Black J. World War Two A Military History

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General Auchinleck, who commanded the Anglo-French expedi-

tionary force to Narvik, attributed the German victory primarily to

air power:

The predominant factor in the recent operations has been

the effect of air power. In the operations which culminated

in the evacuation of Bodo the enemy had complete initia-

tive in the air, and used it, first, to support his troops –

a) By low-flying attacks

b) By bombing

c) By surprise landing of troops by parachute and from

seaplanes.

d) By supplying his advanced detachments by air.

And, secondly, to deny us the use of sea communications in

the narrow coastal waters in the theatre of operations.

The actual casualties caused to troops on the ground by

low-flying attacks were few, but the moral effect of contin-

uous machine-gunning from the air was considerable.

Further, the enemy made repeated use of low-flying attacks

with machine guns in replacement of artillery to cover the

movement of his troops. Troops in forward positions

subjected to this form of attack are forced to ground, and,

until they have learned by experience its comparative

innocuousness, are apt not to keep constant watch on the

enemy.Thus the enemy was enabled on many occasions to

carry out forward and outflanking movements with

impunity…showed a very high degree of co-operation

between his Air Force and his Army…the enemy’s

supremacy in the air made the use inshore of naval vessels of

the type co-operating with this force highly

dangerous…the first general lesson to be drawn is that to

commit troops to a campaign in which they cannot be

provided with adequate air support is to court disaster.

The British navy had also been shown to be unable to cope effec-

tively with German air power, and a doctrine of reliance on

anti-aircraft fire had been revealed as inadequate.Admiral Sir Dudley

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Pound, the First Sea Lord, remarked:‘The one lesson we have learnt

here is that it is essential to have fighter protection over the Fleet

whenever they are within reach of the enemy bombers.’

The navy

also took hard knocks from the German surface warships, particu-

larly when covering the forces returning from Narvik. The

vulnerability of aircraft carriers to surface ships was shown, on 7

June, when the Glorious was sunk by the Scharnhorst, although, in the

event, that was the sole carrier ever sunk by battleships.

The Germans were also more effective at coordinating the

different arms on both land and sea, and this was important to a

campaign that revealed the potential of joint operations, and thus

represented a paradigm shift in warmaking. German skills interacted

with Allied deficiencies in a manner that provided opportunities for

bold command decisions: the Germans both took these and could

give successful effect to them.

Although Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, had backed a

rash policy over Norway, his reputation as a resolute opponent of

Hitler helped ensure that he succeeded Chamberlain as Prime

Minister on 10 May: the latter was weakened by Conservative

disquiet over the energy and style of his war leadership, harmed by

poor man-management and discredited by failure in Norway.

Churchill became Prime Minister in a coalition government and

was to remain war leader until after the defeat of Germany.

The conquest of Denmark and Norway led the British to

respond by occupying the Faeroes, a strategic Danish archipelago, in

April 1940, and Iceland, a state under the Danish crown, its diplo-

matic relations handled by Denmark. Iceland declared independence

from Denmark, and, in May, to ensure that the Germans could not

intervene, the British landed troops. Greenland, a Danish colony,

opted for self-government; the following April, a treaty with the

Americans permitted the latter to establish airfields.

The Fall of France

On 10 May 1940, the Germans attacked Belgium and the

Netherlands, both hitherto neutral, as well as invading France. The

Netherlands, whose military had had no experience of European

conflict since the 1830s, fell most rapidly, in large part because of the

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speed of the German advance, especially the use of paratroopers,

whose capture of bridges weakened the Dutch use of river and canal

defences, and hit the morale of the poorly trained and commanded

Dutch forces. German airborne landings denied the Dutch defence

depth. Both the Dutch and the Belgians were weak in the air, and

the Germans swiftly gained and used air superiority. Supported by

air attacks and tank advances, the Germans retained the initiative and

the Dutch army surrendered on 14 May. Heavy casualties caused by

the bombing of Rotterdam on 14 May speeded the surrender. In

response, the first British raid on the Ruhr was launched. A French

force that had advanced through northern Belgium in order to

support the Dutch was unable to sway the struggle there. Instead,

German success against the Dutch led to a shortening of their front

of advance in the north and increased the pressure on Belgian forces.

