How Hitler Could Have Won World War II

3 THE DEFEAT OF FRANCE

TRUE TO THEIR PLAN, THE GERMANS DELIVERED THEIR FIRST BLOWS IN HOLLAND and northern Belgium. The strikes were so sensational and convincing that they acted like a pistol in starting the Allies’ dash forward.

In the first great airborne assault in history, 4,000 paratroops of Kurt Student’s 7th Airborne Division descended from the early morning sky May 10, 1940, into “Fortress Holland” around The Hague, Rotterdam, and Utrecht. The sudden appearance of this force in the heart of the Dutch defensive system staggered every Allied commander. The Dutch had expected to defend this region for a couple of weeks, long enough for the French to join them and hold it indefinitely. Immediately after Student’s parachutists grabbed four airports near Rotterdam and The Hague, Theodor von Sponeck’s 22nd Infantry Air-Landing Division (12,000 men) started arriving by transport aircraft.

The Germans tried to seize The Hague and the government by a coup de main, but failed, taking many casualties. They were, however, able to capture key bridges in the Dordrecht-Moerdijk-Rotterdam area and hold them until the 9th Panzer Division broke through the frontier and rushed to the bridges on May 13, 1940, eliminating all possibility of resistance.

On the same day the Germans carried out the first major aerial atrocity of World War II: their aircraft rained bombs down on the undefended center of Rotterdam, killing about a thousand civilians and terrorizing the country. Two days later, the Dutch capitulated. Their army had scarcely been engaged.

Another dramatic scenario played out at the bridges over the Maas (or Meuse) River and the Albert Canal around Maastricht—fifteen miles inside the Dutch frontier. The bridges here were vital to the Germans to get their panzers across and into the open plains of Belgium beyond. Dutch guards were certain to blow the spans the moment they heard the Germans had passed the frontier. The Germans, accordingly, decided on a surprise strike.

In addition, a way had to be found to neutralize the Belgian fort Eben Emael about five miles south of Maastricht. It guarded the Albert Canal and the Maas just to the east. Eben Emael, constructed of reinforced concrete and housing casemated 75-millimeter and 120-millimeter guns, had been completed in 1935 and was regarded as virtually impregnable. There was only one undefended part of the fort: the flat roof. This was Eben Emael’s undoing.

Adolf Hitler personally selected paratroop Captain Walter Koch to lead the mission. His force included a platoon of army combat engineers, under Lieutenant Rudolf Witzig.

Early on May 10, 1940, twenty-one ten-man gliders drawn by Junker 52 transports pulled off from fields near Cologne. Over Aachen at 8,000 feet, the gliders unhooked and slowly descended over Dutch territory, ten landing beside four key bridges, and nine landing right on top of the Eben Emael roof. Lieutenant Witzig was not among them. His and another glider’s ropes snapped, and his glider had to be retrieved by another Ju-52. Before Witzig arrived, his sergeant, Helmut Wenzel, had taken charge and set explosive charges in gun barrels, casemates, and exit passages. In moments the German engineers had incapacitated the fort and sealed the 650-man garrison inside. The next day German infantry arrived, and the fort surrendered.

While this attack was going on, storming parties under Captain Koch seized four Albert Canal bridges before the astonished defenders could destroy them.

But special detachments of German spies failed to grab the Maas bridges at Maastricht, and the Dutch blew them. This held up part of Erich Hoepner’s 16th Corps panzers for forty-eight hours. Then they burst across, and opened a wide path for Walther von Reichenau’s following 6th Army.

The Allied commander, General Maurice Gustave Gamelin, ordered the main Allied force on the left wing, the 1st Group of Armies under Gaston Harvé Billotte, to rush to the Dyle River. Included in this force were France’s three “light mechanized divisions” of converted cavalry with 200 tanks apiece. On the left of this army group was the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) of eight divisions under Lord Gort. The British moved to the line Louvain-Wavre south of the Belgian army, while the French swung in below the British from Wavre southward to Namur and Dinant on the Meuse. Meanwhile Gamelin directed French cavalry— motorized forces, armored cars, and horse brigades—to penetrate into the Ardennes and hold up the Germans.

