To Lose a Battle (76 page)

He discovered General Veiel and the 2nd Panzer at Albert, where they had just captured a British gun battery which had exhausted its ammunition. The division was nearly out of fuel, and was proposing to halt at Albert. Guderian says that ‘they were soon disillusioned’ and he ordered them at once to push on to Abbeville. Having somehow mastered their fuel problem, the 2nd Panzers reached Abbeville by 1800 hours that evening, after an advance from Albert of forty-five miles, taking by surprise a French unit drilling on its parade ground. Its tanks then broke in between positions held by Territorials of the British 35th Brigade, only a few remnants of which managed to fall back across the Somme. Abbeville too had been bombed (indiscriminately, like Rotterdam, it seems) all through the 20th, and severe damage caused. But in fact the Luftwaffe probably
granted the hard-pressed British Territorials a respite by mistakenly bombing the bridgeheads which the Germans had seized, forcing them to withdraw that night until the error was resolved.

Because of a delay in the transmission of orders, Reinhardt’s troops did not move until 0800 on the 20th. At 1300 hours they ran into their first British at Mondicourt, who – in the words of the 6th Panzer War Diary – ‘in contrast to the French, cause surprise by their tough way of fighting and are only overcome after a one-hour battle’. Two hours later Ravenstein’s force was again fighting a hard battle against the British 36th Brigade defending Doullens, which, though hopelessly outnumbered, managed to hold out until shortly before nightfall. Nevertheless, despite this stubborn resistance, Reinhardt’s armour swept around Doullens to reach its objectives at Hesdin and Le Boisle. By the end of the day the two British Territorial Divisions, the 12th and 23rd, had all but ceased to exist.
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Widely dispersed, and inadequately prepared as they were to encounter German Panzer divisions, each had given a good account of itself against impossible odds, as the various German accounts testified.

As agreed with Hoth the previous day, Rommel launched forth on another of his famous night attacks just after midnight on the 19th. By 0500 he had reached the village of Beaurains, two and a half miles south of Arras. But, as had happened at Avesnes, his motorized rifle regiments did not follow the armour as closely as intended. Rushing back in an armoured car to find them, Rommel was nearly trapped by French cavalry tanks infiltrating across his lines of communication. These knocked out Rommel’s accompanying tanks, and for several hours he and his Signal Staff were surrounded. The situation was restored only by the arrival of an infantry regiment and artillery. Once again Rommel had the narrowest of escapes. For the rest of the day the 7th Panzer hammered unsuccessfully at Arras, held by British troops under Major-General R. L. Petre. It was Rommel’s first serious check since crossing the Meuse, his casualties the highest since the 13th. On the evening of the 20th, the 7th Panzer was placed on the
defensive around Arras – an unusual posture for Rommel.

Meanwhile, as night descended over northern France on 20 May, Guderian’s men pulled off the ace achievement of the campaign so far. Pushing out down the Somme from Abbeville, Austrians from Lieutenant-Colonel Spitta’s battalion from the 2nd Panzer reached Noyelles on the Atlantic coast, not far from the Hundred Years War battlefield of Crécy-en-Ponthieu. They had advanced over sixty miles since the morning. The dog-tired Panzer crews filled their lungs with sea air and wondered in amazement at how much more they had already achieved than the Kaiser’s Army before them. In ten short days they had covered two hundred miles
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and encircled the cream of the Allied armies. What could they not aspire to! In his orders that night, Guderian told his corps: ‘Today’s battles have brought us complete success. Along the whole front the enemy is in retreat in a manner that at times approaches rout.’

Far back at the rear, both the O.K.H. and O.K.W. were quite taken by surprise at the news. On the 19th, Jodl had been worrying that the Allies in northern Belgium might slip out to the south, and even on the morning of the 20th Halder was expressing concern lest Bock’s pressure in the north might result ‘in driving the game away, as it were, past Kleist’. But at the
Felsennest
, Jodl found a Hitler ‘beside himself with joy. Talks in words of highest appreciation of the German Army and its leadership. Is working on the Peace Treaty… First negotiations in the Forest of Compiègne as in 1918.’

