Third Reich Victorious (8 page)

After two weeks Manstein’s working party reached, without knowing it, the same conclusion as every official British study since the 1860s: the invasion of Britain was not a realistic military operation. The reasoning was simple. For an invasion to take place on a large enough scale to overcome British land forces, the invader needed undisputed control of the seas, nullifying the Royal Navy. But in this case Britain could be starved into submission in a matter of months, making an actual invasion unnecessary. There were, of course, two new factors to be considered. One was that a protracted submarine campaign would increase the chances of the United States entering the war on the British side, as had happened in 1917. The other factor was air power. Manstein consulted experts in the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine. Discounting fantasies and partisan statements from both services, the answer was the same. The Kriegsmarine was not remotely strong enough to defeat or even deter the Royal Navy in its own home waters. The Luftwaffe could do enough damage to keep the British away from an invasion force, but only on a very narrow front and for the shortest and most direct crossing.

Manstein soon discovered that German amphibious capability was virtually nonexistent. The Kriegsmarine had plans to use an incredible mixture of vessels from cross-Channel ferries to fishing boats, with pontoons and Rhine barges towed by minesweepers and other small craft (much as in Childers’s novel), including a motorized barge known as the “Type A” or “Prahm.” Most of these barges could barely survive the bow wave of a passing British destroyer without capsizing. The army’s engineers offered an experimental troop-carrying hydrofoil capable of 50 mph, the prototype for which already existed. With Manstein’s prompting, ten more were built before the navy halted the project in April, claiming that the craft were unseaworthy.

Manstein also remembered early experiments with amphibious tanks, and called for assistance from Panzer Gen. Heinz Guderian, the unofficial but acknowledged leader of the Panzers. Guderian arranged help in the form of the deputy commander of the 3rd Panzer Division, Col. Walter Model, and under the pretext of preparing to cross the River Meuse, the conversion of some Panzer III tanks began. Rather than go direct to Luftwaffe Headquarters (OKL), Manstein also sought out Maj. Gen. Kurt Student, the acknowledged specialist in paratrooper and glider warfare. Student had no doubt that he could get his forces, perhaps as much as a division, across to East Anglia or southern England by air.

Manstein’s study concluded that if Case Yellow succeeded, then a combined air and sea campaign against Britain could be mounted in late June, culminating in the landing in mid-July of no more than one army corps of four divisions, or 50,000 men, across the Straits of Dover. Capturing a major port on the first day was critical. Even then, within three or four days the Royal Navy would cut the English Channel, and the landing forces would run out of fuel, ammunition, and reserves. Either the landing itself had to break the British will to fight, or the Luftwaffe had to keep the Royal Navy and RAF at bay. Model, a keen bridge player, referred to this plan facetiously as Manstein’s “Small Slam.” Manstein himself gave it the most English name he knew, calling it “Case Smith.” He submitted it to OKW in the expectation that it would be filed and forgotten, and in February went off to command the XXXVIII Army Corps. The plan’s existence was leaked to the British intelligence services, who took it seriously. As the British argued, “How could it be supposed that OKW had not in its pigeonholes some masterpiece of staff work providing in minutest detail for the successive stages of an invasion of England?”
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The world now knows the consequences of Manstein’s ideas for the changes to Case Yellow. In an astonishing campaign, everything by way of luck fell for the Germans and against the French. Guderian as commander of the XIX Panzer Corps led the advance of Army Group A through the Ardennes with almost miraculous speed. On May 13, from Sedan to Dinant, three separate Panzer corps, supported by almost 2,000 Luftwaffe aircraft, forced the line of the River Meuse against the weak French 2nd Army. Within three days, seven Panzer divisions were driving westward across France to the English Channel, scattering the 9th Army as they did so. On May 20, Guderian’s leading forces of the 2nd Panzer Division reached the sea at Abbeville, simultaneously slicing through the BEF’s overlong supply lines and isolating most of the 1st Army Group in Belgium.

