by John Keegan
‘Sickle Stroke’ allotted the three German army groups the following missions. Army Group B, the northernmost, commanded by General Fedor von Bock, was to attack into Holland and northern Belgium, with the aim of tempting the Franco-British field army as far eastward as possible and seizing territory from which it could be outflanked from the north. Army Group C (commanded by General Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb), the southernmost, was to engage the garrison of the Maginot Line, penetrating it if possible. Rundstedt’s Army Group A, in the centre, was to advance through the Ardennes, seize crossings over the great water obstacle of the Meuse between Sedan and Dinant, then drive north-west, along the line of the River Somme, to Amiens, Abbeville and the Channel coast. It was to command seven of the ten available Panzer divisions to spearhead the advance, leaving none for Leeb and only three for Bock.
Bock, displeased by his secondary role, emphasised to Halder the risks of the plan in a brilliantly withering ‘worst case’ analysis. ‘You will be creeping by, ten miles from the Maginot Line, with the flank of your breakthrough and hope that the French will watch inertly! You are cramming the mass of the tank units together into the sparse roads of the Ardennes mountain country, as if there were no such thing as airpower! And you then hope to be able to lead an operation as far as the coast with an open southern flank 200 miles long, where stands the mass of the French army.’ To German officers of their generation, Bock’s warning to Halder recalled the German army’s last ‘open flank’ operation into France, in 1914 – the long dusty roads overcrowded with marching troops, the French nowhere to be found, the unprotected lines of communication ever lengthening, the great walled fortress of Paris, bulging with troops and artillery, looming unreduced in the rear until, like a thunderclap, the French counter-stroke was launched, the first Battle of the Marne lost, the German spearheads sent trundling into reverse and the urgent footfalls of manoeuvre warfare drowned by the thud of spades digging the first trenches of the Western Front.
Bock was right to warn that the stagnation of another Western Front awaited the Wehrmacht if ‘Sickle Stroke’ miscarried; he was wrong to warn that it might miscarry as the Schlieffen Plan had done in 1914. For one thing, the Maginot Line, unlike the fortress of Paris in 1914, was not a place d’armes from which a counter-attack force could spring panther-like against the German army’s flank. On the contrary, its conformation and structure imprisoned its garrison within it, consigning them to a purely frontal defence against frontal attack, which it was not Rundstedt’s role to deliver. For another, the German army would not be ‘creeping by’ the Maginot Line; its tank spearheads, if they could negotiate the Ardennes and cross the Meuse, would be driving onward at thirty or forty miles a day, as they had in Poland and as the French army, wherever its mass stood, was not organised to do. As to airpower, there was certainly ‘such a thing’, but the Luftwaffe was superior in quality of aircraft and in tactics of ground-air operations, considerably superior in numbers and far superior in fighting experience to the Armée de l’Air and the Advanced Air Striking Force of the RAF combined.
Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe would reveal its deficiencies later in the war; but in 1940 its strengths were paramount. Unlike its British and French equivalents, which had over-diversified in aircraft production and procurement – trying to build too many types at home and then being forced into purchasing from America to replace unsatisfactory models – it had concentrated on procuring a large number of a few types of aircraft, each of which was finely adapted to its specialised function. The Messerschmitt 109 was an excellent example of what today would be called an ‘air-superiority fighter’, fast, manoeuvrable, heavily armed and with a high rate of climb. The Junkers 87 was a formidable ground-attack dive-bomber, particularly when protected by the Me 109 and as long as ground-air defence depended upon the visually aimed anti-aircraft gun. The Heinkel 111 was an effective medium bomber, at least for daylight operations. Some alternative German types – the Dornier 17 bomber, the Messerschmitt 110 heavy fighter – were to prove misconceptions; but in 1940 the Luftwaffe was burdened with none of the obsolescent or obsolete types which equipped the French and British squadrons. Moreover, its senior officers included a number of first-rate men – Milch, Jeschonnek and Kesselring – whose transfer from the army to the air force was a token of their competence; too many senior officers of the French and British air forces, by comparison, were also-rans who had forsaken the army to restart frustrated careers.