Gamelin also ordered the French 7th Army under Henri Giraud to rush to Breda, about thirty miles southeast of Rotterdam, intending to link up with the Dutch. But with Fortress Holland breached, the 7th Army withdrew to Antwerp, Belgium.

To serve as a hinge around Sedan between the Maginot Line and the armies that had swept northeastward, Gamelin relied on two French armies (the 2nd and 9th) of four cavalry divisions and twelve infantry divisions, composed mostly of older reservists. This Sedan sector was the least fortified portion of the French frontier. Cavalry would be useless against tanks, and the infantry possessed few antitank or antiaircraft guns.

Meanwhile the Luftwaffe exerted all its efforts to beat down Allied air defenses and knock out enemy aircraft on the ground. The Germans were successful in large degree because the Dutch, Belgian, and French fighters were inferior to the Messerschmitt 109s, and the British Royal Air Force held back its Spitfires in England.

German bombers attacked railways, roads, and troop assembly areas. They created fear and chaos, and made the German ground advance much easier. Planes, mainly Stukas, stayed with the German advance troops, guarding flanks, knocking out defensive positions, and stopping enemy armored movements. After a week the Luftwaffe enjoyed superiority, and by another week it had achieved air supremacy.

Behind Hoepner’s panzers (3rd and 4th Divisions), the 6th Army advanced quickly, encircled the Belgian fortress of Liège, and pressed the Allies and Belgians back to Antwerp and the Dyle line. Georg Küchler’s 18th Army, which had moved into Holland, turned on Antwerp as soon as the Dutch surrendered, and seized the city on May 18. The French cavalry that had advanced into the Ardennes made little impression on the German forward elements, and withdrew behind the main Allied positions.

The French First Army, with thirteen infantry divisions and 800 tanks, had been ordered to hold at all costs the “Gembloux gap,” the twenty-two-mile space between Wavre on the Dyle and Namur on the Meuse. Unfortunately, the commander distributed his armor all along the line.

On May 14–15, German panzers struck around the town of Gembloux. Here about 150 French tanks were concentrated, more than the Germans brought up in the beginning. The French drove the German panzers back in a fierce, rolling battle. But more German tanks kept coming up, and the French, now outnumbered, withdrew on May 15, opening the flood gates to the German panzers.

The Belgians and the Allies fell back to the Scheldt River, fifteen to thirty miles west. It was beginning to look like a rout. But the German high command didn’t want to hurry the Allies into too rapid a retreat before the net had stretched across their rear. Accordingly, it took 16th Corps away to back up the drive through the Ardennes, and also withdrew Luftwaffe support.

The German successes had stunned the world. At this moment a great voice lifted to rally the Allies, inspire democratic peoples everywhere, and defy Hitler. Winston Churchill stood before the House of Commons on May 13 and said: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. If you ask me, what our war aim is, I give you only one answer: Victory! Victory whatever the cost!”

While the world’s attention was riveted on the spectacular battles in Belgium and Holland, the actual Schwerpunkt, or center of gravity, of the German offensive plunged almost unnoticed through the Ardennes toward the weakest point of the French line, sixty miles away. Well behind the panzers plodded the German infantry divisions on foot, their supply wagons and artillery pieces being pulled mostly by horses.

The leading element was the 19th Panzer Corps (1st, 2nd, and 10th Divisions), commanded by the father of German armored warfare, Heinz Guderian. His tanks were targeted at Sedan on the Meuse. Just to the north was Georg Hans Reinhardt’s 41st Panzer Corps with two divisions (6th and 8th), aimed at Monthermé, about fifteen miles northwest of Sedan. Each of the five panzer divisions averaged 253 tanks.

About twenty-five miles north of Reinhardt was Hermann Hoth’s 15th Panzer Corps with two divisions, the 5th and 7th (under Erwin Rommel, soon to be famous), with a total of 542 tanks. This corps’s job was to get across the Meuse at Dinant and keep the Allies in Belgium from interfering with Guderian and Reinhardt in their thrust westward.

