How Hitler Could Have Won World War II

2 THE CAMPAIGN IN THE WEST: 1940

GERMANY’S ORIGINAL PLAN FOR THE ATTACK IN THE WEST WAS ASTONISHINGLY modest. It aimed at no decision. It didn’t even anticipate a victory over France.

The initial proposal, produced on Hitler’s orders by the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH), or army command, in October 1939, hoped merely to defeat large portions of the Allied armies and gain territory in Holland, Belgium, and northern France “for successful air and sea operations against Britain and as a broad protective zone for the Ruhr” industrial region east of Holland.

The plan resembled superficially the famous Schlieffen plan of World War I in that the main weight of the attack was to go through Belgium. Beyond that, the OKH’s plan was utterly different. Count Alfred von Schlieffen had intended to defeat the entire French army. His aim was to outflank Allied forces with a wide right hook that drove down southwest of Paris, then turned back and pushed—from the rear—the entire enemy army up against the Franco-German frontier, compelling it to surrender.

None of this was possible in 1940. In 1914 Schlieffen had counted on strategic surprise. In 1940 the Allies anticipated the Germans would come through Belgium because a direct attack across the French frontier was impossible. In the 1930s France had constructed the Maginot Line from Switzerland to Luxembourg, a barrier of interconnected reinforced concrete fortifications and casemated cannons that could not be overcome by a direct attack.

Once the Germans tipped their hand, the Allies intended to throw forward strong forces to meet the Germans in Belgium, though it was the wrong thing to do. The sensible course would be to remain in already prepared defenses along the Belgian frontier, or withdraw to the Somme River fifty miles south, form a powerful defensive line, take advantage of the Allies’ two-to-one superiority in artillery, and launch a counterstroke against the exposed southern flank of the Germans as they drove westward. The Allies might shatter the German army by such a move. Even if they didn’t, they would still be dug in and ready for an attack when and where it came.

But France had suffered great devastation in World War I and did not want to fight the next war on French soil. Also, the British and French hoped to gain the help of the Belgian and Dutch armies. With them, the Allies would have as many soldiers as the Germans. They expected to use the Dyle, a north-flowing river some fifteen miles east of Brussels, as the main defensive barrier, sending their most mobile forces forty miles farther east to the Meuse (Maas) River to slow the German advance.

The Allied leaders downplayed the glaring weakness of this plan. It required their main forces to abandon already built fortifications along the frontier, move rapidly to the Dyle, and dig a new defensive line in the two or three days they were likely to have before the Germans arrived.

OKH saw the Allied disadvantages and hoped German forces could break through the two river lines with powerful frontal assaults. But the Allies, even if defeated, might still retreat behind the lower Somme, and form a continuous front with the Maginot Line. That is why Hitler and the OKH didn’t expect a total victory in the west. They anticipated a stalemate, the same condition the Germans had to accept at the end of the autumn battles in 1914. The only improvement would be that the coast of northern France, Belgium, and Holland would be available to pursue a naval and air war against Britain.

When Erich von Manstein saw the plan he declared that it would be a crime to use the German army for a partial victory, leading to a long war of attrition. It would mean defeat, since the Allies, with control of the seas and access to unlimited resources from Asia, Africa, and America, had much greater capacity to win a long war than the Germans.

Manstein was chief of staff to Gerd von Rundstedt, commander of Army Group A, and he saw an opportunity that had escaped the OKH— a way to eliminate the Allies’ entire northern wing after it rushed into Belgium. This same move would open the door to a second campaign that could destroy the remainder of the French army.

With Rundstedt’s approval, Manstein proposed that the main weight of the German attack be shifted to Army Group A and the Ardennes, a heavily forested region of low mountains in eastern Belgium and northern Luxembourg. He advocated that the vast bulk of Germany’s ten panzer divisions be concentrated there to press through to Sedan on the Meuse River, cross it before a substantial French defense could be set up, then turn westward and drive through virtually undefended territory to the English Channel. This would cut off all the Allied armies in Belgium and force them to surrender.

Manstein urged that a major decoy offensive still should be launched into northern Belgium and Holland under Army Group B, commanded by Fedor von Bock. Bock’s armies should make as much noise as possible to convince the Allies that the main effort was coming just where they expected it. This would induce them to commit most of their mobile forces to Belgium. The farther they advanced, the more certain would be their destruction.

“The offensive capacity of the German army was our trump card, and to fritter it away on half-measures was inadmissible,” Manstein wrote.

Manstein asked Heinz Guderian whether tanks could negotiate the hills and narrow roads of the Ardennes. Guderian studied the terrain, replied yes, and became an ardent apostle of Manstein’s plan.

But the OKH did not, and stonewalled for the next three months. Walther von Brauchitsch, commander of the Germany army, and Franz Halder, chief of the army staff, did not like the idea of their plan being tossed out, and they did not share Manstein and Guderian’s enthusiasm for tanks. They thought like orthodox soldiers and believed crossing a major stream such as the Meuse required moving up infantry and artillery, and a carefully worked-out coordinated assault. This would take time, time the French could use as well to build a strong defensive line.

