190: Stonne and Flavignys Failure

Description

After the failures of the first counterattacks by forces available to Lafontaine, the French would have another opportunity, this time with 3 divisions under the command of General Flavigny.

Listen

Transcript

Rethel = Rothel (long o) Brocard = Brocar Stonne = Stonna colmatage = just like it is spelled, short a Flavigny = Flaveegnee

Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War Episode 190 - The Fall of France - Stonne and Flavigny’s Failure. This week a big thank you goes out to coin_walk_dualizer, George, and Charles for choosing to support the podcast by becoming members. They now get access to ad-free versions of all of the podcast’s episodes plus special member only episodes once a month. This month’s episode is on the design and development of the Hawker Hurricane. If that sounds interesting to you head over to historyofthesecondworldwar.com/members to find out more. When considering the French reaction to the German bridgeheads over the Meuse it is important to make a distinction between what they were trying to do and what they actually did. This is because the basic theory behind their reaction, which they called colmatage, which translates into English as plugging, sealing, or clogging, was to send units forward to seal off any German penetrations to halt their advance and then maybe even to roll back some of their gains through counterattacks. While there were always some variance, this is almost exactly how every other army at this time would have reacted to what was happening. They even had the reserves positioned at the divisional, corps, army, and army group levels to make this happen, as we have discussed on two different occasions over the last two episodes. So if the theory was sound, why did they fail, failures that this episode will also discuss? The problem was one of execution, particularly by the French motorized and mechanized divisions. Because of the nature of the German breakthroughs the French troops best prepared to counteract them were the French armored and motorized units, but they had a problem, they were equipped with vehicles that in many cases were completely unable to fulfill this function. The Char B1 tanks that most of the counterattacking units were equipped with were hopelessly slow at moving around the battlefield, requiring constant fueling and maintenance. This made it very challenging for the French units to react quick enough to the situation at any given moment, which provided a tremendous advantage to the German units who were largely equipped with more mobile vehicles. An interesting parallel could be drawn to the changes in the Panzer divisions throughout the war, because while they started off the war with some of the most mobile tanks on the battlefield by the time that late war designs like the Tiger was in use they would suffer from the same problems as the French did in 1940. It turns out that very large heavy tanks which get poor fuel mileage, have limited mobility due to their weight, and have a tendency to break down will always have a challenging time trying to react to a more mobile opponent. What did not help the situation was the fact that at the highest level of French command there was a general denial about how dire the situation truly was, with Gamelin referring to the German troops at Sedan as ‘merely a local interlude’ as late as May 14th. This was problematic because while there were counterattack forces pre-positioned for all of the French units in the area, there were a finite number of them in the area, and once they had been committed it was critical that more units flow in to fill the gaps left by those that had already been used. Those troops could only come from French high command, and if they were going to be moved it had to be quickly due to the mobility challenges that they were having. Last episode covered the failed counterattacks launched by General LaFontaine near Sedan on May 14th, but even before those counterattacks were a failure additional French counterattack divisions were being ordered to move into position to launch the next round of French attacks. If Lafontaine’s counterattacks had went well, and had stopped the German advance, these troops would then push the Germans back to the Meuse, if it went poorly which it did, they would be the next units pushed into the breach.

