Wehrmacht troops, Western Front 1940. The tanks in the foreground are Czech Pkw 38s.
Back at the Eagle’s Nest, Hitler was not happy. The advance of the panzers had amazed him as much by its ease as its speed. The staff at OKH had been surprised as well, and their carefully laid plans were failing to cope. The supporting infantry, engineers and supplies were some 50 miles behind the panzers and would take 2 days to catch up. In Hitler’s view, the precious panzers were becoming dangerously exposed. Vast reserves of French infantry and artillery were located to the south of the River Aisne, to the rear of the Maginot Line. In 1914 the French had used trains, trucks and even taxis to shift a similar reserve north to frustrate the German attack. Hitler was worried that they would do the same again. If the French mounted an attack north into the German left flank they could cut off the panzers from the rest of the army. At midnight on 16 May Hitler ordered the panzer spearhead to halt.
Guderian was aghast. In front of him were the rolling plains of northern France devoid of enemy forces, but he was being ordered to halt. He questioned the orders and was told by Kleist that he could not move forward until the infantry had come up and secured the south flank of his advance by digging in along the Aisne. Guderian resigned, Kleist contacted Rundstedt in dismay and Rundstedt turned to the Eagle’s Nest. Messages flew back and forth throughout 17 May. Eventually Guderian, his resignation refused, was given permission to carry out ‘reconnaissance in force’.
Interpreting the phrase to mean what he wanted it to mean, Guderian sent his panzers forward once again. On 18 May the panzers reached St Quentin, on 19 May they were over the Somme, on 20 May they took Amiens and on 21 May they reached the sea at Abbeville.
On that same day Hitler’s worries seemed to be coming true. The northernmost panzer division in the great drive west was commanded by Erwin Rommel, who had got the command at Hitler’s instruction as thanks for his work in Poland. On the morning of 21 May, Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division was moving on the Aa River when its right flank was attacked by a force of British tanks at Arras.
The German commander on the ground signalled Rommel that he was being attacked by five divisions, and Rommel passed the message on to Rundstedt. Rommel then called down a massive Stuka strike as he redeployed his panzers to meet this new threat. At almost the same time a French assault was launched north across the Somme near Amiens. If the two attacks were to link up, the panzer spearhead would be cut off. Rundstedt passed the dire news on to the Eagle’s Nest, where Hitler began to worry and rant at his staff.
Fairly quickly, Rommel realised he was faced by only two tank battalions and a couple of infantry regiments, which he quickly threw back. On the Somme, the French assault collapsed in confusion. Rundstedt later recorded that for a few hours the situation had ‘appeared to be a critical moment. We feared that our armoured divisions would be cut off before the infantry could support them.’ In reality the threat was non-existent, but it had rattled the German high command and, in particular, Hitler.
The attack at Arras also had, unknown to Hitler, a profound effect on the Allies. Lord Gort, the commander of the British Expeditionary Force, was already frustrated by the impractical suggestions coming from the French under whose orders he was supposed to operate. He had already contacted Britain to ask that the Royal Navy be prepared to organise an evacuation of the British land forces. Now Gort began to lay his plans in more detail, though the British government sternly forbade him to abandon their French allies. The main bulk of the British army was still deep in Belgium. The Dutch army to the north had already surrendered to the Germans and Gort realised the Belgians would not hold out much longer. Gort looked back to the Channel ports of Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk for salvation.
The Channel ports were also being studied by Reinhardt and his XLI Panzer Corps. On 22 May Reinhardt surrounded Boulogne. On the next day he overran the country around Calais and reached the canal which runs inland from Gravelines to St Omer. The final Channel port of Dunkirk was less than 20 miles away. Reinhardt was confident he would reach it next day. In fact there was just one British battalion defending the 20 mile length of canal, and they could offer no resistance to the panzers. With Dunkirk in German hands, the British army would be cut off from the sea and from the Royal Navy and would be forced to surrender.
