Brave Genius

by Sean B. Carroll

  ENGINEER MONOD, LIKE all other Frenchmen, was oblivious to the leadership crisis in his government. He arrived in Versailles and moved into his barracks, where, as the eldest member of the 126th section, he was given the honor of being the head of the section, and the responsibility for getting the unit settled. Jacques’s immediate concern, however, was to see his wife as soon as possible. He wrote to Odette in Dinard on May 9 to tell her that he would be free after noon on Saturday the eleventh until Sunday evening the twelfth. He told her, “I can only think of one thing at this moment: Will I see you Saturday or Sunday?”

  HITLER ALSO HAD plans for that weekend. At five p.m. on May 9, at the very moment that the leaders of both Great Britain and France were pondering their resignations, he left the Finkenkrug railroad station outside Berlin aboard his special armored train. The Führer was accompanied by his secretaries and various members of his inner circle, including General Jodl. Just before nine p.m. the train stopped near Hanover so that Hitler could get the weather forecast for the next day. Assured of clear skies, he ordered the code word “Danzig” to be forwarded to all units on the western front.

  CHAPTER 4

  SPRINGTIME FOR HITLER

  We have assured all our immediate neighbors of the integrity of their territory as far as Germany is concerned. That is no hollow phrase: it is our sacred will … The Sudetenland is the last territorial claim which I have to make in Europe.

  —ADOLF HITLER, September 26, 1938

  WHILE NINE GERMAN DIVISIONS (120,000 TROOPS) HAD BEEN committed to the invasion and occupation of Norway and Denmark, 136 divisions, more than 2 million men, had been amassing on the German border with Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France.

  They had not gone unnoticed. In the Netherlands, all military leaves had been cancelled and all personnel ordered to join their units. The civilian population was asked to limit rail travel in order to facilitate the troop recall. All public buildings and installations were placed under armed guard. Holland, a neutral country, was assembling the largest army in its history.

  PHONE CALLS STARTED coming into the French command just after midnight on Friday, May 10. At one a.m., General Gamelin was awakened with a message from an agent who was behind enemy lines: “Columns marching westward.” Premier Reynaud received urgent word from Brussels that both the Belgian and Dutch armies noted increased activities on their front.

  As dawn broke, Germany attacked across a 175-mile-long front with Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg. First, there were artillery barrages, then waves of bombers, then armored columns and troops invaded the Low Countries. In Holland, paratroopers seized forts and airfields.

  Shortly after six a.m., the Belgians and Dutch both formally requested the assistance of the Allies. Within minutes, Gamelin was notified and the orders were given for French and British forces to cross into Belgium and to speed north to Holland—the long-planned maneuvers to establish a continuous line of defense across Belgium and Holland.

  Reynaud had to withdraw his resignation and to put aside his differences with Gamelin. Hitler had preempted any change in leadership.

  Gamelin prowled the halls of his command post, even smiling as he learned the direction of the German attacks. He had long planned for this clash of armies. Altogether the Allies had at least as many men as the enemy, about 152 divisions in total: 104 French, 15 British, 22 Belgian, and 11 Dutch. The French had a slightly larger number of tanks than the Germans, as well as a substantial advantage in artillery pieces. The Allies were outnumbered, however, in aircraft by about two to one, and in antiaircraft guns by almost three to one.

  Gamelin was, one corporal observed that morning, “absolutely confident of success.” He issued the order of the day to the troops:

  The attack that we had foreseen since October was launched this morning. Germany is engaged in a fight with us to the death.

  The order of the day for France and all her Allies are the words: Courage, energy, confidence.

  PARISIANS AWOKE TO a beautiful sunny morning, to choruses of birds, and the sound of air-raid sirens. A few planes flew over the city, but no one was sure whether they were French or German. Out of months of habit, few bothered to head to the air-raid shelters.

