Smashing the Meuse Front
FREDDIE KNOLLER Had made it to France, but his Austrian passport ensured he was immediately arrested and handcuffed, even though it was stamped with a large ‘J’ for Jew. Concern over Fifth Columnists outweighed any sympathy for Jewish refugees. At the police station, he was made to show his interrogator his circumcised penis. His story was believed, but this didn’t stop him and other German speakers from being marched to the train station through the streets under armed guard. ‘Sales Boches!’ people shouted at them. One woman emptied her pisspot over them.
Bundled on to a cattle truck along with a number of Germans who were, Knoller discovered, Fifth Columnists, he tried to ignore their taunts, wondering all the time where he was being sent. Eventually, after an interminably long two-day journey with nothing but straw and a wooden floor to sit on, his journey ended. They had reached a town called Saint-Cyprien, about six miles from Perpignan, a way to the south. This, Knoller learned, was an internment camp originally set up for refugees of the Spanish Civil War. Led off the trains and into a large assembly hall, they were then addressed by a French officer. ‘All of you are enemies of France,’ he told them. ‘Any attempt to escape is punishable by death.’
Among the first troops reaching the Meuse were the recently promoted Hauptmann Hans von Luck and his comrades in the 7. Reconnaissance Battalion. Incredibly, they had reached the river just a few miles north of Dinant ahead of schedule on the night of 12 May. Their advance had been through difficult terrain, but they had not met much resistance. Ahead of them now, though, was a river a hundred metres wide and, beyond that, sharply rising craggy cliffs. The first crossing was made over a footbridge by a weir and lock system that was, astonishingly, not only unguarded, but also lay on the boundary between two French corps. It was a sloppy oversight, especially since it was the precise spot where Germans had crossed in 1914, but, even so, one footbridge was not going to be enough to get an entire German division across.
The main assault began the following morning around first light. Generalmajor Rommel arrived in his scout car and told von Luck and his men to stay put. Crossing the river, he said, was a job for the infantry. Paddling over in boats, they soon came under heavy fire, but eventually, through counter-fire and by setting houses ablaze to create smokescreens, they made it, with Rommel himself crossing that afternoon. The French had been badly caught out. Dinant was in Belgium and although the French 9e Armée had begun moving forward to the Meuse once the offensive began, Général André Corap, the Army commander, had not expected the Germans to reach the river there – if at all – in less than ten days and more likely two weeks. Some French troops had arrived but had not dug in. Even so, their commanding position should have enabled them to hold off such a wide river crossing and buy them time to bring up reinforcements. Key to stopping the Germans in their tracks was to defend these nodal points such as rivers, bridges and crossroads. They had failed at this first test.
It could still have been so different. Panzerkorps Hoth was separate from the rest of Panzergruppe Kleist, the main panzer formation in Armeegruppe A, and operating further north. Panzergruppe Kleist was made up of three panzer corps – those of Guderian, General Reinhardt and also General von Wietersheim. Guderian’s three divisions had benefited from being the spearhead, but Panzerkorps Reinhardt, heading towards the Meuse further north of Sedan at Monthermé, soon ran into the world’s biggest traffic jam as infantry units, supposed to be following behind, cut in across them. General Reinhardt’s divisions became increasingly separated and split up – his leading division, for example, was shredded as no fewer than four infantry divisions tried to cut across its advance. By the morning of 13 May, there were queues some 170 miles long.
This meant the vast bulk of Armeegruppe A was a sitting duck for any Allied aerial attack. On the night of 10 May and again the following morning, Allied reconnaissance aircraft had spotted German columns going through the Ardennes, but the reports were not taken seriously. On the night of 11–12 May, another recce pilot reported seeing long columns of Germans, but, again, it was ignored. On the afternoon of the 12th, yet another reconnaissance pilot reported the same, but although his claims were passed on to the intelligence section of the French 9e Armée, they were dismissed as absurd. Had they been taken seriously, and had a mass of Allied bombers been sent over, much of Armeegruppe A would have been stopped in its tracks and, with it, the key component in the German plan of attack.
But the opportunity had been missed: another big black mark against Corap and his staff and the French High Command.
