IMMEDIATELY upon the outbreak of war the British Expeditionary Force, or “B.E.F.”, began to move to France. By mid-October four British divisions, formed into two Army Corps of professional quality, were in their stations along the Franco-Belgian frontier, and by March 1940 six more divisions had joined them, making a total often. As our numbers grew we took over more line. We were not of course at any point in contact with the enemy.
When the B.E.F. reached their prescribed positions they found ready-prepared a fairly complete artificial anti-tank ditch along the front line, and every thousand yards or so was a large and very visible pillbox giving enfilade fire along the ditch for machine and anti-tank guns. There was also a continuous belt of wire. Much of the work of our troops during this strange autumn and winter was directed to improving the French-made defences and organising a kind of Siegfried Line. In spite of frost progress was rapid. Air photographs showed the rate at which the Germans were extending their own Siegfried Line northwards from the Moselle. Despite the many advantages they enjoyed in home resources and forced labour, we seemed to be keeping pace with them. Large base installations were created, roads improved, a hundred miles of broad-gauge railway-line laid. Nearly fifty new airfields and satellites were developed or improved. Behind our front immense masses of stores and ammunition were accumulated in the depots all along the communications. Ten days’ supply was gathered between the Seine and the Somme, and seven days’ additional north of the Somme. This latter provision saved the Army after the German breakthrough. Gradually, in view of the prevailing tranquillity, many ports north of Havre were brought into use in succession and in the end we were making use in all of thirteen French harbours.
In 1914 the spirit of the French Army and nation, burning from sire to son since 1870, was vehemently offensive. Their doctrine was that the numerically weaker Power could only meet invasion by the counter-offensive, not only strategic but tactical at every point. It was now a very different France from that which had hurled itself upon its ancient foe in August 1914. The spirit of revanche had exhausted its mission and itself in victory. The chiefs who had nursed it were long dead. The French people had undergone the frightful slaughter of a million and a half of their manhood. Offensive action was associated in the great majority of French minds with the initial failures of the French onslaught of 1914, with General Nivelle’s repulse in 1917, with the long agonies of the Somme and Passchendaele, and above all with the sense that the fire-power of modern weapons was devastating to the attacker. Neither in France nor in Britain had there been any effective comprehension of the consequences of the new fact that armoured vehicles could be made capable of withstanding artillery fire, and could advance a hundred miles a day. An illuminating book on this subject, published some years before by a Commander de Gaulle, had met with no response. The authority of the aged Marshal Pétain in the Conseil Supérieur de la Guerre had weighed heavily upon French military thought in closing the door to new ideas, and especially in discouraging what had been quaintly called “offensive weapons”.
In the after-light the policy of the Maginot Line has often been condemned. It certainly engendered a defensive mentality. Yet it is always a wise precaution in defending a frontier of hundreds of miles to bar off as much as possible by fortifications, and thus economise in the use of troops in sedentary rôles and “canalise” potential invasion. Properly used in the French scheme of war, the Maginot Line would have been of immense service to France. It could have been viewed as presenting a long succession of invaluable sally-ports, and above all as blocking off large sections of the front as a means of accumulating the general reserves or “mass of manœuvre”. Having regard to the disparity of the population of France to that of Germany, the Maginot Line must be regarded as a wise and prudent measure. Indeed, it was extraordinary that it should not have been carried forward at least along the river Meuse. It could then have served as a trusty shield, freeing a heavy, sharp, offensive French sword. But Marshal Pétain had opposed this extension. He held strongly that the Ardennes could be ruled out as a channel of invasion on account of the nature of the ground. Ruled out accordingly it was. The offensive conceptions of the Maginot Line were explained to me by General Giraud when I visited Metz in 1937. They were however not carried into effect, and the Line not only absorbed very large numbers of highly-trained regular soldiers and technicians, but exercised an enervating effect both upon military strategy and national vigilance.
The new air-power was justly esteemed a revolutionary factor in all operations. Considering the comparatively small numbers of aircraft available on either side at this time, its effects were even exaggerated, and were held in the main to favour the defensive by hampering the concentrations and communications of great armies once launched in attack. Even the period of the French mobilisation was regarded by the French High Command as most critical on account of the possible destruction of railway centres, although the numbers of German aircraft, like those of the Allies, were far too few for such a task. These thoughts expressed by Air Chiefs followed correct lines, and were justified in the later years of the war, when the air strength had grown ten- or twenty-fold. At the outbreak they were premature.
