by Ian Kershaw
The Allied mine-laying gave Germany the pretext it had been waiting for. Hitler called Goebbels, and explained to him what was afoot while they walked alone in the grounds of the Reich Chancellery in the lovely spring sunshine. Everything was prepared. No worthwhile resistance was to be expected. He was uninterested in America’s reaction. Material assistance from the USA would not be forthcoming for eight months or so, manpower not for about one and a half years. ‘And we must come to victory in this year. Otherwise the material supremacy of the opposing side would be too great. Also, a long war would be psychologically difficult to bear,’ Hitler conceded. He gave Goebbels an insight into his aims for the conquest of the north. ‘First we will keep quiet for a short time once we have both countries’ – Denmark and Norway – ‘and then England will be plastered. Now we possess a basis for attack.’ He was prepared to leave the Kings of Denmark and Norway untouched, as long as they did not create trouble. ‘But we will never again give up both countries.’
Landings by air and sea took place in Denmark in the early morning of 9 April. The Danes swiftly decided to offer no resistance. The Norwegian operation went less smoothly. Narvik and Trondheim were taken. But the sinking of the Blücher, by a single shell from an ancient coastal battery that landed in the ammunition hold of the new cruiser as it passed through the narrows near Oscarsborg, forced the accompanying ships to turn back and delayed the occupation of Oslo for the few hours that allowed the Norwegian royal family and government to leave the capital. Despite sturdy resistance by the Norwegians and relatively high naval losses at the hands of the British fleet, air superiority, following the swift capture of the airfields, rapidly helped provide the German forces with sufficient control to compel the evacuation of the British, French, and Polish troops who had landed in central Norway by the beginning of May. The Allies eventually took Narvik later in the month, after a protracted struggle, only to be pulled out again by Churchill in early June on account of the mounting danger to Britain from the German offensive in the west. The last Norwegian forces capitulated on the tenth.
‘Weser Exercise’ had proved a success. But it had been at a cost. Much of the surface-fleet of the German navy had been put out of action for the rest of 1940. Running the occupied parts of Scandinavia from now on sucked in on a more or less permanent basis around 300,000 men, many of them engaged in holding down a Norwegian population bitterly resentful at a German administration that was aided and abetted by Vidkun Quisling’s collaborationist movement. And there was a further consequence which would turn out to be to Germany’s disadvantage and have major significance for the British war-effort. Indirectly, the British failure led to the end of the Chamberlain government and brought into power the person who would prove himself Hitler’s most defiant and unrelenting foe: Winston Churchill.
The eventual success of ‘Weser Exercise’ concealed to all but the armed forces’ leadership Hitler’s serious deficiencies as a military commander. The lack of coordination between the branches of the armed forces; the flawed communications between the OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht – High Command of the Armed Forces) and the heads of the navy and, especially, army and Luftwaffe (leading to the need for alterations to directives already signed and issued); Hitler’s own reluctance, in larger briefing meetings, to oppose either Raeder or Göring, though advocating a tough line in private; and his constant interference in the minutiae of operations control: all provided for serious complications in the execution of ‘Weser Exercise’. On this occasion, the crisis soon passed. Hitler could bask in the glory of another triumph. But when the victories ran out, the flaws in his style of military leadership would prove a lasting weakness.
For now, however, he could turn his full energies to the long-awaited western offensive.
The repeated postponements of ‘Case Yellow’ (as the western offensive had come to be called) provided not just the opportunity to build up the army after the Polish campaign but also time to rethink operational plans. In Poland, Hitler had kept out of involvement in military operations. Now, in the preparation of the western offensive, he intervened directly for the first time. It set the pattern for the future. Already in the autumn he was uneasy about the directives coming from the Army High Command. Some of the top commanders were equally unconvinced. The plans seemed too conventional. They were what the enemy would expect. Even after modifications they remained less than satisfactory. They envisaged the decisive thrust coming from the north, either side of Liège. Hitler wanted something more daring, something which would retain the crucial element of surprise. His own ideas were still embryonic. They favoured a main line of attack further south – though the Army High Command thought this too risky since it involved attacking across the difficult wooded terrain of the Ardennes, with obvious problems for tank operations. Hitler did not know for some weeks that similar ideas were being more thoroughly worked out by Lieutenant-General Erich von Manstein, chief of staff of Army Group A. Manstein was among those generals concerned at the unimaginative strategy of the Army High Command. Discussions with Heinz Guderian, the general with greatest expertise in tank warfare, led him to conclude that the Ardennes posed no insuperable barrier to a panzer thrust. General von Rundstedt, Manstein’s immediate superior, also supported the bolder plan. However, Manstein was unable to persuade Army High Command to adopt his plan. Brauchitsch was adamantly opposed to any alteration to the established strategy and not even prepared to discuss Manstein’s plan. Halder at least agreed to take all operational proposals into account in a series of war games. These eventually, by February, were to make him more amenable to the Manstein plan. In January, however, Brauchitsch still refused to take Manstein’s operational draft to Hitler, and had the persistent general moved to a new command post in Stettin. Hitler had, even so, been made aware of the basic lines of Manstein’s plan in the second half of December. The postponement until spring of ‘Yellow’ that followed in January then gave him the opportunity to state that he wanted to give the operation a new basis, and above all to ensure absolute secrecy and the element of surprise.