The crucial operation in the campaign, however, occurred further

south.This German advance brutally exposed the military failure of

the Anglo-French alliance, and, in particular, the quality of French

military leadership. The French Maginot Line, the well-fortified

position that covered the German frontier, was outflanked when, in

Operation Sichelschnitt (Sickle-stroke), Army Group A, including

seven panzer divisions, advanced through the supposedly impene-

trable Ardennes in southern Belgium and pushed across the Meuse

at Dinant and Sedan on 13 May, without waiting for large-scale

infantry and artillery backing, although the crossings of Meuse were

excellent examples of infantry river crossings and at Sedan some

artillery was well forward. Poor Allied strategy and a major intelli-

gence failure had led the Allies to move their strategic reserve into

Belgium before they were aware of the main direction of the

German attack; although to have abandoned Belgium would have

been unacceptable politically, as well as risking the loss of part of the

Allied order of battle.

This mistake ensured that they were unable to respond adequately

to the German advance, as did their doctrine, particularly the failure

to prepare for fluid defence in depth. The French attention to a

continuous front greatly limited their ability to respond to the

German breakthrough, and the British were tied to French

strategy.

In addition, although the Norwegian campaign did not

make the British Expeditionary Force in France any weaker, British

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attention had been overly focused on Scandinavia. A recent study

concludes:

the plan worked because it was so risky and thus so unex-

pected….Yet the plan also worked in the inevitable chaos of

war because, when mistakes were made on both sides, the

Germans generally recovered from these and the Allies did

not’.

The French forces that opposed the Meuse crossing were not élite

units, and were not supported by sufficient artillery or airpower.The

Allied armies were not well prepared for a major clash, and coordi-

nation between them was inadequate. During the winter’s ‘Phoney

War’, they, and particularly the French reserve divisions, had essen-

tially followed a static regime that, in many cases, led to a situation of

diminished readiness.

In contrast, the Germans made effective use of their massed

mechanised forces, especially tanks, and of tactical air support, partic-

ularly Ju-87 (Stuka) dive-bombers, gaining the strategic, operational

and tactical initiative against forces that were as numerous, disorien-

tating opponents and sapping their will to fight. The Germans had

rapidly achieved air superiority, inflicting heavy casualties on the

Allied air forces.

The Vichy Court of Supreme Justice was to hold

the French air force responsible for the military defeat in 1940.This

was a political judgement, but it reflected the failure of the Armée de

l’Air to match the Luftwaffe in planes and doctrine.

German panzer divisions proved operationally effective as forma-

tions, maximising the weapon characteristics of tanks. Handled well,

as by the British in their counterattack near Arras on 21 May, Allied

tanks could be effective, but, on the whole, the Germans controlled

the pace of the armoured conflict, not least because their tank

doctrine was more effective. Having caused heavy casualties, the

British were finally stopped near Arras by an artillery screen.

The Germans were able to make the offensive work in both

operational and tactical terms, amply displaying the tactical potential

of an offensive spearheaded by armoured forces. Tanks could move

across country, limiting the need to tie forward units to roads. The

French had more tanks than the Germans in 1940, and their tanks

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were, for the most part, more heavily gunned and had more effective

protection.The best French tank, the Char B, had far thicker armour

than its German counterparts, which were vulnerable to both tank

fire and anti-tank guns. However, French tanks were also somewhat

slower and many had to turn in order to fire. Tanks with one-man

turrets left the commander to be the gunner and the communicator.

Their lack of radios also created problems for French tanks: commu-

nication was by signal flag, which made unit coordination harder.