  As bulletins came over the radio of the German attacks on the Low Countries, the collective response in France was “Finally!” After eight months, the long-anticipated battle had arrived. Civilians and soldiers alike appeared relieved that the tension had been broken, and they looked forward to the fight. “The Boches have business with somebody their own size now!” is what A. J. Liebling, Paris correspondent for the New Yorker, heard on the street. “They will see we are not Poles or Norwegians,” said many. A corporal had recently written, “The real roughhouse is about to begin. So much the better! It will be like bursting an abscess!” Liebling’s friend Captain de Cholet phoned that morning to say he was returning to the front. “It’s good that it’s starting at last. We can beat the Boches and have it over by autumn,” the captain added.

  At the offices of Paris-Soir, a military specialist told staff members, “That’s it, Hitler has made his mistake.”

  That evening, Premier Reynaud addressed the country over the radio:

  Three free countries, Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg, were invaded this past night, by the German army.

  They called to their aid the Allied armies.

  This morning, between seven and eight o’clock, our soldiers, the soldiers of freedom, crossed the frontier.

  This centuries-old battlefield of Flanders our people know well!

  Opposite us, hurling himself at us, is the centuries-old invader.

  Everywhere in the world, every free man and every woman watches and holds their breath before the drama that is about to play out …

  The French army has drawn its sword, France gathers itself.

  The official military communiqués for the day reported forty-four enemy planes downed over France, the Dutch claimed to have shot down seventy German planes and blown up four armored trains, and the Belgians assured that the German attack was contained at all points. The Dutch Army command at the Hague was “satisfied that they have the situation in hand.” Allied losses were not reported.

  Chamberlain, however, was one casualty of the momentous day. He resigned and Winston Churchill became prime minister.

  MONOD TRIED TO intercept Odette. He had not yet received a reply to his letter of May 9, and he hoped that Odette had not left Dinard for their rendezvous. He hurriedly composed a short letter from his bed, where he was recuperating after receiving a shot of the typhoid/tetanus/diphtheria vaccine. Writing on graph paper with a shaky hand, Jacques said: “If I have not heard from you by tomorrow morning, I will think that you did not leave Dinard, and I will feel quite relieved. In any case my dear angel, if this letter comes to you in time, I beg you to postpone your departure until the situation and the events are clarified a bit. I beg you not to risk leaving the kids and undertaking such a trip in the current conditions.”

  Despite the German attack, Odette had in fact left Dinard for Paris. That morning, she had run into a friend in Dinard who was leaving for Paris in the afternoon and offered to take her along. She arrived at Jacques’s barracks at eight in the evening, and after some waiting she was delighted to finally see Jacques. Despite ongoing air-raid alerts and the battle that was unfolding, he was allowed to spend the next day at home with Odette, where his brother, Philo, came to join them. Jacques briefed them on all of his activities at the Signaling School—the maneuvers and exercises, the courses in physics and radio, and the reports he was obliged to write as head of his section. He knew nothing more about the conduct of war than what was in the newspapers.

  THE NEWSPAPERS ON May 11 carried passionate appeals to patriotism and unity. In Le Figaro, Wladimir d’Ormesson penned a tirade against the enemy “assassins” and claimed, “We have unlimited confidence in the leaders of our armies. Behind the lines, let us be worthy of them.” In L
e Matin, Jean Fabry urged, “Let us have confidence in our soldiers and their commanders.”

  Those commanders were dealing with some of the surprises and setbacks of the first hours of the campaign. At Eben-Emael, the massive fortress defending key bridges over the Albert Canal, German gliders landed on the roof, where there were no defenses. The specially trained troops promptly disabled many of the fort’s large guns. By the second day, the fort had surrendered. The Germans took more than a thousand prisoners at a cost of just six men killed.

  The fort and the canal had been expected to hold up the German assault while the advancing Allied troops maneuvered into position. In one operation, the Germans had eliminated a vital element of the Belgian fortification system and secured bridges across the canal. They began flooding into Belgium. The quick loss of the fort was a setback; nevertheless, the Germans were proceeding on the course that Gamelin and his commanders had expected.