Manstein and Guderian were certain the Meuse could be breached quickly with only panzer divisions and Luftwaffe bombers, and they believed speed would guarantee that the French would not have time to bring up enough troops to stop them. Speed also would ensure that few enemy units would be in place to block the panzers as they drove right across France to the Channel.

In November 1939 Hitler directed that a new panzer corps of three divisions, the 19th under Guderian, be attached to Army Group A with Sedan as its target. Since the OKH had not told Hitler of Manstein’s plan, he probably made the decision because he saw that Sedan was the easiest place to cross the Meuse. In any event, OKH ignored Manstein’s bolder strategy.

At the end of November, still without changing the northern focus of the offensive, OKH did move up behind Army Group A’s assembly area the 14th Corps of four motorized infantry divisions. These divisions had no tanks, but were almost as fast as the panzer divisions and could be of invaluable help in securing the flanks if the panzers were able to break out to the west.

On January 10, 1940, a staff officer of a German airborne division made a forced landing in Belgium. When captured, he was carrying orders he was only partially able to burn which gave away a large part of the German operations plan (Fall Gelb or “Case Yellow”). Many leaders on the Allied side concluded afterward that this was the event that caused the German high command to change its strategy. But it was not so. On January 25, at a commander-in-chief’s conference with all army group and army commanders, the plan remained the same. On the Allied side, the commanders were not certain whether the captured orders were authentic or a plant. They also did not change their plans.

“Quite unconsciously,” Manstein observed, “the German and Allied high commands had agreed that it was safer to attack each other head-on in northern Belgium than to become involved in a venturesome operation—on the German side by accepting the plan of Army Group A, on the Allied side by avoiding a conclusive battle in Belgium in order to deal a punishing blow to the southern flank of the German offensive.”

Manstein’s barrage of requests to change its strategy had become a nuisance to OKH, and on January 27, 1940, saying Manstein was due for promotion, it appointed him commander of 38th Corps, an infantry outfit with only a walk-on role in the upcoming campaign. The OKH hoped Manstein would conveniently disappear, but he used the appointment to make a decisive change in German strategy.

On February 17, Manstein was summoned to Berlin to report to Hitler for an interview and luncheon, along with other newly appointed corps commanders. Lieutenant Colonel Rudolf Schmundt, chief adjutant to Hitler, had been apprised of Manstein’s proposals, and he arranged for Manstein to talk privately with Hitler after the meal.

“I found him surprisingly quick to grasp the points which our army group had been advocating for many months past, and he entirely agreed with what I had to say,” Manstein wrote later.

The next day, in response to Hitler’s orders, OKH issued new directives that reflected Manstein’s proposals. Manstein’s idea became known in the German army as the Sichelschnitt, or “sickle-cut plan,” an apt description signifying that a strong armored thrust would cut through the weak portion of the Allied defenses like a harvester’s sickle cut through soft stalks of grass or grain.

OKH set up a new “panzer group” of five armored and four motorized divisions under General Ewald von Kleist containing Guderian’s 19th Corps, Hans Reinhardt’s 41st Corps, and Gustav von Wietersheim’s 14th Motorized Corps. These were to be der Sturmbock (battering ram) to breach the Meuse around Sedan. Also allocated was the 15th Corps under Hermann Hoth, whose two panzer divisions would cross the Meuse farther north at Dinant and shield Kleist’s main effort on that flank. OKH allocated 2nd Army to help protect Army Group A’s southern flank. OKH thus transferred the main weight to the southern wing.

At the same time Bock’s Army Group B remained strong enough, with three armies, to attack into northern Belgium and Holland. Bock had the remaining three panzer divisions—two in the 16th Corps under Erich Hoepner to lead his assault, and one (the 9th under Alfred Hubicki) detailed for the Holland operation.

It was a radical and astonishing transformation and the best military decision Adolf Hitler ever made. By shifting the Schwerpunkt to the Ardennes Hitler set up the conditions for an overwhelming victory that could transform the world.

Meanwhile the situation in the Allied camp was changing dramatically. French Premier Edouard Daladier could not summon the courage to dismiss General Maurice Gamelin, the French commander in chief, who was proving to be incompetent.

The French parliament was angry with Daladier because the Allies had done nothing to help Finland, while the Germans were massing on the frontiers of the Low Countries. On March 18, 1940, he lost a vote of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies. Paul Reynaud formed a new government, but had to accept Daladier as minister of defense, and Daladier held on to Gamelin.

This did not sit well with Reynaud, and he resigned, but the president of the republic, Albert Lebrun, induced him to run the government on a provisional basis. Thus France at the moment of its highest need found itself saddled with a weak and indecisive government.