Aside from a poor overall strategy, the French failed to develop an

effective doctrine for their armour. They persisted in seeing tanks,

like artillery, as a support for infantry, and most French tanks, accord-

ingly, were split up into small groups for use as mobile artillery,

rather than being employed as armoured divisions for their shock

value. Tactics and operational control and coordination were more

important for German mobility, and thus success, than the actual

technological capabilities of the weapon.When German and French

tank forces first clashed – in Belgium on 13 May – the Germans

were successful thanks to their offensive tactics.

Having crossed the Meuse, German tanks broke through to reach

Abbeville on 20 May and the English Channel the following day,

cutting off much of the mobile Allied forces to the north. The

tempo of the attack was far greater than in 1918, but the Germans

were also more successful in maintaining supplies for their advancing

units. Superiority in the air helped them, not least by preventing

effective Allied attacks on their advancing forces or supply lines.

The Allies had no equivalent to the Stuka, and the British and

French air forces were outclassed and outnumbered by the German

one. Army–air force co-operation was particularly bad for the

British, and this ensured a lack of close air support, which had

serious consequences for the campaign. The British were also short

of anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns.

Nevertheless, the effectiveness of the Blitzkrieg has been exagger-

ated by commentators, who remain excessively under the spell cast by

the sheer shock and drama of the German offensives, and have there-

fore overrated the impact on war of military methods which

represented more of an improvisation than the fruition of a coherent

doctrine, even among the Germans.

In 1940, as in 1939, much of

the German army still walked.The potential of mechanised/motorised

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internal combustion engine-based weaponry and logistics was less

fully grasped than talk of Blitzkrieg might suggest. The key element

was the tactical and operational use of the armoured tip of the army,

rather than its overall weight, although the quality of German infantry

and artillery should not be underrated. More generally, alongside the

well-trained regular divisions there were more numerous reserve divi-

sions; their training and morale were less impressive.

Yet, it was the contrast at the decisive point of breakthrough that

was crucial. There was a massive French intelligence failure and

totally inadequate forces in the Ardennes, both aspects of a poorly-

prepared army led by commanders who were not up to the task, and

who certainly had only a limited understanding of mechanised

warfare.The lack of adequate signals equipment and training made it

difficult for the French to respond to developments. Morale was also

important. German morale was high, but French morale, on the

whole, was poor, and defeatism rapidly spread. When the French

fought well, however, they were able to make an impact. At

Gembloux on 14–15 May, the French artillery–infantry defence,

particularly the French artillery, was effective.

When the British counterattacked, they disrupted the German

advance considerably. But much of the army was poorly trained,

equipped (especially in anti-tank guns) and commanded, and, for

some, their heart was not in the fight. The British were not

adequately prepared for a fighting retreat in the face of a mobile

opponent: transport, fuel and communications all proved insufficient.

In the end, getting the army out of France became paramount.

Having reached the Channel, the Germans widened their bridge-

head to the north, taking Boulogne on 23 May and besieging Calais.

It held out until 27 May, while Lille did not surrender until 1 June.

Both provided important distractions for the Germans closing in on

the encircled Allied forces around Dunkirk.

Bravery, skill, luck and the not fully explained German halt on

the Aa Canal on 24 May, which owed much to Luftwaffe pressure to

take a leading role and to the need of German tanks for mainte-

nance, helped the British save much of their army (but not its

equipment), as well as many French troops, in the evacuation from

Dunkirk on 27 May–4 June; 338,000 troops, mostly British, but

including 110,000 French, were evacuated, with the British navy,

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which evacuated most of the troops (although private boats also

took off an important number) taking serious punishment from

German planes in the process. The British were helped by the

survival of a pier that could be used for embarkation, as well as by

the weather: ‘By a twist of fate, or better yet a meander of the jet

stream, neither of these two most-likely weather patterns domi-

nated Flanders in late May 1940. Instead the one set of conditions

that most favored the Allied evacuation persisted for days.’