All this was in the future when, on the afternoon of May 10, the BEF started its move into Belgium, with II Corps under Lt. Gen. Sir Alan Brooke. As the motorized 3rd Infantry Division under Maj. Gen. Bernard Montgomery reached its prearranged positions near Louvain, it found these already occupied by the Belgian 10th Division, which opened fire in the belief that the arriving British were German paratroopers. While Montgomery was sorting this out, I Corps, under Lt. Gen. M.G.H. Barker came up on the right of II Corps at Wavre, and by the morning of May 12, the BEF was in position. Its front line consisted of four motorized divisions of tough long-service volunteers, the equal of anything the Germans could put against them. Shortage of tanks was a problem, but the British A12 Infantry Tank Mark II Matilda was almost invulnerable to German tank and antitank guns. In reserve with III Corps under Lt. Gen. Ronald Adam were two more motorized divisions, which included Territorial Army (TA) troops less well equipped and trained than the regulars, plus three TA infantry divisions. Three more second-line TA divisions sent to France as pioneers were kept well in the rear. At the same time, the French 7th and 1st Armies came up into line to the north and south of the BEF in accordance with Plan D. It was a textbook move—which unfortunately put the best Allied forces exactly where the Germans wanted them.

The next days were spent in irate political discussions. In particular, the defensive positions dug by the Belgians did not correspond with their locations on French and British maps—in places by several miles. At a first meeting with King Leopold III and his staff in Brussels, Lieutenant General Brooke’s fluent French (he had been born and raised in France) only served to confirm British suspicions. Meanwhile, both the Belgian frontier defenses and the small and inexperienced Dutch Army were being smashed by the German thunderbolt. On May 10 the Belgian fortress at Eben Emael fell to a surprise attack by German glider troops, opening the way to Liège. Major General Student’s paratroopers of the 7th Air Division, dropped miles behind the lines, created chaos throughout the Netherlands, capturing critical locations. By May 12, the 6th Army was across the River Meuse (called the Maas at this point) and driving for Brussels. The BEF held its positions, confident that, with the 1st Army on its right, it could stop the German charge. But its Air Component, which had begun with six squadrons of Hawker Hurricane fighters, had already lost almost a third of its aircraft, and three more squadrons were demanded from Britain.

Far away from the BEF, an incident occurred that had lasting consequences for the British. In October 1939 the War Cabinet had envisaged the RAF carrying out strategic bombing of the Ruhr in the event of a German attack. But despite Bomber Command’s own enthusiasm, Halifax proved even more unwilling than Chamberlain to risk retaliatory German bombing of British cities. Then, on the afternoon of May 10, three Heinkel 111 bombers attacked what they believed was the French military airfield at Dijon. They never realized that they had actually bombed Freiburg-im-Breisgau, a little German town just inside their own border, killing thirteen women and twenty-two children. The Germans were genuinely shocked by what seemed an Allied act of terror bombing, made all the worse by repeated British and French denials. Hitler declared that such attacks “would be answered by fivefold retaliation against French and British towns.”
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On Tuesday, May 14, BEF Headquarters got its first news of two Allied disasters. To the southeast there had been the French failure at Sedan, where the German armor was across the Meuse in force. Responding to urgent French requests for support, the Advanced Air Striking Force sent successive waves against the German bridgeheads. By the end of the day, of sixty-three Fairey Battle light bombers in action, thirty-five had been lost. If this were not bad enough, in the north, the 7th Army had begun to pull back from Dutch soil. The government of the Netherlands, its country and armed forces helpless against the German attack, announced that afternoon that its surrender would come into effect next morning. Just as the announcement was made, a Luftwaffe raid tore the heart out of Rotterdam.