In Paris, Alexander Werth recorded:

Cheerful news reached me from the censors’ office at night that all telephone (and telegraph?) communications between Paris and London had been broken off – lines cut; Fifth Column at work, or what?… Colonel Thomas said there was some heavy fighting ‘around’ St Quentin and Péronne. He tried to suggest that the German progress was slowing down. I’ve noticed that when they mention places ‘round’ which there is fighting, it means these places are already in German hands.

As usual the French censor was forty-eight hours behind with the news. For the Allies this was unquestionably the darkest day of the war so far; few in the five years to come would be darker.

Chapter 18

Encirclement

21–23 May

In the West, the greatest offensive of all time has had its first strategic result, after a series of major tactical successes; our forces have reached the sea.

Wehrmacht communiqué, 21 May

The Germans have not yet stood the final test… we are the old opponent of the Marne, the old opponent of Verdun. Pétain appears to us like a symbol, a promise. Weygand brings back to us the genius of Foch.

Le Journal, 21 May

A serious technical fault in the cable, it was learned, caused the cancellation of the public telephone service between London and Paris and beyond on Monday night and yesterday… A Post Office official said: ‘We have no idea when the service will be restored.’

Daily Telegraph, 22 May

The recapture of Arras may prove to be a turning-point in the present battle which will have a vital effect on the whole war.

Daily Mail, 23 May

German High Command: More Vacillations

For the jubilant Germans, the next three days would also be potentially the most dangerous of the campaign. The vulnerable ‘tortoise-head’ of the Panzers was now further extended than ever before,
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the vacuum between them and the weary, forced-marching infantry divisions greater than it had been when Hitler had lost his nerve on the 17th. Would the Allies, despite their disarray, yet be able to launch a successful counter-attack to break through the ‘Panzer Corridor’ before this frail wedge between their armies became a thing of steel?

At no time since 10 May had the outcome of the battle become such a race for time. On the German side, Guderian, up in the forefront with his Panzers, was supremely aware of this. After his remarkable achievements of the 20th, he fretted that night that ‘we did not know in what direction our advance should continue’. Nor, he added, had Kleist himself received any further instructions on how to proceed. In his orders for the 21st, Guderian simply told his Panzers to regroup and consolidate on the positions gained the previous day.

So the 21st of May was wasted while we waited for orders. I spent the day visiting Abbeville and our crossings and bridgeheads over the Somme. On the way I asked my men how they had enjoyed the operations up to date. ‘Not bad,’ said an Austrian of the 2nd Panzer Division, ‘but we wasted two whole days.’

‘Unfortunately,’ Guderian commented bitterly, ‘he was right.’

The reasons for this delay in the transmission of orders lay in renewed vacillations within the German High Command, which was again partially caught off balance by its own successses. The objective of
Sichelschnitt
had been reached, the Allied armies in the north were encircled, but the master blueprint had laid down no precise directives as to what the next step should be. Halder seemed to be still toying with notions of immediately continuing the advance southwards from the bridgeheads gained across the Somme, and leaving Bock’s Army Group ‘B’ to ‘mop up’ the encircled Allied forces in the north. Meanwhile, Hitler’s jubilation was once again tempered with renewed misgivings about the weakness of that southern flank, and later that day he was again lecturing Brauchitsch on the slowness of the infantry in catching up with the Panzers. It was thus not until midday on the 21st that the German High Command decided to concentrate all its forces upon reducing the Allied forces trapped in the north, so that by the time Guderian received his orders to swing northwards to seize the Channel ports the campaigning day was over. In the meantime, Rommel and the forces grouped around Arras had run into serious trouble.

