191: Breakouts

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After the failure of the French counter attacks there was only one path forward, to the west.

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Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War Episode 192 - The Fall of France - Breakouts. This week a big thank you goes out to Neil and Sean for choosing to support the podcast by becoming members. Members can get access to ad free versions of the podcast episodes and member only episodes released once a month. Head on over to historyofthesecondworldwar.com/members to find out more. After the Germans had crossed the Meuse, and had beaten back the early French counterattacks on the 14th, and then had secured their positions by bringing more and more troops across the river there are kind of two different stories about what was supposed to happen next. Among a certain group of German commanders the plan was always to push forward as quickly as possible, with men like Guderian and Rommel immediately looking for how they could start towards their ultimate objective of reaching the coast to cut off the French and British forces in Belgium. But above and below this groups of divisional and corps leaders there were many who believed that things were going to calm down for at least a few days after the crossing. Closer to the front even some of the officers who were in positions to know the plans for future movements were a bit unclear about what was to happen next, with the official journal of the 1st Panzer division stating as late as May 9th that “After the breakthrough [at the Meuse], a bridgehead is supposed to be built immediately to permit the crossing of further forces that are supposed to roll up the enemy’s fortifications lines while turning towards the west.” Along the chain of command, reaching from the front all the way up to Hitler there were many leaders who believed that it was essential that the advances of the armored forces be stopped so that infantry forces could catch up and secure their flanks. Between the 14th and 16th of May 1940, it would be the hard charging Generals that would get to dictate the path forward for the advance, and this episode will discuss the continuing attacks of all the bridgeheads that had been built by the Panzer divisions.

After the crossing of the Meuse the next major obstacle for the Germans was the Ardennes canal which runs roughly north and south to the west of the Meuse at Sedan. French forces hoped that, even if the counterattacks failed they would still be able to reform a defensive line along the canal, but already on the morning of May 14th the Germans were destroying this hope. This was because small groups of the 1st and 2nd Panzer divisions were already fanning out and charging hard for various bridges along the canal. Several of them would then fall into German hands throughout the day on May 14th, with the biggest problem being the fact that the captured bridges were quite widely dispersed ranging from Pont à Bar on the northernmost side of the canal down to Chémery 10 kilometers to the south. The capture of the bridges would set up both Panzer divisions for their next advance, but the French were at least already trying to prepare to meet that advance. Back during the night of the 13th, just hours after the Germans had crossed the river, General Georges had taken the steps to prepare this line of defenses, just in case the counterattacks that he also ordered failed. This meant that at roughly the same time there were three different groups of French reinforcements moving into position to make their attacks. There were the Army reserves that had been given to Lafontaine for the initial counterattack on the 14th, then the three divisions given to Flavigny for the aborted counterattack on the 14th, and then behind both of those Georges moved the 6th Army into position. This Army, commanded by General Touchon had originally been positioned in southern France along the border with Italy, but it was decided to try and move it as quickly as possible into an area behind and between the 2nd and 9th Armies which had been hit hard by the German armored units on the 13th. The movement of an entire army would take time, but such movements had been done many times during the First World War to great effect, and the gaol was to move them north as quickly as possible. To give Touchon added strength the Sixth Army was also given the 2nd Armored division and the 14th Infantry division, both considered to be top quality. These actions are important, not just because they would shape the fighting in the days that followed but also because it tells us something about how French actions during this time period should be evaluated. In this moment of crisis the things that the French were doing were not wrong, arranging multiple counter attacks, some that could move immediately, others that would take more time, and then planning for the possibility of failure by bringing in even more forces was a good idea. Then committing forces like the 2nd Armored from the operational reserve that Georges had built was again a great idea. It was not the concepts or the ideas that were bad for the French, but instead simply the fact that they could not react fast enough to what was happening. The Sixth Army would not arrive in time to stand in front of the German Panzer divisions, to save the 2nd and 9th Armies from disaster. Instead it would only be able to slowly move north and by the time that it arrive all it could do was prevent the Germans from advancing south of the Aisne river. But by that point crossing the river was far down the list of German priorities and they were instead hard charging northwest towards the coast. The Sixth Army would simply be too late to make a difference.