Reinhardt was staggered to receive an order from Kleist to halt at the canal. He complained. He pointed out that there were no enemy troops beyond the canal. He explained how important it was to capture Dunkirk. He told Guderian, who complained in his turn. But Kleist could do nothing, not even authorise a ‘reconnaissance in force’. The order to halt had come direct and personally from the Fuhrer.
The decision to halt the panzers in front of Dunkirk on 24 May is one of the most mystifying of Hitler’s career as a military commander. By the time the panzers were allowed to advance again, the British had organised a defensive perimeter around the port. Gort’s evacuation plans were being implemented and the British army was able to evacuate the continent and prepare to defend Britain. Many historians have been baffled by Hitler’s orders, but seen in the context of the day, the decision becomes more understandable.
Throughout the previous week, Hitler had been worried about the southern flank of his panzer advance. Despite approving Guderian’s bold plans, Hitler still had the doubts of a Great War corporal. Above all he believed it imperative not to offer the French an open flank. It was this that had led to the halt order on the 16 May and the worries had not been helped by the scare on 21 May – especially as a general as close to Hitler as Rommel had been involved. Hitler was clearly in a state of mind which could barely believe his good luck and feared greatly that the enemy were better prepared than, in fact, they were.
On the morning of 24 May Hitler was met by Göring. The Luftwaffe chief slammed his hand down on a map of the campaign and declared ‘This is a job for the Luftwaffe’. He promised Hitler that the bombers could smash the port of Dunkirk and cut the British off from the Royal Navy without the need to risk the precious panzers. The port of Dunkirk would undoubtedly be a bottleneck and dock facilities were highly vulnerable to aerial bombardment. There is no doubt Göring believed he could destroy the port of Dunkirk and there is little reason to suppose Hitler thought otherwise. Neither man had a naval background and Hitler most certainly did not consult Raeder at this crucial moment. It probably did not occur to Hitler or Göring that the Royal Navy could evacuate an army by any means other than a port.
Hitler then visited Rundstedt at his headquarters. Rundstedt was still in charge of Army Group A, the main force in the sichelschnitt, but he had been informed by Brauchitsch that he would shortly be given command of the attack south to defeat the remaining French and British forces. Although we do not know what Rundstedt said to Hitler, it would be natural that he concentrated on the coming battle in the south. Hitler was already concerned about preserving his panzer forces. Rundstedt’s assessment of the task still to be accomplished – and the Franco-British forces were still formidable – can only have confirmed Hitler’s worries.
Back at the Eagle’s Nest, Hitler would have been able to consult the maps and papers of the OKW. These told him what he already knew from his experiences in the trenches 25 years earlier – that Flanders was a wet and muddy place with soft, unstable ground. If it rained, Dunkirk would become a scrapyard for the tanks.
Such was the information available to Hitler when he made his fateful decision to stop the panzers. Alone it may have been enough to cause the Führer to give the order, but there might have been another reason as well. He dropped hints of this at Rundstedt’s headquarters when he told the staff ‘France is finished. I want to make peace with Britain on a basis that she would regard as compatible with her honour to accept.’ Hitler was later to insert provisions into the French surrender treaty deliberately aimed at conciliating Britain – for instance the French Navy was specifically allotted to the Vichy regime not to the German Kriegsmarine.
&
nbsp; It is possible that in halting the panzers, Hitler was offering Britain a way to achieve peace with honour. He knew the British would have to leave all their tanks and artillery in France, effectively making them defenceless to blitzkrieg, but without massive casualties British public opinion might favour stopping the war. Some months later Hitler complained to Bormann, ‘Churchill was quite unable to appreciate the way I refrained from creating an irreparable breach between the British and ourselves’. A comment which may have been hindsight.
One other point needs mentioning. The official war diary of the Wehrmacht for 24 May records that the order to halt the panzers was given by Rundstedt. The diary makes no mention of Hitler’s involvement with this order. On other occasions when corroborative evidence is available, the wording of the diary for the 24 would mean that Rundstedt initiated the order and that Hitler’s only involvement was not to over-rule it. Perhaps it was not Hitler’s decision at all.
