11. The 4th Armoured, whose command was later given to de Gaulle, was actually in process of formation when the Germans struck. Once, when discussing the 1940 campaign with her long-time lover, Gaston Palewski (who had served as an Air Force major at the time), and myself, Nancy Mitford made a throw-away remark which perhaps summed up better the French failure in 1940 than any other judgement that a military expert could have passed: ‘Yes, I know they had more tanks, and better tanks, but wasn’t the real trouble that the poor darlings left them in their garidges?’
12. Although this was the month that, for the first time, British aircraft production actually surpassed Germany’s.
13. These are to some extent approximate figures, as there remain considerable discrepancies over the number of German and French machines actually in line on 10 May. One more recent estimate puts the total of French single-seat fighters in line on that day at no more than 542, of which only half were Morane-Saulniers 406, and only 36 France’s newest, and best, fighter, the Dewoitine 520.
14. Excluding planes based in Britain but used in France.
15. The best equipment having been siphoned off for the Seventh and First Armies in the north.
16. It should not be forgotten, however, that the British Secretary of State for War, Leslie Hore-Belisha, was sacked (in January) for criticizing the poverty of the B.E.F. defence works.
17. Which the Panzers were to reach by the eleventh day of the offensive.
18. Compared, by General Beaufre, to Marshal Bazaine ‘laying one cannon at St Privat’ in 1870.
19. By comparison, Hitler’s despised Siegfried Line could boast a density of between twenty and thirty.
20. Despite the fact that, as previously noted, G.Q.G. had been fully informed of what had happened to the Polish bunkers when attacked by the Panzers.
21. Note, though, that the weather did not appear to halt Luftwaffe operations.
22. Possibly his single most helpful contribution to Hitler during the war.
23. Oster was executed in the aftermath of the July 1944 bomb plot.
24. German time, i.e. one hour ahead of French time.
1. Later he became General, and Commander of Central Forces, NATO.
2. French time, which, together with British time, was one hour behind German time. French times are given throughout the rest of the narrative.
3. Hitler immediately claimed that the bombers had been Allied, thereby providing himself with an admirable quid pro quo to excuse the launching of terror raids against Allied – as well as Belgian and Dutch – civilian centres. Goebbels’s propaganda machine kept up the story of the Allied atrocity against Freiburg throughout the war, and it was not until several years afterwards that the whole truth was revealed.
4. In 1940 Holland, with a larger population, had an Army of only 250,000 men, compared to Belgium’s 700,000.
5. ‘Construction and Training Company’. Quite by coincidence, the Germans who had pulled off without loss the greatest coup de main of the First War, the capture of Verdun’s Fort Douaumont, the world’s most powerful fortification, were also ‘Brandenburgers’, in that they came from III Brandenburg Corps.
6. After the war Witzig rejoined the Army and ended his career commanding a wing of the Engineer School of the Bundeswehr.
7. Literally ‘crag’s nest’. Hitler had a passion for giving his headquarters gothically romantic names.
1. Philby’s remark was recorded, long before he came to fame, by Middleton in Our Share of Night, published in 1946.
2. About ten air miles up the Meuse from Dinant. See Map 3.
1. In fact, it was of course Rommel.
2. Later killed in Russia.
3. Midway between Dinant and Yvoir, and about two and a half miles from each. See Maps 3 and 4a.
4. i.e. roughly two hours after the actual crossing.
5. Note that the 2nd Armoured dropped temporarily out of sight; next day it was dispatched to the First Army.
6. It should also be noted that, by 12 May, Georges had already oriented several more of his reserve divisions – including both the 1st and 2nd Armoured, towards northern Belgium – away from the main threat.
7. Again, this was thinking in 1914–18 terms; it need hardly be remarked that the German infantry divisions of 1940 would not have found such a march beyond their powers, even on foot.
1. Mixed divisions, roughly comparable to the French D.L.M.s, consisting of two rifle regiments and only one tank detachment. The Polish campaign proved them to be unsatisfactory.
2. Later killed at the Battle of Alam Halfa in the desert, while again serving under Rommel.
3. The whole 7th Panzer in fact possessed only some two dozen of the new Mark IV tank with its heavy 75-mm. gun.
4. Many of which, it will be remembered, had never received the vital armour plates protecting their embrasures.
5. Hanke, according to Rommel’s son, Manfred, was an out-and-out Nazi highly unpopular with the other officers. He ended the war as Gauleiter of Silesia, and conducted the last-ditch defence of Breslau. When the devastated city finally capitulated to the Russians, Hanke disappeared in a plane and has never been heard of since.
