The fighting
Hitler strikes
The invasion of Poland
The invasion of Poland was the first strike in a total war. Hitler’s new army was now to be tested on the field of combat against the large and well-trained armed forces of the Polish state – the same nation that had famously stopped the Red Army before Warsaw in 1920. As it turned out, however, the poignant and tragic imagery of Polish cavalry fighting against, and hopelessly outclassed by, German armor would prove to be one of the most significant and defining images of the war. The years of training and exercises that the German army had engaged in since 1919 were now to be put into practice with devastating effect.
Despite Hitler’s ambition and confidence, the Germans went through an elaborate charade in order to convince the world that Germany was provoked. Men from the Sicherheitsdienst or SD department of the SS, under the overall direction of Reinhard Heydrich, planned an operation to precipitate the war that Hitler wanted. This operation, code-named Hindenburg, involved three simultaneous raids: the first was on the radio station at Gleiwitz, the second on the small customs post at Hochlinden, and the third on an isolated gamekeeper’s hut at Pitschen. The raids were to be conducted by men dressed in Polish uniforms, and at Gleiwitz the plan was that the attack would be heard live on radio – with the attackers’ voices, speaking in Polish and declaiming Germany, being broadcast live over the air to maximize their impact.
After a number of false starts and poor organization bordering on the farcical, the attacks took place. Four condemned men from the Sauchsenhausen concentration camp and a single German (a local Polish sympathizer) were murdered to provide evidence for the Polish incursions – the corpses, dressed in Polish uniforms, were photographed to complete the provocation. Despite the planning, the radio attack failed to be broadcast because of the poor strength of the transmitter. Hitler was nevertheless able to announce to the Reichstag on 1 September that ‘Polish troops of the regular army have been firing on our territory during the night [of 31 August/1 September]. Since 05.45 we have been returning that fire.’ The Second World War was up and running.
The German attack on Poland began on 1 September. The position was greatly aided by Hitler’s successful ‘annexation’ of Czechoslovakia, as Poland was now situated uncomfortably between the twin prongs of German-held territory. To the east, Stalin’s Red Army bided its time before, on 17 September, acting in accordance with the secret clauses of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and also invading Poland. The Poles, caught between the forces of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, did not manage to maintain resistance for long.
The German plan for the invasion of Poland was termed Fall Weiss or ‘Case White’ and essentially aimed to defeat the Polish army by encircling and destroying Polish army formations. The Germans planned to do this at the tactical level, but also at the strategic level, with German sights focused upon Warsaw, the Polish capital. The Poles were outnumbered both in terms of modern tanks and also in terms of tactics. The Germans mobilized 50 divisions for the Polish campaign, including six Panzer divisions, four motorized divisions, and three mountain divisions. These sizable forces represented the bulk of the available German army, leaving only 11 divisions in the west, where the French army was 10 times that number.
The Germans deployed their armored formations in such a manner as to maximize the attributes of their Panzer troops, rapidly outflanking the slower-moving Poles and creating the conditions for the Kesselschlachten, or ‘cauldron battles,’ that the Germans were so keen to fight. These involved the rapid penetration of the enemy’s defenses via the weakest spot, followed by the encirclement of the enemy. The enemy was therefore compelled either to stand and fight, suffering artillery and air bombardment, or to attempt a breakout, in which case it would be forced to relinquish the advantage conveyed by its prepared defensive positions.
The Germans made good progress across ground baked hard by the long, hot summer of 1939 and were aided also by their overwhelming air superiority, established within the opening three days by the vastly more impressive Luftwaffe. In a pattern that would be dreadfully familiar over the ensuing years, German aircraft struck at the Polish air force on the ground, effectively removing it from the equation. German aircraft flew hundreds of sorties in support of troops on the ground, operating essentially as an aerial dimension to the German army. While the Poles were acutely aware of the likelihood of the German military action and had reasonably good intelligence as to the growing concentrations of German forces, they were still taken by surprise when the attack actually happened. The Germans were able to seize the initiative and held it for the duration of what proved to be a depressingly short campaign.
Army Group North, comprising the 4th Army under Kluge and the 3rd Army under Kuchler, struck the first blow in the campaign. The two-army formation in East Prussia and Pomerania quickly overran the Polish Corridor and the free city of Danzig. Further to the south, Army Group South under the command of von Rundstedt had three army-sized formations, 8th Army (Blaskowitz), 10th Army (Reichenau), and 14th Army (List), which drove westwards into the heart of Poland. The Poles rallied briefly around the city of Poznan and succeeded in driving the Germans back, but this offered only a brief respite and these Polish troops were eventually overrun. The Germans, courtesy of two encirclements (the second being required when the Poles withdrew faster than anticipated) were in a position by 16 September to have surrounded the bulk of Polish forces in western Poland. They were able to snap shut the pincers of their encircling operation at will.
By 16 September the German forces had the Polish capital, Warsaw, surrounded, and they proceeded to bombard the city from the air and the ground. Warsaw eventually surrendered on 27 September with around 40,000 civilian casualties. The Russian invasion of Poland on 17 September was the deathblow for Poland. Predictably, it met little or no resistance as the Poles were both taken completely by surprise and totally immersed in the fighting against German forces in the east of their country. The Polish General Staff had no plans for fighting a war on two fronts, east and west, simultaneously. In fact, the Poles had considered that it was impossible to wage a two-front war.
The timing of the Soviet assault was also of considerable surprise to Germany. Hitler had been attempting to persuade Stalin to enter the war against Poland for some time, reasoning that the western powers then might refrain from intervening at all (i.e. not declare war on Germany) or, if not, might declare war on the Soviet Union as well. Stalin, predictably, had his own agenda with regard to the hapless Polish state. Soviet forces refrained from entering the fighting in Poland while the Red Army organized and re-equipped.
When the Red Army finally crossed the border, it did so under the weak pretence that it was responding to alleged border violations and that the intervention was aimed purely at ‘the protection of the Ukrainians and Belorussians, with full preservation of neutrality in the present conflict.’ Stalin also asserted that, with no effective Polish government now in existence, the ‘Soviet government is no longer bound by the provisions and demands of the Soviet–Polish non-aggression treaty,’ and was therefore at liberty to enter the war against its former ally. While the Soviets received little in the way of significant resistance from the Poles, they did engage in minor skirmishes with German troops whom they met on their advance. It took some time before the position was established and the German and Soviet formations respected the boundary line, which followed the course of the River Bug, along which the two unlikely allies had agreed to divide Poland.