Map 2. The German Breakthrough

Early on Wednesday, May 15, the Prime Minister, who had taken to sleeping in his command bunker beneath Whitehall, was woken by a telephone call from French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud, who explained in English that the Germans had broken through at Sedan and the battle was lost. To Halifax, Reynaud’s outburst made no sense, as well as being completely at variance with the confident official press statements issued daily from Paris. Nevertheless, he took his alliance duties seriously. At the morning’s cabinet meeting he instructed Kingsley Wood, Secretary of State for Air, that the RAF should provide most of the British support. Ten more fighter squadrons were transferred to the AASF, and Fighter Command intensified its patrols across the Channel. That afternoon the AOC-in-C of Fighter Command, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh “Stuffy” Dowding, submitted a formal letter of protest to Wood, pointing out that he had only thirty-four squadrons left, and not the fifty-two deemed necessary to defend Britain.

One of General Lord Gort’s first acts after BEF Headquarters reached Lille was to establish his own personal headquarters with a tiny staff in one of several small villages. He had no direct contact either with the 1st Army Group or the 1st Army; indeed, for several days French staff officers had no idea where he was to be found. An establishment figure like Halifax, Gort thought of himself as a simple soldier and an old-fashioned commander-in-chief whose main function was to maintain the tone and style of the army, defend it against politicians, and leave the details of battles to subordinates. Many contemporaries, and most historians, have seen him as simply out of his depth.

By May 15, as the 6th Army reached the BEF on the River Dyle, Gort was convinced that not only was the Belgian Army crumbling, but so was the 1st Army on his right. The rapidly made new plan was for the BEF to fall back westward from one river or canal line to another, holding off the Germans by day and moving by night, to regain the line of the Canal de l’Escaut east of Lille after six days. That Wednesday, May 15, evening, Gort’s flamboyant chief of intelligence, Maj. Gen. Noel Mason-Macfarlane, gave a press conference at which he explained that the battle was already lost, due entirely to the failure of Britain’s allies and the Chamberlain government for refusing to rearm earlier. The war correspondents barely had time to digest this shocking news. Next day, the first day of the British retreat, the Panzer spearheads reached St. Quentin deep in their rear. “I hope to God the French have some means of stopping them and closing the gap,” wrote Gort’s chief of staff in his diary, “or we are
bust.
”
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For the next five days the BEF performed—as its predecessor had in the retreat from Mons in 1914—that most difficult of military maneuvers, a retreat while holding off a close pursuit. Never seriously threatened, up to May 21 it had suffered fewer than 500 battle casualties. But as the Germans increased their grip on its supply lines, the BEF had fuel and artillery shells for only one major battle. If it attacked in any direction, its forces would simply run dry and empty in a matter of days. Meanwhile, the second-line TA divisions, supposedly safe in the rear, found themselves in the path of the onrushing Panzers of Army Group A, which scattered them with hardly a pause. Gort’s response was to form battle groups under senior officers from any troops available. Mason-Macfarlane commanded “Macforce,” while the BEF’s base at Arras was defended first by “Petreforce” under Maj. Gen. R. L. Petre of the second-line 12th Eastern Division, and then by “Frankforce” under Maj. Gen. H. E. Franklyn of 5th Infantry Division. It was rough and ready, but it would hold for a few days.

The peril in which the BEF found itself was not understood by the War Cabinet. Largely cut off from information, its members continued to think of the 6th Army’s attack into Belgium as the main German thrust, and were reassured by French official pronouncements (increasingly detached from reality) that any German breakthrough was a minor one. On May 20 the chief of the Imperial General Staff, Gen. Sir Edmund Ironside (“Tiny” Ironside, from his impressive bulk and height) arrived at Gort’s headquarters with orders for the BEF to attack southwestward, an idea of which he was soon disabused. Warning was also given to the Royal Navy on May 20 that evacuation of the BEF through the Channel ports might be needed. A suggestion from Churchill of also using civilian craft, or “little ships,” was turned down by Halifax as likely to alarm the population. Indeed, the main concern of the War Cabinet was that the British people should not learn too much of what was happening.