Guderian: Panzer General

by Macksey, Kenneth

  *He recounted it immediately afterwards to General Engel who gives corroboration.

  7 The Green Light through France

  Without a plan and lacking much time to make one, since Hitler demanded its execution on 12th November, the German General Staff went to work on 28th September preparing an invasion of the West. But since, from the outset, Brauchitsch and Haider had little faith in the feasibility of their task, it is hardly surprising that the product of their deliberations lacked inspiration. It was essential, they reasoned, to outflank the Maginot Line which guarded the French frontier between the Swiss frontier to Longwy, south of Arlon, where the man-made defences merged with the allegedly strong natural defensive terrain of the Ardennes. Indisputably, they decided, the main effort should be made north of the Ardennes, in the general direction of Namur while, concurrently, Holland was subdued on the extreme right flank. Left flank protection could be obtained by pushing a relatively strong force through the Ardennes to reach the River Meuse between Givet and Sedan. This was the basis of the plan which was to suffer persistent postponement until, on 10th January 1940, it appeared to be compromised when a German staff officer’s aeroplane carrying its details made a false landing in Belgium. (In fact, the papers were burnt before capture and little was disclosed.)

  Long before January the plan had come under piercing criticism. Manstein complained that it was unlikely to achieve complete victory since it could not bring about the total destruction of the enemy’s northern wing and failed to create a favourable strategic situation from which to launch subsidiary thrusts: in essence it lacked penetration and versatility. He realised that an invasion must achieve all – quickly – since failure to do so would condemn Germany to a protracted war she could not sustain. He desired an annihilating encirclement such as the elder Moltke used to demand, that the younger Moltke had sought and missed, and which he and Rundstedt had recently achieved in Poland. Hitler also was dissatisfied with the plan, though his strategic insight was that of a tyro compared with Manstein’s. On 25th October – before Manstein had seen the OKH plan – he had suggested that the drive through the Ardennes might be enlarged by aiming the main attack across the southern Meuse and then extending it towards Amiens to the Channel coast with the intention of cutting off a large portion of the enemy. On the 31st, quite independently of Hitler, Rundstedt sent OKH a reasoned project which looked remarkably similar to the one Hitler had conjured out of a dream.

  This brought Guderian into the debate as the acknowledged expert whose qualifications in the tank sphere were far superior to those of Brauchitsch, Haider and the rest. For, despite the sniping which still went on among underlings against the Panzertruppe, nobody in supreme command doubted that the coming invasion would depend upon aircraft and tanks. Indeed, the principal reasons for the postponements were fear that aircraft could not fly in bad weather and that the tanks would bog down in the winter mud. After Hitler mentioned his idea to Jodl on 9th November, Jodl discussed it with Wilhelm Keitel, and Keitel called Guderian into consultation on the feasibility of passing strong tank forces through the Ardennes. Guderian omits mention of this in Panzer Leader and only writes of a similar discussion with Manstein in the latter half of November – by which time he had had the time to calculate the demands in terms of forces needed for the project. No doubt recalling his close experience of the Ardennes during the hectic days of 1914 and his sojourn at Sedan during the staff course in 1918, he had confidently informed Keitel that panzer divisions could be sent through the Ardennes. But on 11th November, when told that his own XIX Corps might be the leading formation in a drive for Sedan, he insisted that the two panzer and single motorised divisions proposed were quite insufficient for the task. Later still, when faced with a searching examination by Manstein, as the latter developed his more ambitious scheme, he expanded still further his own requirements: now he bid for seven mobile divisions in the van.

  As the winter advanced Manstein became ever more urgent in his memorandums and personal pleas to OKH until at last they rid themselves of this insistent Staff Officer by appointing him to command of an infantry corps. Nevertheless OKH opinion was veering. The January war games conducted by Rundstedt demonstrated the potentiality of a blow against Sedan at the joint between the strong northern flank and its weaker extension along the Meuse, though Guderian’s insistence that the panzer divisions should lead the attack into the Ardennes, execute the river crossing and also spearhead the advance deep into France, was treated with outright scepticism if not scorn. (The bitter Herrenabend had reflected the nadir of his part in the argument; it was from that moment that he began to stamp his personality on the victory to come.) Haider insisted that the infantry divisions must catch up at the Meuse since they alone would have the power to perform a major obstacle crossing operation against prepared positions. He said that Guderian’s intentions were ‘senseless’ and he was supported by Rundstedt. Guderian stood firm and contradicted them both, reasoning in favour of a surprise stroke in mass, ‘… to drive a wedge so deep and wide that we need not worry about our flanks …’ Support appeared from some of the other generals. Haider began to waver. Then Manstein, during a routine interview with Hitler on 17th February, took the opportunity to describe his plan in person. At once Hitler was re-enthused and next day told Brauchitsch and Haider – as if it was his own idea – that this was what he wanted.

