In contrast, the German infantry involved in the crossing were absolutely exhausted, having had no sleep to speak of since 10 May and having been involved in heavy fighting the previous day. Furthermore, it was not until around 7.20 a.m. that the first German panzers crossed the Meuse. The French armour was ordered up at around 4 p.m. on the 13th, to make a stand at a blocking position along a ridge that ran either side of the village of Bulson a few miles to the south of Sedan. The idea was that as the German panzers appeared, the French armour would be waiting for them. It would then open fire, and knock out the panzers, and then the French tanks and infantry would counter-attack, forcing the Germans back across the Meuse.
This was quite a realistic prognosis, but unfortunately, although the French tanks had only about twelve miles to travel, they did not reach the Bulson ridge until 8.45 a.m. on the 14th – some seventeen hours later – by which time the panzers were already there. Rather than the French lying in wait for the Germans, the opposite occurred – and the French were routed. By the time the French could have brought any more reinforcements forward, Guderian’s bridgehead had been massively expanded. At 12.30 p.m., the general received news that the bridge across the Ardennes Canal had been safely captured. This was a huge coup, because the canal, to the west of Sedan, ran southwards, potentially blocking Guderian’s intended westward thrust. With the bridge taken intact, there was nothing to stop him – nothing, that is, except for his superior officers, and even Hitler himself.
And it was at this moment that Guderian faced one of the biggest gambles of his life.
As the unfolding Allied disaster at Sedan was finally beginning to sink in, the French and British air forces were ordered to urgently bomb and destroy the newly built German bridges constructed overnight, and across which panzers were now rumbling in a steady stream.
Air Chief Marshal Dowding might have been worried about his precious fighter aircraft, but RAF Bomber Command could ill afford to lose large numbers of planes over France either. Tragically, however, this was precisely what was about to happen over Sedan. The flawed Allied air strategy was now about to reveal its shortcomings horribly above this key battleground. The use of RAF bombers in France had already caused no small amount of debate. Air Marshal Charles Portal, only since April the new head of Bomber Command, had voiced his concerns just two days before the German offensive had begun. He was convinced that using Blenheim medium bombers in direct support of the ground forces was a grave mistake. The enemy front would be swarming with fighters and he feared his bombers would suffer hideous losses. Really accurate bombing could not be expected and he doubted whether fifty Blenheims – which was what it amounted to – operating on information unavoidably some hours out of date could make enough of a difference to justify the inevitable losses that would occur. The problem was that these bombers, along with the squadrons of obsolescent Fairey Battles, had already been committed; they could not stand idle on their airfields, so the Air Staff back in London, despite Portal’s grave concerns, had little choice but to commit them once the offensive began. But in so doing they were sending precious pilots to very early deaths.
Once again, the French seemed to be unable to respond to any crisis with anything like urgency. The Arméee de l’Air could only muster forty-three bombers to fly over Sedan, while the RAF sent seventy-three Battles and thirty-six Blenheims. Recognizing that the Allies would make a concerted effort to blow the bridges, Guderian had managed to bring to bear a staggering 300 anti-aircraft guns around his key crossing points. The aircraft of Luftflotte 3 were also there in force to protect the bridges, hovering above and waiting to pounce.
French attacks, made in dribs and drabs, began early in the morning but were hopelessly ineffective. Between three and four in the afternoon, the RAF arrived en masse, flung against the guns and aircraft waiting for them. It was a slaughter.
Oberleutnant Siegfried Bethke was one of the German fighter pilots lying in wait. His squadron had a field day, shooting down five enemy planes. He himself shot down a French Morane in the morning. ‘A second was as good as right in front of my nose,’ he noted, ‘but I let it slip away in my excitement.’
Shortly before midday, Guderian’s Army Group Commander, Generaloberst von Rundstedt, had arrived at Sedan. Guderian reported to him on the bridge at Gaulier, by the Draperie Sedannaise, with an air raid in progress. ‘Is it always like this here?’ von Rundstedt asked. Guderian replied that it was.
