How Hitler Could Have Won World War II (4 page)

But when Kleist ordered an assault on the river on May 13, he insisted that the Luftwaffe mount a massive bombing attack, using large numbers of bombers and dive-bombers. This might cause considerable damage, but then the aircraft would depart, leaving Guderian's troops to face the remaining French machine guns and artillery.

When the Luftwaffe arrived, however, Guderian was astonished to see only a few squadrons of Stukas, operating under fighter cover. They used the tactics he had worked out beforehand: one group of Stukas bombed and machine-gunned trenches, pillboxes, and artillery positions (or pretended to do so), while a second group circled above, waiting to take over. Above these was a fighter shield. The air force had gone ahead with the original plan because it had no time to mount the massive bombing attack that Kleist wanted.

The effects were remarkable. When the assault force, 1st Rifle Regiment, assembled on the river just west of Sedan, enemy artillery was alert and fired at the slightest movement. But the unending strikes and faked strikes by the aircraft virtually paralyzed the French. Artillerymen abandoned their guns, and machine-gunners kept their heads down and could not fire.

As a consequence 1st Rifle Regiment crossed the river in collapsible rubber boats with little loss and seized commanding heights on the south bank. By midnight the regiment had pressed six miles south and set up a deep bridgehead, although neither artillery, armor, nor antitank guns had been able to get across the Meuse. Engineers could not finish building a bridge until daybreak on May 14.

The advance of the German infantry set off a mass retreat of French soldiers.

“Everywhere the roads were covered by artillery teams, ration and ammunition wagons, infantry weapons carriers, fatigue parties, horses, and motors,” Guy Chapman wrote. “What was worse, many of the groups were headed by officers, and, worse still, their guns had been abandoned.”

Meanwhile 10th Panzer Division had crossed the Meuse near Sedan and set up a small bridgehead, while Reinhardt's panzer corps got a narrow foothold across the river at Monthermé. But the terrain was extremely steep there, and Reinhardt had a hard time holding on under strong French pressure.

At the same time Rommel's 7th Panzer Division forced a large breach of the river at Dinant, about twenty-five miles north of Monthermé.

At dawn on May 14, Guderian pressed to get as many guns and tanks as possible across the one bridge that had been completed. He knew the French would try to destroy the bridgehead and were certain to be rushing reinforcements forward. At the moment, only Lieutenant Colonel Hermann Balck's 1st Rifle Regiment—with not an artillery piece nor an antitank gun to its name—was holding the vital bridgehead.

The French commanders recognized the importance of destroying the bridgehead. The 3rd Armored Division was on hand and moved up, but some of its 150 tanks had been distributed to infantry divisions.

At 7 A.M. on May 14, fifteen French light tanks with infantry attacked 1st Rifle Regiment around Bulson, about five miles south of Sedan. They were supported by some French aircraft. The Germans had nothing heavier than machine guns, but shot down several planes and slowed the tanks and infantry long enough for the first German tanks to come up a few minutes later. By 9:40 A.M. only four of the French tanks remained, and they and the infantry retreated to Mont Dieu, a couple miles south.

Meanwhile British and French airmen tried bravely to knock out the single bridge over the Meuse and other spans under construction. The Luftwaffe provided no help against them, having been called away on other missions. But Guderian's antiaircraft gunners shot down a number of Allied aircraft, and prevented any of the bridges being broken.

By midday German infantry and armor were approaching high ground near Stonne, about fifteen miles south of Sedan. This ridge dominated the country to the south, and guarded the Meuse crossings. Guderian turned over defense to General von Wietersheim, leaving the 10th Panzer Division and the independent Gross-Deutschland Infantry Regiment, now also on hand, until Wietersheim's 14th Motorized Corps could come up and take over defense of the flank.

Guderian met with the commanders of 1st and 2nd Panzer Divisions (Friedrich Kirchner and Rudolf Veiel), and, with their eager concurrence, ordered them to turn west, break entirely through the French defenses, and strike for the English Channel. By evening of May 14, elements of the 1st Panzer had seized Singly, more than twenty miles west of Sedan.