  There was no further delay. A new plan appeared in which the full weight of the assault was to be thrown into the Ardennes leaving only a single panzer division (9th in XXXIX Corps) committed to Holland, and two more (3rd and 4th in XVI Corps) temporarily leading the initial thrust against Belgium to the north of Namur. Moving across the northern face of the Ardennes, XV Corps, with 5th and 7th Panzer Divisions, was to tackle the Meuse near Dinant, thus covering the northern flank of General der Panzertruppe Georg-Hans Reinhardt’s XXXXI Corps. The offensive’s Schwerpunkt was to consist of a special Panzer Group under General der Kavalerie Ewald von Kleist, comprising XXXXI Corps, Guderian’s XIX Corps and Wietersheim’s XIV Corps, placed within Generaloberst Siegmund List’s Twelfth Army which in turn came under Rundstedt’s Army Group ‘A’. Reinhardt was given 6th and 8th Panzer Divisions only, but Guderian, upon whom all hopes were pinned, had 1st, 2nd and 10th Panzer Divisions plus the crack motorised Infantry Regiment Grossdeutschland. The armoured strength of Kleist’s Group would thus amount to about 1,260 tanks (with a larger share of Pz Ills and IVs plus the first Schützenpanzers) out of a total German tank availability, on the day of assault (10th May), of about 2,800. But, in addition, priority of air support was promised during the advance to the Meuse, along with a massed bombing attack during the actual river crossing operation. This obviated the need to push heavy artillery and the attendant road-cluttering ammunition columns along tortuous routes which were to be filled by the fully motorised mobile corps.

  As the hard winter gave way to a cheering spring and the Wehrmacht opened the campaigning season with the swift subjugation of Denmark and Norway, Guderian and the rest became absorbed by training and planning. Map exercises predominated since, although tank crews spent a few nights practising driving along difficult country lanes, shortage of fuel precluded intensive rehearsal. Due to shortage of ammunition some tank crews never once fired their guns, though the artillery, including the long 88mm anti-aircraft guns, were given considerable practice in direct fire at small targets, such as pill-box slits, in addition to their orthodox role. Over and again infantry and engineers rehearsed the techniques of an assault river crossing in rubber boats, and then the tank ferrying and bridging operations that must follow once the infantry had secured a foothold on the enemy bank. The training on the River Moselle was notably realistic since its approaches were so like those of the Meuse. Tirelessly Guderian travelled from one exercise to another, goading his men to more intensive activity, analysing faults in their methods, synthesizing each lesson and feeding fresh ideas through Nehring and his staff for dissemination throughout X
IX Corps and, indirectly, to the other panzer formations whose prospects were constantly in his thoughts. For though Guderian gave most attention to his own corps, he never forgot the welfare of the entire armoured force. All ranks came to recognise and value the bustling general with the eager look bearing down upon them with purposeful questions, terse comments and shrewd assessments of their performance. Der Schnelle Heinz enfolded them all with the stern but fair fatherly spirit which he lavished upon his own family. Those who survive have affectionate and enduring memories of him and his catch phrases that the privileged among them loved to throw back at him – Klotzen, nicht Kleckern (which can be translated in all sorts of ways but means ‘Don’t feel with the fingers but hit with the fist’) and ‘Joy riding in canoes on the Meuse is forbidden’ are but two. It amounted to a feeling of absolute mutual confidence, the essence of outstanding leadership.