Allied High Command: More Delays: Ironside’s Plan

In the Allied camp, where time was even more vital, the change of command, however desirable it may have been, could hardly have come at a worse moment. Before any forces could have been concentrated for the attack towards Mézières from the south and the Somme from the north, as called for by Gamelin’s ‘Instruction No. 12’ of the 19th, the order was cancelled by Weygand. On Weygand’s first visit to Georges’s H.Q. that day, Georges had offered to give him a detailed briefing on the situation. Weygand, weary after his fatiguing trip from the Levant, had replied ‘No, tomorrow.’ After his briefing then by Georges, Weygand had taken one or two important measures. He ordered the roads to be cleared (at last); civilians were to be allowed to move only between 6 p.m. and midnight. Struck by the lack of anti-tank weapons, he had ordered all the famous ‘75s’ of the First War to be brought out of mothballs, and used in combination with the infantry, ‘like revolvers’. The most serious problem, as he rightly saw it, now lay not south of the Panzer Corridor but in the north. But Weygand discovered that all communications with the forces there were cut off; he was only in tenuous contact with Billotte through London. Therefore, he told Georges: ‘I must go and see on the spot what the situation is.’ It was Foch who had taught him ‘the value of personal contact maintained at frequent intervals’. Later that afternoon he announced to Reynaud that, if the railway were still working, ‘I will go by train to Abbeville tonight; if not, I will go by air tomorrow morning.’ Pétain, who was present, supported Weygand’s decision, saying that nothing was equal to the presence of a commander-in-chief. Reynaud, however, managed to dissuade Weygand from entraining for Abbeville on the grounds that ‘it would be a fatal blow to France if you were to be taken prisoner’ – which, indeed, might well have been the case, as Abbeville was at that moment about to pass into enemy hands. Finally it was decided that Weygand would fly north the following morning, on condition that, Cinderella-like, he would be away no longer than twenty-four hours. But this would still mean the loss of two more precious days to the Allies.

Meanwhile, as Weygand was being briefed at La Ferté and the Panzers were fanning out towards the coast, on the morning of the 20th the British C.I.G.S., General Ironside, had arrived in the north on an important mission from his Government. His visit followed upon Gort’s call to the War Office of the previous day warning that he might be forced to consider evacuating the B.E.F. Churchill viewed Gort’s fears with considerable disfavour, and stated that the C.I.G.S., Ironside, ‘could not accept this proposal, as, like most of us, he favoured the southward march’. Accordingly, Ironside was dispatched to Wahagnies to tell Gort that he was to ‘force his way through all opposition in order to join up with the French in the south’. The phrasing of this brief revealed just how misinformed the Churchill Government remained, even as late as 19 May, on the true situation in France.
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Ironside arrived at Gort’s H.Q. at 0800 hours on the 20th, and promptly delivered to him a written order embodying the Government’s views, which said that the C.I.G.S. would inform General Billotte and the Belgians accordingly. General Dill, already in Paris, would also inform Georges of the British view; in effect, this constituted the very first intervention by Britain in the French General Staff’s handling of land strategy since the war had begun.

Ironside put his case for executing the southward march towards Amiens. Gort revealed obvious consternation. Then, according to Ironside, ‘after some thought. Lord Gort did not agree. I asked him to try, but the C.-in-C. said no, he could not agree.’ Firmly Gort pointed out that seven of his nine divisions were in close contact with the enemy on the Escaut; even if they could be disengaged, their withdrawal would open a gap on his left between the B.E.F. and the badly shaken Belgian Army through which the enemy would be bound to penetrate. In response to Ironside’s contention that the advancing German Panzers were ‘tired’, Gort said he was sure the French were even more tired. Everything he had seen of the French
forces and their leaders in recent days increasingly led him to doubt whether they could stage ‘an organized counter-offensive on a large scale’; therefore he was inclining more and more to his ‘last alternative’. However, he told Ironside that he ‘already had plans in hand’ to launch the following day a
limited
attack southwards from Arras with his two remaining ‘free’ divisions. In the absence of any fresh orders from the French, he would carry out this attack. Ironside then asked Gort ‘under whose orders he was now acting’.

The answer was General Billotte, who had a headquarters under the Vimy Ridge near Lens. Billotte had given the B.E.F. no orders for some eight days, nor had Gort complained to the Cabinet or to me.
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