Whatever the truth behind the orders of the 24 May, their meaning was clear. The army was to stop and the trapped British and French troops were to be finished off by the Luftwaffe. It was sheer bad luck, for Göring, that the main Luftwaffe bases were affected by fog, low cloud and poor visibility for the next few days.
The British government gave permission to Lord Gort to evacuate his army through Dunkirk on 27 May. Gort had actually given his orders the day before and Admiral Ramsay had been organising an evacuation fleet even earlier. At first the port was filled with transport staff, engineers, cooks and the like, about 25,000 of whom were taken off by the night of 28 May. The next day the Luftwaffe could launch its first major attack and, true to Göring’s promise, the port of Dunkirk was smashed. ‘I hope the British are good swimmers,’ chortled the Luftwaffe boss over dinner that evening.
It was at this point that Ramsay’s foresight came into play. He had been gathering almost any boat that could float around Dover and now sent them over the Channel to take men off the beaches of Dunkirk. There were not enough naval men to man the 900 ships, tugs and pleasure yachts which streamed over the Channel. Many were manned by their civilian crews or owners who braved the maelstrom of Luftwaffe violence to save the army. Some 200 of the vessels failed to return from their mission.
When it became clear how many troops were being taken off by the swarms of small ships – and that the port facilities were again in operation – the panzers were finally unleashed. It was too late. A firm defensive perimeter had been established and despite sustained and heavy attacks, the Germans could not break through. By dawn on 4 June 224,000 British and 116,000 French and Belgian troops had been rescued from Dunkirk and the rearguard holding off the Germans surrendered. Hitler left the Eagle’s Nest that same day and gave orders that it was to be preserved unchanged as a museum to the glory of the German armed forces.
The battle was, however, only half fought.
To the south of the Somme and the Aisne remained the bulk of the French army and four divisions of British troops. Weygand, the new French commander, left 17 divisions in the Maginot Line and massed 49 divisions along the new front. He had few tanks and fewer aircraft, but was determined to stop the invader. Weygand had been on Foch’s staff when the apparently unstoppable German advance was halted on the Marne in 1914. He now gave every impression of being confident that the miracle was about to be repeated.
Hitler was now ensconced in a new forward base at the village of Bruly-de-Pesche on the Belgian/French border. A large concrete bunker was hurriedly built and dubbed Wolfsschlucht – the Wolf’s Gorge. From there Hitler issued an avalanche of orders for the conquest of France. The 10 panzer divisions were brought back up to strength with repaired or replacement tanks. They were divided into five panzer corps massed in three columns. In Champagne, Guderian had two corps to drive east of Reims. At Laon, Kleist had two more to launch a pincer movement to link up with Guderian. On the coast, near Abbeville, Hoth had one corps to drive along the French coast. A further 130 infantry divisions were lined up to support the anticipated breakthrough.
The assault began on 5 June when Hoth attacked at Abbeville. For two days there was heavy fighting, then the French front collapsed and by 9 June Hoth was crossing the Seine at Rouen. Kleist attacked a day after Hoth and again hit determined French resistance. On the 9 June, Hitler decided to move Kleist’s reserves to serve under Guderian whose attack was due to begin that day. The move was inspired for Guderian quickly achieved a breakthrough and swept round to outflank the French facing Kleist.
That same day Reynaud issued a statement declaring, ‘We shall fight in front of Paris. We shall fight behind Paris’. But even as the statement was made, Reynaud and the French government was fleeing to Tours, later moving to Bordeaux. The next day Italy declared war on France, as Mussolini had promised Hitler he would do, and 32 divisions crossed the French border around Nice.
Weygand had already told Reynaud to sue for peace, but had been ignored. On 11 June Churchill flew to Tours to urge the French to continue the war from their colonies. The very next day a distraught Weygand spoke to the cabinet. He told them the war was lost and blamed the British, concluding, ‘I am obliged to say a cessation of hostilities is compulsory.’