The Germans had not anticipated these traffic jams, as strict traffic orders had been put in place, and it was only because the infantry divisions, separate from Panzergruppe Kleist and not so well trained, had not stuck to the plan that these difficulties had arisen. That the spearhead would get to the Meuse in three days if all went according to plan was always going to be a tall order, but that General Reinhardt’s men reached Monthermé as well as Guderian’s troops reaching the Meuse was an absolutely extraordinary achievement, and was due to a masterpiece example of the German Bewegungskrieg.
The men of Panzergruppe Kleist unquestionably conformed to the German stereotype of myth: they were well trained, motivated, decently equipped and confident, and knew exactly what they had to do. Yet speed had been the name of the game in reaching the Meuse. Fighting quality would not add up to a hill of beans if the three panzer corps of Guderian, von Hoth and Reinhardt did not get there in three days and cross it in four, because if they took much longer the French reserves would beat them to it and reinforce this weak spot in the French front line.
With time at a premium, the logistics of the operation needed to be flawless. Luckily for them, the Panzergruppe’s Chief of Staff was the particularly able Oberst Kurt Zeitzler.
‘If ever the success of an operation depended on supplies,’ noted Zeitzler, ‘that is the case with our operation.’ With this in mind, he set about resolving one logistical headache after another. Logistics normally came under the logistics unit of the parent army command, but Zeitzler decided that because the Panzergruppe was to be operationally independent then it should be logistically independent too. Zeitzler called this the ‘Rucksack Prinzip’ – the ‘Rucksack Principle’. ‘To use an analogy relating to railway operations,’ he wrote, ‘you might say, the unit must no longer hand its supplies over to the next higher duty station for transportation. Instead, it must have its supplies with the train itself as a backpack or hand baggage.’
There were 41,400 vehicles in Panzergruppe Kleist, a very large number to cater for, and Zeitzler ensured that every single one was loaded to the maximum capacity with ammunition, rations and, most importantly, fuel. Very well-stocked fuel depots were set up from where the panzer groups formed up within Germany all the way to the Luxembourg border. Zeitzler insisted that every single vehicle – tank, truck or motorcycle – should be loaded full with fuel not only as it passed the Luxembourg border, but the Belgian border too. This was resolved by placing numerous fuel-carrying trucks into the spearhead. At key points, jerrycans were handed over to the crews as the vehicles drove past, and the vehicles were refuelled at the next rest or enforced stop. The empty jerrycans were left on the side of the road at designated points and then picked up and refilled at the next dump.
Another potential headache was the problem of repairs to this vast army of vehicles. All the more than 41,000 had to reach the Channel over 400 miles away, so they carried plenty of mechanics and spare parts, and there were planned air-drops of further supplies.
Leading the advance to the Meuse was 1. Panzerdivision, part of Guderian’s panzer corps. The Divisional Chief of Staff was Hauptmann Johann Graf von Kielmansegg, who knew what they were up against. ‘Every minute counts,’ Guderian repeatedly told his men, and that meant relentlessly pushing forward all day and all night. Von Kielmansegg took this to heart, organizing relief panzer crews to be transported in trucks so that the advance never need stop. Guderian had warned his men they would be unlikely to get any sleep for three nights, and so it proved for a large number of them. Once again, von Kielmansegg had thought ahead, packing some 20,000 tablets of an amphetamine called Pervitin to be handed out to anyone consumed by fatigue.
The slick execution of this operational plan, combined with a big dose of good fortune, had ensured that both Reinhardt and Guderian were ready to cross the Meuse on the 13th, not the 14th – that is, a day earlier than anticipated. A curious feature of the German attack was the repeated insubordination of senior commanders towards their superiors. Guderian, for one, was operating almost entirely in a bubble in which he was deaf to the wishes of von Kleist, for whom he had little time or respect. So he agreed to attack across the Meuse at 4 p.m. on 13 May but ignored von Kleist’s order to make the assault further north of Sedan.
To a certain extent, Guderian’s refusal to be tied to the orders of his superiors was nothing new. Rather like the plan itself, he was adhering to principles of command that had developed as a by-product of Bewegungskrieg. Because of the fast-moving nature of this form of warfare, a flexible system of command was essential, which meant lower-ranking commanders tended to be given a fair amount of leeway to use their initiative. Orders would focus on the objective, while those in the thick of it were left to their own devices as to how that objective could be best achieved. It was known as the ‘independence of the lower commander’, or, in German, Selbständigkeit der Unterführer. In more recent times, this has come to be called Auftragstaktik, or mission command, although this was not a term Germans would have been familiar with in 1940.