Everything depended on speed. The Germans had to cross the Meuse before the Allies woke up to the danger. If they did, they still had time to assemble a formidable defensive line along the river and delay the offensive long enough to bring up reinforcements. If that happened, the Allies might counterattack through Army Group A and endanger Army Group B to the north, or they might hold the panzers along the Meuse and prevent the campaign of annihilation that Manstein had designed.

Guderian had to worry not only about the French but also about his own superiors. He met little resistance in the Ardennes, but near the frontier the French contested the advance firmly and held the Belgian town of Bouillon, eleven miles from Sedan, at nightfall on May 10.

General Charles Huntziger, commander of the French 2nd Army, asked the mayor of Bouillon whether one of the local hotels could be used for the wounded. “Of course not, General,” the mayor replied. “This is a summer resort, our hotels are reserved for tourists. Do you really think there is any danger?”

The next night General von Kleist, who had never commanded armor before taking over the panzer group, got a case of jitters. The higher German commanders could not believe the French had not discovered that the main point of the offensive was aimed at Sedan, and were fearful of a French counterattack on the flank. They disbelieved Guderian, who insisted the French would take days to figure out what had happened, and more days to mount a counterstroke.

During the night of May 11–12 Kleist got reports that French cavalry were advancing from Longwy, about forty miles east of Sedan. He at once ordered the 10th Panzer Division, on the south, to change direction and drive on Longwy. This would seriously upset the German advance and, Guderian argued, was unnecessary. Many of the French cavalry were still riding horses, while their lightly armored mechanized elements were no match for German panzers. Let them come, Guderian told Kleist. They will be smashed. Kleist, after some hesitation, agreed, and the French cavalry wisely did not appear.

Guderian’s 1st and 10th Panzers captured Sedan and occupied the north bank of the Meuse on the evening of May 12. Kleist ordered him to attack across the river with these formations the next day at 4 P.M.

Before the campaign started, Guderian had worked out a plan of attack by the Luftwaffe. Since few of his own artillery pieces could get to Sedan in the press of men, horses, and machines on the roads to the rear, Guderian intended to use Stukas as aerial artillery to help his infantry get across the river. He wanted a few aircraft to remain over Sedan before and during the crossing to make both actual and fake bombing and strafing runs on the French positions. Guderian was less interested in destroying the enemy than in forcing defenders to keep their heads down so his infantry could rush across the stream and find lodgment on the far side. This is what he had worked out with the Luftwaffe staff.

But when Kleist ordered an assault on the river on May 13, he insisted that the Luftwaffe mount a massive bombing attack, using large numbers of bombers and dive-bombers. This might cause considerable damage, but then the aircraft would depart, leaving Guderian’s troops to face the remaining French machine guns and artillery.

When the Luftwaffe arrived, however, Guderian was astonished to see only a few squadrons of Stukas, operating under fighter cover. They used the tactics he had worked out beforehand: one group of Stukas bombed and machine-gunned trenches, pillboxes, and artillery positions (or pretended to do so), while a second group circled above, waiting to take over. Above these was a fighter shield. The air force had gone ahead with the original plan because it had no time to mount the massive bombing attack that Kleist wanted.

The effects were remarkable. When the assault force, 1st Rifle Regiment, assembled on the river just west of Sedan, enemy artillery was alert and fired at the slightest movement. But the unending strikes and faked strikes by the aircraft virtually paralyzed the French. Artillerymen abandoned their guns, and machine-gunners kept their heads down and could not fire.

As a consequence 1st Rifle Regiment crossed the river in collapsible rubber boats with little loss and seized commanding heights on the south bank. By midnight the regiment had pressed six miles south and set up a deep bridgehead, although neither artillery, armor, nor antitank guns had been able to get across the Meuse. Engineers could not finish building a bridge until daybreak on May 14.

The advance of the German infantry set off a mass retreat of French soldiers.

“Everywhere the roads were covered by artillery teams, ration and ammunition wagons, infantry weapons carriers, fatigue parties, horses, and motors,” Guy Chapman wrote. “What was worse, many of the groups were headed by officers, and, worse still, their guns had been abandoned.”

