France, fall of

France, fall of (see Maps 35 and 36). On 9 May 1940, the eve of the German offensive in the west, Hitler proclaimed to his assembled general staff: ‘Gentlemen, you are about to witness the most famous victory in history.’ Like an oriental despot, he gave a gold watch to his chief meteorologist for predicting good weather the following day. He deserved it: ‘Göring's weather’, essential to the success of the campaign, continued virtually without break over the next three critical weeks. Leaving Berlin that night, Hitler took exceptional security measures. The ‘Führer Special’ train first headed north, then under cover of darkness swung west to take Hitler to his battle headquarters at Münstereifel, close to the Belgian Ardennes.

At dawn the following morning the Wehrmacht invaded the three neutral nations of Luxemburg, Belgium, and the Netherlands. An astonishing gamble had been embarked upon. More than to almost any other single factor its success was due to a series of accidents that had imposed radical changes on the original German strategic plan (see FALL GELB), which General von Manstein converted from what had been an unimaginative blueprint into one of inspired daring. It involved an advance into northern Belgium and the Netherlands which would act, in the admirable simile of the British writer on military strategy, Basil Liddell Hart, ‘like a matador's cloak’ waved at the British Expeditionary Force and the powerful French forces in Flanders, and draw them north-eastwards in Belgium. The main blow (Schwerpunkt) would then be delivered just north of where the Maginot Line ended, through the rugged and densely forested country of the Ardennes, which the Germans knew the French general staff considered impassable and which had, therefore, been covered with only inferior forces. Once this breakthrough had been achieved, the panzers would burst out into the flat plains of northern France and race for their objective, the Channel coast, which would effectively cut the Allied armies in two.

The forces at the disposal of the two opposing sides were roughly equal (see Table), but while only just over 29 divisions were allocated to Bock's Army Group B, which was waving the ‘matador's cloak’ in the north, just over 44 divisions were concentrated under Rundstedt's Group A in the south—including virtually all the élite, fast-moving panzer divisions. Leeb's Army Group C, with 17 divisions, was used to press against the Maginot Line in the south to keep French forces there pinned down. Part of Rundstedt's panzer force was Guderian's armoured spearhead aimed at Sedan, while protecting the northern flank of the breakthrough was the 7th Panzer Division, commanded by the 48-year-old Brigadier Rommel. Although Guderian had left his men in no doubt that the English Channel was their ultimate objective, few of the Wehrmacht commanders shared Hitler's remarkable self-assurance about the outcome.

On the other side of the lines, matters were in the hands of the French C-in-C, General Gamelin, operating a tangled chain of command (see France, 6(a)) from his convent-like GHQ at Vincennes outside Paris. As unimpressive a commander as Gamelin was, in October 1939 he had come close to predicting the eventual direction of the main German thrust. Nevertheless he allowed himself to father the Allied ‘Plan D’, whereby immediately Germany invaded Belgium, 33 of the best British and French divisions would rush eastwards to the Dyle Line—just as Hitler had foreseen they would.

The key French sector between Namur and Sedan was held by General André Corap's Ninth and Huntziger's Second Army, immobile and of poor quality and their morale not enhanced by eight months of phoney war. No fewer than 30 French divisions were pinned down unprofitably behind the Maginot Line; while Gamelin's last mobile reserve, Giraud's Seventh Army, had late in the day been committed to make a mad dash to Breda, to lend a hand to the Dutch if they were attacked. Thus before the battle was even joined the famous French ‘mass of manoeuvre’—their reserves—was virtually non-existent.

The French Army was powerful on paper; it had more tanks than the Germans, and some that were better, but it had not yet fully developed the concept of massing them in the way with which the Germans had already triumphed in the Polish campaign. Part of its tank strength was instead spread out thinly and ineffectually—ready, like a lot of small corks, to plug holes in the line. Yet the Wehrmacht too had flaws of which its leaders were well aware; the élite panzer divisions were few in number, while the bulk of the army comprised second-rate infantry divisions, often dependent upon horse transport (see animals), which would have been deeply vulnerable to a flank attack by a determined armoured force.

The British contribution in France amounted to ten front-line divisions (one of which was in the Saar), its smallness the butt of German propaganda broadcasts. A modest support airforce was also sent to France, but the valuable Spitfire fighter was held back for the defence of the UK. There were virtually no tactical attack bombers of any value. It was in the air that the Allies were at their greatest disadvantage, with the French air force largely equipped with inferior machines which, like French armour, were poorly deployed (see France, 6(d)). In contrast, the German Luftwaffe was designed and trained for a single clear-cut purpose—to be an integral part of the German offensive machine. Its fleets of medium bombers were ready to wreak havoc behind the enemy's lines; while its dive-bombers (the Stukas or Junkers 87s) gave direct support to the advancing tanks and infantry (see blitzkrieg).