This independence of the lower commander applied to all ranks, from a lowly Gruppe, or section, commander, right up to a corps commander like Guderian. Certainly, Guderian felt he was in a far better position than von Kleist to decide both crossing points and the way in which his attack should be directed. He also knew the town well, for he had attended the German Staff College, which had been based there back in 1918; it was why he had opted for Sedan in the first place and why he was determined to use his local knowledge for what he considered the best crossing places. Guderian had also, quite independently, organized direct air support from the Luftwaffe, as not all his artillery had arrived. Calling an old friend, Generalleutnant Bruno Loerzer, commander of Fliegerkorps VIII, he had asked for a rolling barrage of wave after wave of Stukas and other bombers. The aim was to stun the French by near-constant attacks. To his horror, however, he then learned that von Kleist had ordered a different one-off massed attack from Loerzer’s superior, General Hugo Sperrle, commander of Luftflotte 3. ‘My whole attack,’ noted Guderian, ‘was thus placed in jeopardy.’
Guderian had clambered up a chalky hill a few miles to the south of Sedan from where he could see the attacks unfold. The Meuse was to be crossed in three places, one at precisely the same point as where German troops had attacked in 1870. It was with great anxiety that he peered through his binoculars waiting for the arrival of the Luftwaffe and for the attacks to start. Much to his enormous relief, however, when the first Stukas arrived, including those of Helmut Mahlke’s 2.St/186, it was to attack in exactly the way he had discussed with Loerzer rather than had been dictated to him by von Kleist. He later discovered that Loerzer had similarly ignored instructions from Sperrle.
Hurrying back down the hill, he headed for his command car and then the central crossing point at the suburb of Gaulier. Like Rommel, Guderian was very much a commander who led from the front and liked to be both in the thick of it and seen by his men.
In the air, it appeared the Luftwaffe was still very much in control. The ability to choose when to attack and in what numbers was proving an enormous advantage.
Among those witnessing this superiority at first hand was Squadron Leader Sydney Bufton, a career RAF pilot with a stack of experience after having been stationed in various corners of the world from Iraq to North Africa. He had recently completed the RAF’s Staff College course, and had then been posted to the Headquarters Staff of the Advanced Air Striking Force in France. However, within a few days of the German assault, months of careful co-ordination with both the French Army and the Armée de l’Air had been rapidly undone. At dawn on 14 May, for example, having been on duty all night at AASF’s HQ at Chauny, he had witnessed a mass of German bombers fly over and hit the large French military camp nearby. In response to this there was neither anti-aircraft fire nor any fighters of their own. The following night, he attempted to go to bed to the sound of an ammunition dump at Laon exploding. Then at 11.30 p.m., they were suddenly ordered to move. ‘All the work of the past nine months was undone,’ he wrote in his diary. The air effort had become completely dislocated – severed at the head.
This was why those sent to bomb Sedan on 13 May had been able to do so without interference. Escorting the bombers were fighter pilots of 2/JG2, including 23-year-old Siegfried Bethke. The escort to Sedan had been his third sortie of the day, but they had still barely seen an enemy plane. ‘We’re almost disappointed,’ he scribbled in his journal. Circling around and watching Stukas dive-bombing was not how he had imagined it would be.
One person who might have gladly swapped places was Billy Drake, who, along with the rest of 1 Squadron RAF, had had more than enough action. He now had four and a half confirmed kills – five would qualify him as an ‘ace’ – and was on yet another sortie when he began suffering oxygen supply problems and so told the others he was returning to base. Losing height to avoid the need for oxygen, he spotted a flight of Dorniers, flew up behind them and shot one out of the sky. He was watching it spiral down in flames when suddenly there was a loud crack and a brief moment later flames were engulfing his Hurricane. Desperately glancing around, he realized he had an Me110 Zerstörer on his tail and still firing.
Panicking, he frantically undid his radio leads and unclipped his harness but then couldn’t remember how to open the canopy. Covered in petrol and glycol, he knew he had to get out and fast, and as he tugged on the canopy the Hurricane flipped over of its own accord so that the flames were suddenly drawn away from him. Finally, the canopy opened, and he dropped out. ‘Still the 110 was shooting at me,’ he noted, ‘and then he was past and gone.’ He pulled the ripcord on his parachute, it billowed open and he floated gently to earth. He was very, very lucky to be alive. The fuel tanks in the Hurricanes were in the wing roots and once the machine guns had been fired, air whistled through the gun ports. If the fuel tanks were hit, this would fan the flames straight into the cockpit. Pilots had a matter of seconds to escape. Drake had also been wounded in the leg and back. Only a short while before, 1 Squadron pilots had added armour plating behind the cockpit – at the insistence of the CO, ‘Bull’ Halahan. Unbeknown to Drake at the time, a bullet had hit the armour plating at head level. Without it, he would have been dead.
