POLAND AND THE “PHONY WAR”
On the morning of September 1, 1939, German forces invaded Poland. On September 3, Britain and France declared war on Germany in accordance with their treaty obligations.
The supposedly powerful Polish Army was decisively defeated and the country overrun in a matter of weeks. The fall of Warsaw on September 28 effectively ended the campaign, although there were some minor engagements lasting into early October.
During this time, the Western Allies did virtually nothing to effectively come to the aid of the Poles.
There was a tentative advance by the French against the thinly held German border. The so-called “Saarland offensive” was launched on September 7 by nine French divisions. These forces penetrated a distance of five miles along a sixteen-mile front, occupying a handful of insignificant villages.
The troops then halted and there was no further advance although German opposition was almost nonexistent. When Polish resistance collapsed, the troops were pulled back, and by October 4, all forces had withdrawn to the French frontier. Not a single German soldier was diverted from the assault on Poland.
The rapid conquest of Poland shocked the Western Allies and revealed to the world the revolutionary blitzkrieg (“lightning war”) concept of independent, fast-moving armored formations penetrating far into the battlefield, in conjunction with devastating tactical air support, causing a fatal dislocation of opposing armies deep behind the front.
The period from September 3, 1939, to May 9, 1940, was known in the West as the “Phony War” as both the German and Allied armies sat behind their respective frontiers. The French and British continued constructing fortifications and planning for the counterstroke to the expected German offensive. The Germans started planning for the attack on Western Europe.
Hitler’s territorial ambitions lay in the East, not the West, and the decision of the British and French governments to declare war was not expected, given their recent history of appeasement over German territorial gains. When Hitler’s tentative peace feelers in early October 1939 were rejected, there was really no alternative than to launch an attack in the West.
FALL GELB AND SICHELSCHNITT
The first German war directive concerning the attack in the West was Directive Number 6 for the Conduct of the War, issued on October 9, 1939. This directive called for the attack to be carried out in the autumn as soon as all plans were finalized and military units brought up to readiness.
The German General Staff was quite pessimistic about the attack on the West; the memories of the carnage of the Great War were still pervasive. This tentativeness was evident in the original plan they put forward, called “Case Yellow” (Fall Gelb). “Case Yellow” was not, as has often been stated, a rehashing of the Schlieffen Plan of 1914. That plan called for a massive enveloping movement from northern Belgium, pivoting on the coast, passing south of Paris, and isolating and destroying the bulk of the French and British armies.
If “Case Yellow” was a variant of the Schlieffen Plan, it was a distinctly anemic one. Essentially, it consisted of an enveloping movement on Ghent in order to separate the British Expeditionary Force from the French forces, defeating both in detail. Air and sea bases were to be secured for later employment against England. This was fundamentally a frontal assault by both the panzer and infantry divisions. How the campaign would further continue to decisively defeat the Allies was not detailed.
The plan was later modified to shift the axis of attack south, but it was still basically a frontal attack with limited objectives. Hitler modified the plan with a proposed attack through the Ardennes to initiate a breakthrough at Sedan on the Meuse.
Unaware of Hitler’s Ardennes variant, General Erich von Manstein, a brilliant strategist and Chief of Staff of General Gerd von Rundstedt’s Army Group A, had developed his own plan for a major attack through the Ardennes. The Manstein Plan envisaged a decisive thrust through the Ardennes, across the Meuse, and to the English Channel, trapping and ultimately annihilating Allied forces north of the Somme. The plan was appropriately called Sichelschnitt—“Sickle Cut.”
In November 1939, Manstein had consulted panzer expert General Heinz Guderian on whether the panzer divisions could be moved through the supposedly tank-proof Ardennes. Guderian replied that it could be done but a maximum concentration of the armored forces would be necessary.
Manstein presented his plan a number of times to the General Staff, but the daring proposal was consistently rejected. In fact, Manstein’s persistence became so irritating that he was removed from his position with Army Group A and sent to command an infantry corps far from the battlefront.
Just prior to taking command, Manstein, along with other corps commanders, met with Hitler on February 17, 1940. The forceful Manstein took this opportunity to present his plan to the Führer. Hitler was immediately impressed by Sichelschnitt as it contained his earlier suggestions for an attack through the Ardennes. The next day, Hitler presented the plan, claiming it to be his own, to Walther von Brauchitsch, Commander in Chief of the German Army, and General Franz Halder, Chief of the General Staff. Manstein did not receive any official credit for his daring and ultimately successful plan, which was finalized in all essential details by February 24.