This next set of French forces that were moving forward was the XXI (21st) Corps under the command of General Jean-Adolphe-Louis-Robert Flavigny. The 21st Corps had started the war as merely a corps on paper, with no divisions actually assigned to it, and it simply being a Corps headquarters awaiting actual divisions. Eventually three divisions would be provided to the corps, the 3rd Armored, the 3rd Motorized, and the 5th Light Cavalry Division. Flavigny was widely considered to be France’s expert on armored warfare, and he had been given the command of the three divisions and much was expected of him. These divisions had been positioned on the northern edge of the Maginot Line due to the French belief that one of the primary goals of any German attack at Sedan would be to sweep south to get behind the line of French defenses. This fear, that the Germans would try to outflank the Maginot Line, was a major contributor to why the French forces south of Sedan were some of the best equipped and trained French forces that were not driving into Central Belgium. Unfortunately this was not really the case for the 21st Corps. The three divisions that made up the unit were in a rough state for many reasons. The 3rd Armored division had only been formed in March 1940, which did not give the division very much time to gel together and train. It was also missing some of the key elements of an armored division, particularly when it came to maintenance units, which was quite problematic given the relative lack of reliability of the French vehicles. When looking at the divisions order of battle about the only thing that it was not short of was tanks, which was good, if they could successfully deployed into battle. To give a good example of the state of the 3rd Armored we can look at the French Army’s own decision on May 10th to not even put the division on alert, and instead allow it to continue its training regimen due to fear that disrupting that training would simply further delay the division’s ability to grow into a fully functional piece of the French Army. The 5th Light Cavalry division had much more training and experience, and had even been involved in the earlier fighting against the German forces as they advanced across southern Belgium. Unfortunately these actions had cost the division many of its men and much of its material which had greatly eroded its combat power. So the 3rd motorized was the only unit that was really fully prepared for the operation ahead, but at the very least they were positioned in a decent area, with their holding position being behind the northern areas of the Maginot Line. This placed the 21st Corps in an excellent position to attack north and into the left flank of Guderian’s forces that were advancing out of Sedan. At 7PM on the 13th, just a few hours after the first of Guderian’s forces crossed the river they were given an order to prepare for a counterattack with the 3rd Motorized and 3rd Armored along with the 5th Light Cavalry division. Then at around midnight they were given their official orders, with the plan being for them to advance to to a line centered on the village of Stonne, and from there to launch a counterattack directly into Sedan. These orders from above were translated by Flavigny’s headquarters into orders that would head down the chain of command to his forces, and these were issued at 4AM on the 14th under the title Operations Order Number 1. This basic outline for the attack, with the French units first moving up into a position to halt the German advance before they drove deeper into the German bridgehead was a completely reasonable approach to the operation. However, it was one that generally played into the hands of the Germans for two reasons. The first was that the French units that had already tried to counterattack had proven how difficult it could be to launch two successive attacks, with the disorganization present in any attempt to stop the German advance causing issues when the units tried to then launch another attack. The second was that French doctrine called for a relatively methodical approach to any attack, which would allow the Germans more time to respond to French actions, and the Germans were so very good at responding to French action.

Regardless of any problems experienced by the French, or the inexperience of the units involved the equipment that was committed to the attack was nothing to scoff at. Between his various forces, and remember that the 5th Light Cavalry division also had a good number of the smaller Hotchkiss tanks, Flavigny had over 300 tanks at his disposal. They would be facing far more German tanks than that, which all of the tanks under Guderian’s command were taken into account, but the numbers were not nearly as bad as you might expect. Over the course of the fist 5 days of the campaign many of the German tanks had either been disabled in combat or were unavailable due to maintenance problems. This meant that at the time of the French attack there were probably under about 875 functional tanks in Guderian’s Panzer Corps. On top of this, many of those were Panzer Mark I’s, which were no match for the French forces, and many of the tanks were doing other things rather than waiting to meet the French attack. It was really only the 10th Panzer which was positioned to counter the French threat, with the 1st and 2nd Panzers either preparing to or were already moving west. This was both a good and a bad thin for the French at that moment. The good news was that the German bridgehead would never be weaker than it was when the French were going to attack, with troops still streaming across the river but two of the three German armored divisions not dedicated to its defense. The only troops really positioned to stop the French were the 10th Panzer and then Infantry Regiment Grossdeutschland which had already been involved in the heavy fighting during the crossings. The bad news was that if the counterattack failed, they would be in much greater danger because they had used their strongest counterattack force to attack the bridgehead instead of trying to halt the advance of the 1st and 2nd Panzer. It was a gamble. It would not pay off.

One of the reasons that it would not pay off was because it would be delayed. The original plan was for Flavigny’s counterattack to begin in the late morning of May 14th, but even this was a compromise, with Flavigny originally hoping that it could begin even earlier. However, he was talked into a delay until 1100 due to how long it would take to refuel and prepare all of his vehicles. The delay would allow about 4 hours for the units to refuel and then 2 hours for them to move forward to their jumping off points. General Brocard, the commander of the 3rd Armored division, immediately registered his concern that his forces would not be ready on that timeframe. His forces had not even fully moved out of the area around Reims and so they needed hours before they would even arrive at the refueling point, and only then could the process really begin. The biggest problem was that most of the division had to move forward 50 kilometers before they could even begin the process of resupply, and then another advance of 15 kilometers to their jumping off points. All of that movement would take additional time. This meant that the earlier that the attack could happen was 4PM, a full additional 5 hours of delay. I have already discussed at length the problem of the fuel consumption of the French Char B1 tanks, but just to add some additional depth there, this short range was a known problem, but the additional fuel tank that had originally been in its design was cut out to reduce costs. And the fuel consumption problem was compounded by the fact that the batteries in the tank could only be charged by the engine, which meant that if the crews wanted to use things like the radio, a pretty important bit of kit, they had to keep the engine running. Oh, and finally, the fuel that these tanks used was not just a normal gasoline or diesel, but instead it had to be high grade fuel which was also used in aircraft engines, which made resupply even more challenging because they could not just dump in what was used by all of the other vehicles. All of these challenges just forced a delay, although Flavigny insisted that everything be done as fast as possible, with the new launch time of the attack being 1300 hours.

