12 May 1940 - Flanders

Panzers in Belgium, 1940

News of the deteriorating situation had gone from bad to alarming as report updates steadily flowed into the Belgian military command.  The officers involved with critical decision-making were clearly upset but they were still charged with saving the nation from disaster.  The linchpin of their initial defense, the 1200 man fortress Eben Emael, the modern man-made Gibraltar, had been rendered useless through the quick work of 78 German engineers and, ultimately, lost to the invaders within the space of 24 hours.  The entire Belgian defense along the Albert Canal had also crumbled and its demoralized formations were falling back towards the River Dyle and their last chance to stop the German troops from sweeping across their land and into France.

German forces were now less than 25 miles from the Belgium capital of Brussels and BEF Corps Commander Alan Brooke motored east from Louvain with 3^rd Division Commander Bernard Montgomery to survey the scene of battle.  The road was clogged with frightened refugees, bundled with precious few possessions, and streaming in the opposite direction, away from the violence that was engulfing their homes just a few miles further down the road.  General Brooke remarked how strange the scene was of refugees trudging pass a crowd of church-goers, congregated in their Sunday best and, seemingly, chatting as they would following any morning service.  War had intervened once again to flip all sense of reason upside down.

Army Group B Commander Fedor von Bock knew he wasn’t making any friends as he whipped his senior commanders into a greater sense of urgency.  16^th Panzer Corps Commander Erich Höepner snapped back angrily, “You don’t need to push me!”  Bock felt otherwise.  He relentlessly pushed the reeling Dutch and Belgian forces back into a hurried, improvisational retreat.  He wouldn't allow them time to accurately assess their situation or to determine an appropriate countermeasure.  With speed he could stampede the Belgians into the laps of the advance elements of British and French forces who were just now attempting to set up their own defensive positions along the River Dyle.  Maintaining the pressure wasn’t going to be easy.  Bock had still to contend with the many waterways crossing his line of attack.  There were simply too few bridges to move men, armor and supplies forward as rapidly as opportunities presented themselves.  The narrow bridges were clogged and resulted in tremendous congestion as his surge of armies funneled through them on their way west.  Once again Bock found himself resorting to transporting fuel by air in an effort to keep his thirsty tanks moving.  Bock was passionate with impatience and he wanted those under him to share his killer instinct for attack.  They must believe as he did that Germany’s success in the West demanded that Allied commanders’ full attention be placed upon what was bearing down on them now.  They should consider no threat other than what he provided.

 French cavalry units used to reconnoiter areas of the Ardennes beyond the River Meuse were easily routed by massed German armor on this Sunday, 12 May.  Their alarm at what they saw had somehow failed to make it up the chain of command.  Still, there was concern enough for the French 2^nd Army to destroy the bridges in the Sedan sector of the Meuse River, and to secure the promise of four first-rate divisions to soon come to their aid.  For the moment they had only the French 10^th Corps, many of whom were aging reservists parked in an area considered to be of least importance.  The local French commanders now knew a German attack was coming but they had no appreciation of its speed or force.

About forty miles up the River Meuse, north of Sedan, Erwin Rommel’s 7^th Panzer Division had chased two retreating French Cavalry Divisions across the river.  Rommel’s attempt that afternoon to make a tank crossing of the river was thwarted as the French blew up all the bridges in the area.  He settled for planning an infantry assault across the river, scheduled for early the following morning.  Meanwhile, by that evening, two panzer divisions of Heinz Guderian’s 19^th Panzer Corps arrived on the north bank of the Meuse River, opposite the historic city of Sedan. 

Guderian was eager to begin the effort to cross the Meuse the following day but it wasn’t certain he would get the needed approval from his immediate superior, Ewald Kleist.  Guderian’s tanks would be making their assault without proper infantry support.  Waiting for their arrival would require a delay of, at least, another day.  But Kleist, a usually more cautious commander than Guderian, had been pleased with the Panzer Group’s progress through the Ardennes and agreed to the next day’s attack.  Preparations for the assault were made during the night.  It was decided the Corps’ artillery resources would be concentrated on the main focus of attack – the area opposite 1^st Panzer Division.  One other critical component for success was arranged for – the inclusion of twelve squadrons of dive-bombers to be used to help force the river crossing.  The following day would give the Allied command their first inkling that the battle they would fight wasn’t the one for which they had planned.