And the reason that they would be too late were the movements of all of the German armored divisions on the 14th, 15th, and 16th. The 1st and 2nd panzer divisions were beginning to push beyond the Ardennes Canal and move west, and slightly south, to the village of Rethel. But between them and Rethel was terrain that was not exactly conducive to quick armored movements, and there were still French units that were fighting hard to prevent the Germans from accomplishing their goals. This fighting including instances like at the village of La Horgne, where the 1st Rifle Regiment which had been so important to the crossing of the Meuse would experience its most costly days of the campaign. This was mostly possible due to the commitment of more units of French reserves and most importantly they brought with them heavier equipment. The units of the 3rd Spahis Brigade were able to get 2 anti-tank guns, four mortars, and 11 machine guns in place before the Germans arrived. This gave them the firepower to hold back the first German infantry attacks, and it was only after the 1st Panzer division had brought up more artillery and tanks that they were able to push through La Horgne, but bringing up that equipment took time. The French forces were certainly not giving up, even if they were constantly in positions that had to be abandoned to the Germans. In general it was a day of just really hard fighting for the exhausted 1st Panzer division, but the 2nd Panzer had it slightly easier to the north mostly due to slightly different terrain that made it easier for the Germans to bring their greater numbers and firepower to bear. While these advances were being made, with the belief that if they could just push through the French forces in front of them then they would be able to breakthrough into more open country, orders back at Kleist’s headerquarters were starting to get confusing. Late on the 15th the orders given to Kleist were that after his Panzer forces had crossed the river and expanded their bridgeheads they were, under all circumstances to halt. This would set the stage for the first major disagreement among the German commanders, although it would not really come to a head until the 17th. This is because even though Kleist had been told to halt, on the 16th he gave his order of the day which was to continue all of the advances of the previous day. But then late on the 16th there was a major change, with a new order sent down that Guderian’s forces, along with the other forwardmost units were to halt immediately.

While there were major French counterattack efforts that were launched against Guderian’s forces near Sedan, the same was not really the case for the Panzer divisions that had crossed further north. The 6th Panzer division, part of the Corps commanded by General Reinhardt had crossed the Meuse at Monthermé and then after some hard fighting had managed to break out of the areas right around the river. Once that happened, they were off to the races and the troops of the 6th Panzer had advanced 55 kilometers during the afternoon of May 15th to reach the town of Montcornet. This represented a major failing for the French 9th Army, which should have had troops in positions to react to such a German attack, but they did not. It was such a failing that on the night of May 14th, even before the major advance had been made the next day, the command of the 9th Army General Corap was replaced by General Giraud, who had previously commanded the 7th Army. This is actually why, if you look at a map of the invasion of France you might see the 9th Army labeled with either Corap’s or Giraud’s name as the commander. Corap was in command when the German invasion started, and when they crossed the Meuse, but the switch was made quite early in the campaign. But just changing the commander, no matter who the old or new commanders were, could not change the fact that there were a mountain of problems for the 9th Army. Because even though the situation with the 6th Panzer was very concerning, the developments further north were even worse, because it was in that area that the 7th Panzer was beginning to run wild.

To the north of the advances made by Reinhardt, the elements of the 7th Panzer Division were providing perfect textbook examples of why the German attacks had been so successful up to May 15th and would be even more successful in the days that followed. In the morning of May 15th the 25th Panzer Regiment would encounter two French tank battalions, with somewhere around 170 tanks, a mix of the monster Chart B1s and Hotchkiss H39s. These French tanks were making preparations to launch a counterattack later in the day and were fueling in preparation for their later adventures. They greatly outnumbered the German tanks that were about to attack them, and only about 30 of the German tanks were Panzer 3s and 4s and the rest were about 90 Panzer 1s and 2s which were useless in a direct confrontation with the French tanks. But they were still able to get the upper hand when they attacked the French at around 10AM with the 25th Panzer Regiment hitting the surprised French hard. The 25th was then pulled back from the fight, because Rommel, the commander of the 7th Panzer wanted to continue to push forward, leaving the fight to the 5th Panzer Division’s 31st Panzer Regiment instead. They would then fight it out with the French for most of the day, benefitting heavily from Stuka attacks and the decisive movement of the available armored units. The arrival of the 5th Panzer allowed the 7th to continue its hard charge to the west, which it would continue throughout the 15th with its tanks leading the way, instead of a more cautious approach. During the late afternoon it would even pass its objective. This is a great example of why the Germans were so successful, instead of getting bogged down in a fight against a larger enemy, they instead still greatly prioritized continuing the advance. The result of this mindset, of constant motion and initiative, would be used time and time again in the days that followed and it would allow the German Panzer divisions to get the French off balance, and then eventually to completely outrun their ability to respond.