Meanwhile 10th Panzer Division had crossed the Meuse near Sedan and set up a small bridgehead, while Reinhardt’s panzer corps got a narrow foothold across the river at Monthermé. But the terrain was extremely steep there, and Reinhardt had a hard time holding on under strong French pressure.

At the same time Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division forced a large breach of the river at Dinant, about twenty-five miles north of Monthermé.

At dawn on May 14, Guderian pressed to get as many guns and tanks as possible across the one bridge that had been completed. He knew the French would try to destroy the bridgehead and were certain to be rushing reinforcements forward. At the moment, only Lieutenant Colonel Hermann Balck’s 1st Rifle Regiment—with not an artillery piece nor an antitank gun to its name—was holding the vital bridgehead.

The French commanders recognized the importance of destroying the bridgehead. The 3rd Armored Division was on hand and moved up, but some of its 150 tanks had been distributed to infantry divisions.

At 7 A.M. on May 14, fifteen French light tanks with infantry attacked 1st Rifle Regiment around Bulson, about five miles south of Sedan. They were supported by some French aircraft. The Germans had nothing heavier than machine guns, but shot down several planes and slowed the tanks and infantry long enough for the first German tanks to come up a few minutes later. By 9:40 A.M. only four of the French tanks remained, and they and the infantry retreated to Mont Dieu, a couple miles south.

Meanwhile British and French airmen tried bravely to knock out the single bridge over the Meuse and other spans under construction. The Luftwaffe provided no help against them, having been called away on other missions. But Guderian’s antiaircraft gunners shot down a number of Allied aircraft, and prevented any of the bridges being broken.

By midday German infantry and armor were approaching high ground near Stonne, about fifteen miles south of Sedan. This ridge dominated the country to the south, and guarded the Meuse crossings. Guderian turned over defense to General von Wietersheim, leaving the 10th Panzer Division and the independent Gross-Deutschland Infantry Regiment, now also on hand, until Wietersheim’s 14th Motorized Corps could come up and take over defense of the flank.

Guderian met with the commanders of 1st and 2nd Panzer Divisions (Friedrich Kirchner and Rudolf Veiel), and, with their eager concurrence, ordered them to turn west, break entirely through the French defenses, and strike for the English Channel. By evening of May 14, elements of the 1st Panzer had seized Singly, more than twenty miles west of Sedan.

The same evening, General André Corap, commanding the French 9th Army, the only force now blocking Guderian’s and Reinhardt’s panzer corps along the Meuse, made a fatal mistake and ordered the entire army to abandon the Meuse and withdraw to a new line some fifteen to twenty miles to the west. He made this decision not only because of the breakthrough at Sedan, but because Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division had crossed at Dinant. Corap was responding to wild reports of “thousands” of tanks pouring through the breach made by Rommel.

When the French arrived on the new line, Guderian’s panzers were already in some of the positions the 9th Army was supposed to have occupied, while withdrawal from the Meuse removed the block holding up Reinhardt at Monthermé. His tanks now burst out and drove westward along an unobstructed path. Guderian and Reinhardt had split the 9th Army in two, blowing open a sixty-mile-wide hole through which their panzers poured like a raging torrent.

The battle of Sedan brought about a major change in battle tactics. Up to this point, panzer leaders, including Guderian, had believed rifle and armored units should be kept sharply distinct, and that tanks should be massed for a decisive thrust. Thus the 1st Rifle Regiment crossed the Meuse with only light infantry weapons. If the French had attacked with heavy weapons during the night of May 13–14, they might have destroyed the regiment.

The infantry remained in a precarious position on the morning of May 14 until the first panzers came up. It would have been safer and more effective for the Germans if individual tanks and antitank guns had been ferried across with the infantry. The lesson led to formation of Kampfgruppen— mixed battle groups—of armor, guns, infantry, and sometimes engineers. These proved to be formidable fighting forces and dominated German tactical operations for the remainder of the war.

Churchill arrived in Paris on May 16 to find panic setting in. Government offices were burning their papers, expecting the capital to fall at any moment. The turmoil slowly abated as word spread that an order taken from a wounded German officer showed the panzers were turning toward the west, not Paris.