The commonality of training shared by German air force and army officers – Jeschonnek had passed first out of the Kriegsakademie – ensured that the Wehrmacht’s tactics of ground-air operations were fine-tuned. The staffs of its ten Panzer divisions knew that when they called for air support it would arrive on time, where and how they required it. This ensured a massive increment to the Panzers’ power, which was in any case formidable. German tanks were not, model for model, notably superior to those of the British and French armies. The Mark IV Panzer, the army’s future main battle tank, was well armoured but undergunned. The Mark III, its workhorse, was inferior in protection both to the British Infantry Tank Mark I and the French Somua, the latter an advanced design whose all-cast hull would influence that of the American Sherman of 1942-5. However, the German tanks were integrated into ‘all-tank’ formations, the Panzer divisions, which were not only ‘tank-heavy’ – that is, unencumbered by unmechanised infantry or artillery – but also trained to maximise the tank’s characteristics: speed, manoeuvrability and independence of action. By contrast, the British had only one armoured division, which was still in the process of forming; while the French, with more tanks than the Germans (3000 to 2400), had distributed half (1500) among their slow-moving infantry divisions, allotted others (700) to bastard ‘cavalry’ and ‘mechanised’ divisions, and kept only 800 to form five armoured divisions, of which in 1940 three were active and one – commanded by the wayward Charles de Gaulle – was still forming. Germany’s ten Panzer divisions were not only homogeneous in composition, as a result of the reorganisation of the ‘light’ into true tank divisions since the Polish campaign; they were also subordinated to higher Panzer headquarters commanded by Hoepner (XVI Panzer Corps), Hoth (XV), Guderian (XIX) and Reinhardt (XLI). Guderian’s and Reinhardt’s Corps, with Wietersheim’s XIV Mechanised Corps, a formation of motorised infantry divisions which included integral tank battalions, actually composed a separate entity, Panzer Group von Kleist. At the time of its creation it was a revolutionary organisation, the largest armoured force existing in any army and the forerunner of the great tank armies which were to sweep across the battlefields of the world in 1941-5.
The Maginot mentality
It was these dense concentrations of tanks which made the German army so menacing an opponent of those of the Western Allies, as the two sides watched and waited either side of the Franco-German frontier in the spring of 1940. The French army, 101 divisions strong, scarcely differed in character from that of 1914; it wore the same boots, manned the same artillery, the venerated 75 mm, and marched to the same tunes as under ‘Papa’ Joffre; many of its commanders had been staff officers to the generals who had led it to war in that terrible August twenty-six years earlier. Moreover, it was still a marching army, its pace of manoeuvre determined by the age-old rhythms of soldier’s stride and horse’s walk. So too was that of the bulk of the German army, whose 120 infantry divisions were as roadbound as those of the enemy. But the ten German Panzer divisions were not roadbound; the Luftwaffe squadrons that supported them were not even earthbound. Together they indeed threatened ‘lightning war’ against the groundlings of the Western Alliance. How did the Western generals hope to give them check?
The strategy of the West was founded first, of course, on its belief in the inviolability of the Maginot Line, that ‘Western Front in concrete’ which had consumed the disposable margin of the French defence budget since the first funds for its construction were voted in January 1930. However, the French commitment to an ‘imper
meable’ military frontier long predated that role. As early as 1922 the French army had determined that its soldiers should never again, as in 1914, have to fight a defensive battle in the open field; and every demographic and economic development since – the declining birth-rate, the static industrial base – had only reinforced that resolution. The original vote for the Maginot Line was for 3000 million francs; by 1935, 7000 million had been spent, one-fifth of the year-on-year military budget, but only 87 miles of fortification had been completed. Fortification experts were satisfied (rightly, as the events of 1940 were to demonstrate) that the money had bought effective protection as far as the line ran, which was along the Franco-German border – but there remained 250 miles of totally unfortified frontier, where France abutted Belgium. Not only had the money lacked to extend the line. The maintenance of good relations with Belgium had argued against its being found; for, on Hitler’s reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936, Belgium had revoked its military treaty with France, declaring itself ‘independent’ – though not neutral – but made clear its resistance to being left on the wrong side of the Maginot Line if it were extended northwards.
