Renewed Blitzkrieg
The Sitzkrieg ended with a renewed Blitzkrieg in April 1940, when Germany invaded Denmark and Norway. The British sent an expeditionary force to France, which first deployed on the French-Belgian border, then moved to Dyle River in central Belgium. On 10 May 1940, the Nazi Army attacked France, bypassing the fortifications and forcing the British and French to fall back in confusion. The French analysis of likely German avenues of approach in May 1940 dismissed the Ardennes Forest because French armor doctrine indicated that the Ardennes was impassable to conventional armored formations. Therefore, the 1st and 7th French Armies were committed to meet what they thought would be the German main effort coming through Belgium. Likewise, the British committed the British Expeditionary Force to the defense of the French-Belgian border.
They failed to account for new German doctrine used in Poland in September 1939. It emphasized new concepts: speed and maneuver rather than firepower and attrition warfare, air attacks deep in the enemy's rear, massed armor with motorized infantry on a narrow front, and momentarily accepting open flanks during deep penetrations. General Heinz Guderian's 19th Panzer Corps moving through the Ardennes Forest, crossing the Meuse River at Sedan, and continuing west across Northeastern France to the English Channel. After crossing the Meuse, Guderian left one division to guard his southern flank from a French counterattack. He did not wait for his supporting artillery or infantry, but continued the armor attack with great speed. Twice, the German General Staff ordered Guderian to stop his advance. The success he achieved seemed incredible.
The French army of 1939-40 is strongly associated with the inglorious “phoney war”, then the military defeat in May-June 1940 followed by the collapse of its politics into collaboration in June 1940. Both in France and internationally, the French army of 1940 is seen as lacking courage. Some commanders didn’t know how to react in the face of the German onslaught, and that some units – after the inactivity of the “phoney war” – panicked or disbanded.
This is still remembered as a huge defeat in the French collective memory. The idea that the French army was badly prepared, poorly motivated and ill-equipped against the invincible Wehrmacht is a myth constructed by Pétain’s Vichy regime. Unfortunately, it’s still used today, because it makes a good excuse: it’s so much easier to admit defeat if you say you had a weak army facing a much stronger one.
The French army had the equipment and personnel – five million men, more than they had in 1914 – to really take the Germans on. Defence spending had been rising since the mid-1930s, making it possible to bolster the air force, to build a powerful naval fleet, ensure a well-equipped army and to build the Maginot line, a fortified boundary on France’s eastern borders. The French high command was far from inactive before the war. They had resources and they created a strategy to use them – small offensives with defined objectives, continuous fronts and the use of firepower to cut off the enemy’s movements.
For the most part French soldiers fought with courage and tenacity. Statistics show just how brutal the fighting was. Around 60,000 French soldiers were killed between May and June. The German military lost 30 percent of its tanks and planes during the Battle of France. Its death toll is estimated at 27,000 killed and missing in June and 21,000 in May.
It was a multifaceted military campaign, and their degree of success was dependent on the terrain, the quality of leadership, the quality of the weaponry they had etc. There were some successful episodes, such as the defeat of the Italian army on the Alpine front in June 1940. And in some battles the French gave the Germans a hard time. In Stonne in the Ardennes, from May 15 to 27, they tried to put pressure on the flank of the German offensive after the Wehrmacht’s famous breakthrough at Sedan. The village was taken and taken back at least 17 times, but the French failed to break through. Nevertheless, they inflicted significant damage on the Germans.
In the Battle of the Scheldt in Belgium. French infantrymen prevented the Germans from crossing the Scheldt Canal between May 21 and May 26, thereby delaying the Wehrmacht’s advance north. The six infantry divisions of the French 1st Army provide another good example. They were encircled by the Germans in the Lille area but carried on fighting until June 1, thus facilitating the British Expeditionary Force’s famous evacuation from Dunkirk.
The Germans took risks during the Battle of France. They concentrated their tanks in the Ardennes, on difficult terrain, between the Maginot Line and the main body of the French army in the north. Then they smashed through the Ardennes while the French army had gone north, to fight the Wehrmacht divisions that had gone through Belgium. So they encircled the Allied forces, penning them in towards the English Channel, before heading south towards Paris. That was when the French army collapsed.
Since 1945 a million and one explanations have been put forward to explain the French defeat, from the nature of the bridges over the River Meuse to the political institutions of the Third Republic to the Maginot line – which has recently been used as an analogy that supposedly explains France’s difficulties in the face of the coronavirus. The reasons for its defeat were intellectual and doctrinal. It’s the old cliché of fighting the previous war. Commanders were too focused on lessons from the First World War; they couldn’t think about the actual war they had to wage in the present. They were unable to adapt. The Germans – by contrast – took risks.
The British narrowly averted a complete disaster by evacuating their forces through the French port of Dunkirk. With the defeat of France almost assured, Italy declared war on France on June 10. France signed an armistice with Germany on June 22 at Compiègne.
On October 28, 1940, the Greek prime minister was asked to surrender to the Italian Armed Forces. He refused to surrender Greece, replying simply, "Oxi" — the Greek word for "no". Soon thereafter, Greece found herself battling Italian invading forces. What ensued went down in history as one of the most significant military victories of all time. Greek troops were outnumbered and under-equipped, but what they lacked in size and supplies they made up for in resourcefulness and determination. The world was amazed when Greece managed to repel the invading Italian forces, thus throwing a wrench into Hitler’s plans for a swift takeover of the Balkans.
A complete German victory seemed imminent. Only Great Britain and her empire presented a credible barrier to Nazi conquests. German plans for a rapid invasion of Britain failed after the Royal Air Force denied the Germans air superiority in the Battle of Britain. Britain launched an retaliatory aerial bombardment which continued throughout the war with greater effect. Later that year, the Axis tried to defeat Britain by capturing the Suez Canal, which would have separated Britain from its Persian Gulf oil supplies and its Indian empire. The German action opened fighting in North Africa that continued through 1943. Germany also initiated unrestricted submarine warfare in the "Battle of the Atlantic." German submarines attempted to destroy British shipping, but never quite succeeded.
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