Related Topics:

10 May 1940 - Flanders

11 May 1940 - Flanders

Blitzkrieg

Objective:  France 1940

11 May, 1940 - Flanders

Battle of Flanders

German anti-tank crew in Belgium, 1940

By the second day of battle the German army was proceeding mostly to plan while confusion was already beginning to set in with the Allied forces.  Two reasons can quickly be identified as the root cause of Allied disorganization.  The more significant is probably the lack of coordination between Allied command and the command of Belgian and Dutch forces, which acted independent of any overall command structure.  This contributed to the friction over where troops would be assigned along the River Dyle defensive line.  A second significant problem was the inability of different commands to communicate with one another, making it nearly impossible for battlefield commanders to address problems between units and also obscuring the changing nature of the battle itself.  Contributing to the inability to communicate was the policy of French High Command to maintain mostly radio silence during the period leading up to the outbreak of war on May 10.  Radio operators had little, if any, actual experience on their equipment.  The result was that orders and messages between commands often depended upon overburdened and insecure commercial phone lines.  When Bernard Montgomery, commander of the British 3^rd Division, reported a dispute between his unit and a Belgian division over who had responsibility for a sector on the defensive line, his commanding officer, General Alan Brooke found it exceedingly difficult to reach his own headquarters in an attempt to resolve the matter.

Still the Germans were not without problems.  One of the arguments against relying on a major offensive to sweep through the Low Countries was the numerous waterways that slowed movement and provided natural defensive barriers to oncoming troops.  General Fedor von Bock, Commander of Germany’s Army Group B, was particularly frustrated with the snarled traffic approaching a critical bridge that crossed the Maas River into Holland.  His valuable 9^th Panzer Division was stalled and vulnerable to air attack.  Fortunately for his men no Allied aircraft ever appeared.  His 4^th Panzer Division was nearly without fuel because of the difficulties in delivering supplies across the Maas and Albert Canal.  In desperation he was able to fly in 20,000 liters of fuel but that amount wouldn't take a thirsty armored division very far down the road.

Better progress was being made further south as the 3^rd Panzer Division had crossed the bridge at Maastricht and was now pushing into Belgium.  German divisions were beginning to cross the Albert Canal in number, forcing Belgian troops into a general retreat towards the next available defensive line along the River Dyle.  They would show up just as French and British troops were arriving to set up their own defensive positions.  At one point Belgians fired on Montgomery’s 3^rd division, believing them to be German paratroopers.  The success of the German onslaught reinforced French conviction that they were facing the full weight of the German offensive in this Battle of Flanders.

Meanwhile, Army Group A was making steady progress through the Ardennes countryside to the southeast.  Heinz Guderian’s lead tank divisions, the 1^st, 2^nd and 10^th Panzer Division had all fought off token resistance from both Belgian troops and French cavalry.  By the evening of this second day, the 1^st Panzer Division was held up by stiffening French resistance just outside the town of Bouillon, a mere 10 miles from Sedan and their first critical objective – the River Meuse.  The success of Germany’s war in the West depended on the ability of their tanks to cross this river and break through French defenses on the far side.  If they succeeded in making it across their efforts and sacrifice would be rewarded with terrain perfectly suited for tank operations.  It would be open fields behind the enemy’s lines all the way to the English Channel, or Paris, or behind the Maginot Line – wherever the German command most desired to go.

Related Topics:

10 May 1940 - Flanders

12 May 1940 - Flanders

Blitzkrieg

Objective:  France 1940

10 May 1940 - Flanders

Battle of France

Glider used at Eben Emael

The morning came to life with reports from everywhere flooding in all at once.  Allied airfields were being bombed and strafed.  The frontier defenses of the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France erupted with attacks all along the border with Germany.  The long winter lull, filled with months of boredom and tedious exercises, had become suddenly a swirl of actions, each demanding someone’s quick judgment call.  Each decision resulted in either a reward or penalty of great military consequence.  Mistakes would be made but there’s no time to fret.  So be it.  Keep moving.  Do the best you can.

10 May 1940 – Luftwaffe aircraft pounce on every Allied airfield within reach, destroying whatever planes are caught on the ground.  It is the required first step if German planes are to gain air superiority, enabling unrestricted action by Stuka Ju 87s to bomb and destroy enemy positions hindering the forward progress of fast moving Panzer units.  This is the combined one-two punch of Blitzkrieg air-ground attack.  It is the coordination of powerful tactical aircraft aiding the lethal drive of massed tank formations.

Immediately following the waves of fighters and bombers are formations of Junkers Ju-52s carrying airborne troops towards bridges crossing the Albert Canal, bridges that must be captured intact if German troops are to quickly penetrate Dutch and Belgian defenses.  This invasion has an unforgiving timetable that must be met if Germany is to achieve its ambitious goals.  Waterways must be broached.  Dutch and Belgian resistance must be quickly overwhelmed.  Germany’s long-time military rival, France, must suffer complete defeat.