Prior to this, the original plan was fatally compromised when a Luftwaffe light liaison aircraft was forced down at Mechelen just inside Belgium on January 10, 1940. The passengers were two army officers, one of whom was carrying a briefcase containing the detailed plans for “Case Yellow.”
Although Hitler originally wanted the attack to proceed as soon as possible, the necessity for a new plan and a particularly harsh winter meant that the offensive was postponed until the spring. May 10 was the chosen date for “A (Attack) Day.”
THE ALLIED PLANS
The Allied defense plans were based on the assumption that the Germans would launch their attack through northern Belgium and southern Holland as they had in the Great War. Three plans were considered based on defense lines along the Albert Canal, the River Dyle, and the River Escaut (Schelde). The Belgians naturally favored the “Albert Canal Plan” as it protected all of their country, but it was considered too risky by the French General Staff as it gave the Germans too much room to maneuver. The “Escaut Plan” was rejected for exactly the opposite reason—it would presuppose the surrender of Brussels and provided no possibility for a link with the Dutch defenses. The “Dyle Plan” was a not wholly satisfactory compromise, establishing a defensive front on the Dyle River in order to protect Brussels. Strong forces were also positioned along the vaunted Maginot Line.
As both Holland and Belgium were neutral, a move by Allied forces into Belgium could only be made if invited to do so by its government. This hampered the construction of permanent fortifications along the Dyle Line.
The “Dyle Plan” played directly into German hands. If, in response to a German northern offensive, the Allies moved the bulk of their first-line infantry and mobile divisions into Belgium, an unexpected and powerful offensive through the Ardennes—considered by the Allies to be impassible for armored vehicles—to the Channel coast would completely isolate those forces.
The balance of opposing forces on the Western Front in May 1940 was as follows:
French, British, Belgian, and Dutch forces: 3,644,000 troops in 143 divisions, 3,500 armored vehicles, 17,500 artillery and antiaircraft guns, and approximately 2,280 aircraft.
German forces: 2,400,000 troops in 136 divisions (including ten panzer divisions), 2,574 armored vehicles, 16,700 artillery and antiaircraft guns, and 2,750 aircraft. The Germans were superior only in numbers of aircraft but could still count on an overwhelming superiority at the point of the attack.
THE HAMMER FALLS: MAY 10, 1940
While the Norwegian campaign was still in its final stages, on Friday, May 10, at 0535 hours, Fall Gelb was launched in stunning fashion, with devastating attacks by the Luftwaffe, rapid movement of armored and mechanized forces, and the daring use of airborne troops to secure key objectives.
In the north was Army Group B, consisting of the 18th and 6th Armies with twenty-nine divisions, including three panzer. The 18th Army was tasked with the occupation of “Fortress Holland,” and the 6th Army was to advance through northern Belgium to the west, encircling Antwerp and Liege. In an incredibly daring airborne assault, eighty-five gliderborne troops of Assault Detachment Granite captured Eben Emael, a formidable modern fortress with a garrison of 1,400. Eben Emael was the key to the defense of Belgium as it guarded Liege and was on the direct approach route of the 6th Army. Despite being unable to capture an intact bridge over the Meuse or the Albert Canal, the Germans soon ferried troops across the waterways and constructed expedient bridges. The Belgian Army fought tenaciously but could do little to impede the advance.
In response to the German invasion, the Allied armies began closing up to the Dyle Line with thirty-five first-class French divisions and all of the 160,000-man British Expeditionary Force (BEF) with its sixteen divisions, including the 1st Armored Division. This advance was exactly what the Germans had counted on as, south of Aachen and Liege, the panzers of Army Group A were advancing toward the Meuse, their presence unknown to the Allies. The 15th Panzerkorps of Kluge’s 4th Army closed up to the Meuse between Dinant and Namur on the evening of May 12 at the junction of the French 2nd and 9th Armies. Panzergruppe Kleist of List’s 12th Army had advanced through the “impassable” Ardennes, easily brushing aside the screening cavalry divisions. Three panzerkorps—Hoth’s 25th (5th and 7th Panzer Divisions); Reinhardt’s 41st (6th and 8th PanzerDivisions); and Guderian’s 19th (1st, 2nd, and 10th Panzer Divisions), comprising some 2,400 tanks—were about to force a crossing of the Meuse. Once across the river, these panzerkorps were the spearhead of the drive to the coast and the isolation of the Allied forces in the north.