On 19 September the Polish government left Warsaw and eventually established a government in exile. This government, under Wladyslaw Sikorski, finally settled in London after the fall of France. Besides the Polish leaders, many Polish servicemen also escaped, with some 90,000 making their way to France and Britain.
What were the key reasons for the rapid collapse of Poland? There are several. First, Poland’s strategic situation was poor: with the conclusion of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August 1939, Poland was effectively surrounded. The addition of the Soviet Union to the side of Germany compounded the territorial adjustments that had been wrought with Germany’s successful dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. The surprise that characterized the German assault also prevented the Poles from doing a better defensive job. This, in combination with the new weaponry employed with such devastating effect by the Wehrmacht, left the Poles struggling to match the Germans, and with the invasion from the east by the Soviet Union, any hope of continuing the fight was effectively removed. Nevertheless, the Poles, for all the ultimate futility of their efforts, did manage to inflict significant casualties on the Germans. They destroyed in the region of 200 German tanks, about 10 percent of the total number deployed, and also killed 13,000 German soldiers, wounding a further 30,000.
The ‘phoney war’
While Poland was fighting for her survival in the east, in the west her two allies, Britain and France, did nothing. Given that France and Britain had declared war on Germany because of the attack on Poland, and France and Britain were committed guarantors of Polish independence, this inaction seems strangely at odds. The British had successfully dispatched the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), numbering 140,000 men, to France by 30 September 1940, but even then no offensive action was contemplated.
Prior to this, on 7 September, elements of the French Fourth and Seventh Armies had advanced into Germany in the vicinity of Saarbrucken. This initial incursion reached no more than about 5 miles (8km) along a 16-mile (26km) front. German military formations in the area withdrew behind the Seigfried Line. At this point, the bulk of the German army was still in Poland and the Daily Mail in Britain ran a headline that claimed ‘French Army pouring over the German border.’ However, the French advance went no further, and following the Polish surrender, the French forces withdrew.
‘It was only a token invasion. We did not wish to fight on their territory and we did not ask for this war,’ a senior French officer was alleged to have said. Certainly, it was a fortuitous development for the Germans, who were surprised that the western allies did not make more of the strategic opportunity before them. After the war, the German Field Marshal, Keitel, commented that ‘we were astonished to find only minor skirmishes undertaken between the Siegfried and the Maginot Lines. We did not understand why France did not seize this unique opportunity and this confirmed us in the idea that the Western Powers did not desire war against us.’
This period between the Anglo-French declaration of war and the fall of France is known as the ‘phoney war’ because of the very inaction of both sides. The Germans were honing their plans for the assault on the Allies in the west, and the Allies too were busying themselves with organizing their counter-effort. The BEF dug what was known as the ‘Gort’ Line (after General The Viscount Gort, the commanding officer of the BEF) and civilians back in Britain also dug air-raid trenches and prepared for the air war that most thought would come.
The Russo-Finnish War
Elsewhere in Europe, more bitter fighting began with the outbreak of the Russo–Finnish War. This conflict has rarely received the coverage it perhaps deserves, peripheral as it was to the larger picture. Nonetheless, some important lessons were learnt from it. The war is known more commonly as the ‘Winter War’ and ran from 30 November until 13 March 1940, during which time Stalin’s ill-advised thrust into his near neighbor’s territory resulted in a bloody nose for the Red Army.
The Red Army, in November 1939, was a far cry from the powerful and well-organized force that would eventually defeat Hitler’s Germany. In fact, in the Winter War against Finland, the Soviets proved remarkably inept. Their difficulties against the Finns, in combination with the purges of the 1930s, probably persuaded Hitler that the Red Army was not likely to prove a formidable opponent in the future. Certainly the Germans were to underestimate the courage and tenacity of the ordinary Soviet soldier when they eventually invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941.
In October 1939, flush from the success of the limited campaign in Poland, Stalin issued an ultimatum to the Finnish government demanding a redrawing of the Russo-Finnish border north of Leningrad, in the Karelian peninsula. The Finns, who had only won independence from Russian dominance in 1917, declined and a short, bitter war ensued. The Finns outfought their numerically superior opponents, using hitand-run tactics and making the best use of the terrain and climate to thwart Soviet intentions. By January 1940, however, the Soviet attack had been stabilized and the Red Army began to employ its strengths in a more effective fashion.
The Finns eventually sued for peace in March 1940 and were obliged to concede the territorial demands originally required of them in October 1939. The Finns suffered roughly 25,000 casualties, but the Red Army came off far worse. Around 200,000 Red Army soldiers were lost in Finland, many through exposure. The Red Army, however, had learnt some valuable lessons for the future.
Hostilities resumed between the Finns and the Soviet Union during what became known as the ‘Continuation War’ of 1941–44 when the Finns formally allied themselves to Germany. The Finnish leader, Mannerheim, skillfully detached himself from the Germans when their defeat became evident. Although his terms for peace with the Soviet Union meant a permanent acknowledgment of the border situation of spring 1940, Mannerheim’s actions did at least ensure that his country did not fall under the sway of the Soviet Union, as did so many other states at the war’s end.
The Norway campaign
While the western allies were content to bide their time in France, in Norway they at last took the offensive. The Allied campaign in Norway was to prove a fascinating mix of strategic ineptitude coupled with extraordinary individual heroism. The German economy was reliant on over 10 million tons of iron ore each year being imported from Sweden. The route of this vital component was overland from Sweden to Norway and thence from the Norwegian port of Narvik to Germany. If the Allies could prevent the regular flow of ore, they would inflict a crucial blow against Germany’s war effort. There was also some discussion of providing aid to the Finns in their struggle against the Soviets, and the easiest route to do this would be across Norway.
The Germans too were concerned at this vulnerability and resolved to take Norway, which would also provide bases for German surface vessels and submarines. First, however, German forces struck at Denmark. The Danes were ill prepared for a war against their powerful neighbor and the Danish government ordered that no resistance should be put up against the invading Germans. Denmark formally surrendered on the same day as the German invasion, 9 April 1940.