In the air the British were slow to respond.  It wasn’t until 1100 hours that RAF bombers were ordered to attack German units west of the Rhine.  As it turns out these attacks were largely ineffective.  Within the first three days of fighting the British lost half of their 200 bombers stationed in France.  The French air force was virtually wiped out.  German aircraft were newer and superior in performance than most Allied aircraft.  Also, the German command structure enabled them to concentrate their airpower while Allied efforts were more dispersed.  Still, the battle in the air wasn’t all one-sided.  German losses were 83 aircraft on 10 May alone, including 47 bombers.  One problem was that neither side appreciated how vulnerable unescorted bombers would be to fighter attack.  German losses to their fleet of transport aircraft were also high with 213 Luftwaffe transports lost and another 240 damaged.  This represented 80 percent of the transport fleet.

The French and British have positioned their best, most mobile, armies along France’s border with southern Belgium.  They’ve long anticipated a German sweep through the Low Countries in order to plunge into northern France, much as the Hun did 25 years before in 1914.  The building of the impregnable Maginot Line along the border shared by France and Germany all but makes this course the only feasible avenue for invasion, or so thought the French High Command.

German paratroopers landed near key bridges in the early morning hours of 10 May and were able to capture nearly all of them before defenders were able to blow the bridges up.  Rotterdam, the hub of Dutch communications was attacked with its airfield and bridges across the River Maas captured.  Paratroopers also captured the airfields near the Dutch capital of The Hague but were driven off by Dutch counterattacks.  Nonetheless these troop attacks from the air added greatly to Allied confusion.

The key defense of the Albert Canal was Belgium’s reputably impregnable fortress, Eben Emael.  Glider-borne German troops landed on the fort’s roof, taking advantage of its Achilles’ heel, a very limited defense against attack from the air.  A contingent of less than a hundred German engineers effectively disabled the fortification, manned by over 1,200 men.  Within 24 hours Eben Emael was lost despite a desperate counterattack from Belgium troops.  Allied commanders expected the fort to hold for a good five days.  They hoped Belgian defenders along the Albert Canal would give them the time needed for French and British troops to reach the River Dyle and set up a coordinated defense with the Belgians.

Plan ‘D’, the Allied strategy to rush troops to a defensive line along Belgium’s River Dyle had two major problems.  Belgian fear of a hostile German response meant it never agreed to properly coordinate their defense with French and British troops.  Consequently, during the heat of battle, there was much confusion and disorganization between French, British and Belgian military contingents.  The second, more lethal, problem would not reveal itself before another four days.  Germany’s plan all along was to lure the best of British and French forces into a fatal trap.  The sweep by Germany’s Army Group B into and through the defenses of the Netherlands and Belgium was actually a distraction.  The early successes of these troops in Holland and along the Albert Canal convinced the French command that they were right in moving the weight of their army deep into Belgium territory.  Their attention was fixed on the desperate battle now unfolding to the north and west.  They had no inkling whatsoever of the enormous offensive force of concentrated tanks to the southeast that was steadily moving towards a lightly defended French portion of the Meuse River opposite the Ardennes forest.  None in the French high command could conceive of a large tank attack coming out of this densely forested, hilly terrain.  This is exactly what German military planners had counted on the Allies to believe.  If this were a game of chess this would now become the equivalent of checkmate in five moves or less.

Related Topics:

11 May 1940 - Flanders

12 May 1940 - Flanders

Blitzkrieg

Objective:  France 1940

Blitzkrieg

1940 Battle of France

Even following the results of World War I Germany remained the nation with the greatest economic potential of all Western Europe.  Given its industrial and intellectual resources the German nation would have likely achieved its current standing among nations many decades ago without resorting to war.  This obviously was not apparent to the followers of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, whose ambitions were beyond any diplomatic solution.   Resorting to conventional military tactics to achieve Germany’s aims was not an option as the nation could not sustain a prolonged war of attrition.  Hitler employed a strategy of isolating one’s enemies, one at a time, then following up with a quick, decisive military victory.  This approach required a tactical doctrine that took advantage of the newest military technologies.

The world witnessed the devastating effect that Blitzkrieg had on Allied forces in 1940’s Battle of France.  Hitler’s armies held the initiative during the entire course of the battle, despite the fact that French and British forces were equivalent in strength to their German adversaries.  Allied commanders had no counter to Germany’s lightening warfare that combined a focused armored punch with breakout speed and mobility.