6. Successor to the wounded Schraepler.
7. Rommel’s total losses that day were five officers, seven N.C.O.s and forty-nine men killed, plus a considerable number of wounded.
8. The fact that Rommel considered it ‘powerful’ is in itself indicative of just how precarious his position on the west bank was, and what might have been achieved by any really resolute French riposte.
9. The sluggishness and lack of punch with which these first ripostes were executed characterized almost all the French counter-attacks subsequently carried out at various levels; in contrast, right through to the last days of the war, the art of the counter-attack was something in which the German Army was particularly skilled. As many American and British veterans will testify, the German capacity to hit back with an instant and weighted blow with whatever forces happened to be at hand was often little short of miraculous.
10. Like the 66th Regiment, both were ‘A’ series reservist units.
11. D’Argenlieu was killed a few days later.
12. Duffet was commander of the 18th Division.
13. It is to be recalled that this also marked the hinge between the French Ninth and Second Armies.
14. Note the two different, closely situated place-names over which confusion was later to arise: Chéhéry and Chémery.
15. In the Luftwaffe of 1940, the basic unit was the Staffel, comparable to an R.A.F. squadron and containing 10–12 planes; three Staffeln comprised a Gruppe, equivalent to an R.A.F. wing; three Gruppen made up a Geschwader, which consisted of approximately 120 planes. Then came the Fliegerkorps, constituted of Geschwader of different types of aircraft. The two Air Fleets deployed in the West between them contained five Fliegerkorps.
16. Though in terms of weight of explosive delivered, it was still probably eclipsed by the German artillery bombardment on the opening day of the Battle of Verdun in February 1916.
17. It was perhaps the noise that constantly seemed the most unnerving feature of the Stuka attack. In Florence Conrad’s field ambulance, the French wounded kept repeating: ‘The noise, the horrible noise!… You feel the bomb coming, even if it falls 50 or 100 yards away. You throw yourself to the ground, certain of being blown into thirty pieces. And when you realize it was only a miss, the noise of this shrieking vous casse les pattes…’
18. It was also the antecedent in design of most present-day tank guns.
19. At the Riom Trial, French Army witnesses claimed, surprisingly, that the use of these boats ‘came to us as a great surprise’.
20. Belonging to Grandsard’s 71st Division.
21. The motorized infantry belonging to the 1st Panzer Division.
22. Presumably Rubarth and company.
23. The ‘Panzers at Bulson’ were in fact almost certainly their own tanks, belonging to Grands
ard’s reserve tank battalions. One more ingenious variation of the story, recounted to Madame Conrad at her Field Service Unit by fugitives several days later, was that the wicked Boche had confused the defenders by utilizing Renault tanks captured in Poland!
24. In the wake of Sedan, the quest for ‘an argument for their own pride’ seems to have been carried out at all levels. General Lafontaine himself, in a report to Gamelin dated 18 May, attempts to utilize the old, untenable bogey (about which more will be said) of the German Fifth Column: ‘one must note the almost certain presence,’ he declares,‘of doubtful characters, certainly of parachutists charged with a definite mission to fulfil, who transmitted the orders for withdrawal…’ As with so many major French débâcles throughout history, there has to be somewhere a ‘traitor’ or an enemy agent – ‘Nous sommes trahis!’ Needless to say, no hard evidence has ever been produced for this ‘Fifth Column’ activity at Sedan.
25. ‘If the ill-starred French had not been still dogged by misfortune,’ commented Captain von Kielmansegg, giving a German view of this missed opportunity, ‘they would have made a spirited counter-attack to remove while it was still small the bulge which had developed in their lines and destroyed all the German units on their side of the Meuse before they could be reinforced.’
26. The Germans claim to have knocked out 30 Somuas and 70 Hotchkiss H-35s.
27. The last thing for which the ‘continuous front’ philosophy was in fact designed!
1. Eingetroffen instead of eingeschlossen.
2. From the newly arrived 4th North African Division.
3. Not much faster than the rate of advance of the Panzers through France.
4. As will be seen on subsequent occasions, it was frequently the French North African and colonial units which put up the best resistance in 1940. On the other side, German troops inoculated with Nazi racial doctrines are repeatedly to be found protesting at the ‘shame’ of the Herrenvolk having to fight against inferior ‘nigger-people’ in France.
5. Its immediate forebear, III Brandenburg Corps of 1914–18, had pulled off the remarkable coup of capturing Verdun’s Fort Douaumont.
6. These reserves would have been principally the 3rd Armoured and 3rd Motorized Divisions.
7. Literally, ‘Wallop them, don’t tap them’, i.e. strike as a whole and don’t disperse the effort.
8. Against fighter attack from the rear the Battles (designed in 1933) had only one flexibly mounted Lewis gun, roughly the same armament as that carried by the aircraft of 1914–18.