The Norwegians, however, were determined to put up a fight. Joining them were 12,000 British and French troops, originally earmarked to join the Finns in their battle against the Soviets. The Finnish capitulation meant that these Allied forces could endeavor to engage the Germans in Norway. Prompt action by the Germans meant that their invasion force landed first, at Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger, and Kristiansand. Fierce Norwegian resistance gave the Allies time and an Allied force landed in the vicinity of Trondheim, from where it engaged German forces heading north from Oslo. Despite success by the Royal Navy against the German Navy, bad planning and confusion blighted the whole operation. After six weeks of fighting, the Allied troops were outfought and eventually evacuated on 8 June. The Norwegian government escaped to Britain and the Germans installed a puppet government under the Norwegian Vidkun Quisling.
France and the Low Countries
Having dealt with the Poles and secured Germany’s eastern borders from the threat of attack by the Soviet Union, courtesy of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Hitler was finally able to deal with France. What was to happen now would astonish the world and turn traditional ideas of strategy and tactics on their head. To gain some idea of what the German armed forces managed to achieve in their invasion of France and the Low Countries, it is useful to draw a parallel with the First World War. Between 1914 and 1918 the armed forces of Imperial Germany had striven to defeat the combined forces of Britain and France. In four years they failed to achieve this aim and in doing so also suffered over 2 million dead as well as experiencing a revolution that swept away the Kaiser and all remnants of the overseas empire that he had tried so hard to establish. Now, in the spring of 1940, Adolf Hitler’s new Germany would deal the western allies a crippling blow and achieve in five weeks, and for the loss of only 13,000 killed, what the armies of the Kaiser had not achieved in four years.
The eventual German plan of attack was arrived at only by much discussion and the intervention of fate as well as by judgement. The initial German plan was an uninspired repetition of the German advance of August 1914 and was based upon an invasion of Belgium. This operation, essentially a rerun of the Schlieffen Plan, was known as Case Yellow or Fall Gelb. The plan was a cautious one and reflected in part the concerns that many senior German officers had over the latent potential of the French army. Case Yellow would see German forces making a frontal assault on the Allied positions in Belgium and the Low Countries and a smaller, diversionary thrust of German forces through the densely wooded and seemingly impenetrable Ardennes region. The Allied response to this probable thrust was the Dyle Plan, which had the best French units and the BEF advancing into Belgium and Holland, thereby avoiding fighting in northern France as well as meeting the German advance.
This plan was not to last for long as the principal means of German advance. Hitler was not keen on the plan, believing that the potential for the German forces to stall and then become bogged down was too great. Hitler’s vacillation over the plan was hastened by the crash landing, on 9 January, of a Luftwaffe aircraft with a German paratroops officer on board near Mechelen, in Belgium. In his possession was a copy of Case Yellow, the officer in question having been on his way to a conference in Cologne from his base in Münster. Although efforts were made to destroy the plans, enough remained of the documents to make it all too obvious that the Germans intended to strike at France, once again, through Belgium.
Once aware of the German intentions, the Allies changed the original Dyle Plan using a modification, known as the Breda variant, which called for the Allies to advance to the line of the Dyle River and also commit the bulk of their reserves. However, the capture of the German plans did nothing more than reinforce in the minds of the Allied generals, and the French Commander-in-Chief General Maurice Gamelin in particular, that their original assumptions about the likely German approach were correct.
The German response to the capture of the details of Case Yellow was also interesting. Hitler, as we have seen, was less than enthusiastic about the original idea and had some notions of his own about how to proceed. Simultaneously, and independently, General Erich von Manstein had been working on how to improve Case Yellow. The new plan, sometimes called the Manstein Plan, called for an audacious switch of effort, with the original, diversionary, thrust through the Ardennes now to be the main point of attack.
While the Ardennes was considered by most, the western allies included, to be ‘impassable,’ this was not the case. The Ardennes region did not have wide roads and was heavily wooded, with many streams and rivers. Despite this, it was passable, albeit slowly and with some difficulty. However, moving a formation the size that the Manstein plan envisaged through the narrow roads would be a tremendous gamble and would require a sophisticated deception plan and coordinated air support to ensure that the passage was neither discovered nor interdicted.
The Manstein Plan required Army Group A to effect a passage through the Ardennes, cross the River Meuse, and break out into the ideal tank country beyond. The formation that was to have shouldered the original burden of the main thrust, Army Group B, was now to attack the Low Countries. Army Group B was to defeat the Dutch and Belgian forces while ensuring that the large numbers of quality British and French troops were ‘fixed’ to prevent them from acting against the main German effort. German aircraft were also tasked with ensuring that the Allies were kept well away from the Ardennes. The role of Army Group B in the north was crucial and likened to that of ‘the matador’s cloak,’ a target tempting enough to persuade the Allied bull to engage it. Army Group C, further south, was to carry out a deception plan opposite the Maginot Line so as to confuse matters still further.
In March 1940, Hitler approved this plan, with additional embellishments from General Franz Halder. The role of Army Group B, the deception formation, has traditionally been given scant attention amidst the dynamic and audacious activities of the other German formations. However, the Germans themselves set a great deal of store by the deception plans in the north, designed not necessarily to change opinions of where the main effort of German activity would fall, but rather to confirm in the minds of senior Allied officers what they themselves had erroneously concluded.
The French wished, essentially, to recreate the Great War’s set-piece battles of attrition, but they also wished to reverse the roles. In the French mind, it was the Germans who would be launching futile and costly attacks on well-defended French positions. The French had put considerable faith in the impressive fortifications of the Maginot Line, named after its instigator, the Defense Minister André Maginot. This interconnected line of fortifications stretched the length of the Franco-German border and was well nigh impregnable. The French did not believe that the Germans were likely to attempt to batter their way through. Instead the value of the Maginot Line was that it obliged any German invasion to come through Belgium, most probably in a repeat of the 1914 Stilton Plan, and thus defensive arrangements could be planned to deal with the threat along this predictable axis of advance.
The Allied strategy was essentially a long-term one: to draw the Germans into the type of fighting that had worked so well between 1914 and 1918, that of fixed positions with an emphasis on attrition, hopefully wearing down the Germans in a fashion similar to the First World War. The Germans were aware of this and were determined that such a situation should not arise. Hitler knew the trenches of the First World War only too well and was determined to avoid a repetition. He sought to conduct a rapid campaign that would end the war quickly before its demands could overburden the German economy – itself not configured for a prolonged war. However, the German method of war fighting, too, was not without its weaknesses.
