The generals filed away, shattered by this tirade. Brauchitsch tendered his resignation. Hitler rejected it, saying that Brauchitsch had his duty to fulfil, like every simple soldier. Later Guderian, detailed by Reichenau, one of the most steadfast of the pro-Hitler generals, went to see Hitler and voiced the ‘indignation’ the Army commanders felt at their leader’s distrust. Hitler replied that he was principally getting at the C.-in-C. of the Army. In that case, said Guderian with some audacity, Brauchitsch should be replaced, and he went on to name some possible successors. But Hitler approved of none of these, and the interview ended inconclusively. The net effect of Hitler’s taunting insults upon the generals, however, was largely to galvanize them into much more enthusiastic support of the Führer. ‘The reproach of cowardice turned the brave into cowards,’ scathingly remarked Colonel Hans Oster, a dedicated member of the military ‘resistance’. From now on the O.K.H.’s opposition to Gelb waned steadily, while at the same time its past hesitancy had made its mark on Hitler, who now seemed rather less determined upon a winter offensive than he had been in October – despite his exhortations of 23 November. The only one of the three main participants in the Gelb plan who remained obdurate was Manstein.
In the latter half of November, Manstein invited Guderian to visit him at Koblenz, where he questioned the Panzer expert as to whether it would be technically feasible to push heavy armoured forces across the Ardennes, towards Sedan. Guderian, who knew the area from the First War, reassured Manstein, but with one proviso. The Panzer divisions deployed there must be made as strong as possible. This was an important conversation, in so far as Manstein was first and foremost an infantryman and had hitherto given little precise thought as to the use of Panzers;14 nevertheless, as late as 18 December, he shows himself still thinking in terms of allocating seven Panzer divisions to Army Group ‘B’ and only three15 to ‘A’, crossing the Meuse south of Dinant. On 30 November, a third memorandum from Manstein now forced Halder to pass, for the first time, some written judgement. It was noncommittal and evasive, saying that the O.K.H. did not want to decide upon where the critical Schwerpunkt should lie until the first encounter with the enemy. Manstein promptly followed up with two more memoranda during December. His fourth, dated 6 December, for the first time came down categorically in favour of the Schwerpunkt being located on the southern flank of the attack, i.e. with Army Group ‘A’, heading for the mouth of the Somme. By this time Halder had had enough and decided to transfer Manstein (already previously earmarked to command a corps) to Stettin in the east, about as far away from Army Group ‘A’ and the Western Front as possible!
Gelb Postponed
During December, the vile conditions of snow, ice and fog which were demoralizing the French Army caused four more postponements of Gelb. No new strategic alterations to the plan were proposed by either the O.K.H. or Hitler, who was still kept unaware of Manstein’s ideas. On the 28th, Hitler told Jodl that if the weather continued bad by mid-January, he would call off the offensive, perhaps until the spring. Nevertheless, on 10 January, after a period of bright, clear skies had been predicted, D-Day was finally fixed for Wednesday the 17th, at dawn. The troops began to roll, over sixty divisions strong, towards the Dutch and Belgian frontiers, the weight of both armour and infantry still preponderantly with Bock’s Army Group ‘B’ in the north. Then, that same day, the two Luftwaffe majors made their forced landing at Mechelen. At 11.45 a.m. on the 11th, Jodl braced himself to inform Hitler. Hitler flew into a terrible rage. Threats of death sentences for the flyers were uttered; the Gestapo was dispatched to interrogate their wives; General Felmy, commanding the Second Air Fleet to which Reinberger and Hoenmanns both belonged, was sacked, and replaced by Kesselring.16 The German Military Attaché in The Hague, Lieutenant-General Wenniger, rushed down to interview the interned majors and find out just how much information the Belgians might have gleaned. Jodl wrote nervously in his diary: ‘If the enemy is in possession of all the files the situation is catastrophic.’ On the afternoon of the 12th, Wenniger wired Berlin: ‘Reinberger declares post burned. Remains of little importance…’17 In fact, the half-burned papers from Reinberger’s briefcase did betray scarcely more than the bare outlines of the operation, but the Germans could never be quite sure. For one more day Hitler refused to abandon the attack. Then, yet again, the weather broke, causing another three postponements. By the 16th, alarming reports were coming in about the extent of Dutch and Belgian mobilization. At last Hitler took a major decision. That afternoon he ordered an indefinite postponement of Gelb. The whole operation must be replanned ‘on a new basis, to be founded particularly on secrecy and surprise’. This new act of Chance finally saved Hitler from what might have been the grave blunder of a premature offensive and led him conclusively towards his finest hour.18
