The operation was set to begin on May 10, 1940. To the south of Army Group A, opposite the Maginot Line, General von Leeb’s Army Group C (19 divisions) would prevent French reinforcements from moving up from the Maginot Line to attack von Rundstedt’s left flank.
North of Army Group A, Army Group B’s 29 divisions (including three panzer divisions), commanded by General Fedor von Bock, would draw off the Allies to the north and hold them there, thus securing von Rundstedt’s right flank. It laid out that the main attack-by Army Group A of 45 divisions including seven panzer divisions and commanded by General Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt-would crash through the forested hills of the Ardennes, which the Allies believed to be “impenetrable to tanks and heavy vehicles.” Army Group A would then cross the River Meuse into northen France on a front from Dinant to Sedan. The German plan of attack was a reworked version of the failed Schlieffen Plan of 1914, brought up to date by Generals Erich von Manstein, Heinz Guderian, Erwin Rommel, and others. The fort’s garrison surrendered after just a few hours. German glider infantrymen assault the supposedly “impregnable” Belgian fortress of Eben Emael near Liege, May 10, 1940. Neither Gamelin nor his four immediate aides, the aging Generals Henri Bineau, Alphonse Georges, Maxim Weygand, and Gaston Billotte, had any concept of armored strategy and scattered their forces in small pockets in an effort to plug holes in the national defenses. Unfortunately for the Allies, the education of most French military commanders had ended in 1918-they were “unable to think beyond the firm belief in a rigid linear defense.” This included the supreme commander of French land forces, General Maurice-Gustav Gamelin. In the air the Germans dominated, able to deploy 3,000 aircraft. In artillery the French were far superior to the Germans-11,200 guns of various sizes against the Germans’ 7,700.
The Allies had about 3,000 tanks, the Germans just over 2,400, but with better-trained crews and equipped with radios. With European nations folding in the face of German onslaughts, the stage was then set for the pièce de résistance: Plan Sichelschnitt (the cut of the sickle), the blueprint for a blitzkrieg against Germany’s old and bitter enemy, France.Īt this time, Allied military strength consisted of the French with 94 divisions, the Belgians with 22, the Dutch 10, and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) also with 10-a total of 136 divisions. French civilians, some applauding, some crying, watch as their troops leave for French colonies in Africa, while their country is taken over by the Germans. The countries held out briefly, then capitulated. Germany’s next victims were Norway and Denmark, both invaded on April 9, 1940, in blitzkrieg-style assaults named Operation Weserübung. When it proved sucessful, Hitler turned his attention from east to west. It gave the Wehrmacht the opportunity of trying out and making improvements in this new type of warfare. Poland was the testing ground for blitzkrieg.
It was a devastating form of combined-arms warfare with an assault spearheaded by panzer (tank) divisions whose firepower and shock were magnified by their accompanying Junkers Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers. Then, on September 1, he launched his first blitzkrieg against Poland, causing France and Britain to declare war on the aggressor.īlitzkrieg, or “lightning war,” was an unprecedented war of movement using modern technology and methods in the form of paratroops, gliders, fast-moving tanks, mobile infantry and artillery, and aircraft, particularly the dive bomber. In May 1939, he signed a “Pact of Steel” with Italy, and in August concluded a cynical nonagression pact with Soviet Russia. Race forth where he does not expect it.” There is no record that Adolf Hitler ever studied Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, but he certainly understood many of its principles, at least during the early phases of World War II.Īfter Hitler bloodlessly annexed his homeland of Austria in March 1938 and bluffed the Czechs, French, and British into giving him the Sudetenland in October, in January 1939 his armies invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia. The ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu wrote, “Go forth to the enemy’s positions to which he must race.