202: "To Make a Corpse Feel"

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Paris Falls. General Brooke realizes that the British are no longer capable of helping the French. Come check out my keynote speech on the topic of Deception in February 2025: https://intelligentspeechonline.com/ Coupon Code: SECOND

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Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War Episode 202 - The Fall of France - “To Make a Corpse Feel”. This week a big thank you goes out to Nicholas for the donation and to Ralph and Marcus for choosing to support the podcast by becoming members. Members get access to ad free versions of all of the podcast’s episodes plus special member only episodes roughly once per month. Head on over to historyofthesecondworldwar.com/members for more information. Last episode left off with the French government and military leaders discussing the fate of Paris, would the city be defended from the advancing German troops, risking its destruction, or would it be declared an open city and handed over without a fight. It was an important decision, but also one that would have to be made quickly because all along the German offensive the French defenses were beginning to collapse. After failing to stop the Germans along the Somme and Aisne rivers by June 10th in many areas they were retreating back to the Seine in the north and the Marne to the east of Paris. But this time, there would be no Miracle of the Marne which had saved France in 1914, with the French once again in retreat it began to seem that there was nothing that could save France, other than peace.

All along the front the French troops would be pushed back from their defensive lives that they had occupied over the preceding days. The overall situation was similar enough in most areas to not require a detailed account, with the French infantry forces trying to retreat fast enough to keep ahead of the Germans, while at the same time the Germans were trying to advance fast enough to get ahead of them. In some areas the German mobile forces would succeed, in others they would be met by what remained of the French motorized and armored divisions that were by this point in the campaign unable to make good most of their losses. This meant that when the French armor was committed to try and slow the Germans down it often just resulted in very high casualty rates and the loss of most of their vehicles. The repetition of this patter rapidly brought the Germans to the Seine and the Marne and they were able to quickly seize several bridgeheads over the two rivers during the fighting on June 10th and 11th. Because of this it would once again be impossible for the French to anchor their defensive lines on the rivers, something that they had been counting on to try and slow the German advance. It is worth noting that once again, when the Germans began to advance and various French units were surrounded there were actions that, well lets call them less than chivalrous, particularly when the Germans were confronted by French colonial troops. Among the Senegalese troops of the 4th Colonial Infantry there would be multiple instances of the Africans being either bayoneted or shot when they tried to surrender. In another instance 64 Africans would be executed by German troops of Infantry Regiment Großdeutschland. French officers who tried to prevent this from happening were then also killed. To make it very clear why these events were happening, when a French officer questioned a German officer of the 9th Infantry Division why these things were happening the response was that “an inferior race does not deserve to do battle with such a civilized race as the Germans.” While the troops that fell behind where at risk of German atrocities, along the entire front the retreats continued. North of Paris some of the troops were able to retreat behind the Oise river, but they were beginning to waste away due the constant trickle of attrition during the retreat. Many of the infantry divisions had lost over a third of their infantry and even more of their equipment like artillery which was always more difficult to move. On the evening of June 10th, at least along parts of the Oise river all of the bridges were blown to prevent their use to the Germans but there were still crossings that could be used north of Paris like the lock barrier at L’Isle-Adam which had to be left intact, even though it would allow a crossing, because destroying it in June would lower the water level too much behind the lock allowing even more areas to cross. Interestingly enough, on the German side they were actually pulling troops away from Paris during this time, because of how well things were going. On that area of the front the goal of the advance was Paris, not necessarily anything beyond it and so some of the motorized forces that were previously approaching Paris would be pulled out of the line and instead moved to the east where the German forces have further to go once they pushed over the Marine river. This gave the French the rare advantage of actually being numerically superior to the German forces making the direct approach to the capital, but numbers only counted for such much at this point in the campaign. Morale was a major problem for the French, not necessarily just because French morale was flagging, but because German morale was so high. They were once again pushing forward very quickly, and taking tens of thousands of prisoners along the way. The only thing that really slowed down the troops on the path to Paris was the fact that they were outrunning their artillery and the Luftwaffe was focused on other areas of the front. This caused the troops of the German 18th Army to pause for a day, from the 11th to the 12th, before attacking the next series of French defenses which were known as the Chauvineau Line.