For the Germans, the Mechelen Incident proved to be pure gain. First of all, the High Command could now re-examine its strategy at leisure, and try out variations on the ground by means of ‘war games’. Secondly, Hitler’s new priorities of ‘secrecy and surprise’ lent added importance to the speed with which the all-out blow should be struck. At a meeting in the Chancellery on 20 January, it was agreed to abandon the previous build-up of several days; instead, all units would have to be ready to attack with twenty-four hours’ warning or less. Thirdly, the enemy reaction to the mid-January alarm now gave the O.K.H. Intelligence ‘Foreign Armies West’,19 an excellent idea of the Allies’ order of battle and their intentions, which it did not possess before. As the French and British units rushed up to take their positions on the Belgian frontier in the middle of January, they made it clear to the Germans that, under Gamelin’s Dyle Plan, the cream of both armies was designated to be pushed into northern Belgium; while, lower down, the weakness of General Corap’s Ninth Army on the Meuse became increasingly apparent. Thus, as knowledge of the Franco-British dispositions made the prospects of a frontal collision less and less attractive, so Manstein’s alternative, that would in effect close a trap behind the élite of the enemy forces, obviously gained in appeal. Finally, it was of course the Mechelen Incident’s revelation of apparent German intentions towards Holland that committed Gamelin, disastrously, to his project of strengthening his northern wing still further by the ‘Breda Variant’, thus adding his best reserves to the ‘bag’ that Manstein was proposing to cut off on the Somme.
But still Halder held out against the persistent Manstein. On 12 January, the day after the news of Mechelen reached Hitler, Rundstedt signed Manstein’s sixth and last memorandum, summing up all that had gone before, and forwarded it to Zossen with the express request that it be submitted to Hitler. Once again, Army Group ‘A’ was told – rather tartly – to mind its own business, and Rundstedt’s request was turned down. On the 25th, Brauchitsch visited Koblenz, and in what must have been by now a chilly atmosphere, Manstein accused the Army C.-in-C. point blank of not aiming for a ‘full decision’ in the West, and referring to the ‘well-known negative attitude of the O.K.H.’ to the offensive in general. He sharply criticized the O.K.H.’s opportunist intention of leaving the Schwerpunkt question open until it had been seen which way the Allied cat would jump, citing Moltke’s maxim that ‘mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be repaired’. Two days later, Manstein was shattered to receive his posting to Stettin. It seemed as if he had lost the battle.
Hitler Backs Manstein
Then, on 7 February, just two days before Manstein was due to depart for his new command, Army Group ‘A’ held its first ‘war game’. Halder was clearly impressed by what he saw, and for the first time showed himself veering towards Manstein’s thinking. On leaving Koblenz, he at last agreed to one of the points demanded by Manstein, namely, that the Meuse crossing at Sedan by Guderian’s XIX Panzer Corps be simultaneously supported by the XIV Motorized Corps. Here was yet a further step in the escalation of Army Group ‘A’. Manstein left for Stettin with at least some satisfaction. Bock uttered another growl of displeasure. On the 14th, ‘war ga
mes’ were continued, this time in Manstein’s absence, at Mayen near Koblenz. Now an important and lively disagreement took place between Guderian and Halder. Guderian wanted to push his Panzers across the Meuse on the fifth day of the attack. True to the doctrines of Achtung – Panzer!, he conceived the armoured blow as being ‘concentrated and applied with surprise on the decisive point, to form the arrow-head so deep that we need have no worry about the flank’. With some asperity, Halder condemned this as ‘senseless’; it would be impossible to mount a ‘stage by stage’ attack across the Meuse until the infantry divisions arrived, and this could not be before the ninth day.20 Rundstedt, no longer supported by Manstein, now took Halder’s side. The games ended with this point unsettled. But, if nothing else, they had proved one other point – the extreme sensitivity of the area around Sedan for the ‘Red’, or defending side.