As it happened, he landed on friendly ground and, despite being fair and slightly Germanic in appearance, was able to persuade the French farmers who arrived on the scene that he was English. Taken to hospital in Chartres and later back to England, he was, for the time being at any rate, one less RAF pilot for the Germans to worry about.
As dusk fell on 13 May, at Dinant, at Monthermé and at Sedan, German troops had not only successfully crossed the mighty Meuse but had made firm bridgeheads. At Sedan, all three crossings had linked up, but it was the action of Oberstleutnant Hermann Balck and his exhausted men of 1. Rifle Regiment that sealed the day. Their objective for the day had been Hill 301, a dominant position overlooking the entire town on which much of the French artillery was dug in. Balck had fought in the last war and remembered a time when they had failed to exploit a hard-won encounter at Mount Kemmel to their cost. ‘What was easy today,’ he urged his men, ‘could cost a lot of blood tomorrow.’ It was an inspired piece of leadership, as his men, exhausted but sensing victory, stormed the hill. By 10.30 p.m., it was in German hands. Below, Sedan was burning and, behind, the French troops were fleeing, panicked into believing the panzers were already across and running amok; in fact, the crossings had been achieved by the German infantry alone.
But the panzers would be there by the following morning. Overnight, ferries would carry over more men and materiel, bridges would be built, and then the panzers and trucks and armoured cars and artillery of those ten mechanized divisions of Armeegruppe A would stream across and in behind France’s defences.
Very early the following morning, 14 May, at General Headquarters at the Château Montry, Capitaine André Beaufre had only just got to sleep when he was awoken by a telephone call from Général Georges.
‘Ask Général Doumenc to come here at once,’ Georges told him.
An hour later, at around 3 a.m., they arrived at Georges’s HQ at Château Bondons, which was more like a large villa set on a hill. All was dark except the large drawing room, which was dimly lit but had been turned into a map room, with trestle tables around the edge at which staff officers were typing and fielding calls. The atmosphere, thought Beaufre, was that of a family in which there had been a death.
Immediately, Georges stood up and came over to Doumenc. ‘Our front has been broken at Sedan! There has been a collapse . . .’ He then flung himself into a chair and burst into tears. ‘He was the first man I had seen weep in this campaign,’ noted Beaufre. ‘It made a terrible impression on me.’
Doumenc tried to reassure him, but Georges explained that the two divisions at Sedan were now fleeing. He then collapsed into more tears. The room was otherwise silent – all were shattered not only by the stunning news but by the sight of their commander in pieces. Doumenc tried to bring some calm. The gap, he said, had to be stopped. There were three armoured divisions, all of which could be redirected towards the Meuse. These three divisions, amounting to some 600 modern and powerful tanks, could be concentrated and drive the Germans back across the river. There was much in what he said. The German benefit of surprise had now gone, they would be exhausted, and they would have to rapidly enlarge their bridgeheads with men and weapons to ensure they hung on to them. The race wasn’t over – in fact, a new one had just begun, and the French, now fully alerted, had a very good opportunity to win this time around. Georges agreed to all Doumenc’s suggestions. Beaufre relit all the lamps, ordered coffee all round, and then they headed back. Even so, Beaufre couldn’t help fearing the worst. ‘All our doctrine was founded on faith in the value of defence,’ he noted, ‘and now, at the first blow, our position organized over nine months broke into little pieces. This revelation struck chill.’
Throughout that day, Beaufre’s worst fears began to be realized. The counter-attack by 3rd Armoured Division, the unit closest to Sedan, was postponed – orders had been slow to reach them, as had the further orders within the division and its various units. They had simply not been ready. And all the while news kept arriving of further gains for the Germans. There had been other French armoured units in the Sedan area, but although they had had less distance to travel than the German panzers and were on the right side of the river, and even though the first panzers did not cross the Meuse at Sedan until 7.45 a.m. on the 14th, it was the Germans who were lying in wait for the French, not the other way round. The French Army had an operational speed that was slow and methodical. Nothing, not even the threat of complete collapse, it seemed, could alter that.