On June 10th Weygand had made an important decision. Over the previous days the French army had been operating under the assumption that Paris would be defended, and that the troops that were in the city would be fighting within the city itself to prevent it from falling into German hands. However, on the 10th, without consulting the other French leaders, Weygand changed his mind and decided instead that defensive positions would not be set up with 30 kilometers of the city, with the goal of convincing the Germans not to target Paris with their artillery. Weygand would let Reynaud and the French political leaders know of his plans, but would not inform the commanders of the forces that were still fighting to the north and east of the city out of fear that such news would cause their lines to immediately collapse. When news that the capital would not be defended reach Reynaud, he had little choice but to begin the process of evacuating the government as quickly as possible, in this case to the city of Tours. At this point Reynaud was still of the belief that France should continue to resist for as long as possible, with more discussions of alternative plans for North Africa, but Weygand believed that any of these plans were unrealistic and refuse to give any orders that might make them possible. The French leaders would bring these disagreements into a meeting with the British leaders near Tours on June 11th. This meeting was attended by all of the major decision makers, and it was the first to include both Reynaud and Churchill since the beginning of June. Weygand would deliver his update to the assembled leaders, that the French Army was still fighting but retreating, and that it was near its breaking point. Churchill would encourage the French to continue resistance, advocating for an all out battle where everyone in France was asked to fight. Of course, from the French point of view Churchill’s suggestions sure seemed a lot like the British leader was very okay with more Frenchmen and women dying while the British refused to make the full throated commitment to the continent that he was pushing the French to make. At the time that this meeting was occurring, the balance of the French cabinet still favored continuing the fight, but they were up against Weygand and Petain who had two immutable facts on their side of the argument. The first was that France could not continue the fight against Germany alone, they would simply lose, and second that the ability of the British to help, and their commitment to help, was totally insufficient. After the meeting ended Reynaud would inform Churchill that Weygand was firmly pushing for an armistice, and that others within the French leadership group were already looking for a way out of the war. While he was in France Churchill would meet with Admiral Darlan to ask him what the plans were for the French fleet. The defeat of France would be a huge problem for the British, but the challenges that it introduced would be greatly increased if the French fleet also fell into German hands. Darlan would make the standard assurances that the Navy would never surrender itself over to German control, but Churchill was already questioning these assurances, the seeds of later actions were already being sown. Even though all of the proper things were said by both sides during the meetings on June 11th, this was the point where the Anglo-French alliance entered terminal and irrevocable decline. The British shifted into the mindset that the French were no longer reliable. The French shifted into the mindset that the British were far more interested in sacrificing French blood for their own benefit rather than rising to the occasion and making British sacrifices in the name of France.