Erwin Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division was the first to cross the Meuse. The crossing was fiercely contested, and characteristically, Rommel personally supervised the bridge-building operations while under heavy fire. On the evening of May 12, Guderian’s corps reached the Meuse and crossed with heavy Luftwaffe tactical support at 1600 hours on the thirteenth.
Despite the stubborn resistance of the largely second-line troops guarding the crossings and all the Meuse bridges being destroyed in accordance with orders, four panzer divisions were across by the evening of the fourteenth and driving headlong for the coast. By the evening of the following day, the last line of defense was broken. The heroic efforts of Allied pilots who continually attacked the bridges despite the massive antiaircraft defenses and marauding Bf 109s was to no avail, and their casualties were crippling.
At this critical juncture, there had been no effective counterattacks mounted, and the Battle of France had effectively been decided in the Germans’ favor. The French supreme commander, General Maurice Gamelin, had established his headquarters at Vincennes with no wireless communications, being completely dependent on telephone landlines. As opposed to the quick reactions of the German commanders, the crucial decisions were either not made or fatally delayed. On May 15, French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud telephoned Winston Churchill, Britain’s prime minister since May 10, and stated to the astonished Churchill: “ We have been defeated. . . . We are beaten; we have lost the battle.”1
The “Dyle Line” was breached by Bock’s Army Group B on May 15, which was much quicker than anticipated by either the Allies or the Germans. The Allied divisions in the north started to fall back, but the fast-moving panzer divisions were already in their rear. At that point, the German high command almost sabotaged their own successful operation by ordering Kleist’s Panzergruppe to halt and not cross the River Oise before the eighteenth. The reason was that the cautious higher commanders, including Rundstedt, and the General Staff were worried about the open flanks of the armored and motorized units and wanted the much slower infantry divisions to close up and protect those flanks.
Guderian ignored the order and continued to advance, earning a severe reprimand from Kleist and precipitating a minor crisis as Guderian asked to be relieved of his command. Rundstedt and General List intervened, and Guderian was not permitted to relinquish his command and was allowed to conduct a “reconnaissance in force” as long as his headquarters remained where it could be easily reached. Guderian continued the offensive with his three panzer divisions, driving headlong to the coast.
One of the few tank-versus-tank engagements of the campaign occurred on May 15 when the 5th and 7th Panzer Divisions caught the French 1st DCR2 refueling. The excellent Char Bs with their heavy armor and armament were immobile, functioning only as static pill-boxes. More than 100 tanks were destroyed almost immediately, and after a night retreat, fewer than 20 tanks remained operational. The 1st DCR was destroyed without being committed to battle.
Colonel Charles DeGaulle, commander of the 4th DCR, counterattacked at Montcarnet, at that time the headquarters of the 1st Panzer Division, on May 17. Although the town was crowded with supply vehicles and logistics elements with few armored vehicles, the Germans hastily organized an improvised defense. The counterattack was repulsed without much difficulty and the panzers continued their advance unhindered. In fact, the attack was considered so insignificant that it was not even mentioned in the 1st Panzer Division’s daily war diary. After the war, as a result of DeGaulle’s fame, the attack of the 4th DCR tended to assume an exaggerated significance.
On May 20, Guderian’s hard-driving panzers reached the sea at Abbeville after advancing ninety kilometers (56 miles) in a single day. The bulk of the Allied first-line forces were now trapped in the north, caught between two German army groups.
One day earlier, General Gamelin was replaced by the seventy-three-year-old General Maxime Weygand, who had never commanded troops in battle. Weygand found himself in a dire situation on taking command. In ten days of fighting, the French had lost fifteen divisions. In the north, forty-five more were in danger of being encircled and destroyed, and the gap in the front, between Valenciennes and Montmedy, was now 160 kilometers (100 miles). There were no effective reserves, and the ammunition stores were almost gone.
On the same day that Guderian’s panzers reached the coast, the only really effective counterattack of the campaign was launched by the BEF at Arras. The counterattack was mounted by the 50th Infantry Division, the 151st Infantry Brigade, and the 1stArmy Tank Brigade with its heavy Matilda MKs I and II. Initially, this counterattack against the flank of Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division went well as the shells from the standard German antitank gun, the 3.7-cm PAK 36, bounced off the heavy armor of the Matildas. Numerous German tanks and guns were destroyed, and at one stage, Rommel took personal command of the artillery and antiaircraft units firing at the tanks over open sights. The situation was restored by the evening of the twenty-first, but this attack sowed the seeds of doubt in the minds not only of senior commanders like Rundstedt and Kleist, but also Hitler and the General Staff. There was serious concern about the seemingly overextended flanks of the panzer divisions.