On 10 May 1940, German forces attacked the Low Countries Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg. That same day the British Prime Minister, Chamberlain, resigned and Winston Churchill took over. Churchill’s accession to power, however, could not stop the subsequent events. As well as achieving their strategic aims in short order – the destruction of France and the isolation of Britain – the Germans did so by employing the experience they had gained in the Polish campaign to even more devastating effect.
It was after the France campaign that Germany’s devastatingly effective tactics became firmly associated with Blitzkrieg, the term subsequently being misappropriated by dozens of historians and generals as a byword for fast, effective armored warfare. In fact, the term Blitzkrieg is one that would have thoroughly mystified German soldiers – officers and men alike – prior to 1940. It is not to be found in any German field manuals or army correspondence dealing with the conduct of operations. Rather, the term was mentioned first by an Italian journalist who used it to describe the type of fighting that he had seen in France and the Low Countries.
Crucially, then, Blitzkrieg is descriptive rather than prescriptive and was coined to describe what the German tactics did rather than the more elusive notion of how they did it. There was a good reason for this. The Germans themselves were not entirely sure that what they were doing was new at all. In fact, to a great extent the practices of fast thrust, encirclement, and then annihilation of the encircled troops were not new at all but had been practiced by German (and Prussian) armies for years before, and by other armies as well.
What was really new in 1940 was the way the Germans were achieving their fast thrusts to encircle their opponents. Whereas in 1870, against the French, the Prussians would have used cavalry, now the Wehrmacht deployed tanks. Of course, the Germans were not the only state to possess tanks. Unlike in the Polish campaign, with its heroic but tragic mismatches of Polish cavalry against German armor, the British and French were well provided with tanks. Also, contrary to popular perceptions about this phase of the war, if anything the tanks of the British and the French were of better quality than the German vehicles and certainly were not inferior.
However, while Britain had taken the lead in the conception and development of tanks in the First World War, and indeed had employed them in the most innovative and successful fashion of all the major combatants in the Great War, this lead had largely evaporated in the interwar years. Germany, despite the limitations imposed on her by the Versailles settlement, had conducted exercises with mock-tanks, sure in the knowledge that the tank would prove to be a major element on the battlefield.
Numerically, the French army on its own had more tanks than the Germans were able to field, which meant that when French tanks were combined with those deployed as part of the BEF, the western allies had a marked numerical superiority: 3,383 tanks deployed compared to Germany’s 2,445. Numbers alone, however, are rarely the deciding factor in combat; obviously the quality of the equipment is also of vital significance. Here too the Anglo-French forces were not embarrassed. The French were equipped with a variety of tanks, the best of which were the Somua S35 and the Char B. These were more than a match for the German Panzer IIs and IIIs with which the majority of the German Panzer formations were armed. The Panzer divisions were equipped with 1,400 Marks I and II; 349 Mark IIIs, with a 37mm (1.5-inch) gun; and only 278 of the larger, 24-ton Mark IVs, armed with a far more substantial 75mm (3-inch) gun. The Germans also had a number of excellent Czech-built tanks, a result of Germany’s earlier takeover of that country.
In other areas, the French superiority was marked. The French army possessed far more artillery than the Germans, for example, fielding in the region of 11,000 pieces compared to the Germans’ 8,000. But the Germans, although numerically weaker, did have mobile artillery: self-propelled pieces that equipped units deployed with Panzer divisions. These enabled them to be used in a far more dynamic and effective fashion than the static role favored by the French.
The Germans went to considerable lengths to convince the Allies that the main blow would come in the north. Airborne forces attacked bridges spanning the Mass, Waal, and Lek rivers, and cut the Netherlands in two. Parachute engineers also attacked the impressive Belgian fortress of Eben Emael, the linchpin of Belgium’s defenses. In a move of brilliant audacity, the German Paras negated all of Eben Emael’s strengths. The fort was virtually impregnable from attack on the ground, such was the thickness of its walls. The Germans negated these strengths by landing on the roof of the fortress, using gliders that made no sound, and thus denied the defenders the opportunity to react earlier. The German troops blasted their way into the fortress and held it until relieved.
While Army Group B continued with its operations, further south, Army Group A penetrated the Ardennes. The Luftwaffe flew innumerable sorties on the first few days to protect the long and slow Panzer columns, terribly vulnerable in the narrow confines of the Ardennes roads. This was the Allies’ main chance: if the advance of Army Group A had been spotted in time and sufficient force brought to bear, the outcome of the campaign would have been totally different. Instead, only light Allied air attacks threatened the German advance. The Germans encountered only moderate resistance on the ground, mainly from reserve formations, and this proved insufficient to prevent the advance of the Panzers – seven divisions all told. By the evening of 12 May, these units had reached the east bank of the River Meuse. The German forces now demonstrated that they possessed a host of attributes.
On 13 May the Germans successfully crossed the Meuse at Dinant, courtesy of a weir left intact by the French. Further south, at the town of Sedan, German infantry and combat engineers crossed the river at astonishing speed under cover of a concentrated air and artillery barrage. German infantry established a foothold on the western bank and within hours pontoon bridges were constructed across the river and Panzers began to cross. The all-arms combination functioned perfectly, with all the participating units knowing the aim of their mission and all working in concert to achieve it.
By the morning of 16 May, over 2,000 German tanks and in excess of 150,000 German troops had crossed the River Meuse along a 50-mile (80km) stretch. This breach of the Allied defensive line effectively sealed the fate of the Allied armies in northwest France and the Low Countries, and paved the way for the decisive, strategic success of the German assault. The German formations, now in open country, began their drive for the Channel in a northwesterly arc, deep into the rear areas of the British and French formations deployed in Belgium.
The opportunity for the Allies to defeat the apparently inevitable German advance, however, was considerable. The German lines of communication were by necessity very extended, stretching back to the Meuse and beyond. These extended lines of communication were as much a feature of the German Blitzkrieg as anything and were a real vulnerability in the German methods of war fighting. Here was an opportunity for the Anglo-French to drive across the ‘Panzer corridor’ and regain some of the initiative.