Premier Reynaud reported that Gamelin had no more reserves—or ideas. He took over the defense establishment from Daladier, relieved Gamelin, appointed General Maxime Weygand, just arriving from Syria, to command the armies, and named the ambassador to Spain, Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain, as vice president of the cabinet. Weygand arrived at the front on May 21, but was unable to conceive any plan to reverse the disaster unfolding for the Allies.

Kleist’s panzers were rolling through territory that resembled a long corridor. The region was clogged with fugitives who created chaos, while the panzers at the arrow point had to be nourished with ammunition, food, and fuel. Walls had to be formed on either side, in case the Allies were massing to counterattack. Wietersheim’s 14th Motorized Corps was trying to keep up with the tanks and form blocking positions. But their numbers were too small and the distances too great. Solid lines could only be created by the infantry, most of it still far behind. Rundstedt was doing everything possible to bring them forward, but the pace was slow, gaps were impossible to close, and, to the orthodox soldiers who made up the German senior command, perils lurked at every crossroad.

The generals were as stunned as the Allies by the speed and success of the campaign. They still could only half believe it was happening. Hitler likewise had become “monstrously nervous.” He hurried to see Rundstedt at Charleroi on May 15 and urged him not to drive toward “boundless shores” (Uferlose).

Rundstedt, also worried, ordered Kleist to stop to give the infantry time to catch up. Kleist reported none of the higher-ups’ worries to Guderian, and simply ordered him to halt. But Guderian, along with the other panzer commanders, saw that a gigantic victory was within their grasp. It could be assured only if they continued to drive west at full fury and not give the distracted and increasingly desperate enemy a chance to develop countermeasures.

Guderian extracted from Kleist authority to continue the advance for another twenty-four hours, under the pretext that “sufficient space be acquired for the infantry corps that were following.” With this permission to “enlarge the bridgehead,” Guderian drove personally to Bouvellemont, twenty-four miles southwest of Sedan. This was the farthest projection of the 1st Panzer Division, and where the 1st Infantry Regiment had been involved in heavy fighting.

In the burning village, Guderian found the infantry exhausted. They had had no real rest since May 9 and were falling asleep in their slit trenches. Guderian explained to Colonel Balck that his regiment had to open a way for the panzers.

Balck went to his officers, who argued against continuing the attack with exhausted troops. “In that case,” Balck told them, “I’ll take the place on my own.” As he moved off to do so, his embarrassed soldiers followed and seized Bouvellement.

This broke the last French point of resistance, and the Germans rushed out into the open plains north of the Somme with no substantial enemy forces ahead of them. By nightfall of May 16, Guderian’s spearheads were at Marle and Dercy, fifty-five miles from Sedan.

Guderian assumed that this spectacular success had stilled the fears back at headquarters, and he sent a message that he intended to continue the pursuit the next day, May 17. Early in the morning, Guderian received a radio flash that Kleist would fly into his airstrip at 7 A.M. Kleist arrived promptly, didn’t even bid Guderian good morning, and launched into a tirade for his disobeying orders. Guderian at once asked to be relieved of his command. Kleist, taken aback, nodded, and told him to turn over command to the next-senior officer.

Guderian radioed Rundstedt’s army group what had happened, and said he was flying back to report. Within minutes, a message came to stay where he was. Colonel General Wilhelm List, 12th Army commander, was coming to clear up the matter. List arrived in a few hours and told Guderian the halt order had come from Rundstedt, and he would not resign. List was in full agreement with Guderian’s desire to keep going, however, and authorized him to make “reconnaissance in force,” a subterfuge that did not defy Rundstedt’s command but slipped around it.

Immensely grateful, Guderian unleashed his panzers, and they surged forward. Rundstedt’s army group belatedly called off its stop order. By nightfall May 17, 10th Panzer seized a bridgehead across the Oise River near Moy, seventy miles west of Sedan. The next day, 2nd Panzer reached St. Quentin, ten miles beyond Moy, while, on May 19, 1st Panzer forced a bridgehead over the Somme near Péronne, almost twenty miles west of St. Quentin.