On June the 12th the overall situation looked grim for the French Army. In the north the 10th Army was essentially shattered, with much of its strength having been trapped north of the Seine, leaving the entire sector of the front defended only by random small units, none of which were even divisional in size. In front of Paris when the German forces there finally resumed their attack they quickly pushed through the French defenders that had been put in place on the direct path the Paris. Further east the French forces were saved only by the fact that the German armored forces had been moved elsewhere, which limited the ability of the German units to pursue the French. But that just meant that more German armored units were present even further east where the Germans were crossing the Marne and rapidly moving south. Guderian’s Panzer group was one of the more concerning German formations because they had found the border between the French 2nd and 4th Army and were very rapidly moving south with the concern being that they would be able to trap French forces up against the Argonne forest and the Maginot Line. There were no real reserves to try and rescue the situation, as everything had already been committed, although there were some frantic efforts to build out some combat units from the men who had been evacuated from Dunkirk, but time was so heavily against the effort that it was difficult to make anything happen. Even in their poorly organized and equipped state the first units from this effort, some light cavalry units, were sent to the front on June 11th, although they were not able to really do much good. In the early afternoon of June 12th, the official order went out for all of the French forces in the three primary Army Groups to begin a general retreat, including abandoning Paris. The only forces that were not included in this retreat order were those that were manning the Maginot defenses and those that were in Southern France. Remarkably, given the overall importance placed on whether or not to defend the capital, General Héring, who actually commanded the Army of Paris, was one of the last to find out that his troops would not actually be defending Paris at all. And instead they with retreat behind the city to the Loire River, which was 150 kilometers to the rear. The units within Paris began to put up posters announcing that the city was being declared an open city, and that the Germans would be allowed in without a fight, which intensified the desire of many Parisians to get out of the city as quickly as possible. More than half of the city’s population had already left, but the announcement caused many more to take to the roads south and west of Paris, which hindered the movement of French forces along the same routes. French engineers were also sent around the city to dismantle any of the demolition charges that had already been placed around the city. On the evening of June 12th Weygand would be far more forceful during a meeting of the council of ministers when he said that the battle was lost, and he therefore demanded that the French leaders ask the Germans for an armistice as soon as possible. While Weygand was obviously pushing strongly for an armistice, the rest of the French government simply was not ready to take that step on the evening of June 12th, and instead wanted to discuss the situation again with the British. Therefore a message was sent to Churchill, who had just arrived back in London less than a day before, and he and his entourage turned around and went back to France, this time flying to Tours to meet with the Supreme Allied War council. Reynaud would actually start the meeting without Weygand or Petain present, and he would lay out the challenges that the French were facing, and stated that his government would soon be forced to seek out an armistice. There was little that Churchill and the British could offer beyond what they had already offered in the meetings over the previous days. Promises, and assurances, but little real action. Churchill’s primary tactic during the meeting was to talk up the inevitability of American involvement in the war, but there was of course no timeframe on that intervention. The rest of the meeting was just sort of talking about things, by which I mean they were discussing various topics but there were no real actions taken, and certainly nothing that would turn the situation around in any meaningful way. After such an uninspiring meeting, the other ministers in the French government began to shift further and further into alignment with Weygand and Petain and their desire for an armistice. A meeting of the French cabinet meeting later that night made this clear, with French ministers coming around to the idea that France was simply defeated, and they had no other choice but to start trying to exit the war.

On June 14th, in the early morning hours, the first German troops began marching into Paris. They were far from a crisp and splendid looking troop parade, with the infantry units covered in mud and exhausted due to the previous days of fighting and pursuit of the French forces before they arrived. This were the soldiers of the 9th Infantry Division of the 18th Army, and for the last several days they had been pushing French troops back towards the city, but the 18th Army had no armored divisions and so they could only push them back as quickly as they could walk. As they were marching in the last of the French troops were marching out, with the French police doing their bit to keep the two units apart. Even though the city had been declared an open city, and surrendered to the Germans by a French officer, there were still concerns on the German side that the Parisians would take matters into their own hands and begin to actively resist the German occupiers. To try and prevent this from happening, loud speakers were placed on German cars and driven around the city loudly broadcasting the message “No demonstration will be tolerated. Order must prevail. Any attack on German soldiers will be punished with death.” At least in the beginning this messaging world work. The French forces all along the front were retreating back just about as quickly as they could. And there was nothing that was really going to stop them.

