200: Case Red

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Stage one of the German invasion had went so well, so now it was time for stage two. Come check out my keynote speech on the topic of Deception in February 2025: https://intelligentspeechonline.com/ Coupon Code: SECOND

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Deception, lies, fakery, fraudulence and forgery – this is what Intelligent Speech 2025 will be bringing you. We are delighted to announce three outstanding Keynote speakers. We have Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse from the awesome Fake History Hunter Twitter feed and author of Fake History. We also have Otto English, author of another Fake History and Fake Heroes and presenter of the Utter Bollocks podcast. And finally we have podcasting legend and Intelligent Speech stalwart, Wesley Livesey, host of the History of the Great War and the History of the Second World War podcasts. Intelligent Speech 2025 – Deception will be taking place on the 8th of February 2025. Go to intelligentspeechonline.com to find out more. The conference will be taking place on the 8th of February 2025, and if you act now you will be able to take advantage of a special offer for listeners of this podcast. When you buy your ticket, enter promo code Second at checkout to receive an additional 10% off the already discounted ticket price. That’s a great deal for this much content! So go to https://intelligentspeechonline.com/ to get your tickets today!

Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War Episode 200 - Case Red. Hard to believe that we are already at 200, but this week a big thank you goes out to Ryan, Stuart, Sam, and Nicholas who have chosen to support the podcast by becoming members, you can find out more over at historyofthesecondworldwar.com/members. Did you know that you can also gift podcast memberships to others? You can find a link to do that on the members page, just in case you know anybody who would might like something like a 30 minute dive into a single British government memorandum from 1940, or an upcoming 2 part biography of Marshall Philippe Petain, a man who, well he certainly made some choices. All that and much more over at historyofthesecondworldwar.com/members. After the German successes of the first 10 days of their attack into France, during which they had advanced from the French and Belgian border all the way to the North Sea both sides had been solely focused on those events. However in the days after this tremendous accomplishment both sides had shifted focus onto preparing for what was to come next: the next German attack. On the German side this involved planning for what they would do to push further into France with the objective of destroying the rest of the allied military forces. On the French side they were preparing to meet that offensive in whatever way they could. General Weygand, the commander of all French military forces had made the decision that the French army would make its stand in the positions that had been frantically established along the Somme and Aisne rivers. These positions had been established to contain the German advance of the previous weeks, and would now be manned by as many French divisions as possible. The French would also be using a different defensive technique than what had been used during the earlier attacks, with a focus on the creation of strongpoints built around villages and towns with the gaps between those strongpoints covered by artillery and mobile forces. In theory this was not the worst idea, and it helped the French to make up for the numerical deficits that they found themselves working with, but it also put a heavy emphasis on two requirements: a steadfast defense from those forces inside the strongpoints, even when they were at risk of being surrounded, and rapid and powerful responses to any German penetrations to prevent those strongpoints from simply being cut off and destroyed. The fate of France depended on the French military meeting those two requirements.

