Above all, the enticing vacuum that had existed behind the German spearhead on the 20th and 21st would no longer exist by the 23rd.
Churchill’s Hopes
In Reynaud’s private ear, Churchill complained that four consecutive days had been allowed to pass without Gort receiving any orders whatever. ‘Ever since Weygand had assumed command three days had been lost in taking decisions. The change in the Supreme Command was right. The resultant delay was evil.’ Nevertheless, carried along by the vigour with which Weygand had put his case, the Vincennes meeting (so Ismay records) ‘ended on a note of restrained optimism’. Before he left, Churchill remarked flatteringly to Weygand: ‘There is only one fault in you; you are too young!’
Throughout his career, Churchill would always show himself susceptible to a general who gave the appearance of being a fighter, and Weygand, in sharp antithesis to the pallid intel-lectualism of Gamelin, clearly struck him as such. Shaken as he had been by the dreadful revelations in Paris of 16 May, as the British statesman who had once cried out ‘Thank God for the French Army!’ Churchill still harboured some romantic faith in that Army. Indeed, could this magnificent weapon upon which all the calculations of British European policy had been founded since 1919, could it really be proved a broken reed by the events of just twelve terrible days? As both historian and participant, Churchill retained the memory of Foch and the ‘Miracle of the Marne’ and July 1918 constantly before his eyes. Surely, as on both those occasions, the French Army would spring back again at the eleventh hour? Now, if a fighting French general, the spiritual heir to Foch, declared that such an offensive operation was possible, then it must be tried, though without being too pragmatic. And here, as far as experience with practicalities is concerned, Churchill shares some of Weygand’s own limitations. Like Wavell in Greece the following year, Weygand had been plunged into the middle of battle with no previous first-hand knowledge of the speed and momentum and utter destructiveness of a modern armoured Blitzkrieg; similarly, Churchill – and this must always be borne in mind when considering his actions in May 1940 – after those years in the wilderness, remote from the pragmatism of public office, had had less than a fortnight of unrelenting crisis in which to acquaint himself with the practical logistics of an army at war in 1940. Now, Weygand had rekindled Churchill’s faith. In the vivid words of Spears, the Weygand Plan ‘hung like a limp sail from the mast’, but Churchill in his turn, ‘like a new Aeolus, filled it momentarily with the power of his lungs’. (But added Spears, ‘the ship did not move’.)
At 1930 that same night Churchill was back in London and holding a Cabinet meeting. General Ironside noted dejectedly that ‘he was almost in buoyant spirits’. The impression Weygand had made upon him remained markedly observable, and he stuck to his belief in the feasibility of his plan. Some of Churchill’s military advisers, however, were much less happy. Ironside, for one (although, as he was about to be replaced as C.I.G.S., his views no longer counted greatly with Churchill), now completely disillusioned by what he had seen on his visit to Billotte two days previously, thought that ‘when it all came down to things it was still all projets’. The B.E.F., he said gloomily, had ‘lost a chance of extricating itself’. But even Churchill’s faith in Weygand’s ‘project’ would begin to wilt in the face of events before many more hours went by.
The Panzers Drive for the Channel Ports
After the well-deserved day of rest forced upon his Panzers, Guderian was on the move again early on the morning of the 22nd. His orders now were to swing northwards and seize the Channel ports. Originally he had wanted to throw the relatively fresh 10th Panzer towards Dunkirk at full speed; this was refused him, on account of ‘Frankforce’s’ attack at Arras on the 21st which had persuaded Kleist to keep the 10th back as Armoured Group reserve, in case the situation worsened.31 Guderian says ‘it was with a heavy heart’ that he changed his plans. The 1st Panzer, bolstered by the Grossdeutschland Regiment, which was now back in the fold after recuperating from the fighting at Stonne, was to head for Calais, while the 2nd swept up the coast to Boulogne. By 0700 hours his forces had crossed the River Authie, some fifteen miles north from Abbeville; though Guderian noted, significantly, that they could not move in full strength since units of both divisions had to be left behind to secure the Somme bridgeheads until the motorized infantry of Wietersheim’s XIV Corps caught up to fill its now familiar relieving role. That afternoon there was fierce fighting on the approaches to Boulogne, and for the first time Guderian recorded being vigorously attacked by Allied aircraft, ‘while we saw little of our own Luftwaffe’. Owing to the speed of the advance, the German tactical air support was now operating at long range at the same time that the battlefield was coming within comfortable radius of the R.A.F. Air Component units relocated in Kent.