There now occurred the last of the elements of chance which were to shape the course of Gelb. Shortly before Manstein’s departure, Hitler’s chief adjutant, Colonel Schmundt, happened to be on a tour of the front and called in at Rundstedt’s H.Q. Here he had a prolonged conversation with Manstein, who revealed his plan at length. This was the first Schmundt had heard of it, and he was amazed how closely it paralleled Hitler’s own thoughts, though in a ‘significantly more precise form’. Back in Berlin on 2 February, he immediately told Hitler of the conversation. Though not hiding his own personal aversion to Manstein,21 Hitler expressed the keenest interest; Manstein must be brought before him, but how could this be done without arousing the suspicions of the O.K.H.? Talking to Schmundt later, a Lieutenant-Colonel Heusinger22 of the O.K.H. operations branch, who was a warm supporter of the Manstein Plan, suggested that he should be summoned along with the four other newly-appointed corps commanders to ‘kiss hands’ with the Supreme Commander. So, on 17 February, a fateful working breakfast took place at the Chancellery. Manstein remained until 2 p.m. pouring forth every detail of the plan he had so long been ruminating. Hitler listened raptly. The next day Brauchitsch and Halder were ordered to the Chancellery. Hitler put the Manstein Plan to them, producing it as his own homework, with no attribution to its author. The O.K.H. leaders showed that they had in the meantime swung round towards it still further (perhaps, seeing which way the wind was now blowing, they were also anxious to avoid a repetition of the painful tirades of November). With a new spring in their step, they returned to Zossen to draft an entirely revised directive. A buoyant mood of fresh confidence replaced earlier doubts. Hitler having been navigated safely past the shoals of a winter campaign, and the Army reorganized from the war in Poland, the new design now caused a prospect of great military success to glimmer within the keenly professional mind of Halder. Thoughts of deposing Hitler receded to remoter regions. Henceforth, until the plan actually went into action, the O.K.H., Hitler, Rundstedt and the other front commanders are to be found all pulling together with that superbly smooth efficiency of the German military machine at its best.
Sichelschnitt
By 24 February the new directive was ready. As it emerged from the cautious pen of Halder, it represented an even more drastic revision of Gelb than anything proposed by Manstein. The disputed question of the Schwerpunkt had been resolved; it would lie, from the very start, on the front of Army Group ‘A’. The role of Bock’s Army Group ‘B’ was now relegated, in the admirable simile of Liddell Hart, to that of ‘a matador’s cloak’, which would draw Gamelin into Holland and northern Belgium, while Rundstedt was striking the lethal sword-blow elsewhere. The operation of the original Schlieffen Plan in 1914 has been compared (again by Liddell Hart) to that of a revolving door; the harder the French armies pressed in Lorraine, the more forcefully the door was intended to rotate against their back with the German push swinging round through Belgium in the north. Sichelschnitt (‘the cut of the sickle’), as the O.K.H.’s new plan was admirably christened, also functioned like a revolving door, but this time the rotation was clockwise, with the French ‘pushing’ in the north, the Germans in the south. Bock’s forces had been whittled down from his original 43 divisions to 29⅓; from controlling all the Panzers, he was left with only three, and two of these would be earmarked for eventual transfer to Rundstedt. None the less, Bock’s role remained of the utmost importance. Though substantially weaker than the numerical sum of the forces likely to be met in Holland and northern Belgium, Bock had to engage the Allied ‘bull’ so vigorously that he would be unable to break away in order to gore the flank of Rundstedt’s thrust.
