Hitler's Panzer Armies on the Eastern Fron (4 page)

The Germans made the following assumptions: 1. That the sizeable French Army was dispirited and had learned nothing from Poland; 2. The Allies would go northward into the Low Countries; and 3. One critical hit would demolish the French and, indeed, the entire Allied cause. The intended breakthrough near Sedan would in turn give the Wehrmacht three options: 1. Go west to the coast; 2. Turn south to Paris; or 3. Go southeast and roll up the Maginot Line. Any of these courses of action would have been disastrous for the Allies. However, the operational objective of both Hitler and von Manstein was the Channel coast and the utter destruction of French and British forces which only the first solution would provide.
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With Allied armies in the field defeated, Paris and Maginot fortresses would fall with comparative ease.

Von Manstein’s earlier plans of mid–December did not include the accumulation of panzers the Wehrmacht would historically employ. This decisive concentration took form during the second half of February. The panzer formation’s official name was ‘Gruppe von Kleist’, named after its commander,
General of Cavalry Ewald von Kleist, and subordinated to the Twelfth Army under Colonel General Wilhelm List. Historians speculate that von Kleist was given the job as a cautious counterweight to the impetuous General of Panzer Troops, Heinz Guderian. His headquarters had once been that of the XXII Corps. The Group’s XIV, XIX and XLI Corps included 1,254 panzers, nearly half of the German total. Guderian’s XIX Panzer Corps held nearly two-thirds of that number (818), while Lieutenant General Georg–Hans Reinhardt’s XLI Panzer Corps had the remainder (436). General of Infantry Gustav von Wietersheim’s XIV Corps consisted of motorized infantry, and would mainly secure the group’s southern flank. Covering von Kleist’s northern flank, and often acting in coordination with him, stood General of Infantry Hermann Hoth’s XV Panzer Corps (542 panzers), part of the Fourth Army.
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All told, von Kleist commanded 41,000 vehicles that would eventually have to negotiate only four routes through the Ardennes. Echeloned under Army Group A, by noon on the first day of operations, 10 May, Guderian had passed through Luxemburg into Belgium, Reinhardt’s formation reached back to the Rhine, while von Wietersheim’s corps still occupied their assembly areas near Giessen. Von Kleist’s huge force went undetected by Allied air reconnaissance largely because of concentrated flak and Luftwaffe air superiority.
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Von Kleist’s tactical objective was to achieve crossings over the Meuse in the vicinity of Sedan and Givet, while his operational goal was to get into the Allies’ rear before the enemy suspected such a potentially catastrophic maneuver. His strategic goal was to win the war quickly so there would be no repetition of the First World War stalemate. Orders read ‘thrust through Luxemburg and southern Belgium [to] gain the west bank of the Meuse River in a surprise attack’. Guderian commanded the Schwerpunkt, aiming for Sedan, while Reinhardt’s much smaller corps headed for Monthme, at the confluence of the Semois and Meuse Rivers. They were to strike at the boundary of two armies, the 2nd and 9th, a perfect target for any attack. Reinhardt had to negotiate more difficult terrain than did Guderian and would not face weak, ‘B’-quality divisions. Wisely, the panzer group’s chief of staff considered logistics critical to mission accomplishment. Therefore he created three motorized detachments totaling 4,800 tons of carrying capacity that would insure necessary supplies all the way to Calais.
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As the rest of this book will repeatedly make clear, not all German generals showed the requisite high opinion for logistical matters. By any measure, Gruppe von Kleist was definitely set up for success.

Luxemburg essentially gave Guderian free passage through the country. Assisted by Brandenburger commandos, XIX Panzer Corps entered Belgium
on the afternoon of 10 May. While French cavalry and Belgian Chasseurs Ardennais quickly gave way before the 10th Panzer Division, stalwart Belgian defenders halted the 1st Panzer. The remainder of the panzer group wound its way through the Ardennes – even moving during the night with headlights blazing – demonstrating their contempt for Allied reconnaissance. By the end of the invasion’s second day, Guderian had brushed aside the French 5th Light Division, his last serious opposition until he reached the Meuse.
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A day later, he was almost to the Meuse, whereas Reinhardt remained jammed up in the Ardennes. The XLI Panzer’s task got a little easier when the 3rd Spahi (North African) Brigade turned over the frontier defense to cavalry units which proved too light to stand up to the panzers. The Germans took heart that the French made no effort to adjust their defenses, giving no indication that they had located the Schwerpunkt. French intelligence did not identify von Kleist’s panzer divisions until late on the 12th. Strategically, German intelligence observed French railroad traffic patterns indicating they expected a German assault against the Maginot Line. German deception, essential at all times if the blitzkrieg was to succeed, worked as well as could be expected.
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Colonel General Georg–Hans Reinhardt