If, as seems to be the case, there was not a massive gulf between the quality of the German armored formation and their Anglo-French opponents, nor was there a discrepancy in numbers between the Germans and the western allies. Indeed, the Anglo-French forces were able to field more armored vehicles than the Germans. How, then, can we explain the apparently overwhelming success of the Germans? Fundamentally it came down to the way in which armor was employed by the respective sides. The Allies used their tanks in small formations – what was known as ‘penny-packets’ – and as, in effect, little more than infantry support weapons rather than as weapons with an intrinsic, dynamic potential of their own. The BEF was almost completely mobile – the only participating army that could make such a claim. Yet, the British failed to make the most of this capability.
Other considerations did mark out German Panzers from their Allied counterparts. While armor and gun and speed might have been equal amongst the respective sides, the Germans had one crucial advantage. Most of the individual Panzers were equipped with radios. On the Allied side, only 20 percent of tanks were similarly equipped. It has been said elsewhere that the key technical development in the evolution of Blitzkrieg involved neither the tank nor the aircraft – both of which acquired in the 1930s the reliability, range, and speed needed for deep penetration operations – but the miniaturization of the radio. General Guderian had received his initial experience of combat as an officer in a signals unit, and his appreciation of the need for effective communication was vital. The miniature radio enabled the tanks to be used to maximum effect and facilitated the interaction between the armored formations and other branches or arms of the German armed forces.
The Germans also practiced their ideas of Auftragstaktic to a far greater extent in France and this was well served by the abundance of radios. The British and especially the French were nowhere near as up to date and were often suspicious of radio communications because of their susceptibility to interception. Von Kluge, Commander of the German 4th Army, summed up the importance of mission command in the German war-fighting method:
The most important facet of German tactics remained the mission directive, allowing subordinates the maximum freedom to accomplish their assigned task. That freedom of action provided tactical superiority over the more schematic and textbook approach employed by the French and English.
The following quotation from a 3 Panzer Division Report (1940) also stresses the type of officer that the German Panzer troops were seeking to recruit. It makes an interesting comparison with the earlier lecture of Captain Bechtolsheim:
One thing is sure – he who seeks formulae for commanding the mobile units, the pedantic type, should take off the black battledress [of the Panzer forces]. He has no idea of its spirit.
Apart from the numbers of tanks available to each side, the opposing sides (the British, French, Dutch, and Belgians on one hand, and the Germans on the other) were fairly evenly matched in terms of manpower totals and even equipment levels. It became fashionable to dismiss the Allies as outnumbered by the Germans – after all, the German population in 1940 was double that of France. But in fact, the western allies fielded 144 divisions with the Germans managing 141. Similarly, the western powers fielded 13,974 artillery pieces as against the Germans’ 7,378.
In the air, the Allies again had greater numbers of aircraft, but the Germans had the advantage in terms of numbers of modern combat aircraft. They possessed the excellent Messerschimdt 109 fighter, which outclassed most Allied fighters. The British contribution to the air war did not include sending Spitfire aircraft to France, but only Hurricanes in limited numbers. The French Dewoitime was another good Allied aircraft, but the French air force had only around 100 machines. The Germans had used their Stuka dive-bomber to devastating effect against the Poles and the Luftwaffe possessed several hundred of these aircraft, using them in the close air-support role.
Once the lead German formations had crossed the Meuse and largely outrun their supporting infantry and logistical supplies, the western allies were presented with an opportunity to regain some of the initiative. The Germans lacked a coherent operational level plan; once they had crossed the Meuse, they were in two minds as to where to go, either towards Paris or to take the Maginot Line from behind. Eventually the Germans decided to head for the coast and the Allies at last took their chance. The counterattack by the BEF at Arras, from the north, and the French from the south was indicative of the whole campaign. The Anglo-French forces did not operate in tandem and despite some initial success the Germans beat them off. This incident, however, did persuade Hitler to halt his leading Panzer elements and in doing so allowed the British and French vital time to organize the evacuation of their forces from Dunkirk.
Hitler, along with many senior German officers, could not quite believe how much their forces had achieved so quickly and still considered that the Allies were likely to strike back. They were wrong; Allied resistance had collapsed. After 5 June the Germans enacted Fall Red, the final phase of their plan to take France, occupying the rest of the country. Ironically, some elements of the Maginot Line were not defeated, but instead were ordered to give up in the general surrender of 22 June.
Operation Dynamo
Operation Dynamo began, officially, on 26 May 1940. By 4 June, 366,162 Allied troops had been successfully evacuated from the beaches around Dunkirk; of these, 53,000 were French. The price of the Dunkirk evacuations was not a light one. The RAF lost 177 aircraft over Dunkirk – losses it could ill afford – and the Royal Navy also had 10 escorts sunk. Even after the operations around Dunkirk were over, the evacuation of Allied personnel continued from elsewhere in France, including France’s Mediterranean coast, and up to the final cessation of operations on 14 August a further 191,870 were successfully rescued. In total 558,032 Allied personnel were evacuated from France between 20 May and 14 August.
Operation Dynamo has traditionally been represented, certainly in British historiography, as something of a triumph. In many respects it was so; the figures cited above are ample testimony to what was a fantastic achievement in rescuing so many Allied troops from captivity or death. A little over a month after the Dunkirk evacuation, however, three British journalists, Peter Howard of the Sunday Express, Frank Owen of the Evening Standard, and Michael Foot also of the Standard, wrote a devastating critique of the Dunkirk fiasco and the events that led up to it. This work, entitled Guilty Men and published with the authors’ names concealed by the pseudonym ‘Cato,’ had a considerable impact on the general public.
Cato charged the disaster to have been caused by the prewar appeasers, men such as Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin, and, most specifically, Neville Chamberlain himself. This notion became firmly embedded in the postwar psyche, certainly of the British. The fact that it accorded with what Winston Churchill was also to write, postwar, certainly helped this simplistic idea of appeasement to become the standard way of remembering the prewar years.
The collapse of France was to have a tragic and controversial postscript. The French Navy was large and formidable, and its inclusion in either of the warring sides would have proved significant. The British Mediterranean fleet was on a par with the Italian Navy, but the addition of the French would have tipped the delicate balance decisively. In the aftermath of the fall of French, the French fleet, under Admiral Darlan, ignored the provisions of the Franco-German armistice, by which the French fleet was to have been disarmed under Axis supervision. Instead, a large portion of the fleet sailed to the Algerian ports of Oran and Mers el-kebir, where it had assembled by 29 June.