It is a joke in Britain to say that the War Office is always preparing for the last war. But this is probably true of other departments and of other countries, and it was certainly true of the French Army. I also rested under the impression of the superior power of the defensive provided it were actively conducted. I had neither the responsibility nor the continuous information to make a new measurement. I knew that the carnage of the previous war had bitten deeply into the soul of the French people. The Germans had been given the time to build the Siegfried Line. How frightful to hurl the remaining manhood of France against this wall of fire and concrete! In my mind’s outlook in the opening months of this Second World War I did not dissent from the general view about the defensive, and I believed that anti-tank obstacles and field guns, cleverly posted and with suitable ammunition, could frustrate or break up tanks except in darkness or fog, real or artificial.
In the problems which the Almighty sets his humble servants things hardly ever happen the same way twice over, or if they seem to do so there is some variant which stultifies undue generalisation. The human mind, except when guided by extraordinary genius, cannot surmount the established conclusions amid which it has been reared. Yet we are to see, after eight months of inactivity on both sides, the Hitler inrush of a vast offensive, led by spear-point masses of cannon-proof or heavily-armoured vehicles, breaking up all defensive opposition, and for the first time for centuries, and even perhaps since the invention of gunpowder, making artillery for a while almost impotent on the battlefield. We are also to see that the increase of fire-power made the actual battles less bloody by enabling the necessary ground to be held with very small numbers of men, thus offering a far smaller human target.
Anyway, the earliest date at which the French could have mounted a big attack was perhaps at the end of the third week of September. But by that time the Polish campaign had ended. By mid-October the Germans had seventy divisions on the Western Front. The fleeting French numerical superiority in the West was passing. A French offensive from their eastern frontier would have denuded their far more vital northern front. Even if an initial success had been gained by the French armies at the outset, within a month they would have had extreme difficulty in maintaining their conquests in the east, and would have been exposed to the whole force of the German counter-stroke to the north.
This is the answer to the question “Why remain passive till Poland was destroyed?” But this battle had been lost some years before. In 1938 there was a good chance of victory while Czechoslovakia still existed. In 1936 there could have been no effective opposition. In 1933 a rescript from Geneva would have procured bloodless compliance. General Gamelin cannot be the only one to blame because in 1939 he did not run the risks which had so enormously increased since the previous crises, from which both the French and British Governments had recoiled.
What then were the probabilities of a German offensive against France? There were of course three methods open. First, invasion through Switzerland. This might turn the southern flank of the Maginot Line, but had many geographical and strategic difficulties. Secondly, invasion of France across the common frontier. This appeared unlikely, as the German Army was not believed to be fully equipped or armed for a heavy attack on the Maginot Line. And, thirdly, invasion of France through Holland and Belgium. This would turn the Maginot Line, and would not entail the losses likely to be sustained in a frontal attack against permanent fortifications. We could not meet an onslaught through the Low Countries so far forward as Holland, but it would be in the Allied interest to stem it, if possible, in Belgium, and at this period there were two lines to which the Allies could advance if they chose to come to her succour, or which they could occupy by a well-planned secret and sudden scheme, if so invited. The first of these lines was what may be called the line of the Scheldt. This was no great march from the French frontier and involved little serious risk. At the worst it would do no harm to hold it as a “false front”. At the best it might be built up according to events. The second line was far more ambitious. It followed the Meuse through Givet, Dinant, and Namur by Louvain to Antwerp. If this adventurous line was seized by the Allies and held in hard battles the German right-handed swing of invasion would be heavily checked; and if their armies were proved inferior it would be an admirable prelude to the entry and control of the vital centre of Germany’s munitions production in the Ruhr.
“We understand,” wrote the Chiefs of Staff, “that the French idea* is that, provided the Belgians are still holding out on the Meuse, the French and British Armies should occupy the line Givet-Namur, the British Expeditionary Force operating on the left. We consider it would be unsound to adopt this plan unless plans are concerted with the Belgians for the occupation of this line in sufficient time before the Germans advance.… Unless the present Belgian attitude alters and plans can be prepared for early occupation of the Givet-Namur [also called Meuse-Antwerp] line, we are strongly of opinion that the German advance should be met in prepared positions on the French frontier.”
The Allied Supreme Council met in Paris on November 17. Mr. Chamberlain took with him Lord Halifax, Lord Chatfield, and Sir Kingsley Wood. The decision was taken: “Given the importance of holding the German forces as far east as possible, it is essential to make every endeavour to hold the line Meuse-Antwerp in the event of a German invasion of Belgium.” At this meeting Mr. Chamberlain and M. Daladier insisted on the importance which they attached to this resolution, and thereafter it governed action. In this posture therefore we passed the winter and awaited the spring. No new decisions of strategic principle were taken by the French and British Staffs or by their Governments in the six months which lay between us and the German onslaught.