This new deadline would once again prove to be too optimistic, as it would fly by without the French attack being launched. The 3rd Armored division was simply too slow to be in position and as the hours drug on without any option Flavigny was faced with a choice. He would continue with the plan to launch the counterattack on the 14th or he could delay until the 15th. If he attacked on the 14th it was very likely that the attack would not even begin until the early evening which would result in fighting in the dark. Due to the fear of the chaos that such an action could cause among the French forces, Flavigny instead decided to delay the attack until early on the 15th. This decision was not taken lightly, but given the actions of the 3rd Division on the 14th, and their apparent lack of real vigor to get into the fighting, Flavigny was concerned that a disorganized attack would be an abject failure. And so instead the forces under his command would dispersed into defensive positions for the night, with the goal of an attack the next day. Flavigny has come under a lot of criticism for this decision, as many see this exact moment and this exact decision, made in the afternoon of the 14th as the last real chance that the French had to halt the developing disaster. He would later say that he made the decision because disaster was exactly what he was trying to avoid. The risks, in his opinion, was simply too high saying later in the war that “It seemed impossible to make the counterattack…before night…. An attack led by weak, poorly trained troops seemed to me to be doomed to a failure that could have compromised the defense of Mont Dieu.” This is one of those decisions where Flavigny is not wrong, it is very possible that the counterattack could have been a disaster, but by delaying it he also helped to ensure the disaster of the days that followed. All of this was compounded by the fact that the forces of the 3rd Armored were spread out into a series of defensive lines, and they would never be concentrated again, which sacrificed whatever benefit such a strong French armored formation could have provided. The attack was a risk, but it was a risk that the French Army desperately needed Flavigny to take, even if it had a high chance of failure.

The failure of the French attack was critical to the success of the attacks of Guderian’s forces, even though his strongest mobile forces were already on the move to the west. It was still important that the left flank of the advance be guarded, with the threat of a French counterattack always present and concerning. To try and minimize the problem was to push further south with the 10th Panzer Division with the goal of the areas around the village of Stonne. The hope was that the German line could be anchored on the high ground around Stonne, which would allow the 10th Panzer to quickly be replaced by other forces so that it could rejoin the 1st and 2nd divisions in their movement to the west. However, the future of those movements west were in doubt by the morning of the 15th. This doubt all came back to the disagreements between the different groups of German generals and how they each believed that the attack should develop after the river was crossed. There were some influential members of German high command that advocated for a more cautious strategy, and they wanted Guderian’s forces to focus on just holding the bridgehead until infantry arrived. Only after those infantry forces arrived would they then begin another attack with the armored forces. In this case it would be the other group, led by Guderian who advocated for an immediate attack with the 1st and 2nd Panzer that would win the argument, thanks partially to the support of General Halder. There argument was a good one, because an immediate attack would allow the Germans to keep the initiative and to keep the French off balance. If they halted, even for a few days, it was very possible that the French would have time to rush in reinforcements to solidify the front and then they would have to execute a costly breakthrough attack. I keep bringing up these disagreements, and they will resurface multiple times in the next few episodes because in many ways it would be the defining factor of the German campaign after the armored forces had successfully crossed the Meuse. On one side you had the more aggressive generals who wanted to push forward as quickly as possible, while at the same time some officers argued for caution, out of concern that the rapidly advancing armored spearheads could be cut off by French counter attack. These arguments would become much more complicated once Hitler would get involved in the days after May 15th. All of that would be in the future though, when on the afternoon of May 14th, with Flavigny still trying to get his counterattack sorted out, Guderian would order the 1st and 2nd Panzer divisions to attack west towards Rethel, an advance of around 40 kilometers and the first step of many in the days that would follow, leading eventually to the English Channel.