Reading from north to south, the German line-up would be as follows: Army Group ‘B’, consisting of Küchler’s Eighteenth Army (opposite Holland), and Reichenau’s Sixth Army; Army Group ‘A’, with its northern boundary running south of Liège, consisting of Kluge’s Fourth Army (which, transferred from Bock to Rundstedt, now brought Army Group ‘A’s strength up to 45⅓ divisions), List’s Twelfth Army and Busch’s Sixteenth Army; Army Group ‘C’ (Leeb), running from Luxembourg to the Swiss frontier and consisting of the First and Seventh Armies. The seven Panzer divisions handed to Rundstedt were all to be concentrated from the start (as in Achtung – Panzer!) to break through the rugged Ardennes country of Luxembourg and southern Belgium – which the French High Command had so long considered ‘impenetrable’. In a solid steel phalanx, forty five miles wide, they would breach the Meuse between Dinant and Sedan.
The main effort – no longer just a subsidiary thrust – would be made at Sedan, by Guderian’s XIX Panzer Corps consisting of the 1st, 2nd23 and the 10th Panzer Divisions, aided by Hitler’s élite Grossdeutschland Regiment of motorized infantry and backed up by von Wietersheim’s XIV Motorized Corps. Further north, the 6th and 8th Panzers of Reinhardt’s corps were to head for Monthermé, while the 5th and 7th Panzers of Hoth’s corps were to provide flank cover by crossing the Meuse at Dinant. The five Panzer divisions of Guderian and Reinhardt, comprising the main effort, were welded together under command of an integrated Armoured Group. There was some argument as to who should command this; both Guderian and Manstein were passed over (fortunately for Britain, because if either had received the key command there would most probably have been no evacuation from Dunkirk), the final choice falling upon General Ewald von Kleist. A rather conservativeminded cavalry general, Kleist had been retired at the time of the Fritsch-Blomberg ‘purge’, but brought back to command a corps in the Polish campaign. Though his corps had included one Panzer and one ‘light’ division, according to Guderian (who certainly did not welcome the thought of Kleist sitting on top of him), Kleist had never ‘shown himself particularly well disposed to the armoured force’. His appointment, however, was an important success for Halder, who, always suffering some nervousness about the audacity of the new plan, reckoned that in the conservative Kleist he had a man whom he could keep on a tight rein.
At Hitler’s particular instance, a major reshuffle (which would make an essential contribution to the success of Sichelschnitt) was ordained within the Panzers themselves. Most of the heavier, cannon-bearing Mark III and IV tanks were to be withdrawn from Küchler’s Eighteenth Army facing Holland, where they would hardly be needed, and given to Kleist and Rundstedt, who would find their guns indispensable for silencing bunkers that defended the Meuse crossing areas. Also incorporated in the new plan were various ‘special operations’ that had been hobby-horses of Hitler from the earliest days of Gelb;24 these included parachute and glider operations to capture key bridges and forts on the Dutch and Belgian canal defence systems, as well as communications centres lying on the route of Kleist’s approach-march through the Ardennes. Hitler occupied himself down to the last detail with the planning of these ‘special operations’; as will be seen, the use of ‘Brandenburger’ commandos wearing Dutch uniforms especially appealed to him.
Meanwhile, Sichelschnitt was to be accompanied by elaborate ‘deception’ schemes designed to keep the French constantly in fear that the real – or, at least, a serious secondary – attack would come from Leeb’s Army Gro
up ‘C’ facing the Maginot Line. In fact, Army Group ‘C’, containing only nineteen infantry divisions of moderate value, was to play virtually no aggressive role in the coming battle. The mighty Maginot Line upon which France had spent so much of her substance would simply not be accorded any opportunity to cover itself with battle-honours. On the other hand, if it fell for Hitler’s deception plan, the French High Command, it was hoped, would be hesitant to risk withdrawing from the Maginot Line the ‘interval troops’, which constituted such a large portion of disposable reserves, for use against the Sedan breakthrough. Thus were both Leeb and Bock to act as foils for Rundstedt.
There remained some doubts and misgivings about the new plan. As late as April, Bock, possibly still smarting from the dilution of his command, was grumbling to Halder that
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 air power! And [added Bock] 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 Lose a Battle Page 20