The British were understandably concerned about the future of the French vessels and considered a variety of options. They wished the French fleet either to join with their Free French compatriots and fight alongside the British, to sail to neutral ports, or to scuttle their ships and thus prevent them being utilized by the Axis powers. A final option, described by Winston Churchill as ‘appalling,’ was that the Royal Navy would ‘use whatever force was necessary’ to prevent the ships being used against Britain. There were concerns, too, over what the German role might be – whether or not the Germans would apply pressure to force Admiral Darlan to comply.
Despite last-minute talks between the British and the French commander on the spot, no accommodation could be reached. The British, fearing the arrival of other French vessels, opened fire on 3 July, killing in the region of 1,200 French sailors. The British officer responsible for the failed negotiations wrote to his wife: ‘It was an absolute bloody business to shoot up those Frenchmen … we all feel thoroughly dirty and ashamed.’
The Battle of Britain
In the aftermath of the rapid defeat of France and the Low Countries, and the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk, few believed that Great Britain could resist Hitler for long. Indeed, the American Ambassador to the Court of St James, Joseph Kennedy – father of the future president, John F. – believed that Britain was doomed and reported the same to Washington.
In the face of the British refusal to make peace, Hitler planned an ambitious amphibious operation, codenamed Operation Sea Lion, to invade the British Isles. With the fall of France and the scrambled evacuation of Anglo-French forces from the beaches of Dunkirk, Britain stood effectively alone against Nazi Germany. On 18 June Winston Churchill told the assembled House of Commons that ‘The Battle of France is over, I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin.’
The next logical step for Adolf Hitler was the removal of Great Britain from the strategic equation, leaving him free, in due course, to turn eastwards and accomplish his principal aim: the destruction and subjugation of the Soviet Union and the establishment of German colonies in this new Lebensraum. How this was to be achieved was a dilemma for Hitler, initially at least. Hitler was not an implacable opponent of the British, partly for reasons of race, and professed to admire the British Empire. What, then, of the chances for peace between Britain and Germany?
Despite some apparent British warmth for the idea of a negotiated settlement, these sentiments were fundamentally insubstantial, based as they were on the false beliefs, first, that an acceptable peace could be arrived at and, second, that suggestions of impending British acquiescence might spur both the USA from her neutrality and the Soviet Union from her collaboration with Hitler. Hitler’s enunciation of his willingness to negotiate with the British was made clear in a speech on 19 July. When there was no positive response from the British, the way was clear for the planning of Operation Sea Lion – the proposed invasion of Britain by German amphibious forces.
However, any successful landing in Britain would require effective German air superiority. To achieve that, the Royal Air Force had to be destroyed and this was to prove problematic. While the British Expeditionary Force that had been sent to France was representative of Britain’s generally small army, it was the RAF and to a lesser extent the Royal Navy that had received the lion’s share of defense spending in the run-up to the outbreak of war. To a large extent this money had been well spent, with new fighter aircraft such as the Hurricane being particularly effective and the even newer Spitfire setting new standards of performance for a fighter plane. The RAF had not deployed any of its Spitfire strength to France, instead holding them back for the likely air battle to follow.
The German ability to attain air superiority was hampered, in part, by the role for which the Luftwaffe had originally been conceived, that of tactical air support for troops on the ground. This focus on supporting army operations meant that in 1940 Germany lacked both a long-range bomber and a fighter with which to conduct a strategic bombing campaign. Indeed, over the course of the war Germany never rectified this position, although she did develop larger aircraft, notably the four-engine Condor, which was used for reconnaissance purposes.
The Battle of Britain has earned a significant place in British cultural as well as military history. Emboldened and honored in several trademark speeches, the ‘few’ of the RAF (together with a sizable Commonwealth and exile contingent of Czechs and Poles) successfully thwarted the aims of the Luftwaffe, obliging the date for Sea Lion to be progressively put off until it was finally cancelled. The Battle of Britain can conveniently be split into two distinct phases: the first from 10 July 1940 until 13 August, and the second from 13 August to 17 September, when Operation Sea Lion was postponed indefinitely. The invasion was finally cancelled on 12 October 1940.
On 19 July 1940, Hitler made a curious speech in the Reichstag. It was witnessed by American journalist William Shirer, who noted that Hitler said:
In this hour I feel it is my duty before my own conscience to appeal once more to reason and common sense. I can see no reason why this war must go on … I am grieved to think of the sacrifices which it will claim. I should like to avert them, also, for my own people.
Shirer admitted to wondering what the British reply to this clumsy overture for a peaceful accommodation might be. It did not take long for British feelings to be made known. Shirer heard the BBC German program announcer reply, unofficially, ‘Herr Führer and Reichskanzler we hurl it right back at you, right in your evil-smelling teeth.’ The official feeling was less graphically expressed but did not differ markedly.
The first phase of the German air assault was designed to secure German air superiority over the Channel – the so-called Kanalkampf – with the harbors of England’s south coast and their associate shipping being the target. The second phase was known as the Adlerangriff (Eagle Attack) and began, on 13 August, with Adlertag (Eagle Day), which finally swept the RAF from the skies. The German bombers now concentrated on the RAF airfields themselves, destroying aircraft and pilots faster than the British could replace them, and threatening to overwhelm Fighter Command’s ability to resist.
However, despite the odds mounting gradually in Germany’s favor, a freak incident helped change the course of the battle and with it the strategic direction of the war. The accidental bombing of London by German aircraft led to a reciprocal British strike on Berlin. This prompted Hitler to his famous pronouncement, ‘since they bomb our cities, we shall raze theirs to the ground,’ and to the wholesale switch of German air effort toward the destruction of British cities rather than the RAF bases that defended them. On 7 September 1940, Reichsmarschal Hermann Göring told his senior Luftwaffe officers:
I now want to take this opportunity of speaking to you, to say this moment is an historic one. As a result of the provocative British attacks on Berlin on recent nights, the Führer has decided to order a mighty blow to be struck in revenge against the capital of the British Empire. I personally have assumed the leadership of this attack and today I have heard above me the roaring of the victorious German squadrons which now, for the first time, are driving towards the heart of the enemy in full daylight, accompanied by countless fighter squadrons … this is an historic hour, in which for the first time the German Luftwaffe has struck at the heart of the enemy.