The velocity of the panzer drive had made a powerful counterstroke almost impossible. Even so, the newly formed French 4th Armored Division under General Charles de Gaulle came forward on May 19 with a few tanks and attacked near Laon, but was severely repulsed. This failure to mass tanks was the pattern the French and British followed throughout the campaign. Even after the breakthrough, they might have stopped the advance if they had concentrated their still formidable armored strength and struck hard at a single point on the German flank.

This never happened. The French had formed four armored divisions of only 150 tanks apiece in the past winter, and had wasted them in isolated engagements like de Gaulle’s attempt at Laon. Most of the 3rd Armored Division had been dispersed among the infantry along the Meuse at Sedan, while the rest had been shattered in small attacks. The 1st had run out of fuel and been overrun by Rommel’s panzers, while the 2nd had been spread along a twenty-five-mile stretch of the Oise, and Guderian’s leading tanks had burst through them with little effort.

In Belgium, the tanks of the ten British armored battalions had been parceled out to the infantry divisions, as had those of the three French mechanized divisions and independent French tank battalions. The few French tanks that had assembled at Gembloux, however, had performed excellently, showing what might have been achieved with concentration.

On May 20, 1st Panzer seized Amiens and pressed southward to form a bridgehead four miles deep across the Somme. During the afternoon, 2nd Panzer reached Abbéville, and that evening a battalion of the division passed through Noyelles and became the first German unit to reach the Atlantic coast. Only ten days after the start of the offensive, the Allied armies had been cut in two.

The Allied forces in Belgium had formed a line along the Scheldt River, with their southern flank resting at Arras, only twenty-five miles from Péronne on the Somme. Thus the Germans had only this narrow gap through which to nourish their panzers and their offensive.

The Allies still had a chance. If they could close this gap, they could isolate the panzers, reunite the armies in Belgium with forces to the south, and bring the German offensive to a halt.

Lord Gort, commander of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), ordered a counterattack southward from Arras on May 21. He tried to get the French to assist, but they said their forces couldn’t attack until May 22. With Guderian’s panzers already at the English Channel, Lord Gort decided he couldn’t wait and ordered forward two infantry battalions of the 50th Division and the 1st Army Tank Brigade with 58 Mark I Matildas armed only with a single machine gun, and 16 Mark II Matildas armed with a high-velocity two-pounder (40-millimeter) gun. Matildas were slow infantry tanks, but with 75 millimeters of armor, were much more resistant to enemy fire than the lighter-skinned panzers.

The attack got little artillery and no air support.

Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division had arrived south of Arras, and he swung his tanks around northwest of Arras on the morning of May 21. The division’s artillery and infantry were to follow.

The British, not realizing that the German tanks had passed beyond them, formed up west of Arras in the afternoon and attacked southeast, intending to sweep to the Cojeul River, a small tributary to the Scarpe, five miles southeast of the city, and destroy any enemy in the sector.

South and southwest of Arras, the British ran into Rommel’s artillery and infantry, minus their tanks, and began to inflict heavy casualties. The Germans found their 37-millimeter antitank guns were useless against the Matildas. The British tanks penetrated the German infantry front, overran the antitank guns, killed most of the crews, and many of the infantry, and were only stopped by a frantic effort—undertaken by Rommel himself—to form a “gun line” of field artillery and especially high-velocity 88-millimeter antiaircraft guns, which materialized as a devastating new weapon against Allied tanks. The artillery and the “88s” destroyed thirty-six tanks and broke the back of the British attack.

Meanwhile, the panzers turned back on radioed orders from Rommel and arrived on the rear and flank of the British armor and artillery. In a bitter clash of tank on tank, Rommel’s panzer regiment destroyed seven Matildas and six antitank guns, and broke through the enemy position, but lost three Panzer IVs, six Panzer IIIs, and a number of light tanks.

The British fell back into Arras and attempted no further attack.