In the event of a German offensive, which seemed certain to be based on the exploitation of Belgian weakness (as in 1914), the French high command would therefore have to launch its mobile field army, with the British Expeditionary Force, into Belgian territory, without having been able to co-ordinate plans with the Belgian General Staff beforehand or reconnoitre the ground on which it was to fight. Nevertheless the French were obliged to accept this highly unsatisfactory basis on which to prepare a defensive battle. On 24 October 1939 General Maurice Gamelin, the French commander-in-chief, issued orders for an advance to the line of the river Schelde in Belgium in the event of a German attack. Three weeks later, on 15 November, when the disadvantages of that scheme had been realised, he issued an amended Directive No. 8 which set the line of advance on the river Dyle, a shorter front which connected the two big Belgian water obstacles, the Schelde estuary and the Meuse, from which river-mobile troops would hold the gap between it and the Maginot Line.
Directive No. 8 had the advantage of bringing the Franco-British force closer behind the projected positions of the Belgian army, which was twenty-two divisions strong on mobilisation and had an excellent military reputation; for all the scorn the Allies were later to heap on the Belgians, the Germans had regarded them since 1914 as tenacious opponents and would continue to do so even after the débâcle that was to come. Their front was also protected, as in 1914, by strong fortifications, particularly along the Meuse, on which much money had been spent.
Could the Belgians, even if fighting independently, win a delay on their frontier with Germany? Directive No. 8 promised an effective strategy. Its success would depend on the operational efficiency of the Franco-British forces of manoeuvre. Of these the British Expeditionary Force composed a homogeneous element, though of mixed quality. ‘It was no use’, the British Ambassador in Paris had written to Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, in January 1940, ‘pointing to the size of the British Navy and Air Force . . . French public opinion wanted large numbers of troops in Europe.’ The British had done their best; by December 1939 they had sent all five of their excellent home-based regular divisions to France. However, because the British military system was indeed regular, and yielding trained reserves in very small numbers by comparison with the conscripted armies of France and Germany, that almost exhausted its military resources. Extra divisions had to be found from the voluntary reserve, the Territorial Army, ‘Saturday night soldiers’ as they were known at home, high in enthusiasm but low in experience and skill. The five extra divisions sent to France between January and April were all Territorial; a final three sent in April were so deficient in training and equipment that even the British categorised them as ‘labour’ formations. Further, all thirteen were infantry divisions; in May 1940 Britain’s only tank formation, the 1st Armoured Division, was still not ready for action. Nevertheless there was an impressive consistency of organisation and spirit in the British Expeditionary Force. The regulars had mobilised with Tommy Atkins’s traditional and cheerful indifference to the identity of the King’s enemies – or allies (‘going to fight them bloody Belgiums’, a Tommy had explained to Siegfried Sassoon in 1914) – and the Territorials eagerly aped their sang-froid.
By contrast, the French army was a piecemeal collection of divisions and units, good, indifferent and plain bad. The good included the ten ‘active’ conscript infantry divisions, which were kept at full strength in peacetime, the seven regular divisions of the colonial army and those North African divisions of the Armée d’Afrique which had been brought to France. Less good were the category ‘A’ reserve divisions mobilised from the younger reservists; some of the category ‘B’ divisions, mobilised from reservists of over thirty-two, were militarily inert and even insubordinate. Lieutenant-General Alan Brooke, the future British chief of staff, recalled a march-past of such men in November 1939 with disgust: ‘men unshaven, horses ungroomed, clothes and saddlery that did not fit, vehicles dirty and complete lack of pride in themselves or their units. What shook me most, however, was the look in the men’s faces, disgruntled and insubordinate looks . . . although ordered to give the “eyes left”, hardly a man bothered to do so.’ The French tank and motorised divisions were of better human quality, but organised on no coherent system; the five light cavalry divisions (DLC) included horse and armoured-car units, the three light mechanised divisions (DLM) armoured cars and light tanks, the four armoured divisions (DCR) tanks only and the ten motorised divisions of track-borne infantry. They were distributed haphazardly among the armies, providing none of the commanders with an equivalent of the solid mass of armoured troops which would form the cutting-edge of Rundstedt’s Army Group A. Perhaps the only French units logically trained and equipped to perform an allotted function were the fortress divisions in the Maginot Line, which included units of Indo-Chinese and Madagascan machine-gunners; but they, by definition, were prisoners of their positions and unavailable for deployment elsewhere.