This switch in tactics was a godsend for the RAF, since the breathing space allowed it to regroup and rejoin the battle. Now the battle focused on preventing German aircraft from reaching their targets over London or a score of other British targets.
While the target of German interest had changed, the ferocity of the air battles had not. Nor were losses in the air declining. During the first week of September, the RAF lost 185 aircraft and the Luftwaffe lost in excess of 200. The climax of the battle came on 15 September. Successive waves of German bombers, escorted by fighters, flew toward London and the RAF was stretched to the limit to try to contain them. The end result was a success for Fighter Command – but only just – and a realization on the part of the Luftwaffe and Adolf Hitler that air superiority was unlikely to be achieved any time soon. 15 September, subsequently celebrated as Battle of Britain day, marked the end of German attempts to provide the right circumstances for an invasion.
The success of Fighter Command in staving off the imminent threat of German invasion did not, however, end the German bombing campaign against British cities. In fact the Blitz, as it came to be known, had only just begun. The Germans hit the Midlands city of Coventry on 14 November and followed this up with raids on Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, and Liverpool. London, too, was obviously a massive target for the Luftwaffe as a symbol of British defiance as well as the heart of the governmental system. German bombing continued into 1941, with the last raids of the Blitz coming in May that year. German attacks on Britain resumed in the latter stages of the war as they launched initially the V1 rockets, later the V2, against London. These weapons did little real damage, but were sufficient to cause concern amongst the civilian populace.
Dieppe
Having successfully warded off the threat of imminent German invasion in 1940, the British gave considerable thought to hitting back at the Germans. One means, in the air, was the strategic bombing campaign, examined in more detail below. While the British had achieved some morale-building successes, such as the sinking of the German pocket battleship Bismarck, in 1942, there was widespread feeling that more should be done to strike at Hitler’s ‘fortress Europe.’
After the fall of France, Churchill had sanctioned the training and employment of ‘commando’ units to strike at targets in occupied Europe. He also created the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to ‘set Europe ablaze.’ The commando raids were successful in raising Allied morale and proving a nuisance to the Germans, but after successes at St Nazaire and Bruneval, the Allies determined on a more substantial foray into occupied Europe.
The aim of the Dieppe raid of August 1942 was limited in terms of what was to be achieved practically, but significant in terms of what the Allies hoped to learn about the problems involved in landing in enemy-held territory. The Allied plan, Operation Jubilee, aimed to land troops and armored vehicles on the beach and take and hold the port for 12 hours. The Allied forces, having secured the town, were to push inland and capture a German headquarters, gaining prisoners for interrogation and documents, and then to retreat back across the Channel. The Allies also hoped to cause enough damage, and to worry the Germans sufficiently, that the German High Command would withdraw forces from the Eastern Front and thereby take some pressure off the Red Army. This second aim was rather ambitious.
In the event, Dieppe was a disaster. The Allied force lost the vital ingredient of surprise when they ran into German shipping mid-Channel, and failed to secure the two headlands on either side of the main beach at Dieppe. Despite this setback, the main force landed on the beach and met considerable fire from German troops, well dug-in in blockhouses on the seafront and from the headlands. Still more Allied forces landed: 27 Churchill tanks reached the beach safely and 15 made it to the esplanade but no further.
Eventually, when it was apparent that no progress was being made, the mixture of British, Canadian, and American troops were withdrawn. This first composite Allied force, a foretaste of the Normandy landings two years hence, suffered 1,027 dead and a further 2,340 captured. However, the experience gained by the assault itself proved invaluable and prompted Admiral Lord Mountbatten to comment that ‘for every soldier who died at Dieppe, ten were saved on D-Day.’ While Mountbatten’s comments may have proved, ultimately, to be true, he was also the man in charge of the operation.
The Battle of the Atlantic
The Battle of the Atlantic was one of the most important battles waged during the Second World War (see The Second World War (3) The war at sea in this series). Britain’s survival, and with her the survival of the struggle against Nazi Germany, depended on feeding her population and her war machine. British industry relied on raw materials from overseas to keep functioning. These goods had to be carried to Britain across, for the most part, the Atlantic Ocean. Without the outside lifeline, Britain’s ability to sustain meaningful resistance against the Axis powers would have been seriously eroded, and eventually Britain would have been starved into submission.
The means of ensuring this constant lifeline were convoys – large numbers of ships marshaled together with naval support to beat off attacks from German submarines, or U-boats. As the tactics adopted by the German submariners became ever more sophisticated, such as hunting in large Wolf Packs, and as their submarines became ever larger and more seaworthy, so too did the weapons and tactics devised by the Allies in response. These included underwater echo-finding sonar, known as asdic, depth charges, and merchant ships converted to carry aircraft launched from a catapult. The development of surface radar was also vital in enabling surface warships to detect their submarine prey on the surface, when they were at their most vulnerable. This advance allowed the surfaced U-boats to be located in darkness and helped reduce the threat from the U-boat fleet, many of whose commanders preferred to attack at night and via the surface.
Alongside the vital convoys bringing raw materials to Britain between 1939 and 1943, the British also mounted an enormous effort to send supplies to the Soviet Union in order to prop her up against the German attack, after June 1941. While the Soviet authorities consistently downplayed the amount of British (and American) aid received, it was substantial. The convoy routes from Britain to the Soviet Union, usually the northern port of Murmansk, were fraught with danger from the German U-boats and from the perilous conditions of sub-zero temperatures and mountainous seas.
The war in the Atlantic cost the lives of thousands of sailors on both sides, but by the summer of 1943 it was the Allies who were decisively in charge. The U-boats of German Admiral Dönitz’s navy sank 2,600 Allied merchant vessels and over 175 naval ships; 30,000 Allied sailors also died. On the German side, out of 1,162 U-boats built, 784 were lost. Of the German crews, a staggering 26,000 sailors out of a total number of 40,000 were killed, with 5,000 men taken prisoner. The German submarine arm had come close to strangling the Allied war effort, but the cost, as a proportion of the size of the service, was unmatched.
The strategic bomber offensive
One of the most controversial elements of the Second World War was the Allied strategic bombing offensive against German-occupied Europe. The bombing of enemy cities was obviously not a new phenomenon; indeed, the Germans had carried out a limited campaign against Britain in the First World War using Zeppelin airships and Gotha aircraft. However, bombing had previously been essentially confined to a tactical role, if only because of the limitations of the fragile technology available.