Even before the Germans would launch their attack, they would of course first seek to use the almost complete domination of the air that they had gained since the start of the campaign to further disrupt French forces and preparations. On June 1st the number of Luftwaffe attacks would begin to escalate, and it even included French targets far away from the front. For example on the 1st of June German Ju-88 bombers would visit the French city of Marseille targeting the docks within the city, and they were successful in this attack with a British troopship catching fire and a French auxiliary cruiser damaged beyond repair. While Marseilles was far away from the battlefields in the north it was an important target due to the growing importance, and even greater future importance, of French troops from their North African colonies. However, these bombing raids in the south were not really that important to the overall course of the coming attacks, but they might have been had the French resisted longer than they would during June 1940. While these bombing raids were occurring in the south the main strength of the Luftwaffe was preparing for the real effort in the north, particularly a series of bombing raids on Paris and the areas around Paris. These would begin on the afternoon of June 3 and would feature more than 200 German bombers and of course large numbers of escorting fighters. They would target a variety of areas in and around the city, including government buildings like the Air Ministry, factories like those of Citroen and Renault, and then 16 airfields that were positioned around the city. A total of 20 French aircraft were either destroyed or heavily damaged in these attacks on their airfields, just adding to the woes experienced by the French air Force over the previous weeks. However, it was not all bad news for the French in the air, because in a weird way, even with their losses of over 330 fighters since May 10th, in some ways their fighter force was better. This is because just under 330 fighter aircraft had been received as replacements for those lost, and they were generally newer and higher quality designs. The problem was finding pilots to fly these replacements because around 40 percent of the fighter pilots with which the French had started the campaign had either been killed, wounded, or captured. This meant that they were more reliant on the Czech and Polish pilots that had managed to find their way to France after the German invasion of their countries. What none of these pilots could depend on was strong support from the British. There were still British fighters in France, but they amounted to just 3 Hurricane squadrons, far from a full commitment to the continent by the RAF, for the reasons we discussed last episode. The pilots that were available would be able to destroy 10 German aircraft during the raids on Paris, although they would also lose 10 French fighters in the effort. During the night of June 4 to 5 both the French and British would launch bombing raids over Germany, but it is quite telling that while the Germans were willing and able to stage their bombing attacks during the day, which made it far more likely to actually find their targets, the allied bombers were forced to fly at night. This protected them from attacks by German fighters, but made it very challenging to get find their targets, although the French bombers were generally better at this than the British, who did not even really have any kind of proper night time navigation aids within their bombers, they were mostly just guessing. But even the German attacks, although they did find some of their targets, were not focused enough or capable of dropping the required bombing tonnage to really cause serious damage to the French military effort.

Along the front of the coming attack, which measured just under 200 kilometers the Germans had arranged 90 divisions, however 40 of these were in some level of reserve, and the primary efforts would be made by 50 of the best divisions including the 10 Panzer divisions that had been so important to the German success up to this point in the war. While the original plans for Fall Rot had been for the advances to only move to the Seine, the goals of the German mobile divisions had already begun to expand, with some of the objectives stretching out along the coast all the way to Cherbourg. On the French side Weygand was able to bring together 49 divisions to put in the German path, which meant that at least initially the forces involved would be relatively equal, until the Germans brought in reserves, because those 49 divisions represented almost every combat capable unit that the French army could commit to the defense. There had been attempts to begin the reorganization process for the 10s of thousands of soldiers that were not available after the evacuations from Dunkirk, but as always this would take time. The largest problem was simply finding the equipment for the units that were being created. Infantry small arms were available, but the specialist units that were essential to Second World War infantry divisions, machine guns, anti-tank rifles, artillery, vehicles of all varieties were very scarce. To try and make some use of these men they would be forced into what were called light infantry divisions, and they were joined in these divisions by personnel from training schools and other random sources. Even ignoring the lack of cohesion within these divisions, they were also far short of just about every type of equipment which would make them far less capable when facing the Germans. The hope was that they would be given some time to recover and prepare before they were needed, because at least the 49 divisions that were on the line were almost entirely good, solid, experienced and equipped regular army and colonial divisions, not the best troops that France had at the start of the war, those had been lost in Belgium, but far from the worst.