Late in the day on May 16th, after another day of advancing, Rommel’s 7th Panzer finally crossed the French border, as they had to travel much further than Guderian did further south. Although for Rommel and the 7th this was really just a line on the map because they continued to push forward into the evening. This move was fully supported by Rommel’s commander, Hoth, and his commander von Kluge as they hoped to continue west as the expected counterattack of French forces from the north had not yet materialized. Continuing forward was against the previously agreed upon plan, as they had invisioned the 7th stopping soon after it moved into France to allow for consolidation along the front. The orders that were written up for Rommel were that he should push on towards Avesnes-sur-Helpe, but in this movment he was restricted both in terms of how far he could advance and how quickly he could advance, the goal being to keep the German armored units at least somewhat close to supporting units just in case that French counterattack began. However, these restrictions were never received by Rommel because by the time that they had arrived at his headquarters, he was already moving forward with some of his Panzer units. The story of the advance might be getting a bit boring for everybody to hear, but the French were caught off guard by the bold German attack down the road to Avesnes, and some French artillery was captured while the motorized troops that had been defending this area of the front were pushed back in disarray. Apparently the motorized infantry unit was not even remotely prepared for a German attack and did not even know that they were in the area before they were attacked, which is always a recipe for disaster. It was not an easy fight, and there was real fighting along the road, but by the end of the day Rommel and the leading elements of the 7th Panzer were in Avesnes. A German soldier that would advance down the same road in the days that followed would write that “I have never seen anything like the scenes along Rommel’s route of advance. His tanks had run into a French division coming down the same road, and they had just kept advancing right on past it. For the next five or six miles, there were hundreds of trucks and tanks, some driven into the ditches, others burned out, many still carrying dead or injured.” In total the quick attack was an advance of around 15 kilometers, and while there would be some fighting throughout the night in Avesnes, by dawn the last French forces had been pushed out of the town and were retreating further to the West. Now the question became, what to do next. The orders that had been provided by Hoth and von Kluge were for Rommel to not just push forward indefinitely, and even the advances to Avesnes was pushing the limits of what the orders had been. But Rommel was already looking further ahead the next objective he thought he should pursue was the French village of Landrecies, where there was a crossing over the Sambre river, making it very valuable real estate for the Germans to control. Landrecies would be an advance of around 18 kilometers, and if he was going to do that he might as well just push forward to the larger town of Le Cateau, that was only another 12 kilometers, seemed reasonable.

The advance to Landrecies was another familiar tale of surprised French forces that were totally unprepared to fight German units during the early morning hours of May 17th. The bridge and Landrecies was taken without much of a problem, even though by this point Rommel was at the front with only two tank battalions and 3 motorcycle platoons, with most of his forces strung out over the last 24 hours of advances. Over that time he had advanced around 60 kilometers, a truly staggering amount by prewar calculations. But Le Cateau seemed ripe for the taking and so Rommel continued to push forward. It would also be captured at around 6:30 in the morning. It was finally at this point that Rommel, with a shrinking number of units under his direct command and with more and more kilometers piling up behind him that Rommel took a moment, handed over command of his advanced units to another officer and then began to make his way back to Avesnes to re-establish contact with his headquarters and to ensure that the rest of the division were moving up quickly. In a perfect example of just how chaotic the situation was, when Rommel was moving back to Avesnes he would encounter French troops retreating on the roads between Le Cateau and Avesnes, troops that he had to drive through at a very rapid pace . This would eventually result in Rommels tiny detachment of only a few vehicles capturing 40 French trucks on his way back to the rest of his division. When he met up with the rest of his division and made his way to headquarters he found that there were some higher officers that were very displeased with him. Rommel had very conveniently ensured that he could not be reached for multiple lengthy periods of time over the past day. This allowed him to do what he wanted, which was to continue forward, even though throughout the day multiple orders arrived at his headquarters that he needed to slow down and then that he needed to stop immediately. But it did not really matter what orders Rommel had ignored along the way, because he was so successful and it was simply impossible for such actions to be punished, and so instead as is the case with many officers that ignore orders but are successful in their actions, instead of facing disciplinary actions Rommel instead received the Knight’s Cross due to his personal bravery during the advance.