It was a beautiful early summer’s day. Dark green pine forests and lush, vibrantly green meadows covered the countryside around Sedan. Almost incessantly, however, the dull explosions of bombs, the chatter of machine guns and the thudding flak guns boomed out over the valley, while, above, the roar and scream of aero engines seemed to be ever-present. The ground shook with the weight of ordnance. Long black plumes of smoke followed broken aircraft as they plummeted to the ground.
By early evening, the wrecks of Battles and Blenheims lay strewn, crumpled and charred, all over the wooded slopes around Sedan. Of the seventy-one aircraft that had set off for Sedan that afternoon, forty never returned. No RAF operation of similar size has ever suffered a higher rate of loss.
Meanwhile, Guderian, following his noisy chat with von Rundstedt, crossed back across the Meuse and hurried to Chémery, a small village near the bridge across the Ardennes Canal, where the 1st Panzer Division now had their command post. It was decision time. His orders were explicit: after establishing a bridgehead, he was to wait and build up strength in case of an expected counter-attack from the south. To charge on recklessly with the panzer force was considered by everyone from Halder to von Rundstedt and von Kleist as far too risky. Even Hitler, the arch-gambler, suggested the panzers should wait until sufficient forces still crawling through the Ardennes had caught up.
On the other hand, Guderian and von Manstein, when they had originally devised their plan of attack, had intended that the panzers go for broke, disregarding the danger to their flanks. They had always seen victory or failure in terms of a race against time. And Guderian did not now have time to wait for reinforcements. The French were reeling; it was time to exploit a favourable situation. The problem was that if he went ahead, he would be blatantly disregarding orders that went to the very top. It was a big call to make.
It was the 1st Panzer Division’s Chief of Staff, Major Walther Wenck, who helped Guderian make up his mind, by reminding the General of one of his favourite sayings: ‘Klotzen, nicht kleckern!’ – ‘hit hard, not softly!’ Guderian, his decisive, tough-guy reputation put on the line by a mere major, needed no further pause for thought. ‘That really answered my question,’ he admitted.
Immediately, he ordered 1st and 2nd Panzer Divisions west, leaving 10th Panzer to protect the bridgehead. The dash to the Channel had begun.
To the north, around Dinant, the 5th and 7th Panzer Divisions were also expanding the bridgeheads they had fought so hard to secure the day before. Hans von Luck heard that Rommel’s command tank had been hit and knocked into a ditch. ‘“Is Rommel immune?” we asked ourselves.’ Hans’s reconnaissance battalion was once again at the front of the advance. ‘Keep going, don’t look to left or right, only forward,’ Rommel had told them. ‘I’ll cover your flanks if necessary. The enemy is confused; we must take advantage of it.’
Once again, a slow response by the French allowed the Germans to burst out of the bridgehead. Both 5th and 7th Panzer Divisions had faced hard fighting on the 14th, but by the end of the day had begun breaking out because the French 1st Armoured Division, although on standby near Charleroi since the 13th, was not actually ordered forward until 2 p.m. on the 14th and then did not get moving for another couple of hours. Battling against roads crammed with fleeing civilians, it had gone about twenty miles when it leaguered for the night. Little did the troops realize that Rommel’s lead panzers were also corralled for the night just a few miles away.
By morning, the Luftwaffe had bombed and destroyed several French fuel convoys, s
o the 1 Division Cuirassée (1st Armoured Division) was still in the process of refuelling near the village of Flavion when Rommel’s tanks spotted it and immediately opened fire. Meanwhile, antitank gunners and panzers from 5th Panzer Division had also arrived on the scene. Disengaging, Rommel ordered his panzers to push on while the remaining mass of the French armour fought a day-long battle with 5th Panzer Division.
Despite the superior firepower of the French tanks, the 1 Division Cuirassée, one of the best tank divisions in the French army, was destroyed, with burning wrecks littering the sweeping countryside much as RAF bombers were strewn around Sedan. The 1 Division Cuirassée had begun the day with 170 tanks. By the day’s end, it had just thirty-six. By the morning of the 15th, that figure stood at sixteen. The 1 Division had been utterly destroyed.