Reinhardt was born in Saxony in 1887. He became a lieutenant in Infantry Regiment 107 in 1908. During the 1930s he commanded 1st Rifle Brigade and 4th Panzer Division. In this latter position he led the attack on Warsaw, for which he received promotion to lieutenant general and the Knight’s Cross. He led the XLI Panzer Corps across France, and as a newly promoted general of panzer troops would have been one of the principal panzer commanders during Operation Sealion.

During Barbarossa’s first week, Reinhardt initially surrendered the limelight to von Manstein while the XLI Panzer fought the bulk of the Northwestern Front’s defenses. Afterwards, he raced toward Leningrad, capturing Luga River bridges barely three weeks into the campaign. The drive on Leningrad failed to yield the desired results, and XLI Panzer moved to the central theater for Operation Typhoon. Days into that offensive, Reinhardt replaced Hoth at Third Panzer Army, a position he would hold until August 1944. Reinhardt’s men came close to the Soviet capital, only to relinquish their gains to fresh units from Siberia. While his former superior, Colonel General Erich Hoepner, was cashiered during the defensive fighting that winter, Reinhardt earned the Oak Leaves.

Third Panzer remained on the northern edge of Army Group Center, beating back Soviet attacks, combating partisan raids and trying to maintain a solid connection with Army Group North. Enemy pressure slowly pushed the panzer army back, and from the autumn of 1943 through the winter of 1944, its main objective was holding the important rail junction of Vitebsk. Reinhardt’s defensive efforts earned him the Swords to his Knight’s Cross, but greatly weakened his forces. With the Soviet’s Operation Bagration in June 1944, Vitebsk became encircled and Hitler was anxious that the town be held. The Fuhrer ordered Army Group Center commander Field Marshal Ernst Busch to instruct Reinhardt to parachute in a staff officer to stiffen the garrison commander’s resolve. Reinhardt replied, ‘Field marshal, please inform the Fuhrer that only one officer in the Third Panzer Army can be considered for this jump and that is the army commander. I am ready to carry out his order.’ That ridiculous answer was the only possible response to such a ridiculous plan.

With Busch’s utter failure at the head of the army group, Reinhardt took over on 16 August. Shortly afterwards, the Soviet offensive shot its bolt and an uneasy stalemate settled over East Prussia and northern Poland. The Soviets maintained local pressure until their winter 1944–45 offensive destroyed Reinhardt’s command. Fed up, Hitler relieved him on 25 January. Samuel Mitcham believes Reinhardt would have left soon in any event: he had sustained serious head wounds a short time earlier. Reinhardt was tried for numerous war crimes after the war, was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. His captors released him in 1952 and he died in 1963. The great promise as a panzer leader with which he began the war did not survive much past Typhoon.

Late on 11 May, von Kleist issued orders for the Meuse crossing. The 12th would be a big day for the Panzer Group as it made up for time lost in the Ardennes and closed on the river. Meanwhile, harsh words passed between von Kleist and Guderian and their chiefs of staff, Kurt Zeitzler and Walther Nehring all day long. Consequently, everyone’s nerves were on edge that night during the conference at Panzer Group headquarters as details of the final plan for the cross-river assault operation were hammered out. Guderian wanted to delay twenty–four hours in order to bring the 2nd Panzer forward alongside the 1st and 10th. Von Kleist wanted to keep up the pressure on the French and told him ‘No’, the assault would go off the next day as planned and further, the corps commander needed to obey orders. It seems that Halder’s choice of the soft–spoken but firm leader von Kleist had been a wise one. As was his nature, Guderian always pushed to the point of disobedience but in the end did as instructed.
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Across the lines, French 2nd Army commander General Charles Huntziger wishfully continued to believe that the Wehrmacht moved at no more than at the pace of the French Army. He assumed that the Germans would need five days to close on Sedan en masse and another week to launch a deliberate river
crossing operation. In his thinking, the French had almost a fortnight to improve the Class ‘B’ 55th Division’s defenses. He was confident in their ability to hold the Meuse Line.
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Von Kleist allowed no such breathing space. If his artillery stood strung out to the rear, he would shore up the assault with tank guns, 88mm flak and most importantly, close air support (CAS). French artillery outnumbered German guns 350:150, but assuming a two-week-long engagement, they sought to ration their ammunition against this ‘feint’. If Guderian’s combat engineers were trailing behind and not available, his Landsers would have to man the assault boats themselves. Starting late in the morning of the 13th, the Stukas came in force. The approximately 1,400 aircraft that Bruno Loerzer and Wolfram von Richthofen (VIII Fliegerkorps) provided to von Kleist that Sunday (and most of these were thrown at Sedan) practically equaled the total number of Allied planes in the entire theater. The Luftwaffe silenced the French artillery and initiated a general panic among the defenders.
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Therefore, in terms of pace, location of attack and morale, von Kleist’s men held every advantage.