In mid-February the operational plan for ‘Yellow’ was still not definitively agreed. Hitler was said to have described the existing planning of the Army High Command as the ‘ideas of a military cadet’. But nothing had as yet taken their place. At this point, Hitler’s Wehrmacht adjutant Rudolf Schmundt took the initiative and arranged for a meeting with Manstein on 17 February. By this time, Jodl had been informed that Hitler favoured a thrust of the motorized units on the southern flank, towards Sedan, where the enemy would least expect them. The army leadership, taking these wishes of Hitler on board and also bearing in mind the outcome of the war games, had already adjusted its strategic thinking when, on 18 February, Hitler spoke of the favourable impression he had gained of Manstein’s plan the day before. The die was now cast. By chance, the basic thoughts of the amateur had coincided with the brilliantly unorthodox planning of the professional strategist. Further refined by the OKH (Oberkommando des Heeres – High Command of the Army), the Manstein plan gave Hitler what he wanted: a surprise assault in the most unexpected area which, though not without risk, had the boldness of genius. The famous ‘sickle cut’ – though the designation was not a contemporary one – was incorporated in the new directive of 24 February. While the Allied forces countered the expected German attack through Belgium, armoured units of Army Group A would rapidly drive through the Ardennes and into the lowlands of northern France towards the coast, scything through Allied forces and pushing them into the path of Army Group B, advancing from the north.
‘The Führer presses for action as rapidly as possible,’ commented Goebbels in mid-April. ‘We can’t and won’t wait for long.’ The attack was finally set for 10 May. Hitler was confident. To those who saw him at close quarters, he appeared calm and optimistic, as if the doubts of previous months had passed, and he was now letting events take their course. He thought that France would capitulate after around six weeks, and that England
would then pull out of a war which, to continue, would mean losing its Empire – something wholly unimaginable. The balance of military forces was roughly even. What Hitler had not been fully informed about was the critical state of Germany’s raw-material reserves: enough rubber for six months, enough fuel for only four months. Booty from the western campaign would prove crucial in securing the material base for continuing the war.
The level of secrecy maintained even in Hitler’s closest entourage in the days leading up to the offensive was profound. When his special armoured train, code-named Amerika, pulled out of a small, secluded station on the outskirts of Berlin on the evening of 9 May, his press chief, Otto Dietrich, thought he was en route to visit shipworks in Hamburg, and Hitler’s secretaries thought they were setting out for Denmark and Norway to visit the troops. After midnight, the train quietly switched in the vicinity of Hanover from the northbound tracks and turned westward. Even then, the destination was not disclosed. But by now there was no longer any doubt of the purpose of the journey. Hitler was in excellent spirits throughout. Dawn was breaking when they got down from the train at a little station in the Eifel, near Euskirchen. Cars were waiting to drive the company through hilly, woody countryside to their new temporary home: the Führer Headquarters near Münstereifel that had been given the name Felsennest (Rock Eyrie). The accommodation was cramped and simple. Apart from Hitler himself, only Keitel, Schaub, and a manservant had rooms in the first bunker. Jodl, Dr Brandt, Schmundt, Below, Puttkamer, and Keitel’s adjutant were in a second. The rest had to be accommodated in the nearby village. The woods around were filled with the springtime twittering of birds. But as his staff gathered in front of Hitler’s bunker the peaceful sounds of the countryside in spring were broken by the distant rumble of shell-fire. Hitler pointed to the west. ‘Gentlemen, the offensive against the western powers has just started,’ he declared.
II
That offensive proceeded with a breathtaking pace that stunned the world. Even Hitler and his military leaders scarcely dared hope for such a scale of early successes. On the northern flank, the Dutch surrender followed within five days, the Queen and government fleeing to exile in England. Before that, the terror-bombing of Rotterdam’s old town had brought death and devastation from the skies. It was the trademark of the new type of warfare. Warsaw civilians had suffered it first; the people of British cities would soon come to dread it; and, later in the war, German citizens themselves would be exposed to its full horror. Belgian neutrality, for the second time in under thirty years, was breached along with that of the Dutch. On 28 May the Belgian army would surrender unconditionally, leaving King Leopold in effect a prisoner with the government in exile. Meanwhile, the ‘sickle cut’ plan was proving a brilliant and decisive success. Aided by the strategic and operational ineptitude of the French military command, German armoured units were able to sweep through the Ardennes, through Luxemburg and southern Belgium into northern France, breaking the thin line of French defence, and crossing the Meuse already on 13 May. Within ten days of the launching of the offensive, by the night of 20–21 May, the advance had covered 150 miles and reached the Channel coast. The ‘sickle cut’ had worked. The Allied forces had been cut in two; vast numbers were now squeezed between the coast and the oncoming German divisions. On 26 May the War Office in London bowed to what had become increasingly inevitable, and ordered the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force, the bulk of it by then fighting a desperate rearguard action just east of Dunkirk, the last remaining Channel port in Allied hands. The next days would see almost 340,000 British and French soldiers – the vast proportion of the Allied troops still in combat in north-west France – carried to safety across the Channel in an improvised armada of small boats while the Luftwaffe pounded the harbour and beaches of the port.