While the German armored divisions were already moving, on the morning of May 15th another French counterattack was planned using the forces that Flavigny had brought forward the day before. Huntziger would give the orders to Flavigny at about 8:30AM on the morning of the 15th, and then Flavigny brought together the commanders of the 3rd Armored Division and 3rd Motorized Infantry Division which he had under his command. This meeting then did not occur until 10 AM, and at that meeting the deadline for the attack was set for 2PM. And you are never going to guess what happened, it got delayed. First to 4PM, then against to 6:30PM, and then at 6:15 it was cancelled. There were two core problems that once again caused another possible French counterattack to be delayed and then cancelled. Fuel was once again a challenge, for all of the same reasons that it was the day before, with the commander of the 3rd Armor General Brocard saying that “Suicide mission or no suicide mission—the tanks cannot move without gas.” Just as importantly after the final cancellation of the attack on the 14th the forces had been widely dispersed into defensive positions, and concentrating them back together just took more time than expected. It simply took time for orders to be passed around and then for the physical movement of men and machine, particularly in situations where fuel was already a problem. The second major problem was the fact that by the time that the orders started to go out for the counterattack, some of the units that were supposed to launch that counterattack were already fighting Germans. We will discuss some of that fighting here in just a moment, but it was of course always challenging for units to disengage from the fighting and prepare for a counterattack somewhere else. The failure of Flavigny’s forces to do anything would receive a lot of criticism, and General Brocard would be made the scapegoat being relieved of command of the 3rd Armored. But there is plenty of blame to go around throughout the entirety of French command around the Sedan area, leading the British author Len Deighton to say, that the French Army “had been defeated by its own commanders” which I think about sums things up.

Because of the French failures to launch their counterattack, and the German desire to secure the left flank of the advance of the two armored divisions moving west, the two sides would become heavily involved in fighting around the village of Stonne. The village was located on the heavily wooded Mont-Dieu which was a high ridge about 15 kilometers to the south of Sedan and one that presented both sides with a relatively commanding position. Stonne is located on the steepest part of the ridge, and it would be the focus of the fighting in the days that followed. Over the course of May 15 to 17 the village itself would change hands 17 times, with the fighting devolving into the kind of positional slugfest that had been the norm during the First World War. This fighting was purely a consequence of the failure of the French to launch a counter attack, because this was one of the areas that the French counterattack forces had been dispersed to once the attack on the 14th had been cancelled. The units who had moved into the area had occupied a variety of positions in the area, including within the village of Stonne with the goal of preventing any further German advances. They would be tested early in the day on May 15th when the first German units of the Grossdeutschland Regiment attacked with the support of tanks of the 8th Panzer Regiment. What happened next was a fitting introduction to the fighting that followed, because as the German tanks moved forward in a column they would very quickly lose 7 tanks. This damage was done by just a few French anti-tank guns that had been positioned to protect the approaches to Stonne. One of these anti-tank guns would quickly knock out three Panzer IV tanks as soon as they started to approach. Even with these successes, the French defenders were heavily outnumbered and outgunned and the Germans would continue to attack eventually pushing into Stonne by 8AM. Then the two sides would fight over the village for most of the morning with control passing back and forth several times in the hours that followed. In one of these instances, at around 11AM, a strong force of French tanks of three different tank battalions would be joined by infantry forces in a counterattack. At that time Stonne was only held by infantry forces of Grossdeutschland, and they had brought up a total of 9 anti-tank guns. There was just one problem, those anti-tank guns were not powerful enough to stop the French Char B tanks. The Char Bs were not the only tanks in the attack, and some of the more lightly armored French tanks were at risk, but the presence of the massive and seemingly invincible Chars caused a serious crisis of confidence among the German infantry. This would result in the French retaking the village once again. But then a large portion of the French tanks were pulled out of the area around Stonne during the afternoon because of Flavigny’s attempts to concentrate his forces for the abortive counterattack that he was supposed to launch. This then allowed the Germans to retake the village, as the French tank forces were a major reason that they were able to hold onto their gains. The fighting for Stonne would follow in the days after the 15th, with it primarily being an infantry fight as French and German reinforcements arrived, including the newly arrived 16th and 24th German infantry divisions. By the time that these new forces arrived they could see the impact of the fighting that had already occurred, with buildings damaged and the remains of over 50 French and German tanks scattered in and around Stonne. While it was another French defeat, it was also another good example of how well the French forces could fight if they were properly prepared and in position. They had inflicted serious losses on the German forces that they had fought at Stonne, but unfortunately this tactical victory was not a success that could turn the course of the campaign.