But on the ground, resistance was patchy and ill organized, so that by nightfall on the 22nd, Guderian was at the gates of both Boulogne and Calais, after making another staggering advance of over sixty miles (to Calais). Kleist having in the meantime decided that the crisis at Arras was past, the 10th Panzer returned to Guderian, who promptly ordered it to replace the 1st Panzer before Calais on the morning of the 23rd. The 1st was then to hasten eastwards to strike out for Grave-lines and for Dunkirk, just twenty-five miles by road along the coast from Calais. During the 23rd, however, it encountered much tougher resistance and halted that night on the Aa Canal after progressing only some fifteen-odd miles. The 2nd Panzer was also involved in heavy fighting at Boulogne, which was stoutly defended by Irish and Welsh Guards of the 20th Guards Brigade (only two days previously they had been training in Surrey) and improvised French garrison defence forces. For several hours the thick medieval ramparts of the old port kept even the Panzers at bay; then an ‘88’ was brought up, and it blasted a hole in the wall through which the tanks were able to make their way. But it was not until the 25th that the 2nd Panzer was able to hoist the Swastika over Boulogne, thereby providing another important setback in Guderian’s timetable for grabbing the far more important booty of Dunkirk. Meanwhile, under personal orders from Churchill not to surrender, Brigadier C. N. Nicholson held out at Calais until late on the 26th in one of the finest stonewalling actions of the British Army,32 thereby pinning down the 10th Panzer which otherwise might also have been deployed against Dunkirk.
On the 21st, elements of Reinhardt’s 6th and 8th Panzers had been ordered to swing inland to meet the threat developing at Arras, and on the next day they were in turn pushing menacingly at Gort’s right flank west of the Béthune-Arras line. At the same time, once Martel’s attack had been brought to a halt, Reinhardt’s main force (now reinforced by a motorized S.S. division moved up from Holland) thrust northwards on a course parallel to Guderian’s, so that by the end of the 23rd it too was standing on the Aa Canal, in the area of St Omer.
As soon as Rommel had recovered his breath from the shock at Arras, on the 22nd he was attacking again, using his armour in his favoured technique of slipping round the enemy flank, while his riflemen kept it pinned down frontally. At Maróuil, Rothenburg’s tanks overran some British gun batteries supporting Martel’s rear. They then pushed up on to Mont-St-Éloi, an important height overlooking Arras from the north-west, where they were temporarily driven off in a spirited counter-attack by a regiment of Prioux’s motorized Dragoons. On the 23rd, General von Hartlieb’s 5th Panzer drew level with Rommel, almost for the first time since the crossing of the Meuse, and Colonel Werner’s tanks (of the 31st Panzer Regiment) now joined Rothenburg’s in the flanking drive to the west of Arras. By the evening of that day Werner stood on the dominating Lorette Heights, the scene of so much bitter fighting in 1915, where a French war memorial bears the inscription ‘Who holds the Lorette Heights holds France.’33 Rommel’s advance guard was within sight of the outskirts of Béthune and threatening the Lens road, ‘Frankforce’s’ principal line of access to Arras. Meanwhile German motorized infantry was attacking the city itself – which was being subjected to
constant dive-bombing – from three sides.