In the early hours of June 5th the pre-attack German artillery barrages began to fall at various point all along the front, in the north the two areas of focus were near the coast in the St. Valery-sur-Somme area and around Abbeville. This area of the front was primarily defended by the British 51st Highland Division which had been brought in over the previous days to take part in the Battle of Abbeville. They were thinly spread through a series of fortified villages and other positions, and in retrospect they were probably required to hold simply more frontage than they were capable of. But this problem was shared by all of the Allied forces at this time. This resulted in a British line that was constructed more like an outpost line, with small units thrown into a line that was not really strong anywhere. The only good news is that the 51st had a larger than expected allocation of artillery guns, 112 vs 72, and there were still some units of tanks available as counterattack forces. The problem was that the troops in the front line found that their ability to communicate with the artillery was often severely restricted, with some of the front line units losing all communication with the rear just hours after the start of the attack due to damage to their communications cables. All of this resulted in a very similar series of events along the front, with the British defenders hit first by German artillery and then by German infantry which would infiltrate through the widely dispersed defenses. Once this was done the British units could either retreat as quickly as possible or risk getting surrounded. Some of the surrounded units were then able to find a way to escape, or they were trapped like the 7th Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders would be, with the two units trapped and bombarded by German artillery until they surrendered. This scenario was mostly the same along the entire frontage of the 51st, with those on the left being pushed back by the German 12th Infantry Division while those on the right were doing mostly the same due to attacks by the newly arrived 32nd Infantry division and the 57th Infantry which had resisted the British and French attacks at Abbeville over the previous days. The 51st commander, General Fortune, requested that he be allowed to pull the entire division back from the front to the Bresle River. The French General Altmayer agreed to this request, although he made it clear that he expected the Highlanders to hold the new line that they would occupy at all costs. Altmayer, who as commander of the French 10th Army commanded the front from the north sea to south of Abbeville had many things to worry around on June 5th. The 51st Division was not the only one that was being hit hard by the German attack, with the French troops to the south of Abbeville experiencing similar problems. To make matters worse, some of the units to the south of Abbeville were being attacked by German armored units, at least in the north the biggest problem was the German infantry. Along the southern end of the 10th Army’s line the French had constructed their defenses so that at various towns and villages strongpoints had been created to act as centers of resistance, with at least some anti-tank guns present in many of these areas. The defense was not perfect, because there was not enough artillery to support all of the positions, and there were never enough anti-tank guns, but what was available was put to good use in the early hours of the attack. In a few areas of the front, like around Longpré-Hangest and Condé-Folie the French troops, many of them Senegalese troops from Africa, were able to hold their positions for most of the day even though they were under constant attack from German tanks, including Rommel’s 7th Panzer. Sadly, there are also accounts of the French colonial soldiers being killed after they were captured on this area of the front, and phenomenon that would be in no way unique to just these units or just these villages.

To the south of Abbeville, and closer to the German bridgehead at Amiens the French defenders would have similar problems, although in some areas the results would be better. To the north and west of Amiens the German Army Corps under the command of General Manstein would stage an assault crossing of the Somme with 2 infantry divisions. They would make their first crossings mostly successfully, using rubber boats to cross a section of the river that was only 30 meters wide, but they immediately ran into problems. The area on the west side of the river was defended by the troops of the 13th Infantry Division and the 60th Reserve Division. These troops had been spread even thinner than on another areas of the front because the terrain that they defended was quite wet and marshy, and so the assumption was that the Germans were less likely to attack through the area. This meant that in some areas there were up to 500 meters between French defensive positions, with nothing really in the gap in between. The Germans were actually a bit surprised by how bad the ground was once their infantry got across the river, and may have been in serious trouble if they had met a strong and determined resistance. As it was, they met a determined resistance, with some of the French infantry resisting the German attacks for most of the day, but the defensive line was far from strong, with some positions being overrun and surrounded quite quickly. But for both sides the area of the front to the north of Amiens was a sideshow, the focus on both sides was on the areas directly around the Amiens bridgehead. Here the German 14th Armored Corps was prepared to make its attack starting in the early hours of the June 5th. For the attack there were 3 divisions, two Panzer divisions the 9th and 10th and then the 9th Infantry division. The 10th Panzer division was the strongest unit in Amiens, and one of the strongest in the German army by this point, and they would be met by the French 16th Infantry Division, a Reserve formation, but one that was well equipped with artillery and anti-tank guns. The positions occupied by the 16th Infantry was as close as the French could get in June 1940 to being ideal defensive positions, with the fortified zone being 10 kilometers deep, with every village in that zone fortified, and defended not just by infantry but at least 1 anti-tank guns, and often more than 1. This proved to be very fortuitous, and provides a very potent example of what the French Army was still capable of even at this late stage. When the 10th Panzer division attacked forward, as expected when the tanks encountered a town that was heavily fortified, they did not attack into it and instead pushed around to bypass the town to keep moving, leaving the village to be attacked by the infantry forces that followed. In many instances this was exactly what the French wanted, because it meant that the German tanks were left without infantry support, and they advanced directly into French anti-tank positions. In one instance 8 German tanks would be knocked out in a matter of minutes to just a few small 47mm French anti-tank guns. In other areas they ran into anti-tank mines, which were capable of disabling even the largest and most powerful German tanks like the Panzer IV. This was dangerous business for the French though, and while in some cases they were able to stop the German tanks, in others they were faced with overwhelming odds. For example the 5th Battery of the 37th Artillery Regiment, with its 4 75mm artillery guns would make their stand near the village of Sains-en-Amienois. In the action that would follow, with German machine gun bullets hitting all around them the 75mm guns would knock out 12 German tanks before all four guns were forced out of action. Of the 32 artillerymen who were manning the guns, 28 of them would die in the effort. Heroic actions like those of the 5th Battery meant that even after a full day of attacks, the French defenses on the 16th Infantry Divisions front were largely intact, and in fact the Germans had not even really been able to push through second line of villages. And more importantly, of the roughly 200 German tanks that the 10th Panzer had at the start of the day, only 90 of them were still running when the sunset. Not exactly an easy and triumphant march to victory.