  The military communiqués stated, and newspapers dutifully reported, that on May 11, Allied forces were advancing rapidly and thirty-six enemy planes were downed and, on May 12, Allied forces were in place on Belgian and Dutch soil, thirty enemy planes were downed, and the pressure on the Dutch had been ameliorated by the actions of the Royal Air Force. On May 13, a combined British and French force even landed in Norway, finally, and captured Bjerkvik, just north of Narvik. This was the first opposed amphibious landing of the war.

  All seemed, or at least was reported to be, in control. The Allies’ movement into Belgium and Holland was, according to The Times of London, “brilliantly prepared and executed.”

  Unfortunately, the armies were right where the Germans wanted them to be.

  LE CHOC

  The French military communiqué of May 12 also mentioned that the enemy was making an important effort in the Ardennes region in Belgium. Pétain had deemed this rugged forest with narrow, winding roads “impenetrable”; it would at least be folly to attack through it.

  An enormous concentration of German armor was in the process of mocking that doctrine. Seven panzer divisions with more than 1,200 tanks and 134,000 troops cut right through the forest. Lead elements reached the critical natural barrier of the Meuse River on May 12, beyond which lay northeastern France. The region was lightly defended, mainly by second-line troops—older soldiers who had been called up from the reserves, as they were not expected to receive the brunt of the German attack.

  The Germans had changed their plans. After the capture of Majors Hoenmanns and Reinberger in Belgium in January, along with the latter’s copy of the then-imminent plan for an attack on Belgium and Holland, Hitler and the German command worried that the original battle plan had been compromised. Moreover, Hitler was concerned that the attack would bog down among the heavily fortified defenses of the Allies. The solution, then, was to go where there were not any fortifications, where they were not expected and could achieve surprise.

  Hitler and his staff conceived a two-part plan. First, in order to set a trap for the Allies, they would begin the invasion by the expected routes into Belgium and Holland. This would, and did, draw the Allied armies north. Then, in a second offensive, the Germans would cut through the Ardennes south of the Allied armies, cross the Meuse River around Sedan, race west to cut off the northern armies from their supply lines and reinforcements, and destroy them. This daring plan to make a “sickle cut” across Northern France all the way to the sea would rely on overwhelming force and unprecedented speed.

  Beginning on the morning of May 13, the French defenders on the Meuse were pounded by an intense air bombardment. For eight hours, more than a thousand planes struck in waves, shattering the nerves of the troops and pinning them in their bunkers. Assault teams then crossed the river at several places and took key vantage points.

  Preoccupied with the offensive farther north, which in fact was going moderately well for the Allies, Gamelin and other commanders did not perceive the threat from the Ardennes. Little air support was provided either to bomb the armored columns or to counter the German dive-bombers. German forces that crossed near Sedan were right at the “hinge” between two French armies, thus piercing the Allied front.

  When word reached various headquarters that the Meuse had been breached, there was shock, confusion, and, finally, concern. Gen. Gaston Billotte recognized the danger and ordered counterattacks to bomb the bridges the Germans had laid and to repel the incursion. Billotte told the Air Force, “Victory or defeat hangs on those bridges.” The scene at Gen. Alphonse Georges’s command post was merely pathetic. As the general exclaimed to another, “Our front has been pushed in at Sedan!” he and other officers broke into sobs.

  The bombing of the bridges was ineffective. Worse yet, the Allies, already at a significant disadvantage in the air, suffered terrible losses. The British RAF alone lost thirty of their seventy-one bombers. The ground counterattack was repeatedly postponed, and the German advance continued. Confronted with overwhelming force, some units panicked and fled.