A few weeks later in Britain, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain could not present a convincing explanation for the Norwegian fiasco to the House of Commons, and his support, already weak because of his appeasement of Hitler, evaporated. On the evening of May 9, 1940, Labour Party leaders Arthur Greenwood and Clement Attlee refused to form a unified government with the Conservatives so long as Chamberlain remained chief of the Conservative Party. This forced his resignation.

The next day, the very day the Germans attacked in the west, Winston Churchill—the strongest and most eloquent voice in England against Hitler—seized the rudder of a unity government. Chamberlain belonged to it as Lord President (a job with little power), Lord Halifax led the Foreign Office, and Anthony Eden switched from the Colonial Office to the War Ministry. Attlee became Lord Privy Seal and deputy premier, while Greenwood became minister without portfolio. Churchill demanded for himself the newly formed Ministry of Defense. From then on, he could make agreements with the chiefs of staff over the head of the minister of war.

The German forces arrayed on the frontiers of Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg on May 10, 1940, presented a tremendously different picture from armies that had gone before. Ordinary infantry divisions were noticeably absent. These traditional orthodox mainstays that marched to battle and fought on foot had been preempted. In the campaign about to erupt, they were too slow to have decisive jobs. The real agents of victory were in part a few airborne troops attached to the northern group, but mainly the new German Schnellentruppen, “fast troops”—the panzer and motorized divisions.

The campaign in the west was going to be decided by only part of these fast troops—seven panzer divisions in Army Group A—a force representing only 8 percent of total German strength. The three panzer divisions of Army Group B were to play important roles. But the actual disruption of the Allied position took place in the first phase of the campaign, and the seven armored divisions in Army Group A were the instruments.

The Luftwaffe had an important task in assisting the panzers. Messerschmitt 109 Bf fighters were to destroy enemy aircraft, and the bombers, principally Stukas, were to give ground support on the battle line.

Behind the fast troops on the German right or northern flank were twenty-five infantry divisions. Stacked up behind Army Group A in the middle were thirty-eight infantry divisions. Their job was to fill out the corridor that the “panzer wedge” was to open. In the south along the Maginot Line were eighteen infantry divisions in Army Group C under Wilhelm von Leeb, with only a holding job.

The Allies had 3,370,000 men in 143 divisions—nine of them British, twenty-two Belgian, eight Dutch, the remainder French. The Germans committed 3 million men in 141 divisions. The Allies had almost 14,000 cannons, the Germans just over 7,000. However, the Allied guns were principally field artillery pieces designed to assist infantry. The Allies possessed too few guns required for the war about to be fought: antiaircraft and antitank weapons.

The Allies had more armor, about 3,400 tanks to the Germans’ 2,700. But Allied armor was mostly spread out among the infantry divisions, whereas all German tanks were concentrated into the ten panzer divisions.

Only in the air was Germany clearly superior: 4,000 first-line aircraft to 3,000 Allied planes. Worse, many Allied planes were obsolete and their bombers were designed to strike area or general objectives, not targets on the battlefields as were the 400 Stukas. The French thought they could use medium bombers as “hedge hoppers” to attack enemy troops. But when they tried it they found the bombers were extremely vulnerable to ground fire.

The French had only sixty-eight Dewoitine 520 fighters, their only craft with performance approaching that of the 520 Messerschmitt 109 Bfs. The British Royal Air Force held back in England the competitive Spitfire, though a few Hurricanes were in France and could challenge the Messerschmitt on only slightly inferior terms.

While the Germans were placing their faith in a new type of warfare based on fast-moving tanks supported by dive-bombers, the French (and to a large degree the British) were aiming to fight World War I all over again.

The French army was by far the strongest challenge, but its doctrine required a continuous front, strongly manned by infantry and backed up by artillery. The French expected the enemy to attack this front fruitlessly and wear down his strength. Only when the enemy was weakened and finally stopped did doctrine permit the French army to go over to the offensive. An attack was always to be a bataille conduite, literally “battle by guidance” but translated as “methodical battle” by the British. This system had been worked out in the late stages of World War I and refined ever since. It was slow in the extreme. French doctrine prohibited action until the commander had perfect information about his and the enemy’s forces, a process requiring extensive, time-consuming reconnoitering.

When the infantry attack started it had to come behind a massive artillery barrage. The foot soldiers could advance only 1,500 meters before stopping to allow the artillery to shift its fires. After several such bounds, they had to stop until the guns could be moved forward.

All this required a great deal of time. A training exercise in 1938, for example, took eight days of preparation for an attack that was to last two days.

Guderian, who was fully aware of the enemy’s battle system, was confident that the speed of the panzer advance would preclude the French from ever having time to mount a counterattack. The situation would change by the hour, and the French would never catch up. This meant to Guderian that the panzers did not have to worry about their flanks. They would reach the English Channel and victory before the French could even begin to react.

The German high commanders, who thought more like their French opposite numbers than like Guderian, were not so sure. Out of these conceptual differences much conflict would emerge.