The German army which opposed this miscellaneous Allied host impressed above all by the homogeneity of its composition. It maintained only three types of division: armoured (Panzer), motorised and infantry. The parachute divisions formed part of the Luftwaffe. By May 1940 all ten of its Panzer and all six of its motorised divisions were deployed in the west; so too were 118 infantry divisions, which, since the Polish campaign, differed little in fighting efficiency, whether they were pre-war ‘active’ or wartime reserve. The only oddities in the German order of battle were the 1st Cavalry Division (effectively a motorised formation), the elite mountain infantry divisions and the two motorised divisions drawn from the SS, the Nazi Party militia. The SS had already demonstrated in Poland a tendency to illegal brutality that it was to amplify in France. Otherwise its units differed from those of the army only in an evident determination to excel in courage on the battlefield.
The simplicity of the German army’s organisation was reflected in its command arrangements. Authority over its formations ran from Hitler through his personal headquarters, OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the Supreme Command), as yet an undeveloped instrument of control, to the army high command (OKH) and then directly to the army groups. In practice, as foreshadowed in Poland, Hitler would deal directly with the General Staff, locating his headquarters close to it, but leave direct operational control to its experts. The Luftwaffe’s liaison staff at OKH directly co-ordinated air operations with the army’s. On the Allied side, by contrast, operational authority rested with the French Supreme Commander, General Maurice Gamelin, but was exercised first through a Commander Land Forces (General Doumenc) and then by the commander for the north-east, General Alphonse Joseph Georges, under whom came not only the French Army Groups 1, 2 and 3 but also the British Expeditionary Force. The BEF’s commander, General Lord Gort, answered operationally to Georges but politically to the British cabinet; b
ut by May 1940, because Gamelin answered politically to his own cabinet, he had developed the habit of dealing directly with Gort rather than through Georges, while Gort ultimately looked to London for orders rather than to La Ferté (Georges’s HQ), Montry (Doumenc’s) or Vincennes (Gamelin’s). It was a further structural weakness of the Allied command system that Gamelin’s headquarters were near Paris, those of Doumenc halfway to those of Georges in northern France, those of Gort separate from his, and those of both the British and French air forces separate again. The Royal Air Force in France actually answered to two headquarters: Gort directly controlled the RAF component of the BEF, but the much larger Advanced Air Striking Force came under Bomber Command in Britain. The French air force had three levels of command above its operational squadrons, three separate squadron headquarters, and liaison staffs with both elements of the RAF.
Structural deficiencies were compounded by personal failings. Gort was a famously brave officer who had won the Victoria Cross in the First World War but identified over closely with his fighting battalion commanders. Georges had never properly recovered from a wound suffered during the assassination of the King of Yugoslavia at Marseilles in 1934. Gamelin, once operations officer to Joffre, was simply old – sixty-eight – and, what was worse, tired by age. De Gaulle, who visited him in his remote ‘convent-like’ headquarters at Vincennes during the phoney war, brought away the impression of a researcher testing the chemical creations of his strategy in a laboratory. Air Marshal Arthur Barratt, commander of the British Air Forces in France, had a more caustic judgement: ‘a button-eyed, button-booted, pot-bellied little grocer’. Gamelin’s operational directives read like philosophical tracts. No word, written or spoken, that issued from Vincennes carried fire to the men at the front.