The Allied effort had been too weak to alter the situation, but showed what could have been done if the Allied commanders had mobilized a major counterattack. Even so, the British effort had wide repercussions. Rommel’s division lost 387 men, four times the number suffered until that point. The attack also stunned Rundstedt, and his anxiety fed Hitler’s similar fears and led to momentous consequences in a few days.

On May 22, Guderian wheeled north from Abbéville and the sea, aiming at the channel ports and the rear of the British, French, and Belgian armies, which were still facing eastward against Bock’s Army Group B. Reinhardt’s panzers kept pace on the northeast. The next day, Guderian’s tanks isolated Boulogne, and on May 23, Calais. This brought Guderian to Gravelines, barely ten miles from Dunkirk, the last port from which the Allies in Belgium could evacuate.

Reinhardt also arrived twenty miles from Dunkirk on the Aa (or Bassée) Canal, which ran westward past Douai, La Bassée, and St. Omer to Gravelines. The panzers were now nearer Dunkirk than most of the Allies.

While the right flank of the BEF withdrew to La Bassée on May 23 under pressure of a thrust northward by Rommel from Arras toward Lille, the bulk of the British forces moved farther north to reinforce the line in Belgium. Here Bock’s forces were exerting increasing pressure, causing King Leopold to surrender the Belgian army the next day.

Despite this, Rundstedt gave Hitler a gloomy report on the morning of May 24, laying emphasis on the tanks the Germans had lost and the possibility of meeting further Allied attacks from the north and south. All this reinforced Hitler’s own anxieties. He showed his paranoia by saying he feared the panzers would get bogged down in the marshes of Flanders, though every tank commander knew how to avoid wet areas.

Hitler had been extremely nervous from the start of the breakthrough. Indeed, he became more nervous the more success the Germans gained, worrying about the lack of resistance and fearing a devastating attack on the southern flank. He had not grasped that Manstein’s strategy and Guderian’s brilliant exploitation were bringing about the most overwhelming decision in modern military history. The Germans had been out of danger from the first day, but to Hitler (and to most of the senior German generals) it seemed too good to be true.

The question now arose of what to do about the British and French armies in Belgium. With virtually no enemy forces in front of them, Guderian and Reinhardt were about to seize Dunkirk and close off the last possible port from which the enemy troops could embark. This would force the capitulation of the entire BEF and the French First Group of Armies, more than 400,000 men.

At this moment, the war took a bizarre and utterly bewildering turn. Why events unrolled as they did has been disputed ever since, and no one has come close to understanding the reasons.

Hitler called in Walther von Brauchitsch, the army commander in chief, and ordered him to halt the panzers along the line of the Bassée Canal. Rundstedt protested, but received only the curt telegram: “The armored divisions are to remain at medium artillery range from Dunkirk [eight or nine miles]. Permission is only granted for reconnaissance and protective movements.”

Kleist thought the order made no sense, and he pushed his tanks across the canal with the intention of cutting off the Allied retreat. But he received emphatic orders to withdraw behind the canal. There the panzers stayed for three days, while the BEF and remnants of the 1st and 7th French Armies streamed back to Dunkirk. There they built a strong defensive position, while the British hastily improvised a sea lift.

The British used every vessel they could find, 860 in all, many of them civilian yachts, ferryboats, and small coasters. The troops had to leave all their heavy equipment on shore, but between May 26 and June 4 the vessels evacuated to England 338,000 troops, including 120,000 French. Only a few thousand members of the French rear guard were captured.

Two seemingly plausible reasons have been advanced for Hitler’s decision. One is that Hermann Göring, one of his closest associates and chief of the Luftwaffe, promised that he could easily prevent evacuation with his aircraft, since the panzers were needed to turn south and begin the final campaign to defeat France. The other is that Hitler wanted a settlement with Britain and deliberately prevented the destruction of the BEF to make peace easier to attain. Regardless of which motivations impelled Hitler, he made the wrong judgment. The Luftwaffe did a poor job, and the British were uplifted by the “miracle of Dunkirk,” redoubling their resolve to fight on.