The same evening, General André Corap, commanding the French 9th Army, the only force now blocking Guderian's and Reinhardt's panzer corps along the Meuse, made a fatal mistake and ordered the entire army to abandon the Meuse and withdraw to a new line some fifteen to twenty miles to the west. He made this decision not only because of the breakthrough at Sedan, but because Rommel's 7th Panzer Division had crossed at Dinant. Corap was responding to wild reports of “thousands” of tanks pouring through the breach made by Rommel.

When the French arrived on the new line, Guderian's panzers were already in some of the positions the 9th Army was supposed to have occupied, while withdrawal from the Meuse removed the block holding up Reinhardt at Monthermé. His tanks now burst out and drove westward along an unobstructed path. Guderian and Reinhardt had split the 9th Army in two, blowing open a sixty-mile-wide hole through which their panzers poured like a raging torrent.

The battle of Sedan brought about a major change in battle tactics. Up to this point, panzer leaders, including Guderian, had believed rifle and armored units should be kept sharply distinct, and that tanks should be massed for a decisive thrust. Thus the 1st Rifle Regiment crossed the Meuse with only light infantry weapons. If the French had attacked with heavy weapons during the night of May 13–14, they might have destroyed the regiment.

The infantry remained in a precarious position on the morning of May 14 until the first panzers came up. It would have been safer and more effective for the Germans if individual tanks and antitank guns had been ferried across with the infantry. The lesson led to formation of
Kampfgruppen—
mixed battle groups—of armor, guns, infantry, and sometimes engineers. These proved to be formidable fighting forces and dominated German tactical operations for the remainder of the war.

Churchill arrived in Paris on May 16 to find panic setting in. Government offices were burning their papers, expecting the capital to fall at any moment. The turmoil slowly abated as word spread that an order taken from a wounded German officer showed the panzers were turning toward the west, not Paris.

Premier Reynaud reported that Gamelin had no more reserves—or ideas. He took over the defense establishment from Daladier, relieved Gamelin, appointed General Maxime Weygand, just arriving from Syria, to command the armies, and named the ambassador to Spain, Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain, as vice president of the cabinet. Weygand arrived at the front on May 21, but was unable to conceive any plan to reverse the disaster unfolding for the Allies.

Kleist's panzers were rolling through territory that resembled a long corridor. The region was clogged with fugitives who created chaos, while the panzers at the arrow point had to be nourished with ammunition, food, and fuel. Walls had to be formed on either side, in case the Allies were massing to counterattack. Wietersheim's 14th Motorized Corps was trying to keep up with the tanks and form blocking positions. But their numbers were too small and the distances too great. Solid lines could only be created by the infantry, most of it still far behind. Rundstedt was doing everything possible to bring them forward, but the pace was slow, gaps were impossible to close, and, to the orthodox soldiers who made up the German senior command, perils lurked at every crossroad.

The generals were as stunned as the Allies by the speed and success of the campaign. They still could only half believe it was happening. Hitler likewise had become “monstrously nervous.” He hurried to see Rundstedt at Charleroi on May 15 and urged him not to drive toward “boundless shores” (
Uferlose
)
.

Rundstedt, also worried, ordered Kleist to stop to give the infantry time to catch up. Kleist reported none of the higher-ups' worries to Guderian, and simply ordered him to halt. But Guderian, along with the other panzer commanders, saw that a gigantic victory was within their grasp. It could be assured only if they continued to drive west at full fury and not give the distracted and increasingly desperate enemy a chance to develop countermeasures.

Guderian extracted from Kleist authority to continue the advance for another twenty-four hours, under the pretext that “sufficient space be acquired for the infantry corps that were following.” With this permission to “enlarge the bridgehead,” Guderian drove personally to Bouvellemont, twenty-four miles southwest of Sedan. This was the farthest projection of the 1st Panzer Division, and where the 1st Infantry Regiment had been involved in heavy fighting.

In the burning village, Guderian found the infantry exhausted. They had had no real rest since May 9 and were falling asleep in their slit trenches. Guderian explained to Colonel Balck that his regiment had to open a way for the panzers.

Balck went to his officers, who argued against continuing the attack with exhausted troops. “In that case,” Balck told them, “I'll take the place on my own.” As he moved off to do so, his embarrassed soldiers followed and seized Bouvellement.