All the time more and more second-line infantry divisions were pouring into the Panzer Corridor, to plug any possible breaches that the Allies might exploit. By-passing Hoth’s Panzers, Hoeppner’s 3rd and 4th Panzer Divisions were now moving into line to take up positions between Rommel and Reinhardt; thus all the German armour34 would shortly be concentrated in an arc facing eastwards, opposite (principally) the B.E.F. At the same time as the German armour was thrusting into the western flank of the encircled Allied armies, Bock’s infantry divisions were also stepping up their pressure against the Escaut Line, and by the 23rd the tired Belgians35 had been forced to abandon the anchor points of Terneuzen and Ghent.
William Shirer was there to watch the German preparations for crossing the Escaut:
Heavy artillery – and this is amazing to see – six-inch guns, pulled by caterpillar trucks, and on rubber tyres, are being hauled up a hillside at forty miles an hour. (Is this one of the German military secrets, such big guns being hauled so fast?)… over the front all afternoon hover two or three reconnaissance planes, German, obviously, directing artillery fire. They cruise over the battlefield unmolested… The lack of observation planes alone puts the Allies in a hole. In fact we do not see an Allied plane all day long.
Once again Shirer was struck by the calm organization of the Wehrmacht going about its business: ‘Even the wounded seem to play their part in this gigantic businesslike machine. They do not moan…’ But what particularly impressed him was the morale of the German troops. It was ‘fantastically good’:
I remember a company of engineers which was about to go down to the Scheldt River to lay a pontoon bridge under enemy fire. The men were reclining on the edge of the wood reading the day’s edition of the army daily paper, the Western Front. I’ve never seen men going into a battle from which some were sure never to come out alive – well, so nonchalantly.
In contrast, Shirer sadly recalls some unaddressed letters he had found near the recent graves of two dead French soldiers: ‘They must have been written before the push began. They tell of the boredom of army life and how you are waiting for your next leave in Paris, “ma chérie”.’
In these days the smell of victory was unmistakably in German nostrils. Rommel, in one of his brief notes to his wife, wrote on the 23rd:
Dearest Lu,
With a few hours’ sleep behind me, it’s time for a line to you. I’m fine in every way. My division has had a blazing success. Dinant, Philippeville, breakthrough the Maginot Line and advance in one night forty miles through France to Le Cateau, then Cambrai, Arras, always far in front of everybody else. Now the hunt is up against sixty encircled British, French and Belgian divisions. Don’t worry about me. As I see it the war in France may be over in a fortnight.
Lieutenant Karl-Heinz Mende, with one of the infantry divisions pouring into the Panzer Corridor, wrote home about the same time:
don’t try to form impressions of what is happening here. What is logical and what can be estimated, that is too small a yardstick for these days; out of all that is happening there is only one thing that is certain – every day something new, every hour something new.
Reflecting the admiration many young Germans felt for the astonishing successes run up by their Führer, he speaks glowingly of ‘an infallible victorious deed of a genius’, and later declares: ‘This war is good…’
22 May: the French Attack
While ‘Frankforce’ was having a hard time holding its ground west of Arras, at 0900 hours on the 22nd, General René Altmayer launched the attack originally agreed between Ironside and Billotte and which had failed to materialize the previous day. But instead of the projected two-division thrust, as had happened with ‘Frankforce’ the French effort was whittled down to one infantry regiment (the 121st, belonging to General Molinié’s 25th Motorized Division), supported by two armoured reconnaissance groups and artillery. Striking from the east of Douai towards Cambrai, the 121st executed its orders brilliantly, administering a hard blow to the German 32nd Infantry Division. French light tanks penetrated quickly to the outskirts of Cambrai. Then they were heavily bombed by formations of Henschel 123s,36 and strafed by cannon-firing Messerschmitts; finally, yet again, it was German 88s firing at a range of 150 yards, that halted the French armour. Twelve hours after the beginning of the French attack, orders came through from First Army for it to halt and withdraw behind its start-line. That the attack took place at all when, in theory, the First Army and the B.E.F. should have been conserving their strength for Weygand’s ‘eight-division’ counter-stroke projected for the 23rd, in itself reveals the disastrous breakdown in co-ordination which followed Billotte’s fatal accident; Gort, for one, had also not been warned of Molinié’s operation.