On the same day the Meuse was crossed, President Roosevelt had met Henry Morgenthau Jr, the Secretary of the Treasury, and General George C. Marshall, the Chief of Staff of the US Army, for a meeting at the White House. Marshall was fifty-nine, with the best part of forty years’ military service under his belt. He had served in the American–Philippine War, and in the Great War, had been posted to France, first as a trainer and then later on had joined the planning staff of General Pershing, the Commander-in-Chief of US forces in France, where he made quite a name for himself during the important Meuse-Argonne offensive during the last months of the war.
Remaining in the US Army, Marshall had served in China, taught at the War College and had later been assigned to the War Plans Division in Washington. By the summer of 1939, he had risen to Deputy Chief of Staff and was then promoted to the top job, being sworn in on the very day Germany invaded Poland. Intelligent, calm and soft-spoken, Marshall possessed both an inner steel and a clear, logical mind. As an administrator he had already proved himself to be exceptional, but, like Roosevelt, he was keenly aware how poor America’s defences were. For several months he had been trying to persuade key figures in Congress and the Government of the need to increase defence spending. He had also put his case to Henry Morgenthau, but for men like the Secretary of the Treasury, who had been almost solely concerned with domestic issues, the world of dramatic rearmament was something new and involved dizzyingly high sums of money at a time when America had very little to spare. He was, however, supportive of Marshall, but knew the only option was to take the matter to the President. That the Germans had launched their attack a few days earlier was very much to Marshall’s advantage.
Also attending were the isolationist Secretary of War, Harry Woodring, and the ineffective Secretary of the Navy, Charles Edison. The debate quickly became heated, and neither Morgenthau nor Marshall was getting through, until eventually Morgenthau asked FDR to listen to the Chief of Staff.
‘I know exactly what he would say,’ Roosevelt replied. ‘There is no necessity for me to hear him at all.’
At this, Marshall got up, strode over to Roosevelt’s chair and said with quiet authority, ‘Mr President,’ he said, ‘can I have three minutes?’
Apparently disarmed, Roosevelt agreed, and Marshall then presented the President with some blunt truths. It was time, Marshall pointed out, for the President to make some tough decisions. The Army was in a woeful state. It really is hard not to overplay just how moribund the US armed forces were in May 1940. The Army’s equipment was out of date, in terms of troop numbers it was tiny, and it was in no position whatsoever to confront the Germans. There were just a few hundred tanks, and no anti-tank guns whatsoever, and there was a shortage of mortars, machine guns and other essential weaponry. The Army Air Corps had just 160 fighters – or pursuit planes, as the Americans called them – and fifty-two heavy bombers. These were as good as nothing. The Navy was also in a bad way, with an antiquated structure and no central means of procurement. Roosevelt had increased naval shipbuilding since 1936, but it was not enough. If Japan decided to go to war against them too – and Japan’s imperial ambitions were becoming all too evident – then the US would be powerless to stop it. Fighting a war on a two-ocean front was unthinkable.
What Marshall urged Roosevelt to do was not only demand far greater spending on rearmament, but also to gather together a group of industrialists to help advise the government on how to achieve massive rearming as quickly as possible. Because, Marshall made clear, getting the cash was only half of it. Even more challenging was going to be mobilizing American industry for war. The US Army had only six working arsenals manufacturing weapons, and much of the machinery was both old and obsolete. The time for paying lip service to the isolationists was over; the US needed to act, and act fast. ‘If you don’t do something,’ Marshall told him, ‘and do it right away, I don’t know what’s going to happen to the country.’
Further warnings of doom had come from the new British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. At the outbreak of war, Roosevelt had written to Churchill asking to keep informally in touch with him personally. The two had met – albeit only once before – back in July 1918, when Roosevelt, as Assistant Secretary to the Navy, had been in London on a fact-finding mission and had attended a dinner for the War Cabinet; Churchill had not impressed Roosevelt, while the Prime Minister had forgotten the encounter altogether. In other words, the two knew about each other, but that was all. On 15 May, the day after Marshall’s entreaty, Churchill wrote his sixth letter to the President. ‘The small countries,’ he wrote, ‘are simply smashed up, one by one, like matchwood.’ He painted a darker picture than Churchill believed to be really the case, and warned of an imminent invasion of Britain. ‘But I trust you realize, Mr President, that the voice and force of the United States may count for nothing if they are withheld too long.’ He asked for more direct support in terms of arms and war materiel, and particularly the loan of forty or fifty old destroyers to bridge the gap while British shipyards made up the shortfall. He also pointed out the need to purchase steel from the US now that Britain’s traditional markets in North Africa and Sweden were threatened. Roosevelt, who accepted that US security was directly linked to Britain’s survival, responded the next day with as much encouragement as he dared.