France, fall of: Forces available to the powers involved in the German invasion, 10 May 1940

I. Army
	Divisions	Guns	Tanks
a North-eastern front alone, including reserves and one Polish division
b Forces transferred to the Continent, see British expeditionary force
c Excluding Norway and east
d Total available
e Operational aircraft with front-line formations in metropolitan France
Source: Maier, K. A. et al, Germany and the Second World War, Vol. 2 (Oxford, 1994).
France	104a	10,700	3,063a
Britainb	10	1,280	310
Belgium	22	1,338	10
Netherlands	8	656	1
total	144	13,974	3,384
Germany	141	7,378c	2,445d
II. Air Force (estimates only)
	Fighters	Bombers	Reconnaissance planes	Total air craft
France	637	242	489	1,368e
Britainb	261	135	60	456
Belgium	90	12	120	250
Netherlands	62	9	50	175
Britain (home-based)	540	310		850
total	1,590	708	719	3,099
Germany (total)	1,736	2,224	700	5,446
Germany (operational 4 May 1940)	1,220	1,559	535	4,020

The first revelation of the full deadliness of the attack came with the news of the fall of Eben Emael, supposedly the world's strongest fortress and linchpin of the Belgian defences (see Belgium, 4). Forty-eight hours later the Netherlands had virtually collapsed (see also Netherlands, 4). Meanwhile, unseen and almost unopposed the great phalanxes of von Rundstedt's armour advanced through the supposedly impassable Ardennes. Their worst problems were the vehicle jams on the inadequate forest roads. Stretching back 80 km. (50 mi.) east of the Rhine, the advancing columns were protected by a massive and constant umbrella of fighters. A few wellplaced bombs on these roads could have seriously impeded the advancing tanks, but Allied eyes were focused on the attack they had expected in the north.

By nightfall of Whit Sunday, 12 May, seven panzer divisions stood on the east bank of the Meuse all the way from Dinant (Rommel) to Sedan (Guderian). Still French military intelligence failed to recognize the danger, reckoning (as usual, on the basis of First World War experience, which still constituted much of Franco-British military doctrine) that the Germans would require at least five or six days to concentrate before they could force a river crossing. This erroneous judgement was passed on to and shared by London. At 1830 hours on 13 May, by which time Guderian was already across the Meuse, Churchill was telling the war cabinet that he was ‘by no means sure that the great battle was developing’.

The previous evening, encouraged by his successful advance on Sedan, Guderian had agreed with his immediate superior, General von Kleist, that he would attack at once, even though one of his three panzer divisions had not yet emerged from the forest. Guderian was promised maximum air support, in particular from the dive-bombers of General Wolfram von Richthofen's Eighth Flying Corps, and the attempt to cross the Meuse was ordered for 1600 hours next day.

Towards midday on 13 May, about 1,000 aircraft struck Huntziger's Second Army opposite Sedan. Casualties were not in fact great, but the terror caused by the Stukas was: ‘The gunners stopped firing and went to ground’; wrote one French general; ‘the infantry cowered in their trenches…their only concern was to keep their heads well down.’ Meanwhile the Messerschmitt squadrons circled over the battle front, pouncing on any slower French fighter that tried to interfere. Assault troops of the German 1st Panzer Division, attacking immediately downstream from Sedan against the base of the vulnerable Iges peninsula, created the first usable bridgehead. By nightfall 1st Panzer infantrymen had fought their way up the Meuse's southern escarpment, through the French main and secondary defence lines. The division now held a bridgehead on the south bank 4.8 km. (3 mi.) wide and 6.4 to 9.6 km. (4–6 mi.) deep.

French attempts to neutralize this dangerous pocket on 14 May were too slow and too late. In the afternoon, when there was still an opportunity to drive a powerful wedge into the exposed eastern flank of 1st Panzer Division, the French threw away their 3rd Armoured Division, full of spirit and eager to attack, through sluggish deployment and slow refuelling arrangements. When the division could still have attacked with some effect, the order was suddenly countermanded and its precious armour dispersed by the new local corps commander who strung it out in a series of weak defensive positions. The same day the Allies dispatched all available tactical bombers, the greater part of them obsolete British Fairey Battles, to destroy 1st Panzer Division's pontoon bridge. They pressed home their attack heroically, but never concentrated in sufficient numbers to overwhelm the excellent anti-aircraft defences. Losses were disastrous, and the bridge remained intact. On this day, Allied offensive air power in France was broken and the campaign was effectively decided on the next. For the French wasted the whole of it in preparing, and then abandoning, a counter-attack by the dispersed 3rd Armoured Division instead of attacking Guderian's southern flank which he had exposed the previous afternoon when he had swung his panzers sharply westwards towards the English Channel.