There are five essential elements to Blitzkrieg tactical doctrine.

1.            Surprise.  The idea is to limit one’s own loses by striking hard with a spearhead of tanks at a soft-point of the enemy.  In 1940 this involved the use of deception.  French and British Allied commanders expected Germany to sweep through the Low Countries of Belgium and Holland much as they did in 1914 prior to their invasion of northern France.  Germany encouraged this belief by moving a large army swiftly into the area, much as they had done at the start of World War I.  But this was not the real offensive.  It was only a feint to draw the Allied forces forward, leaving them vulnerable to the real attack that was coming through the Ardennes, several miles to their southeast.

2.            Air Control.  While the ground forces of the opposing armies were roughly equivalent in strength, the German Luftwaffe retained a significant advantage over the allied air forces in both quantity and quality of their aircraft.  German fighter aircraft were quickly able to dominate the skies, enabling German dive-bombers to coordinate their precision strikes in support of advancing German tanks.  The Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter had no equals over the skies of France save for a few, underrepresented, British Spitfires.  This enabled the Junkers Ju 87 ‘Stuka’ dive-bomber to act as airborne artillery, picking off enemy strong-points in support of German armor on the ground.  Attacks from the air were also instrumental in disrupting enemy attempts at supplying and reinforcing frontline troops.  Communications facilities were attacked, sowing further confusion.

3.            Breakthrough.  Blitzkrieg doctrine concentrated overwhelming force onto a narrow front of the enemy’s line in order to quickly breach the opposition’s defense and then rapidly pour its forces into the weakly defended backfield.  While the allied armies of the west generally distributed their tanks as support for their infantry, German tactics called for specialized panzer divisions.  In 1940 these divisions each had about 240 tanks along with assorted other support vehicles.  There were seven such panzer divisions that broke out of the Ardennes forest in May of that year.  They were quickly followed up by three mechanized infantry divisions whose role was to provide flank defense for the initial breach.  This armored surge was aided in its mission by Stuka aircraft that took out enemy strongpoints using accurate dive-bombing from overhead.

4.            Deep Strikes.  Germany’s military tactics were designed to achieve a quick victory while avoiding actual battle as much as possible.  Once their armored units had achieved a breakthrough they used their speed and mobility to disrupt enemy communications as well as suppress opposition efforts at resupply, reinforcement and any organized counterstrike.  The panzer divisions were capable of reaching thirty miles within a day while follow-up infantry units maneuvered to envelope and dismantle the opposing force.  This rapidity of movement created confusion among allied commanders in 1940.  The result was a paralysis of indecision.  How should they respond?  Where should they respond?  Was the enemy’s objective the Channel coast or was it Paris?  It’s important to military commanders to keep the enemy guessing so they cannot easily concentrate their defenses. 

Penetrating deep behind enemy lines is the phase of blitzkrieg with the greatest potential for the enemy’s destruction.  It is also the point of the attacking army’s greatest vulnerability.  To better appreciate the problems inherent in blitzkrieg let’s first quickly look at the technological advances that occurred following the First World War.  Certainly the most dramatic advances occurred in aircraft design and performance.  The military planes of 1940 were much faster, had greater range and payload and were considerably more rugged than the wood and canvas biplanes of 1918.  Tank performance also far exceeded the first tentative efforts in tank design made by the British near the close of World War I.  These first tanks proved of little value in actual battlefield conditions.  Their slow speed and unreliability made them incapable of exploiting a breakthrough of enemy lines. 

Most everyone appreciates the contribution tanks and planes made to blitzkrieg.  But there is a third contribution that proved fundamental to the success of ‘lightening warfare’ and is often overlooked.  Fast and mobile armored units stretched the range of the battlefield many times beyond what it had once been in more conventional conflicts.  Command and control of one’s own units wouldn’t have been possible under these circumstances twenty years previously.  Improvements in radio changed this and enabled ‘real time’ communications over vast areas.  Radios were now more powerful and more reliable in different terrains and under varied weather conditions.  Most important, though, was the fact that radios had become portable.  They fit in tanks and planes.  Commanders could interact with their units and coordinate their maneuvers.  Planes could better collaborate with the ground troops they were aiding.  Commanders were aware of their units’ status and disposition, enabling armored penetrations that would have been reckless had they been moving blind.