Hitler was of much the same opinion. He announced he would not damage Paris if it was declared an open city and went on to deny he intended any harm to Britain. Indeed, the Fuhrer emphasised, Britain had declared war on Germany not the other way round. He was preparing the way, again, for peace moves.
Meanwhile the fighting had to go on. German troops entered Paris on 14 June. The collapse of French armed resistance and the German advance had been so sudden that Paris was quite unprepared for what happened. Some German officers spent the afternoon shopping for French luxuries to send home to their wives.
Hitler receives news of the fall of France, 20 June 1940.
On 17 June Reynaud resigned as Prime Minister and was replaced by Marshal Pétain. This hero of the Great War was enough of a military man to know the war was hopelessly lost. He hurriedly contacted the Germans asking for an armistice. When Hitler heard the news at the Wolf’s Gorge he slapped his knee in delight.
Now the French were beaten, Hitler knew exactly what he wanted to do. While his armies continued their armed tour through France, Hitler ordered the French envoys to Compiegne. On 21 June Hitler greeted the French while seated in the same railway carriage in which the German generals had surrendered in 1918. A companion noted that Hitler’s face was blazing with revenge, anger and hate. Once the formal opening of negotiations was over, Hitler left. Keitel, his Chief of Staff, was to conclude the negotiations which were in reality little more than German dictation. At 6.50pm on 22 June France formally surrendered.
The superiority of German tactics in the defeat of France, Belgium and Holland was mirrored by the casualty figures for the fighting since 10 May. The combined Allied losses were 90,000 dead, 200,000 wounded and something approaching 2 million captured or missing. By comparison the German losses were much lower at 30,000 dead and some 120,000 wounded. For a fraction of their casualties in the Great War, the Germans had achieved total victory over France.
Hitler clearly thought the war was as good as won. He went on a victory tour of Paris, viewing the grand buildings he had studied as plans during his time as an impoversihed architectural student, then he returned to Germany. There Hitler gave extensive leave to the army and even ordered a partial demobilisation. He began a charm offensive against Britain confident that peace was soon to be secured. He was to be disappointed.
The actual situation was summed up by Winston Churchill: ‘The Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin.’
CHAPTER NINE
Operation Sealion
As early as 1914, when a rumour swept his regiment that they were to land in England, Hitler had turned his mind to considering invading Britain. The rumour turned out to be false and Hitler spent the next four years in the trenches in France. But in 1940 he was faced with the
prospect of fighting a war against Britain and was forced to try to find a way to defeat that country.
The main problem he confronted was that neither he nor anyone in the German military had expected to face a war against a Britain determined to resist. Hitler had never had any intention of attacking Britain nor any part of her empire, it simply was not part of his plan for conquest in the East. Although he had expected Britain to object to his aggresion and, perhaps, even to declare war, Hitler had believed that Britain’s essential interests were not threatened by his actions. He had reasoned, therefore, that Britain would make peace once his conquests were an established fact.
It was the first real strategic failure that Hitler made in his military career. He had expected Britain to make peace. When she did not he had no pre-planned brilliant operation ready to knock her out of the war. The second, and much greater, strategic mistake was to follow the next year. With Britain still unsubdued, Hitler expanded the war by invading Russia. He had said before the conflict started that he would first have to ensure peace in the West before attacking East. He did not do so. Arguably this cost him his victory; certainly it has been argued that this ranks as one of the greatest blunders in military history, superseded only by Hitler’s 1941 declaration of war on the United States.
The main reason why Britain did not make peace in the summer of 1940 was that it had chosen Winston Churchill as Prime Minister. Throughout the 1930s Britain had been run by honest, honourable men who simply did not understand Hitler. They did not trust him, nor like him, but they gave way time and again to avoid a war. Churchill understood Hitler perfectly well and realised very early on that he could not be bargained with nor controlled, only destroyed. Churchill believed that if Britain made peace she would ultimately end up as an offshore appendage of a United Europe run by the brutal dictatorship of the Nazis. That fate was unthinkable, so Churchill decided Britain had to fight. The people of Britain agreed.
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