While the exact situation on the ground was not known in London and Paris, it was clear by May 17th that things were not going according to plan. The Meuse had been crossed, and multiple German armored divisions were on their way west. These developments would result in multiple meetings at the highest level between the two allies, meetings that would only grow in importance in the days that followed. One importance change that would take place was the fact that these meetings were attended by the new British Prime Minister, who had taken over for Chamberlain on May 10th and so he had been in office for less than a week when some of the most important meetings of the campaign would occur on May 16th and 17th. Oh, and I realize I have kind of just sailed over the Churchill thing, I have made the decision that I am going to circle back to the Chamberlain replacement during the Battle of Britain episodes that will be the next series on the podcast, just trying to keep these episodes more focused on events in France. Before the important meeting on May 16th, on the night before an important event had occurred, the first RAF Bomber Command raid of the Ruhr would occur. Since the beginning of the war both the British and French bomber forces had been very careful to limit their raids in ways that would do everything possible to prevent civilian casualties. They had spent some time bombing strictly military targets like the German fleet bases, or doing propaganda missions where leaflets were dropped over Germany. But with the German invasion of of the west everything changed, the British War Cabinet decided on May 15th that any restrictions on bombing were removed, with the only remaining provision being that the bombing had to be aimed at a military objective. This would result in the first bombing raid on the night of May 15th to 16th, the first step in a campaign that would last until the very closing days of the war. On the very next day a meeting of the Supreme War Council would occur with French and British military and political leaders. Churchill’s account of this meeting is perhaps the most famous, mostly due to some of his questions that had would ask of the French leaders. Gamelin would provide a military overview based on the events of the previous days. Churchill would later tell the British War Cabinet that he found Daladier and Gamelin to be depressed, but Prime Minister Reynaud to be in better spirit. At the point where this meeting was occurring the Germans had not truly broken through in the ways that they would in the days that followed, but even at this stage there was concern about what the French might be able to do to stop them. One of the measures that was being taken was the movement of the 6th Army up to the area around Sedan from its position in the south. It would be around the questions of reserves that Churchill would, rather famously, ask Gamelin where his strategic reserve was, to which he would reply that he had none. This answer provides in many ways the center piece of many arguments about the failure of the French armies during the invasion, and it was a problem, but I think sometimes the response is not taken within the proper context. The French Army did have reserves, and the last 2 episodes have essentially been built around the story of how those reserves were deployed. Divisional and Corps reserves that LaFontaine attacked with on the afternoon of May 14th, Army and Army Group reserves that Flavigny had under his control at Sedan and that General Bruneau had at Dinant, and then finally there was the even larger movement of the French 6th Army from the south. The problem was not that the French did not have reserves, it is that the local reserves had all been committed, and failed, while the movement of larger reserves from Southern France was simply taking too long. But the nuances of the situation, and the previous efforts of the French Army, was little comfort for the leaders in the meeting on May 17th, a meeting that would later cause Churchill to write " I was dumbfounded. What were we to think of the great French Army and its highest chiefs? It had never occurred to me that any commanders would have left themselves unprovided with a mass of manoeuvre … I admit this was one of the greatest surprises I have had in my life." And that is basically the story that has stuck for over 80 years, that the French had not reserves and could do nothing against the Germans, when in fact they had simply already committed or were in the process of committing all of their reserves. While researching this part of the episode I ended up pulling up the Conclusions document for the British War Cabinet, essentially a summary of the meetings that occurred, the particular meeting that I was looking at was the meeting on May 17th, 1940 at 10AM. During this meeting Churchill would inform the others in the government about the meeting with the French and a general overview of the situation. However, another sentence really struck me, and is the perfect example of how evaluations and understanding of events can be fundamentally different than later evaluations and understanding. Next episode we will be discussing the German armored divisions pushing for the coast, but when the May 16th and 17th meetings occurred in Paris in London, the idea of having the forces in Belgium cut off was not seen as a high possibility. We know today that this is exactly what would happen, and the forces would be cut off and then Dunkirk would happen, but at 10AM on May 17th when Vice Chief of the Imperial General Staff Sir John Dill would has his words summarized as having said “Some comfort may be taken, however, from the fact that the flower of the French Army was in the North and not in the part of the line where the blow had fallen.” I find this sentence so funny because of the criticism that is leveled against the French for placing their best troops in Belgium, and here at the time the British were of the opinion that the decision was a good thing. I hope you will join me next episode, when we will find out why placing all the best French troops and the BEF in Belgium was very much not a good thing, because Guderian was ready to race to the sea and there was only one thing that could stop him….German High Command.