Nevertheless, the German achievement had been far greater than in

1870–1 and 1914. Aside from defeating the British and the French,

other German forces had overrun Belgium, which surrendered on

27 May, weakening the Dunkirk position.

In Fall Rot (Operation Order Red), launched on 5 June, the

Germans also pressed south into France, overcoming strong resis-

tance on the Somme and the Aisne. On 7 June, Rommel ignored

the strongly held French defensive hedgehogs and advanced from

the Somme towards the Seine. On 9 June, he reached the Seine.

Further east, despite a French armoured counterattack on 10 June,

the Germans crossed the Marne and captured Rheims the next day.

The French army was heavily outnumbered, especially in armour, its

morale had been badly hit by earlier defeats, and much of its equip-

ment, including over half the tanks, had already been lost. The

well-motivated Germans benefited from their training and equip-

ment, but also from better generalship.

After the initial struggle, resistance rapidly collapsed. The Seine

could no more be held than the Somme. The French government

left Paris for Bordeaux on 10 June, and the Germans entered the

capital four days later. They pressed forward on a number of axes.

From Rouen, there were advances to Cherbourg (fell 19 June) and,

via Rennes (18 June), to Brest (19 June).Talk of continued resistance

from a Breton redoubt proved abortive. Cut-off Allied units were

evacuated by sea from St Valéry-en-Caux (although a British division

had to surrender there), Le Havre, Cherbourg, St Malo, Brest and St

Nazaire, but others were captured.

From Paris, German forces advanced into the valley of the Loire,

capturing Tours (18 June) and Nantes (20 June). Others, advancing

south-east of Paris, captured Dijon on the 16

and pressed on

towards the Swiss frontier and Lyons. The French forces in eastern

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France – half a million strong – were trapped between Nancy and

Belfort. There was also a political collapse in France. With the

Commander-in-Chief, General Maxime Weygand, critical of the

political system and pressing for an armistice, and Marshal Henri

Pétain, the Deputy Prime Minister, also pessimistic about the future

and opposed to fighting on, the Cabinet, on 15 June, agreed to find

out what armistice terms the Germans would offer. This sold the

pass.There would be no union with Britain, no guerrilla warfare, no

retreat of the government to the North African colonies. On 16

June, Paul Reynaud resigned as Prime Minister, to be replaced by

Pétain. The French asked for an armistice on 17 June and accepted

German terms on the 22

, the Germans insisting on the symbolic

step of their signature in the railway carriage at Rethondes in which

the Germans had signed terms at the close of World War One. By

then, German forces had captured Lyons (20 June) and Vichy (20

June). For less than 30,000 dead, the Germans had inflicted a rapid

victory on a scale that enabled them to dictate radical terms.

Under the settlement, a new French government established on

10 July, headed by Marshal Pétain and based in Vichy, was left in

control of south and part of central France, about 40 per cent in

total, although Vichy France also was occupied by the Germans on

11 November 1942.Vichy was restricted to a 100,000-strong army,

while 1.6 million French military personnel became German pris-

oners of war; 100,000 had died in the campaign.The parts of Alsace

and Lorraine ruled by Germany from 1871 until World War One

were annexed anew, while German control in the occupied zone in

north and west France was intense. Hitler was interested in further

breaking up France at the end of the war. From their refuge in

London, the Free French under Brigadier-General Charles de Gaulle

(1890–1970), called for continued resistance, but most of the French

empire chose to follow orders from Vichy.