  How much confidence did Guderian himself repose in the prospects of the oncoming adventure – an enterprise which, at one time, had been as unthinkable to him as it still was to many of his contemporaries? He says in Panzer Leader that French reticence to take advantage of German preoccupation in Poland suggested over-caution on their part – but this was insufficient in rating them inept. Far more important was the knowledge that French strategic and tactical doctrine had dictated, certainly until September 1939, a mode of positional warfare waged at the pace of 1918. Though the French were thought to be superior in number of tanks (they and the British between them could actually assemble about 4,200) it could be assumed that these machines would neither be used at speed nor in mass, and that their scale of radios was low and under-implemented. Therefore they would be spread along the front and must be slow to react in a fast-moving situation. This, Guderian felt sure, would prove fatal. He was aware, however, that many of the latest French tanks, the Somua S 35 and the heavy Char B, carried twice the armour of his Pz IVs and, in their 47mm gun, had a superior anti-armour weapon to any mounted in his own tanks. Thus, in a tank-versus-tank contest, his machines would be at a disadvantage and so too would the infantry whose only anti-tank gun was the same 37mm as carried by the Pz III. The use of field artillery along with 88mm guns in the forefront of the battle, alone, would compensate for this deficiency – that and the ability to outfight the enemy by manoeuvring for his flanks and rear and defeating his armour by directing accurate fire at the smallest exposed weak-spots – a testing exercise for nervous gunlayers in the heat of battle.

  German knowledge of the enemy positions in the Ardennes and along the Meuse was quite comprehensive – and generally encouraging to them. They realised, from extensive reconnaissance by every possible means, that the defences were shallow and, in places, incomplete. Taken on balance there was good reason for Guderian to have confidence that superior, surprise handling of his armour could surmount shocked opposition in the good defensive country of the Ardennes and bounce a way across the Meuse before the enemy could recover from initial setbacks. His only recorded doubts before the action became related to fear for inadequate support from his superiors, though, to be fair to them, it has to be said that only a man of Guderian’s conviction could have been happy with the prospects. Hitler was out of his depth in the realms of educated military thinking. Though his ‘intuition’ put him on the course that was to prove right, his frequently expressed doubts often undermined his composure. Brauchitsch and Haider had vacillated so much at first, and become converts so late to the new scheme, that it was impossible to place solid trust in their consistency if a crisis arose. List wanted infantry divisions to lead across the Meuse. Rundstedt had wavered and demonstrated a lack of tank appreciation by declining to consider deep penetration beyond a Meuse bridgehead. Kleist had no experience of armour though his cavalryman’s instinct for movement and his recognition of opportunities were by no means dim. Busch did not think Guderian would manage to cross the Meuse at all, while Bock, whose Army Group in the north had been deprived of the original dominant role prescribed in the first plan, spoke for a majority with reasoned objections (by conventional standards) when he told Haider:

  ‘You will be creeping along, ten miles from the Maginot Line flank on your breakthrough, and hoping that the French will watch inertly! You are cramming the mass of tanks together into the narrow roads of the Ardennes as if there were no such thing as air power. And you then hope to lead an operation as far as the coast with an open southern flank 200 miles long where stands the mass of the French Army!’

  There Bock went wrong, for sufficient intelligence of Allied intentions in the event of an invasion of Holland and Belgium had been gathered throughout the winter months to make it almost certain that the mass of Allied armies would move forward into Belgium and thus create a vacuum in the open space Panzer Group Kleist was to enter. Yet it is interesting that Guderian once called the advance via Amiens to Abbeville a raid. Perhaps it was the careless use of a word: maybe it reflected uncertainty of the final outcome and he was prepared to backpedal if necessary – mentally he was as flexibly attuned to retrograde panzer movements as to progressive ones, as the Supreme Command would one day learn.

  In a mood which reflects repose, and certainly not bombast or over-confidence, he sent his feelings to Gretel as his headquarters got ready to advance:

  ‘Your guess was right. I now say farewell to you. We have strenuous days ahead of us and I don’t know when I will have a chance to write again. I would like to have said farewell in person. Now it has to be done by means of an insipid piece of paper and all my tenderness remains unspoken and undone. The last beautiful leave is still fresh in my mind and even a short repetition would have been a blessing, but it was not to be. Great activity is developing in the beautiful spring countryside, but it is not in harmony with the splendour of the blossom and so, despite all the confidence, one is filled with a gentle sadness. Your thoughts will now speed increasingly to our boys and I wish and hope with you that you may hold them safe and sound again in your arms after the victorious campaign. We must now direct our thoughts towards our task. Everything else, therefore, must take second place … I have left my comfortable quarters and will move forward tonight … If a big success materialises none of the discomfort will be of account.’