Unfortunately for the French, the Sedan sector also happened to lie right on the hinge between two armies, Huntziger's Second and Corap's Ninth, which greatly increased the difficulties of command for the defenders. Having dealt a crippling blow to Huntziger's forces, Guderian's tanks pushed westwards where the Ninth Army was now in complete disarray as Rommel's tanks had penetrated its rear positions 6.4 km. (4 mi.) across the Belgian Meuse. Corap, a broken man, ordered his army to withdraw but Giraud, who replaced him, found by the end of the day that there was nothing to command—just an open gate, 100 km. (62 mi.) wide, for the Germans to pass through, which Huntziger widened further when he was forced to pull back his hard-pressed army south-eastwards.

On 16 May Churchill made his historic sortie to Paris; where Gamelin dumbfounded him with the admission that there was no masse de manœuvre. Reynaud, the prime minister, declared the battle was lost, while outside ‘venerable officials’ stocked bonfires of the Quai d'Orsay archives. As the German thrust to the sea began, the French High Command remained disastrously in the dark as to the enemy's real objective, Paris or the Channel.

The French attempted one more local offensive action, towards Montcornet with a hastily assembled 4th Armoured Division. Though courageously led by Colonel Charles de Gaulle, it was soon repulsed. Yet, growing nervous of their easy success, the German High Command had already imposed two separate halts on Guderian's panzers on the 15 and 17 May. A well co-ordinated counter-thrust against the German columns might have had considerable effect; but the Allies no longer had the ability to co-ordinate any such an action. Gamelin's replacement as commander-in-chief by 73-year-old General Weygand on the evening of 20 May contributed nothing except two days' delay in mounting a pincer movement against the vulnerable ‘Panzer Corridor’.

On 19 May, Guderian's 2nd Panzer Division reached the Channel near Abbeville, having advanced 320 km. (200 mi.) in ten days. The élite of the French and British forces were now trapped in a vast pocket, with their backs to the sea, and the northern armies suffered additional disarray when their commander, General Pierre Billotte, died as the result of a car crash. A limited British tank attack southwards from Arras on 21 May achieved a success which made a strong impression upon Rommel; but then, seeing no French follow-up, the British Expeditionary Force withdrew to Dunkirk.

With Kleist's victorious armour massed against the southern perimeter of the Dunkirk pocket on 24 May, ready to push forward for the kill, Hitler made a historic error of judgement: he issued his much-criticized ‘Halt-Order’. Aided by some of the earliest ULTRA intercepts which revealed this order, the Dunkirk evacuation began. Why ULTRA was unable to do the more to influence the course of the French campaign by revealing the true objectives of the German offensive can be explained briefly as follows: first, many of the crucial German orders were transmitted over secure land-lines, not by radio; secondly, the intercept system at Bletchley Park and its French equivalent was in its infancy, so that too little information usually arrived too late; finally however, as Ronald Lewin remarks (in Ultra Goes to War, London, 1978, p. 67) … if your enemy, having won strategic surprise, attacks with irresistible power and panache, then the best of intelligence…tends merely to confirm the inevitable.’

On 28 May the Belgians surrendered; and on 3 June the British completed the ‘miracle’ of Dunkirk, a deliverance only made possible by the sacrifice of the French and Belgian rearguard forces—a fact not generally appreciated in the UK at the time.

The Wehrmacht was free to mop up the French Army, now fighting alone. After Dunkirk, it became largely a matter of marching for the Germans, who now wheeled southwards to face the French forces which had dug themselves in on the line of the Somme and the Aisne—the so-called ‘Weygand Line’. Fighting with often greater tenacity than they had shown on the Meuse, though against hopeless odds, the French resisted the first German onslaught on 5 June. But the ‘Weygand Line’ was a line in little more than name, and once the Germans had broken through it there was nothing to stop them. On 14 June Paris fell, undefended; the French armies holding the redundant fortifications of the Maginot Line were taken in the rear; Italy administered its infamous ‘stab in the back’ (though it was ineffectual and barely affected the campaign); and on 22 June France was forced to agree to a humiliating armistice—signed in the same railway carriage where Marshal Ferdinand Foch (accompanied, among others, by Weygand) had accepted the German surrender of 1918.

The brilliantly improvised German operational plan for the attack in the west had succeeded beyond all dreams. France—with losses estimated at 90,000 dead, 200,000 wounded, and 1.9 million taken prisoners or missing—had been utterly defeated in six weeks for a cost of 29,640 German dead (army and air force) and a total casualty figure of 163,213. But the Germans had no provisions for following up a French collapse; and while they gorged themselves on their triumph, and on the delights of Paris, the RAF spent the unexpected respite in bracing itself for the battle of Britain in which it was to rob Hitler of final victory.

Alistair Horne

Bibliography

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Gunsberg, J. , Divided and Conquered: The French High Command and the Defeat of the West, 1940 (London, 1979).
Horne, A. , To Lose a Battle, France 1940 (London, 1969, new edn., 1990).
May, E. R. , Strange Victory (London, 2000).
Shirer, W. L. , The Collapse of the Third Republic (London, 1970).