Germany’s success in its seven-week campaign had transformed

the strategic situation in Europe.Victory led Hitler to a conviction

of his own ineluctable success, and that of the Wehrmacht under his

leadership.Thanks to this victory, the Germans would clearly be able

to fight on, and any successful challenge to them would now have to

overcome German dominance of Western Europe. British air attacks

on Germany would no longer be able to benefit from French

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airfields and friendly airspace. Vichy’s control of Syria, Lebanon,

Madagascar, French West Africa, particularly Senegal, Algeria,Tunisia,

Morocco, French Guiana and French Indo-China, and a substantial

fleet, also changed the global position, as it created the possibility of

German penetration into the Middle East and Africa. It also

appeared to clear the way for Italian expansion into Egypt, as the

Italians would not have to worry about French forces in their rear in

Tunisia. The willingness of the weak Vichy government in Indo-

China to close the railway to Nanning in China in response to

Japanese pressure in June 1940 was followed by the (coerced) accep-

tance of effective Japanese control in the north that September and

in the south the following July.

Britain under attack

More immediately, Britain’s security was now at risk. The coastline

from the Spanish border to the North Cape of Norway was now

under the control of Germany, and, on 30 June, the Germans occu-

pied the undefended Channel Islands, which were vulnerable to

German air attack. Moved forwards into France, Belgium, the

Netherlands and Norway, German airbases were now close to Britain,

cutting the journey time of bombers and allowing fighters to escort

them. German planes would not only be able to reach southern

England. They could now easily reach the Midlands and Lancashire.

From Brittany and Normandy, German planes could ‘outflank’, to the

west, air defences focused on protecting south-east England.

Germany’s air power and submarines threatened Britain’s vital sea

lines of communication and supply with the outside world, while

Hitler planned Operation Sealion (Seelöwe), an invasion of southern

England, although there was, initially, a lack of commitment that, in

part, reflected his hope for a negotiated settlement. German atten-

tion was also diverted by growing interest in preparations for an

invasion of the Soviet Union. On 19 July, Hitler offered peace, with

Britain to retain her empire in return for her acceptance of

Germany’s dominance of the Continent.

Influential British politicians, particularly the Foreign Secretary,

Lord Halifax, who had come close to succeeding Chamberlain, felt

that such negotiations were desirable, and David Lloyd George, a

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former Prime Minister, thought that he might be able to succeed

Churchill. He could well have proved, as Chamberlain warned, a

British Pétain, not in terms of his politics but in terms of his willing-

ness to settle with Germany.

Churchill’s political position was

vulnerable, not least because Chamberlain remained leader of the

Conservative Party, but Churchill was determined not to surrender

and not to negotiate with Hitler.

The Luftwaffe was instructed to help prepare the way for invasion,

particularly by driving British warships from the Channel. The

Norway campaign had indicated the vulnerability of amphibious

operations to British naval power, and, although Italy’s entry into the

war had increased pressure on the British navy, enough warships

remained in home waters to challenge any German naval attack.

However, Luftwaffe commanders were increasingly concerned to

attack the RAF and its supporting infrastructure in order to prepare

the way for reducing Britain to submission by a bombing war on

civilian targets, a strategy that would put the Luftwaffe centre-stage.

The lack of clarity in the relationship between air attack and inva-

sion affected German strategy, but there was also a lack of

preparation for a strategic air offensive, because the Germans had not

sufficiently anticipated its necessity. Furthermore, the schedule was

too tight, with the need to invade before mid-September, when the

weather was likely to become hostile.

In addition, the Germans suffered from a lack of sufficiently

trained pilots, and from limitations with their planes and tactics.

Their bombers’ load capacity and range were too small, and their

fighters were too sluggish (Me 110) or had an inadequate range

affecting the time they could spend over England (Me 109), and the

fighters were also handicapped by having to escort the bombers.The

Germans also failed to understand the role of British radar and its

place in the integrated air-defence system. Furthermore, they had

lost many planes and pilots during the Battle of France. Despite

these deficiencies, the Germans outnumbered the British on the eve

of the battle. There had been heavy losses of British planes in the

Battle of France, and the factories where new planes were being

manufactured were now within range of German bombers.

Initial German attacks on the RAF and its airfields inflicted

serious blows, particularly on pilot numbers, and it was a shortage of

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