-pan at Arras the Allied armies in the north made no further effort to break out of the trap, while the belated relief offensive from the south that Weygand planned was so feeble as to be almost farcical. It was easily baulked by the barricade which the German motorised divisions had quickly built up along the Somme, to keep out interference while the panzer divisions drove northward to close the trap. With such slow-motion forces as Weygand commanded, his grandiloquent orders had no more chance of practical effect than Churchill’s adjurations to the armies to ‘cast away the idea of resisting attack behind concrete lines or natural obstacles’ and regain the mastery ‘by furious, unrelenting assault’.

While the highest circles continued to debate impracticable plans, the cut-off armies in the north were falling back on a slant closer to the coast. They were under increasing frontal pressure from Bock’s infantry armies — though they were spared a deadly stab in the back from the panzer forces.

On the 24th Weygand bitterly complained that ‘the British Army had carried out, on its own initiative, a retreat of twenty-five miles towards the ports at a time when our troops moving up from the south are gaining ground towards the north, where they were to meet their allies’. In fact, the French troops from the south had made no perceptible progress and the British were not yet retreating — Weygand’s words merely showed the state of unreality in which he was living.