The isolated Allied divisions in the north were retreating toward the Channel ports of Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk, their only possible exits from the German army groups that were rapidly closing in. Lord Gort, the commander of the BEF, knew that the Battle of France had been lost and his responsibility now was to save as many of his troops as possible. The BEF contained the majority of the professional soldiers in the British Army and their loss would be irreplaceable if Britain was to fight on alone. Boulogne and Calais were courageously defended, the former until May 25 and the latter until the evening of the twenty-sixth. A defensive perimeter was established around Dunkirk with orders that it was to be held at all costs.
Guderian’s panzers were also closing in on Dunkirk but were given the order to halt on the May 24; the destruction of Dunkirk was to be left to the Luftwaffe. The reason for the order was never given—was it concern for the vulnerable flanks and need for rest and maintenance of the panzerdivisions, or was it Goering’s boasting that his Luftwaffe could destroy the trapped Allied troops? Whatever the reason, the halt order saved the BEF and thousands of French troops. In the early evening of May 26, the halt order was rescinded, but by then, the defensive perimeter around Dunkirk was firmly established. On May 28, the gallant Belgians surrendered unconditionally, with British troops taking over their positions.
The epic evacuation from Dunkirk, Operation Dynamo is well known, with over 338,000 British and French troops rescued from May 29 to June 4, with courageous French soldiers providing the rearguard. Britain’s army lived to fight again.
THE FINAL BATTLE FOR FRANCE
General Weygand attempted to organize a defense in depth behind the Somme and Aisne Rivers, utilizing strongpoints centered on towns and villages, with the gaps in between covered by artillery and mobile reserves. However, Weygand only had sixty-five divisions left, and seventeen of those were either part of the Maginot Line garrison or second-line reserve formations. Additionally, more than 140,000 British troops remained in France after Dunkirk and were being reinforced as Lord Gort attempted to establish a new BEF.
The Germans commenced their attack on June 5 with Army Group B, which included six panzer divisions, and soon broke through the French defenses. By June 9, Army Group B had reached the Seine River, smashing the defending forces, and at this time, Army Group A launched its powerful assault in the center. The spearhead of the assault was Panzergruppe Guderian with four panzer divisions. Initially, this attack was held up by the stubborn defenders utilizing numerous armored counterattacks and heavy artillery fire. Close air support from the Luftwaffe soon destroyed the supporting artillery, and the panzers were free to create their usual havoc.
On June 15, the Germans marched into Paris, which had been declared an open city in order to save it from destruction, and the next day, the Rhone Valley had been reached. Reynaud resigned on June 16 and was replaced by Marshal Petain, the hero of the savage battles at Verdun in the Great War. Petain was under no illusions about the futility of continuing the struggle and asked for an armistice. Hitler’s terms were delivered on June 20, accepted on the twenty-second, and took effect at 2100 hours on the twenty-fourth. The Battle of France was over in a scant six weeks at a cost of some 153,000 German soldiers killed, wounded, and missing—a small fraction of the casualties sustained in the Great War.
Crucial factors in the Allied defeat were the deficiencies of command, control, communications, and intelligence. At almost every level, Allied communications were defective. Decision making was ponderously slow and therefore ineffective. By the time counterattacks were organized, the German forces had moved on. In contrast, the Germans reacted swiftly to any setbacks and immediately seized opportunities to advance—they were masters of the war of movement.
For all the success of the brilliant German victory in the French campaign, it fostered Hitler’s delusion of the invincibility of the Wehrmacht and the infallibility of his decision making, which would have disastrous consequences in subsequent campaigns.
The final variant of “Case Yellow.” Army Group B advances to the Dyle Line, causing the Allied armies to advance to the north. Army Group A is able to advance relatively unhindered through the Ardennes and reach the Meuse. From the Meuse, the panzer divisions break through to the coast.
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1. George Forty and John Duncan, The Fall of France: Disaster in the West, 1939–1940 (Kent: The Nutshell Publishing Co. Ltd., 1990).
2. DCR—Division Cuirassee Rapid, French armored division, of which only three were operational in May 1940. The division had around 200 modern tanks consisting of two battalions of light tanks (Hotchkiss H39/35) and two battalions of heavy tanks (Char B1 bis), a battalion of motorized infantry and a regiment of artillery. Most of the French armor (about 80 percent) was dispersed among the infantry divisions.