Between the wars, much thought was given over to the idea of air power now being potentially a decisive weapon in war. The improvements in aeronautical engineering turned the fragile aircraft of 1914–18, with their limited range and payload capacity, into far more useful weapons. Air power theorists such as the Italian Guilo Douhet, the American William Mitchell, and the Briton Sir Hugh Dowding all prophesied that the bomber might shape the course of future wars. In Britain especially, the idea that the ‘bomber will always get through’ haunted interwar defense planners, conscious that Britain’s traditional reliance on her naval strength would be inadequate. In the event this proved true, and the days of the battleship were numbered when HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales were sunk by Japanese aircraft off Malaya in December 1941. However, the role of the bomber also proved to be far less decisive than the advocates of air power imagined.
On 3 September 1940, a year to the day after Britain had declared war on Germany, Winston Churchill declared that ‘our supreme effort must be to gain overwhelming mastery in the air. The fighters are our salvation, but the bombers alone can provide the means to victory.’ Churchill’s personal commitment to the idea that the bomber could win the war was significant and had its origins in his position as the First Lord of the Admiralty when he ordered bombing raids on German Zeppelin bases. In 1917, however, Churchill’s position was rather different; indeed, he considered then that ‘nothing we have learned justifies us in assuming that they [German civilians] could be cowed into submission by such methods [large-scale bombing].’
On 22 February 1942, Arthur Travers Harris was appointed to the post of Chief of Royal Air Force (RAF) Bomber Command. He believed that area bombing or strategic bombing could win the war, and that by pounding Germany’s industrial capability and destroying German cities, the will of the Germans, in tandem with the buildings around them, would collapse. This bomber offensive was no simple payback for the German raids on British cities. RAF Bomber Command pounded Germany for three years, culminating in the destruction of Dresden. The British bombers were joined in the summer of 1942 by the United States Army Air Force, whose more heavily armed B-17 ‘Flying Fortresses’ bombed by day, and then the Allies struck around the clock in a campaign that the Germans called ‘terror bombing.’ Harris soon earner himself the nickname of ‘Bomber’ Harris amongst the general public, and ‘Butch’ or ‘Butcher’ Harris amongst his own men.
The tactics of the bombing offensive changed dramatically as the war progressed. Initial sorties were conducted by comparatively small, twin-engine aircraft such as the Vickers Wellington. The amount of ordnance that these aircraft could carry was small compared to the new, four-engine bombers that were coming into service by the time Harris took over. The introduction of the Short Stirling and later the Avro Lancaster revolutionized the distance that the bomber raids could fly, and thus the range of targets that could be hit, as well as increasing exponentially the bomb tonnage that could be carried.
A confidential report, prepared in 1941, highlighted some of the worrying problems associated with the bombing campaign and undermined the claims by the bomber advocates that they were capable of winning the war on their own. The report, gleaned from aerial photographs of bomb targets, concluded that only one aircraft in three was able to get within 5 miles (8km) of its allocated target and that their accuracy was often even less impressive. The overall percentage of aircraft that managed to arrive within 75 square miles (194km2) of the target was as low as 20 percent.
The net result of these inaccuracies was the creation and adoption of a new tactic, that of ‘area bombing.’ This eschewed the attempted precision raids of the past in favor of the destruction not only of factories but also of their hinterland: the surrounding towns, complete with the workers who lived there. This policy, unfairly attributed to Harris himself, was the product of a decision not to adopt terror tactics, but rather to ameliorate the shortcomings inherent in bombing so inaccurately. It was also hoped that the net effect of this type of destruction, to civilians, would result in the gradual erosion of morale amongst the civilian population. Potentially, it might either bring about the collapse of the will to resist or, more ambitiously, and more unlikely, induce a war-weary population to overthrow Adolf Hitler’s administration.
The German response to the Allied bombing offensive was an impressive defensive arrangement that also grew in sophistication, in tandem with the bomber formations that it was conceived to thwart, as technological advances combined with tactical reappraisals. Luftwaffe General Josef Kammhuber was appointed to lead the air defense provision for the Reich and initially achieved some startling successes. He devised a grid system, with each square in the grid being 20 square miles (52km2), and located a fighter in each square – held there by air traffic control and guided by radar to its target whenever a bomber or bomber formation entered its airspace.
British bomber tactics had initially focused on sending aircraft into occupied Europe singly, at intervals, and Kammhuber’s approach was ideally suited to dealing with them. Later, however, with larger numbers of aircraft available, the British simply swamped the German defensive arrangements. In fact, much of the strategic value of the bombing campaign lay in the extent to which it diverted valuable resources of men and equipment away from vital front-line areas. The intensity of the bombing obliged the Germans to relocate artillery pieces as flak guns in Germany, rather than deploying them against the Soviets on the Eastern Front.
While concentrations of bombers, bringing all their firepower together, had improved their survivability in the skies over Germany, a second Allied initiative would help turn the course of the bomber offensive in a decisive fashion. This development was the introduction of fighter escorts for the whole duration of the bombing mission. It was made possible by the adoption of long-range fuel tanks, a practice that was very common when deploying fighters over long distances, but which had failed to be considered practical for combat purposes. The introduction of the Anglo-American P51 Mustang brought immediate results.
The strategic bombing campaign has been the cause of much controversy since the end of the Second World War. Elements of it, in particular Operation Gomorra (the firestorm raids on Hamburg) and the destruction of the baroque city of Dresden, are cited as evidence of how far democracies, too, are forced to go in a ‘total war.’ Alongside the many charges of wanton slaughter of civilians leveled at Bomber Command and its chief, Arthur Harris, are also less inflammatory ones. These allegations are more practical and center on the claim that, particularly in the early years of the war, the strategic bomber offensive was a criminal waste of men and materials that would have been better employed elsewhere. It has been argued that the overall impact on Germany’s war-fighting ability was far less than it should have been, given the resources expended. However, as Richard Overy comments:
There has always seemed something fundamentally implausible about the contention of bombing’s critics that dropping almost 2.5 million tons of bombs on tautly-stretched industrial systems and war-weary urban populations would not seriously weaken them. Germany … had no special immunity.