During the winter and spring the B.E.F. were extremely busy setting themselves to rights, fortifying their line and preparing for war, whether offensive or defensive. From the highest rank to the lowest all were hard at it, and the good showing that they eventually made was due largely to the full use made of the opportunities provided during the winter. The British was a far better army at the end of the “Twilight War”. It was also larger. But the awful gap, reflecting on our pre-war arrangements, was the absence of even one armoured division in the British Expeditionary Force. Britain, the cradle of the tank in all its variants, had between the wars so far neglected the development of this weapon, soon to dominate the battlefields, that eight months after the declaration of war our small but good Army had only with it, when the hour of trial arrived, the 1st Army Tank Brigade, comprising 17 light tanks and 100 “Infantry” tanks. Only 23 of the latter carried even the 2-pdr. gun, the rest machine-guns only. There were also seven cavalry and Yeomanry regiments equipped with carriers and light tanks which were in process of being formed into two light armoured brigades.
Developments on the French front were less satisfactory. In a great national conscript force the mood of the people is closely reflected in its Army, the more so when that Army is quartered in the homeland and contacts are close. It cannot be said that France in 1939–40 viewed the war with uprising spirit, or even with much confidence. The restless internal politics of the past decade had bred disunity and discontents. Important elements, in reaction to growing Communism, had swung towards Fascism, lending a ready ear to Goebbels’ skilful propaganda and passing it on in gossip and rumour. So also in the Army the disintegration influences of both Communism and Fascism were at work; the long winter months of waiting gave time and opportunity for the poisons to be established.
Very many factors go to the building up of sound morale in an army, but one of the greatest is that the men be fully employed at useful and interesting work. Idleness is a dangerous breeding-ground. Throughout the winter there were many tasks that needed doing: training demanded continuous attention; defences were far from satisfactory or complete—even the Maginot Line lacked many supplementary field works; physical fitness demands exercise. Yet visitors to the French front were often struck by the prevailing atmosphere of calm aloofness, by the seemingly poor quality of the work in hand, by the lack of visible activity of any kind. The emptiness of the roads behind the line was in great contrast to the continual coming and going which extended for miles behind the British sector.
There can be no doubt that the quality of the French Army was allowed to deteriorate during the winter, and that it would have fought better in the autumn than in the spring. Soon it was to be stunned by the swiftness and violence of the German assault. It was not until the last phases of that brief campaign that the true fighting qualities of the French soldier rose uppermost in defence of his country against the age-long enemy. But then it was too late.
On January 10, 1940, anxieties about the Western Front received confirmation. A German staff major of the 7th Air Division had been ordered to take some documents to headquarters in Cologne. He missed his train and decided to fly. His machine overshot the mark and made a forced landing in Belgium, where Belgian troops arrested him and impounded his papers, which he tried desperately to destroy. These contained the entire and actual scheme for the invasion of Belgium, Holland, and France on which Hitler had resolved. Shortly the German major was released to explain matters to his superiors. I was told about all this at the time, and it seemed to me incredible that the Belgians would not make a plan to invite us in. But they did nothing about it. It was argued in all three countries concerned that probably it was a plant. But this could not be true. There could be no sense in the Germans trying to make the Belgians believe that they were going to attack them in the near future. This might make them do the very last thing the Germans wanted, namely, make a plan with the French and British Armies to come forward privily and quickly one fine night. I therefore believed in the impending attack.
We appealed to Belgium, but the Belgian King and his Army staff merely waited, hoping that all would turn out well. In spite of the German major’s papers no further action of any kind was taken by the Allies or the threatened States. Hitler, on the other hand, as we know, summoned Goering to his presence, and on being told that the captured papers were in fact the complete plans for invasion, ordered, after venting his anger, new variants to be prepared. Of course, if British and French policy during the five years preceding the war had been of a manly and resolute character, within the sanctity of treaties and the approval of the League of Nations, Belgium might have adhered to her old allies and allowed a common front to be formed. Such an alliance properly organised would have erected a shield along the Belgian frontier to the sea against that terrible turning movement which had nearly compassed our destruction in 1914 and was to play its part in the ruin of France in 1940. At the worst Belgium could have suffered no harder fate than actually befell her. When we recall the aloofness of the United States; Mr. Ramsay MacDonald’s campaign for the disarmament of France; the repeated rebuffs and humiliations which we had accepted in the various German breaches of the Disarmament Clauses of the Treaty; our submission to the German violation of the Rhineland; our acquiescence in the absorption of Austria; our pact at Munich and acceptance of the German occupation of Prague—when we recall all this, no man in Britain or France who in those years was responsible for public action has a right to blame Belgium. In a period of vacillation and appeasement the Belgians clung to neutrality, and vainly comforted themselves with the belief that they could hold the German invader on their fortified frontiers until the British and French Armies could come to their aid.