Further south near the bridgehead at Péronne a similar story would occur, only this time with the tanks of the 3rd Panzer Division and the French infantry of the 19th Infantry Division. When the German attack began, after a bombardment from about 400 guns, they would be focused on three villages that were in a pretty small area and defended by a single French infantry regiment. The French artillery would throw fire at the German attackers to slow them down, which had a particular impact on the German infantry support, which slowed their advance down considerably. The 3rd Panzer Brigade would continue moving, only to run into more and more French 75mm artillery pieces. In most of the small firefights that broke out between the French artillery and the German tanks, the outcome was not seriously in doubt, there were simply too many Germans and they brought with them too much firepower. But the French guns were able to inflict some serious attrition on the German tanks, making them pay for every advance that they were trying to make. This meant that by the end of the day, while a few of the villages along the front had been taken by German infantry assault, the French were still holding out even after heavy casualties. German tank losses were high, and just as importantly they still had not achieved the expected breakthrough. This was a problem on so many areas of the German attack that frustrations filtered up from units at the front, to divisional and corps headquarters and even higher. General List, the commander of the German 12th Army, which occupied an area of the front further south than Peronne would write that: “The French are putting up strong opposition. No signs of demoralisation are evident anywhere. We are seeing a new French way of fighting.” The two main reasons for the French successes was first the change in defensive tactics, with the defense in depth of strongpointed villages proving to be a good way to slow the German attacks, even if it still resulted in many French casualties. The second reason was simply the resiliency of the French soldiers, the French forces along the Somme reacted very differently than those on the Meuse in the early days of the campaign, and this was something that the French soldiers themselves realized. A French armor officer would write in a letter to his wife that: “We’ve taken a heck of a pasting, and there’s hardly anyone left, but those still here have fantastic morale […] we no longer think about the awful nightmare we’ve been through. That’s typical of the French soldier, if you could only know the happiness of going into a scrap with chaps like these.”

The second day of the attack would largely be a story of two different sectors of the front. In the north the situation which had been precarious during the first day continued to deteriorate, with the overstretched British and French forces unable to establish a firm defensive line overnight. This meant that the 5th and 7th Panzer divisions were able to start making some serious headway. The last thing that the French wanted was for the German armored divisions to start gaining any momentum, because once they did they would be impossible to stop. What the French had at the front was all they had, and their ability to react to any kind of major breakthrough was almost nothing, and by the end of June 6th the 5th and 7th Panzer were starting to separate from the French defenses. Further south around Amiens, the situation actually looked much better for the French, with the 9th and 10th Panzer divisions, after such heavy losses the day before, mostly just taking their time to mop up French resistance that had already been bypassed instead of seeking to continue the attack. Around Peronne the 3rd Panzer division would present further bad news for the French though, because after the destruction of one major strongpoint, primarily by aerial and artillery bombardment, the 3rd Panzer started moving quickly, advancing about 14 kilometers during the afternoon. If that advance continued that speed of advance the next day they would find themselves through the French defenses and that meant disaster. The French Air Force would launch 60 bomber attacks against the German forces in this area, but few of these sorties found any targets. There was one instance where 8 French bombers caught the German tanks during a refuelling meet up, and the Germans would take some casualties during this time, but the overall impact was minimal. For their efforts the French lost 17 bombers. French fighters had a better day though, and although they lost 14 fighters over their various areas of the front, they would be able to claim 20 German aircraft for their efforts. Overall, at the end of June 6th the situation at the front was very worrying, but not yet completely disastrous. Some sectors of the front were either holding, line around Amiens, or were at the very least just bending like to the south of Peronne. But in a few areas the German armored forces had started to make real progress, and in the days that followed it would be difficult for the French to find any possible way to stop them.