And on that same day, 16 May, and bucked further by polls suggesting the public was warming to the idea that the US needed to adequately rearm, the President addressed Congress and asked not for the $24 million increase to the Army budget that had been originally put forward, but a staggering $1.2 billion, and to increase both the Army’s and the Navy’s air forces to some 50,000 aeroplanes. US aircraft manufacturers had produced just 2,100 military aircraft in 1939. ‘These are ominous days,’ he told a joint session of Congress. ‘The American people must recast their thinking about national protection.’ The generally isolationist Congress, shocked by what was happening in Europe, not only applauded the speech, but approved the President’s request. It was a start – a step closer towards all-out rearmament.
Meanwhile, in France, the Germans had been enlarging their bridgehead west of the River Meuse. Guderian had once again ignored orders from von Kleist to wait to build up forces before advancing, although on this occasion it had been 1. Panzerdivision’s Chief of Staff, Major Wenck, who helped make up his mind by reminding him of one of his favourite sayings: ‘Boot them, don’t slap them!’ ‘That really answered my question,’ he admitted. Ordering 10. Panzerdivision to protect the bridgehead, he ordered 1. and 2. Panzer to head west – towards the Channel coast.
At any rate, there was no French counter-attack of any note along the Sedan front on 14 May, allowing the Germans the breathing space to get more forces across the river without much hindrance. An Allied bomber attack on Sedan was massacred, while, at Dinant, Panzerkorps Hoth continued to press forward. Hans von Luck was amazed to keep seeing Rommel among them and in the thick of the fighting, but his divisional commander had told them repeatedly, ‘Keep going, don’t look to left or right, only forward. I’ll cover your flanks if necessary. The enemy is confused; we must take advantage of it.’
Even so, they would not have had such an easy time of it had the French 1st Armoured Division, on standby near Charleroi, got moving sooner. Again, the French were proving they simply could not operate with speed. In fact, the division was not even ordered forward until 2 p.m. on the 14th and then found itself battling against roads crammed with fleeing civilians. It managed twenty miles then leaguered for the night. Unbeknown to them, Rommel’s lead panzers were also corralled for the night just a few miles away. By morning, the Luftwaffe had attacked and destroyed several French fuel convoys, and the French tanks were laboriously refuelling one tank after the other. The German refuelling method was completely different. Rather than using fuel bowsers, trucks would motor from tank to tank, with men dishing out large numbers of jerrycans so that the panzers could be refuelled at the same time. At any rate, the lead tanks of the French 1st Armoured were caught out while still refuelling. After knocking out a number, Rommel ordered his lead units to push on, leaving 5. Panzerdivision to take on the French.
The French 1st Armoured had better tanks with better guns, but they were still destroyed that day. At dawn they had had 170 tanks; by evening just thirty-six. The following morning, that figure had dwindled to just sixteen. What had done for them was not the German panzers but the panzers’ radios and German anti-tank guns. Some French tanks – but not all – had radios, but most of them had broken down because they were equipped with weak batteries. In contrast, all panzers had modern radio equipment and were able to communicate with each other and their anti-tank artillery units. In a nutshell, the panzers acted either in packs, beetling about and hammering their flanks all at once, or as bait, luring the French heavy tanks into a waiting anti-tank screen.
That same day, Panzerkorps Reinhardt also broke out of its bridgehead at Monthermé and charged thirty miles west, an astonishing achievement considering only 6. Panzerdivision had actually made it across the Meuse – the rest of the corps were still languishing in the traffic mayhem of the Ardennes. The next morning, 16 May, 6th Panzer met up with Guderian and 1st Panzer at Montcornet, some fifty miles west of Sedan. The audacious plan could not have gone better. The entire Meuse Front had completely collapsed, and the stunning German victory had been achieved by just six panzer divisions – three at Sedan, one at Monthermé and two at Dinant.
Now they had to complete the encirclement.