That same day, 15 May, Panzer Corps Reinhardt also managed to break out from its bridgehead at Monthermé and thrust more than thirty miles. It was all the more extraordinary because only Generalmajor Werner Kempf’s 6th Panzer Division had actually made it across the Meuse – the rest of the corps was still labouring through the gridlock of the Ardennes. The following morning, 16 May, Generalmajor Kempf met Guderian in the marketplace at the small town of Montcornet; the two Panzer Corps had linked up, some fifty miles west of Sedan.
Earlier, as Guderian had passed through an advancing column of the 1st Panzer Division, his men had cheered him. He had been worried that perhaps he had been pushing them too hard: the men were exhausted and ammunition was just beginning to run low. The day before he had seen Oberst Balck after a hard fight against ‘a good Normandy infantry division and a brigade of Spahis’, his eyes red and his face covered in dirt. Now, though, Guderian knew there must be no more hesitancy. ‘The men were wide awake now,’ he wrote, ‘and aware that we had achieved a complete victory, a break-through.’
Guderian was right. The entire Meuse front had now collapsed. As the motorcycles, tanks, half-tracks and armoured cars of those half-dozen leading panzer divisions thundered through the dusty May roads, French soldiers, stunned to see German troops where no German troops could possibly be, surrendered in their droves.
For the Allies the realization that they had been well and truly humbugged came as a profound shock. In London, Churchill learned the news on the evening of 14 May, when the Cabinet received a message from M. Reynaud, the French Prime Minister, telling it that the Germans had broken through at Sedan, and asking for ten more fighter squadrons. Further messages from Gamelin and Georges revealed that the French C-in-C had been stunned by the rapidity of the German advance. At about 7.30 the following morning, 15 May, Churchill received a telephone call from Reynaud. ‘We have been defeated,’ he said. For a moment, Churchill did not say anything, so Reynaud added, ‘We are beaten; we have lost the battle.’ The Prime Minister tried to reassure him, but to no avail.
Soon after, he spoke to Général Georges, who seemed to have partially recovered from the previous day’s breakdown. Georges admitted that there had been a serious breach of more than ten miles, but assured Churchill it was now plugged. In this, of course, Georges was hopelessly misinformed. In fact, the French Ninth Army had crumbled apart at the seams and a gap of some fifty miles had been punched in the line up to sixty miles deep. The French First Army had also had its front pierced on a 5,000-yard front. The BEF had repulsed all attacks along its stretch of the line, but the French Seventh Army had retreated west of the Scheldt in the north, while the Belgians continued to falter along their part of the line. By 11 a.m., news had arrived that the Dutch had surrendered. No wonder Reynaud had believed it was as good as over.
It is true that Gamelin had been completely fooled by the German deception plans – so much so that when reports of massed German columns in the Ardennes filtered through he repeatedly refused to take them seriously. Yet with an army of that size and armament, it should have been quite possible to prevent the German breakthrough. Just six panzer divisions could and should have been stopped in their tracks. But this had not happened.
There is no question but that France had been severely traumatized by the events of the 1914–18 war; all the combatants had, but it had been largely fought on French soil. This in itself, however, was not why the French had crumbled so spectacularly along the Meuse front. Rather, it was due to a completely different approach to battle from the German one, albeit one that had not developed at all since the last war; the only difference was that now they had better equipment and better defences.
Military doctrine centred around the concept of ‘the methodical battle’, whereby everything was prepared in great detail and carried out according to a prearranged plan. This led to very rigid centralization and an adherence to top-down orders, which in turn ensured there was little or no scope for initiative in low-level commanders. The result was that the French army was not equipped to deal with the unexpected. When the battle deviated from the prepared plan, the French did not know what to do. They simply hadn’t been trained to take the initiative and to think for themselves.