The fact that armored spearheads were able to quickly cover vast distances created another danger.  Their long, thin probes left their flanks vulnerable to an enemy counterattack.  While the German assault into northern France in 1940 had available to it three mechanized infantry divisions that were capable of keeping pace with the tanks, they were not enough.  The vast majority of Germany’s infantry still moved on foot.  At various times the tanks had to wait for foot soldiers to make up the ground.  Tanks were also limited logistically.  Much of the German army’s supply was the responsibility of horse-drawn wagons.  Despite these drawbacks the effect of blitzkrieg on the opposing force was both dramatic and devastating. 

5.            Follow-up.  A very small portion of the German army actually decided the issue in the Battle of France in 1940.  But once armor has achieved the battlefield advantage there is still the need for large numbers of troops to secure the ground recently won.  Without the follow-up of a mass army a tank assault is little more than a cavalry charge into vast stretches of land.  It’s an exhilarating sight but ultimately on no consequence.

Related Topics:

Hitler's War Strategy

Kursk

The Ardennes Plan

Pacific Theater:  1941

Objective: France 1940

Blitzkrieg from the Ardennes

German armor in the Ardennes

With the defeat of Poland in September 1939, Hitler turned immediately to the problem of his western border and hostilities with both Britain and France.  Hitler’s strategy had always been for Germany’s eventual expansion into the vast open spaces of the Soviet Union, particularly the grain and mineral rich region of the Ukraine.  Then, too, there was southern-most Russia, rich in oil, along the Caspian Sea.  All this treasure was out of reach so long as Germany feared having to do battle on two fronts – Russia in the east and the allied forces of Britain and France to the west.

Hitler needed a plan that would quickly eliminate England and France’s military threat before proceeding with an invasion of Russia.  In October 1939 the German Military High Command proposed an offensive that was much like the Schlieffen Plan Germany used in 1914.  Even if this assault through the low countries of Belgium and Holland and continuing into northern France proved successful, it would not provide the quick, decisive victory Hitler needed.  The Allied armies would be pushed back but not destroyed.  Germany simply did not have the resources available to it to successfully prosecute a prolonged war of attrition.  The take-over of Austria and Czechoslovakia had been bloodless.  Victory in Poland had been swift.  Hitler’s plan to dominate Europe involved first isolating one’s adversary from their natural allies before dispatching them in short order.  His non-aggression pact with Stalin allowed him to safely focus on the west, but now his generals were charged with the daunting challenge of designing an offensive that could quickly defeat an opponent of equal size and strength.

General Erich von Manstein brought Hitler a plan that intrigued him with its boldness.  There would once again be swift movement by German forces into both Belgium and Holland but it would be a feint, drawing the best of the British and French forces forward to prearranged defensive positions along the rivers Dyle and Meuse in Belgium.  The intended knockout punch would be delivered to the southeast, along a lightly defended line facing the dense Ardennes forest.  French commanders were convinced this region of wilderness and rugged terrain was a natural barrier that would block a large enemy assault.    

There was complacency in the disposition of troops in the area around the French town of Sedan.  They were mostly lightly armed infantry, often older in age, and not of the caliber a commander would rely upon for a critical mission.  When the freight train of panzer divisions broke suddenly from the Ardennes forest these soldiers held their ground but they barely slowed the irresistible force of massed tank attack coordinated with the precision bombing of German Stukas diving from above.  This was a new form of warfare.  It emphasized armor, speed and a narrow focus of attack. 

Despite having defensive positions along the Meuse River French lines were breached in multiple locations by the following morning.  German armor, led by Heinz Guderian, penetrated deep into the open countryside, enveloping the opposing forces, spreading confusion and causing a paralysis of indecision among the French high command.  The assault, spearheaded by seven German panzer divisions, would rapidly make their way west toward the French coast.  The allied military response was unable to blunt the drive.  Soon the finest of the French army, as well as the entire British Expeditionary Force, found themselves surrounded, cutoff from reinforcement and supplies. 

France would hold out a few more weeks but the issue had been resolved within the space of ten days.  Britain’s escape at Dunkirk would one day prove disastrous for the Third Reich in ways a triumphant Germany could not now imagine.  For the present there was only gloom in London and Washington.  Democracy had been extinguished in Europe.  The great western cities of Paris, Berlin, Rome, Prague and Vienna were all under the oppressive rule of fascist dictators – men having only contempt for the free exchange of thought.  At the time they seemed invincible.  But among the defeated there were those strong of heart that knew this had been only the opening round.

Related Topics:

10 May 1940 - Flanders

11 May 1940 - Flanders

12 May 1940 - Flanders

Pacific Theater:  1941