  Stretching back a hundred miles from head to tail XV, XXXXI and XIX Corps began to wend their way from woodland hiding places down the roads leading across the frontier. Ahead the opposition, such as it was, fell to pieces under the impact of surprise: in places the defenders, quite literally, were caught napping by infiltrators dressed in civilian clothes who had previously entered the zone on the pretext of being’tourists’ and who neutralised as many demolition devices as possible and saved bridges and defiles from destruction. Working alongside the tank and infantry combat teams were the assault engineers whose job it was, expeditiously, to remove and demolish those road blocks which stood. Everywhere the advance flowed smoothly and to schedule. Haider called it a’very good marching achievement’. Indeed the preliminary movements were largely a struggle by engineers and logisticians to remove barriers and overcome the choking traffic jams which inevitably, at random moments, impeded Guderian’s advance. The appearance of a screening French cavalry division (half in lorries and half in tanks), at the approaches to the River Semois caused only the slightest pause since it was soon swept away, artillery and all, in a brief skirmish. German tanks infiltrated much as they pleased and the terror they inspired was exaggerated by rumour into a dreadful spasm which passed from the mouths of stragglers and refugees of battle to the ears of uncommitted formations in flank and rear. Yet, on the German side, Kleist, the cavalryman, logically and loyally credited French horsemen with a prowess he contended ought to be theirs, and deflected 10th Panzer, squeezing it along Guderian’s left flank, southward from its planned axis to counter a nebulous cavalry threat at Longwy. Guderian protested vigorously against this ‘detachment of one third of my force to meet a hypothetical threat’ but compromised and shifted the division’s axis in orde
r to staunch Kleist’s fears. But in this effort to placate a superior Guderian erred, for the diversion of 10th Panzer impinged upon its neighbour, 1st Panzer, which at that moment was XIX Corps’ main striking force and preparing to cross the Semois. 1st Panzer then became entangled with 2nd Panzer further north and they in turn encroached into XXXXI Corps’ sector, stalling 6th Panzer. Fortunately the enemy made no air attacks upon the snarled up columns, otherwise irreparable damage besides further chaos might have been caused. This was but the first and smallest of many vacillations to come from every level of command. These were the perfectly natural reactions to a quite unprecedented operation of war – classical examples of ‘friction’.

  The Attack through the Ardennes

  The battle for the Semois was settled before XIX Corps arrived, for the French were already in voluntary retirement to the Meuse. Infantry waded the river on the night of 11th/12th May and the tanks crossed by fords at dawn. Nehring and Guderian established their headquarters in the comfortable Hotel Panorama with ‘a splendid view over the valley of the Semois’ and paid for their over-indulgence under an accurate enemy bombing attack which showered Guderian with glass and a lucky escape from a falling boar’s head mounted on the wall above his desk. After that they tended to behave a little less ostentatiously and Guderian became surprisingly cautious. The old, undecided question of how and when to cross the Meuse cropped up and now demanded a firm answer. 1st Panzer Division, flanked on the left by the 10th, though a little in the air on the right because 2nd, due to its traffic problems, was falling behind, was within striking distance of the river. Kleist had by now overcome his doubts. Reports from the other fronts made it clear that the main allied armies had moved into Belgium. News of tank-versus-tank skirmishing in the approaches to Hannut, between XVI Corps and the French Light Mechanised divisions (the nearest equivalent in the French Order of Battle to the panzer divisions), indicated a technical superiority on the German part. Though the French tanks were comfortably proof against German 37mm shot, their return fire was slow and inaccurate due to the poor layout of the fighting compartment. In French tanks the commander also laid and fired the gun: in German models the commander just commanded while another crew member aimed and fired the gun. Also the French spread their tanks over a wide and shallow frontage in accordance with their out-moded tactical methods while the Germans concentrated on attacking vital points in turn and defeated their opponents in detail.