9. Total French and British losses from the Sedan action on 14 May were probably nearer ninety.
10. His unit, the 2nd D.L.C., having regrouped after its withdrawal from the Ardennes, was due to attack on the right of Flavigny’s group, comprising the 3rd Armoured and the 3rd D.L.M.
11. Comprising the 3rd Armoured, 3rd Motorized and 5th Cavalry Divisions and the 1st Cavalry Brigade.
12. This was duly passed on to Gamelin, with the addition of a little extra saccharine at Les Bondons.
13. Another factor was the serious shortage of fuel threatening the Panzers at this stage in the campaign. To an important extent the planning of Sichelschnitt had been predicated on the German ability to supplement its own reserves from captured enemy supplies.
1. This decision exemplified the unawareness on the part of the French commanders of the speed with which the Panzers were about to move. That same morning General Sancelme of the 4th North African Division, the other component in Corap’s counter-attack against Rommel, had also sent his guns to the rear.
2. So called from the insignia of the 31st Panzer Regiment.
3. The total may have been somewhat exaggerated.
4. But the fact that the 1st Armoured had virtually ceased to exist was not learned by Ninth Army H.Q., No. 1 Army Group, or G.Q.G. until much later.
5. Very probably the artillery and supply echelons that Bruneau had sent to the rear.
6. This was optimism!
7. As one French military historian, Colonel le Goyet, remarks, by now Brocard ‘no longer commanded anything. He had simply become a provider of tanks.’
8. One of the crack German divisions that was later lost at Stalingrad.
9. Though they were light compared with any equivalent action at Verdun in 1916.
10. Huntziger retained his command throughout, though in retrospect it is difficult to see that he handled the battle any more brilliantly than Corap, who had faced the far greater test.
11. According to Churchill, by the night of the 14th there were only 206, out of 474, serviceable R.A.F. aircraft left in France.
12. Over the passage of intervening years, the record seems to indicate that Churchill comes out better from this oft-recounted episode; it now appears that Dowding presented his famous graph of Hurricane losses not, as previously suggested, on 15 May, but three weeks later – which would have considerably reduced its impact.
1. The words ‘surprised’, ‘shocked’, ‘astonished’, appear with revealing frequency in these sections of the Gamelin memoirs, Servir.
2. A retort originally attributed to one of Napoleon’s generals upon whom he had wanted to impose his own plan of campaign.
3. Although they were sent with the primary purpose of protecting the northern end of the Maginot Line, the dispatch of these two units to Sedan was perhaps Georges’s happiest stroke; as already seen, it was the fault of the local commanders, not Georges, that they were so misused. A less happy stroke was Georges’s change of mind about the 2nd Armoured, also earmarked on 11 May for Sedan, which, two days later, was ordered northwards to First Army.
4. It was revealing that the first measure taken to defend Paris should have concerned the preservation of order, presumably against a popular revolt by the Left, such as had been a perpetual bugaboo since the Commune of 1871.
5. This incredible episode appears at least to have steeled Reynaud to one resolve, though rather late in the day. ‘It is time to put an end to this comedy,’ he told Baudouin. ‘I must be Minister of National Defence. Daladier will have to go to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or resign.’
6. The next day, when the panic had temporarily abated, Hering wrote anew to Reynaud:
‘It was my duty, yesterday, to suggest to you the departure of the Government and the Chambers from Paris. You have decided to remain. My heartiest congratulations,
Yours respectfully,
Hering.’
7. ‘What a man!’ one of Mandel’s colleagues remarked to Élie Bois that day. ‘What a pity he’s not Prime Minister!’
8. The 71st was specifically mentioned. This was the thesis to which even Reynaud, in his memoirs written after the war, continued to subscribe.
9. French accounts of this exchange broadly agree with Churchill’s, with the exception that Gamelin claims that, when speaking of the strategic reserves, he did not say ‘There are none’, but ‘There are no longer any’.
10. According to Alexander Cadogan (The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, p. 284), before leaving for France, Churchill ‘sprang up’ in Cabinet, and declared that ‘it was ridiculous to think that France could be conquered by 120 tanks…’. It revealed just how out of touch even he was with the true state of affairs in France.
11. Ismay observed that ‘boolge’ was the nearest Churchill could approach in French.
12. This had been sanctioned by the Cabinet just before Churchill’s departure from London that day, despite the views of Dowding.
13. It should be expressly noted that, by the night of 16th, there was no considered thought by either Churchill or the French leaders that the German thrust might be aiming at the Channel and not at Paris.
To Lose a Battle Page 77