In the northern sector, Reinhardt managed to get two companies across the Meuse on the morning of 13 May. The 102nd Fortress Division counterattacked, regained the river and managed to stall the 6th Panzer there for three days. At the Germans’ main point of assault, in one of the war’s best-known episodes, Colonel Herman Balck’s 1st Rifle Regiment stormed over the Meuse at Sedan, capturing the heights above the west bank. Despite the fact he had no artillery or anti–tank weapons, he managed to expand his bridgehead throughout the 13th. By midnight the Germans had built three tactical bridges over the Meuse River. Allied air forces made repeated weak, ineffective bombing raids against the bridges, but either missed their targets or caused insignificant damage.
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Huntziger did not realize it at the time, but his entire defensive structure was about to collapse.

On the morning of the 14th, a French tank brigade counterattacked against Balck, whose men held out by using newly arrived anti–tank guns against the uncoordinated enemy. Balck thereby demonstrated the inestimable value of combined–arms Kampfgruppen. For the next five years the Germans would employ these ad hoc formations in the most imaginative ways. Altogether 570 panzers crossed the Meuse that day to push the German advantage as far as the Ardennes Canal. The Allies continued their fruitless aerial assault, launching twenty–seven attacks, each with a meager ten to twenty planes. The Luftwaffe and Guderian’s 300 flak guns accounted for 100 of the 400 attacking aircraft. The French planned a counterattack near Flavigny by the 3rd Armored, 3rd Motorized Infantry and 5th Cavalry Divisions, but never pulled the trigger. They proved singularly incapable of functioning in the blitzkrieg milieu.

Guderian’s Schwerpunkt, the 1st Panzer stood poised to break into the French rear, with the 2nd Panzer finally ready to enter the action as back–up.
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While Guderian was generally free of the Ardennes by the time he reached the Meuse, Reinhardt still had to contend with poor terrain and a dearth of Luftwaffe CAS. However, by the morning of the 15th, he had finally overcome the resistance of the 41st Corps. Thanks to the initiative of the 6th Panzer s commander, the XLI Corps crossed the river at Montherme. Simultaneously, the 8th Panzer crossed at Nouzonville, rendering useless further French resistance at the major rail junction of Chareville. A large traffic jam developed at Moncoronet on the small Serre River, 50km west, where the 1st, 2nd and 6th Panzer Divisions all tried to pass. Commanders on the scene ironed out this problem, freeing von Kleist to exploit into the Allied hinterland.
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The French high command continued to have no clue about developments along the Meuse. On the same day von Kleist s men achieved true freedom of action west of the river, General Joseph Georges blithely told Maurice Gamelin, ‘the breach at Sedan has been contained and a counterattack with strong formations was carried out at 0430 .
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Of course, none of this was true. The 10th Panzer and Infantry Regiment Grossdeutschland on Guderian s left shoulder hit prepared French defenses near Artaise and remained stuck there for three days. This did not delay von Kleist, who adroitly shifted his Schwerpunkt. Covered by Rommel s 7th Panzer on his right (part of Hoth s corps), Reinhardt took advantage of the French concentration against Guderian to press on. The perceived threat to von Kleist’s southern flank soon grabbed the attention of von Rundstedt s headquarters. The Army High Command (OKH) was also getting nervous over von Kleist s continued westward movement.
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Events even began to out-pace the Wehrmacht s ability to manage.