War Lord

  

 

N A T I O N A L     S U R V I V A L

Blitzkrieg has vulnerable flanks.

It's a long neck.  Cut off the head.

Very quickly your tank attack runs out of gas

and ammo.  Without supply your armored punch

becomes state of the art junk.  Useless.

British and French forces had the chance

for such a successful counterattack but their

lack of organization squandered the opportunity. 

Germans are believers in big surprises.

They head fake the Royal Navy outside Norway

and now French forces feel like they are shooting

at targets in a fun house mirror.  The threat

in front of you has suddenly become the threat

 to your rear.  The result is catastrophic.

 

  Party over.

 

   

Arsenal of Democracy

How does Britain defeat Hitler?

"I shall drag the United States in"  says Churchill.

The US Army is minuscule in size but Uncle Sam 

is truly the industrial giant Daddy Warbucks.

Already across the Atlantic shipyards are awakening

and factories expanding.  Soon the workers used

to assembling Chevys will instead build tanks,

planes, trucks and other implements of war.

Marx provides Stalin his strategy.

 "A war is on between two groups of capitalist countries.

Hitler, without understanding it or desiring it, is shaking

and undermining the capitalist system.  We can 

maneuver, pit one side against the other to set them

fighting with each other as fiercely as possible."

Stalin to his aids prior to Poland.

FDR runs for third term.

   

Roosevelt knows war will one day come to America.

The voters want nothing to do with the war in Europe.

The war to end all wars ended just twenty year ago

and now... here we are again.  Foolishness.

I can't get ahead of the voters, Franklin says.

You'll just have to wait, Winston.

* * * * * 

©  Tom Taylor

OVER EASY

coldValentine

Industry

  

Economics provide the foundation for a modern military.

Stalin saw industrialization, mass production, as 

the decisive factor to winning the war with Germany.

A successful war economy made huge numbers of

battlefield necessities because combat wear and 

tear quickly used up all the trucks, tanks, planes,

and ammo on hand.  

Germany had few strategic resources of its own.

A six month supply of critical materials such as 

steel and oil was all that Hitler could count on to

win the war.  Everything Germany needed to be

strong militarily was imported, scarce and often

not reliably available.  

The strategy for war had to take this into account.

Success over your enemy had to be quick, decisive.

The Allies base their strategy on defense.

The strategy of Britain and France was to play defense.

Prolonging the war worked to their favor because of

Germany's material disadvantage.  The German

military could be crippled by denying this elite force

it's 20th century underpinnings.

Germany bets on an armored punch with speed.

Blitzkrieg was the tactic German strategists wanted

because it offered the potential for quick victory.

This meant a very selective, pinpoint offense of

armor, artillery and air support.  Concentrated firepower 

would overwhelm your opponent's defense, creating

a breach that would enable tanks to speed behind

enemy lines - disrupting supplies, capturing

command centers and causing confusion.

Surprise is an essential component of victory.

Your enemy's most vulnerable point is where your 

main attack is least expected.  

France believed the Ardennes region along its

northern border was too mountainous to 

support an advancing panzer force.

French defense along the Meuse River was

infantry, mostly older reservists lightly armed. 

They hadn't trained for confronting an army 

of tanks.

The Luftwaffe controlled the skies over Ardennes.

The German force headed for the Meuse

was backed up over a hundred miles of 

narrow, winding mountain roads.

The French were right.  This was not tank country.

Meanwhile, the Allies thought they were fighting

the main German attack in Belgium.  Everything

was going as planned.  Britain and France rushed

their troops forward into battle.  They had matters

well in hand.  So they thought.  

Turns out they were just chasing the bait.  

* * * * * 

©  Tom Taylor

OVER EASY

coldValentine

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