The exercising of command in the encircled armies of the north was becoming increasingly difficult. General Blanchard’s H.Q. had been driven out of Lens after a Luftwaffe incendiary raid had turned the town into a sea of fire. It moved to the village of Estaires until that was bombed to pieces; then on to Attiches, which was also soon blasted by the Luftwaffe. The headquarters’ power plants were destroyed, so there was no electric light or radio. Around it were constantly milling large numbers of dejected soldiers who had lost their units, their equipment and their rifles and were too tired to march any further. Under the ceaseless air attacks, there were inevitably signs of still further cracks in French morale. In Paris, Weygand told Baudouin on 23 May that he had received information that forty French officers from the armies in the north had taken refuge in London; they were to be arrested and brought back to France. There had been times recently, Weygand added, when he had ‘not been able to recognize the morale of the French troops; both in conduct and demeanour they were so different from those I left when I gave up my command’.
As for the relief counter-stroke coming from south of the Somme, which Weygand had depicted so favourably at Vincennes, by the end of 23 May virtually nothing had happened. Elements of General Frère’s Seventh Army ‘made contact’ with the river, while Senegalese troops of the 7th Colonial Division, exhausted after a twenty-mile approach march, were halted on the perimeter of the German bridgehead south of Amiens, some three miles from the city. There could be no possibility of General Robert Altmayer’s new groupement doing anything effective for several days. There was some basis for Ironside’s bitter statement that the deployment of the French forces on that side of the Somme was purely defensive, and they appeared to have ‘no intention of attacking but were trying to prevent the Germans from advancing on Paris’.
Gort Decides: Save the B.E.F.
Over the past three days, Gort’s frustration had been steadily mounting because of his Government’s apparent inability to see how grave the situation was in the north. It reached a peak, bordering on despair, when he received Churchill’s directive following the Vincennes meeting of the 22nd. How on earth, in their present state, were the northern armies to mount an eight-division effort by the 23rd? As Gort well knew, the French First Army now totalled no more than eight divisions plus the much reduced elements of the Cavalry Corps, and the most they had so far been able to produce for an attack was one regiment; the B.E.F.’s two divisions formerly kept in reserve were fighting for their lives around Arras, and nothing could be expected from the Belgians. Most annoying of all, he had not even been told in advance of the French attack; with Billotte dead and still not replaced, the absence of any overall control of the three different national forces augured extremely ill for any concerted effort. By the morning of the 23rd, the day on which the Weygand Plan called for the attack to begin, Gort had still not received any specific orders; so, resorting to a rare use of his prerogative, he sent a telegram to the Secretary of State for War, Anthony Eden, pleading that ‘co-ordination on this front is essential with the armies of three different nations’. He requested that the universally respected Sir John Dill fly out that day to make an on-the-spot appreciation, and warned Eden fo
rthrightly:
My view is that any advance by us will be in the nature of a sortie and relief must come from the south as we have not, repeat not, ammunition for serious attack.37
Arriving at Gort’s H.Q. that morning, General Blanchard expressed agreement with this view.
Churchill’s response to Gort’s plea was to protest to Reynaud in a new and sharper tone about the immediate execution of Weygand’s plan:
I demand the issue to the French commanders in north and south and Belgian G.H.Q. of the most stringent orders to carry this out and turn defeat into victory. Time is vital as supplies are short.
This hardly helped Gort in his own difficulties, but (although Gort could not have been aware of it) Churchill was beginning to revise his opinion of Weygand’s intentions. At a Cabinet meeting held that morning, after he sent his demand to Reynaud, Churchill pointed out ‘that the whole success of the Weygand plan was dependent on the French taking the initiative, which they showed no signs of doing’. That night, when still no Allied action either north or south of the Panzer Corridor had materialized and no orders had been received by either Gort or the Belgians, Churchill followed up with an even tougher signal, addressed to Weygand via Reynaud, and asking:
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