The Luftwaffe started late, not mounting a strong attack until May 29. Air attacks increased over the next three days, and on June 2 daylight evacuation had to be suspended. But RAF fighters valiantly tried to stop the bombing and strafing runs, and were in part successful. The beach sand absorbed much of the blast effects of bombs. The Luftwaffe did most of its damage at sea, sinking 6 British destroyers, 8 transport ships, and more than 200 small craft.

Hitler lifted the halt order on May 26, but soon thereafter army headquarters directed the panzers to move south for the attack across the Somme, leaving to Army Group B’s infantry the task of occupying Dunkirk—after the Allies had gone.

On June 4, Winston Churchill rose to speak in the House of Commons. He closed his address with these words that inspired the world:

The end in France came swiftly. In three weeks, the Germans had captured more than a million prisoners, while suffering 60,000 casualties. The Belgian and Dutch armies had been eliminated, and the French had lost thirty divisions, nearly a third of their total strength, and this the best and most mobile part. They had also lost the assistance of eight British divisions, now back in Britain, with most of their equipment lost. Only one British division remained in France south of the Somme.

Weygand was left with sixty-six divisions, most of them understrength, to hold a front along the Somme, the Aisne, and the Maginot Line that was longer than the original. He committed forty-nine divisions to hold the rivers, leaving seventeen to defend the Maginot Line. Most of the mechanized divisions had been lost or badly shattered. However, the Germans quickly brought their ten panzer divisions back to strength and deployed 130 infantry divisions, only a few of which had been engaged.

The German high command reorganized its fast troops, combining armored divisions and motorized divisions in a new type of panzer corps, generally with one motorized and two armored divisions to each corps.

OKH promoted Guderian to command a new panzer group of two panzer corps, and ordered him to drive from Rethel on the Aisne to the Swiss frontier. Kleist kept two panzer corps to strike south from bridgeheads over the Somme at Amiens and Péronne, but these later shifted eastward to reinforce Guderian’s drive. The remaining armored corps, under Hoth, was to advance between Amiens and the sea.

The offensive opened on June 5, and France collapsed quickly. Not all the breakthroughs were easy, but the panzers, generally avoiding the villages and towns where defenses had been organized, were soon ranging across the countryside almost at will, creating chaos and causing the French soldiers to surrender by the hundreds of thousands.

An example was Erwin Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division, which crossed the Somme near Hangest east of Abbéville on June 5, and moved so fast and materialized at points so unexpectedly that the French called it the “ghost division.” On June 6, at Les Quesnoy, the entire division lined up on a 2,000-yard front, with the 25th Panzer Regiment in the lead, and advanced across country as if on an exercise. Two days later it reached the Seine River, eleven miles southeast of Rouen, a drive of seventy miles, then turned northwest and raced to the sea at St. Valéry, where it captured the British 51st Highland Division.

Guderian’s panzers cut off northeastern France with a rapid drive to the Swiss frontier. The troops defending the Maginot Line retreated and surrendered almost without firing a shot.

With victory over France assured, Italy entered the war on June 10. The same day President Franklin D. Roosevelt was speaking at commencement at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Roosevelt reversed his usual emphasis on avoiding American involvement in the war and promised to extend aid “full speed ahead.” But his address is most remembered for his condemnation of Italy for striking “a dagger into the back of its neighbor.”

The Germans entered Paris on June 14 and reached the Rhône valley on June 16. The same night the French asked for an armistice, and on June 17 Reynaud resigned as premier and was succeeded by Marshal Philippe Pétain. While talks went on, German forces advanced beyond the Loire River. At the same time, a French light cruiser took to safety 1,754 tons of gold from the banks of France, Belgium, and Poland, while, under the direction of British Admiral William James, ships at numerous French ports carried to England nearly 192,000 men and women (144,171 Britons; 18,246 French; 24,352 Poles; 4,938 Czechs; and 162 Belgians). Many of the French joined a new Free French movement under Charles de Gaulle, who had arrived in Britain, vowing to fight on against the Germans.

On June 22 the French accepted the German terms at Compiègne, in the same railway car where the defeated Germans had signed the armistice ending World War I in 1918. On June 25 both sides ceased fire. The greatest military victory in modern times had been achieved in six weeks.