Rather, military thinkers had believed that any new war would be dealt with by first sitting tight and waiting for the enemy to attack. From their bunkers they would halt the enemy with heavy fire, while local reserves were brought up, bringing any enemy attack to a standstill. Only once superiority had been achieved in men and materiel at the main point of attack would the French then go on the offensive. Thus, French armour, for example, was only ever conceived of as being infantry support, rather than an independent arm.
It was a cumbersome process designed for the long-haul attritional war of twenty years before, but while the French had pretty good tanks and guns, and a phenomenal amount of concrete, they lacked decent, properly thought-out logistics and disgracefully neglected developments in communications. As a rule of thumb, orders from Gamelin’s HQ to the front usually took around forty-eight hours. There was not even a radio at Gamelin’s HQ, for example; he believed they were too insecure, and could be easily listened in to by the enemy. Telephones were fine so long as the front line was not disrupted – which it inevitably was – while messengers were obviously horribly slow. It simply had not occurred to them that large, modern forces could or needed to be moved quickly. The speed at which the Germans reached the Meuse stunned them completely.
The lack of radio communication had been starkly revealed at Flavion when the 1 Division Cuirassée had been destroyed. Hardly any French tanks had radio sets and so they could not communicate with one another. The Germans, on the other hand, might not have had powerful guns in their turrets but they did have wireless sets. The Panzer Is and IIs, thanks to good communication, were able to lure the more powerful French tanks into traps of hidden anti-tank guns. It was these, rather than the panzers themselves, that had done most of the damage. And there were other little things: the French had been caught napping as they refuelled because it was such a long-drawn-out process. Fuel bowsers would laboriously go from one tank to another filling them up in turn. The Germans, in contrast, would deliver truckloads of jerrycans so that panzer crews could fill up simultaneously. And that, of course, saved time.
Poor French logistics were symptomatic of a system that was unwieldy in every way. The chain of command was also top-heavy and convoluted, with Gamelin as Commander-in-Chief, and then Général Georges as C-in-C North-East Front, then three Army Groups under him, and within Billotte’s First Army Group no fewer than five armies, of which the BEF, with half a million men, was one. Furthermore, the French commanders were old. All were in their sixties and command veterans of the First World War. Commanding armies is an exhausting job at the best of times, but much more so during battle, when there are few opportunities for sleep; mental and psychological demands are intense. Army commanders need to be able to grasp information and intelligence quickly and then act decisively, something that is better suited to a man in his forties or fifties. Interestingly, nearly all the German commanders were of this age: Guderian was 51, von Kleist 58, Halder
55, Reinhardt 53, Rommel 48. Only von Rundstedt, at 64, was of a comparable age to the senior French commanders.
The entire French approach was defensive and negative – and a negative mindset takes hold in many counter-productive ways. The huge cost of the Maginot Line and the appeasement and non-aggression line of the French Government and political left also played an enormous part in formulating policy, but this endemic defensive attitude – this rigidity to the methodical battle plan – had ensured that there could be no French march into Germany when Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936, nor again when Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Had the French done so on either occasion, the Second World War would almost certainly have never taken place.
France’s unwillingness to step out from behind her defensive system had also unwittingly proved to keen-eyed observers like Heinz Guderian that France was not offensively minded and that her commanders were overly cautious. It suggested they hoped to avoid a serious clash of arms, which was absolutely the case.
No matter how obvious it might have seemed to the conservative Gamelin that the German main attack must come through the Low Countries, the failure to prepare for other eventualities was seriously negligent. Nowhere was this carelessness more manifest than at Sedan.
The town effectively formed the hinge between the top of the Maginot Line, which ended twelve miles to the east at La Ferté, and the mobile north-east part of the line that had swung up into Belgium at the start of the offensive. Clearly, if this hinge could be broken, the two halves of the French line would be critically severed in two. With this in mind, it would perhaps have been sensible to err on the side of caution and make sure this stretch of the line was exceedingly well-defended.
The Battle of Britain Page 15