The evacuation had been greatly helped by Hitler’s decision, at 11.42 a.m. on 24 May, to halt the German advance with the spearhead a mere fifteen miles or so from Dunkirk. Post-war suggestions that Hitler was deliberately allowing the British troops to get away as an act of generosity to encourage Britain to come to the peace table with its armies intact are far-fetched. Hitler himself was alleged to have told his entourage a fortnight or so later that ‘the army is the backbone of England and the Empire. If we smash the invasion corps, the Empire is doomed. Since we neither want to nor can inherit it, we must leave it the chance. My generals haven’t grasped that.’ Such sentiments, if they were indeed expressed in those terms, were no more than a self-justification for a military mistake. For the decision not to move on Dunkirk was taken for military reasons, and on military advice. According to his Luftwaffe adjutant, Nicolaus von Below, ‘the English army had no significance for him’ at Dunkirk.
Hitler had flown that morning, 24 May, to Charleville, around 125 miles east of the Channel, to visit the headquarters of Colonel-General Gerd von Rundstedt, commander of Army Group A, which had made the remarkable advance in the ‘sickle movement’ along the southern flank. When Hitler arrived at half-past eleven, Rundstedt gave him a report on the situation. The suggestion to hold back the motorized units came not from Hitler, but from Rundstedt, one of his most trusted generals. Hitler agreed, adding that the tanks had to be conserved for the coming operations in the south and that a further advance would restrict the scope for action of the Luftwaffe. Hitler was keen to press on with the attack to the south without the delay that he thought would come about if they took a few days dealing with the surrounded Allied troops in Dunkirk. When Brauchitsch arrived next morning, the 25th, wanting to advance the tanks on to the plains, Hitler opposed him, arguing that the numerous canals criss-crossing Flanders made it an unsuitable terrain for tanks. But he left the decision to Rundstedt, who rejected the suggestion because of the need to have the tanks recover for the operations to come in the south. Halder, as well as Brauchitsch, was dismayed. They would have to come to terms with a supreme commander of the Wehrmacht who intervened in the direction of operations. But there was no magnanimity in the decision to hold back the tanks. Hitler wanted to strike Britain a knock-out blow to force her to accept peace terms. He had no interest in allowing the British troops to escape captivity or destruction. He had been persuaded by Göring to let the Luftwaffe finish off the encircled enemy. He thought few of the British would escape.
In fact, the Luftwaffe could not deliver on Göring’s promises. Despite its claims of success, bad weather and the Royal Air Force contrived to prevent the easy pickings Göring had imagined. Dunkirk did nothing to enhance the Luftwaffe’s prestige. Within two days, Hitler realized that the halt order had been an error. On 26 May, he reversed his decision and finally ordered the advance on Dunkirk to prevent further evacuations. Few of the encircled troops had got away by then. But the delay of forty-eight hours proved vital in enabling the British to orchestrate the extraordinary retreat – a masterpiece of improvisation accompanied by much good luck – over the next days.
In military terms Dunkirk seemed, as one stunning success followed another, of secondary importance to Germany. It amounted in reality to a massive defeat for Britain. But that the troops were brought back under such conditions to fight again another day was converted by the new British Prime Minister Churchill (who had come into office on the very day that the western offensive had begun), and by popular myth, into a symbol of the British fighting spirit – the archetypal triumph in adversity. As such, the great setback at Dunkirk provided a boost to British morale at one of the lowest points in the nation’s long history. In another way, too, Dunkirk was fateful. If the British Expeditionary Force had been lost, it is almost inconceivable that Churchill would have survived the growing pressure from those powerful forces within Britain that were ready to seek terms with Hitler.
Towards the end of the first week in June, Hitler moved his headquarters to Brûly-de-Pesche, in southern Belgium, near the border with France. The second stage of the German offensive was beginning. The French lines were rapidly overwhelmed. While the French ha
d more guns and tanks than the Germans, they were hopelessly outmatched in air-power. Not just that: French weaponry and tactics were outdated, not attuned to the demands of modern, mechanized warfare. And, just as important, the French military leadership conveyed their sense of defeatism to the rank-and-file. Discipline collapsed along with morale. Taking their lead from their fighting men, civilians fled from the big cities in their thousands. Some looked to astrology. The faithful placed their trust in prayer and the intercession of St Geneviève. Neither would be enough.
On 14 June German troops penetrated the Maginot Line south of Saarbrücken. That same day, less than five weeks since the launch of the western offensive, their comrades entered Paris. A generation earlier, the fathers and uncles of these soldiers had fought for four years and not reached Paris. Now, the German troops had achieved it in little over four weeks. The disparity in casualty figures mirrored the magnitude of the victory. Allied losses were reckoned at 90,000 dead, 200,000 wounded, and 1.9 million captured or missing. German dead numbered almost 30,000, total casualties just under 165,000.