  The German invasion. Open arrows indicate the line of attack launched on May 10, 1940, against France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The closed arrowheads indicate the path of the “sickle cut” taken across France to cut off the French forces that moved north to repel the invasion of Belgium. (Map by Leanne Olds)

  The public was largely in the dark about the gravity of the rapidly developing crisis. Communiqués offered reassuring but completely vague statements about “hurling counterattacks” and “the enemy making an important effort in spite of increased losses.” The press was operating under stringent military censorship, which prevented the reporting of much negative news. Despite being in the offices of Paris-Soir, Camus learned very little. The paper sought to maintain the public’s faith by inflating claims and offering up pithy slogans. The pages Camus laid out reported that the Germans were losing a hundred planes a day and that “France has many trump cards in its hand and does not need to bluff.”

  More important, the government was also dangerously unaware. Early on in the battle of the Meuse, Premier Reynaud was being reassured that threats were being met. Finally, on the evening of May 14, he heard from Gamelin himself about the Army’s precarious position. Reynaud was so alarmed that he sent an urgent message to Churchill to request more fighter planes: “If we are to win this battle which might be decisive for the whole war, it is necessary that you send at once ten more squadrons.”

  Churchill and his command were concerned about the RAF’s losses and had to consider the need to defend England should Hitler continue to advance. And there was more startling news that evening—the Dutch Army was surrendering.

  Before Churchill could even reply to Reynaud, the premier called the prime minister directly at seven thirty the next morning, Wednesday the fifteenth. “We have been defeated,” he blurted in English. “We are beaten; we have lost the battle.”

  “Surely it can’t have happened so soon?” Churchill replied.

  “The front is broken near Sedan; they are pouring through in great numbers with tanks and armored cars,” Reynaud explained.

  Churchill said he would fly over to meet with Reynaud. When he landed on the sixteenth, the German front had already penetrated sixty miles beyond Sedan and was a little more than seventy miles from Paris. Churchill was told that the Germans were expected in Paris within a few days. Churchill met with Reynaud, Daladier, and Gamelin in an elegant room at the Quai d’Orsay. He saw “utter dejection” on every face. Gamelin went over the current war map, indicating how far the Germans had progressed. Churchill had been through such anxious moments in World War I. In 1914, the Germans’ initial thrust carried them to the Marne, where they were finally halted and pushed back by counterattacks. He sought to quell the panic.

  “Where is the strategic reserve?” he asked Gamelin. Churchill asked again in French, “Où est la masse de manoeuvre?”

  Gamelin turned to Churchill, shook his head, shrugged, and said, “Aucune.” None.

  Churchill was st
unned. The French had assumed that they could maintain a five-hundred-mile-long defensive front and had made no provision to meet any breakthrough. Churchill looked out the window to see clouds of smoke from bonfires in the courtyard onto which officials were dumping wheelbarrows full of documents.

  Churchill needed to rouse the French leadership’s failing spirit. He cabled London to ask for the ten squadrons that Reynaud wanted. His cabinet agreed, in spite of its concern for the defense of England. At a minimum, for the sake of history, England could say it gave the French the assistance that was requested.

  French communiqués continued in their vagueness. On Wednesday night, the fifteenth, it was reported that in the area of Sedan “where the enemy had made some progress, counterattacks were ongoing with tanks and bombers.”

  THE NEXT DAY’S edition of Le Figaro stretched the truth of the battlefield situation:

  For the moment, the principal battle is taking place on the crossings of the Meuse … For the enemy, the concern is to break the vast hinge at the elbow of the Meuse between the Allied armies of Lorraine [to the south] and Belgium [to the north]. In spite of the terrible shock, where all possible means were employed, this attempt has only partially succeeded. The surprise of the suddenness and intensity of the attack did not rattle the gallantry of the defenders. This valor is receiving incessant support …

  It will be, without a doubt, several days before the outcome of this battle appears more clear.

  The morning communiqué for the sixteenth declared, “It is in the best interests of the conduct of operations not to furnish precise information on the actions in progress.”

  It was also in the best interest of civil order. German forces were dashing for the sea in order to cut off the northern armies. The rout was under way.