While the British were never able to provide the level of support that the French believed that they should, that does not mean that in the days after the beginning of Case Red that they did not provide any support, and instead a growing number of British forces would be sent to France throughout the campaign. When the 51st Highland Division surrendered to the Germans on June 12th there were still over 100,000 British troops in France, but the majority of these were either not combat troops or were not in contact with the German forces at the time. One of the problems is that there was not really a Second British Expeditionary Force for several weeks after the evacuations at Dunkirk, and it would not be until General Brooke arrived on June 13th that there would be one unified commander of all of the British forces on the continent. But troops continued to arrive, with the 52nd Lowland Division beginning to arrive in Cherbourg on June 7th and the 1st Canadian Division arriving at Brest on June 12th. While the arrival of these forces could be seen as a confirmation of the British desire to continue to assist the French in their defense, there were a few problems. The first was that the divisions of the Second BEF were arriving in France in a piecemeal passion, which meant it would be quite some time before they could be utilized in combat. The second was that these second wave divisions were far less prepared for war on the continent than those that had made up the original BEF, having fewer vehicles, heavy weapons, and most importantly training. When General Brooke arrived to take command of the new BEF he would immediately travel to meet with Weygand, which made perfect sense. He would then receive a briefing from Weygand on the morning of June 14th, and from the information that he received, again directly from Weygand, the situation looked bleak. Brooke was already concerned that the British Army could do little to rescue the situation in France, and of course everything Weygand said just confirmed this suspicions. Remember, this is after Weygand essentially demanded that the French government start armistice negotiations with the Germans, so it is not like he was in a position to paint a positive picture of the Allied situation. Based on the information he received at this briefing Brooke essential made the decision that the only purpose that his troops could serve was to get out of France as quickly as possible. When he returned to his headquarters at Le Mans he dismissed the liaison missions between British Headquarters and the French. He then telephoned General Dill and told him that he should stop putting British troops ashore immediately, because the campaign in France was all but over. Brooke then said that his forces had been released from French command by Weygand, and that arrangements needed to be made to evacuate all of the troops that were in France as quickly as possible. Now, Brooke did not have any written authorization that the British were released from any obligations to the French, but he had already made up his mind and the BEF was on the way out.

After informing Dill not to send any more troops Brooke quickly began to issue the orders to get the men under his command out of France. The 52nd Lowland Division was ordered to retreat to Cherbourg where it would be evacuate, the Canadian troops were sent back to Brest. Brooke then contacted Lieutenant-General Marshall-Cornwall, who was the British liaison officer with General Altmayer’s headquarters, which had previously commanded the 51st Highland Division before it surrender, Brooke told Marshall-Cornwall to gather together any British forces in the area and bring them back to Cherbourg. As the orders went out, and Dill was informed back in London of Brooke’s intention information got back to Churchill about what was happening, and he demanded that he be allowed to talk to Brooke directly. Brooke would later write that “He asked me what I was doing with the 52nd Division, and after I had informed him, he told me that that was not what he wanted. I had been sent to France to make the French feel that we were supporting them. I replied that it was impossible to make a corpse feel, and that the French army was, to all intents and purposes, dead, and certainly incapable of registering what had been done for it …” On June 14th, when all of these movements were happening the remaining Royal Air Force squadrons in France began their evacuation plans. All non-fighter squadrons were sent back to France, and the remaining squadrons of Hurricanes moved to airfields around Nantes so that they would be in position to provide air support for evacuation operations. Weygand was learn of all of this on June 15th, and he was of course not pleased. In his eyes the British forces were simply and openly abandoning the French Army while it was still fighting. Sure, the French Army was also in retreat, but at least they had only started that retreat after making contact with the Germans, the British were retreating before they even entered the fight. During June 15th, Churchill would try to order Brooke to send the British units back into the fight, but they were already on their evacuation paths and Brooke was unwilling to change their orders. It was really already too late by that point though, because back in the French cabinet Reynaud had been the strongest voice for continued resistance, but he had tied his entire argument to the fact that the British were still there, the British were still fighting, and the French had to continue to do the same. Now Weygand and Petain, and others who advocated for an armistice could point to recent events as part of their argument. On the same day, June 15th, the evacuations would begin and would continue over the following days. Some of the units were evacuated from Cherbourg, others Brest, and a few from other areas. The vast majority of those evacuated during this time for British, over 144,000 but also over 24,000 Polish, 18,000 French, 5,000 Czech, and about 150 Belgian personnel were also brought out of France. As with the earlier evacuation at Dunkirk the vast majority of the equipment, heavy weapons, and ammunition was abandoned and destroyed. This probably could have been avoided, because the evacuations were not under any direct threat, but there was an urgency due to fears of a French collapse. In total 192,000 personnel, really refugees from their lack of equipment, would be evacuated. Unfortunately for the vast majority of the French soldiers, there was no evacuation, there was no escape, their was only retreat, but they could only retreat so far.