This broke the last French point of resistance, and the Germans rushed out into the open plains north of the Somme with no substantial enemy forces ahead of them. By nightfall of May 16, Guderian's spearheads were at Marle and Dercy, fifty-five miles from Sedan.

Guderian assumed that this spectacular success had stilled the fears back at headquarters, and he sent a message that he intended to continue the pursuit the next day, May 17. Early in the morning, Guderian received a radio flash that Kleist would fly into his airstrip at 7 A.M. Kleist arrived promptly, didn't even bid Guderian good morning, and launched into a tirade for his disobeying orders. Guderian at once asked to be relieved of his command. Kleist, taken aback, nodded, and told him to turn over command to the next-senior officer.

Guderian radioed Rundstedt's army group what had happened, and said he was flying back to report. Within minutes, a message came to stay where he was. Colonel General Wilhelm List, 12th Army commander, was coming to clear up the matter. List arrived in a few hours and told Guderian the halt order had come from Rundstedt, and he would not resign. List was in full agreement with Guderian's desire to keep going, however, and authorized him to make “reconnaissance in force,” a subterfuge that did not defy Rundstedt's command but slipped around it.

Immensely grateful, Guderian unleashed his panzers, and they surged forward. Rundstedt's army group belatedly called off its stop order. By nightfall May 17, 10th Panzer seized a bridgehead across the Oise River near Moy, seventy miles west of Sedan. The next day, 2nd Panzer reached St. Quentin, ten miles beyond Moy, while, on May 19, 1st Panzer forced a bridgehead over the Somme near Péronne, almost twenty miles west of St. Quentin.

The velocity of the panzer drive had made a powerful counterstroke almost impossible. Even so, the newly formed French 4th Armored Division under General Charles de Gaulle came forward on May 19 with a few tanks and attacked near Laon, but was severely repulsed. This failure to mass tanks was the pattern the French and British followed throughout the campaign. Even after the breakthrough, they might have stopped the advance if they had concentrated their still formidable armored strength and struck hard at a single point on the German flank.

This never happened. The French had formed four armored divisions of only 150 tanks apiece in the past winter, and had wasted them in isolated engagements like de Gaulle's attempt at Laon. Most of the 3rd Armored Division had been dispersed among the infantry along the Meuse at Sedan, while the rest had been shattered in small attacks. The 1st had run out of fuel and been overrun by Rommel's panzers, while the 2nd had been spread along a twenty-five-mile stretch of the Oise, and Guderian's leading tanks had burst through them with little effort.

In Belgium, the tanks of the ten British armored battalions had been parceled out to the infantry divisions, as had those of the three French mechanized divisions and independent French tank battalions. The few French tanks that had assembled at Gembloux, however, had performed excellently, showing what might have been achieved with concentration.

On May 20, 1st Panzer seized Amiens and pressed southward to form a bridgehead four miles deep across the Somme. During the afternoon, 2nd Panzer reached Abbéville, and that evening a battalion of the division passed through Noyelles and became the first German unit to reach the Atlantic coast. Only ten days after the start of the offensive, the Allied armies had been cut in two.

The Allied forces in Belgium had formed a line along the Scheldt River, with their southern flank resting at Arras, only twenty-five miles from Péronne on the Somme. Thus the Germans had only this narrow gap through which to nourish their panzers and their offensive.

The Allies still had a chance. If they could close this gap, they could isolate the panzers, reunite the armies in Belgium with forces to the south, and bring the German offensive to a halt.

Lord Gort, commander of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), ordered a counterattack southward from Arras on May 21. He tried to get the French to assist, but they said their forces couldn't attack until May 22. With Guderian's panzers already at the English Channel, Lord Gort decided he couldn't wait and ordered forward two infantry battalions of the 50th Division and the 1st Army Tank Brigade with 58 Mark I Matildas armed only with a single machine gun, and 16 Mark II Matildas armed with a high-velocity two-pounder (40-millimeter) gun. Matildas were slow infantry tanks, but with 75 millimeters of armor, were much more resistant to enemy fire than the lighter-skinned panzers.