History of the Second World War (13 page)

The German invasion of the West opened with dramatic successes on the right flank, against key points in the defence of neutral Holland and Belgium. These strokes spearheaded by airborne troops focused the Allies’ attention there in such a way as to distract them for several days from the main thrust — which was being delivered in the centre, through the hilly and wooded country of the Ardennes, towards the heart of France.

The capital of Holland, the Hague, and the hub of its communications at Rotterdam, were attacked in the early hours of May 10 by airborne forces, simultaneously with the assault on its frontier defences a hundred miles to the east. The confusion and alarm created by this double blow, in front and rear, were increased by the widespread menace of the Luftwaffe. Exploiting the disorder, German armoured forces raced through a gap in the southern flank and joined up with the airborne forces at Rotterdam on the third day. They cut through to their objective under the nose of the French Seventh Army which was just arriving to the aid of the Dutch. On the fifth day the Dutch capitulated, although their main front was still unbroken. Their surrender was accelerated by the threat of further close-quarter air attack on their crowded cities.

The German forces here were much smaller than those opposing them. Moreover the decisive thrust was delivered by merely one panzer division, the 9th — the only one that could be spared for the attack on the Dutch front. Its path of advance was intersected by canals and broad rivers that should have been easy to defend. Its chances of success depended on the effect of the airborne coup.

But this new arm was also very small — and amazingly small compared with what it achieved. In May 1940, Germany had only 4,500 trained parachute troops. Of this meagre total, 4,000 were used in the attack on Holland. They formed five battalions, and were backed up by a light infantry division, of 12,000 men, that was carried in transport aircraft.

The main points of the plan are best summarised in the words of Student, the Commander-in-Chief of the airborne forces:

The limitations of our strength compelled us to concentrate on two objectives — the points which seemed the most essential to the success of the invasion. The main effort, under my own control, was directed against the bridges at Rotterdam, Dordrecht, and Moerdijk by which the main route from the south was carried across the mouths of the Rhine. Our task was to capture the bridges before the Dutch could blow them up, and keep them open until the arrival of our mobile ground forces. My force comprised four parachute battalions and one air-transported regiment (of three battalions). We achieved complete success, at a cost of only 180 casualties. We dared not fail, for if we did the whole invasion would have failed.*

* Liddell Hart:
The Other Side of the Hill,
pp. 160-1, Other extracts in this chapter from same source.

Student himself was one of the casualties, being wounded in the head, and he was out of action for eight months.

A secondary attack was made on the Dutch capital, The Hague. Its aim was to capture the heads of the Government and the Services in their offices, and disrupt the whole machinery of control. The force employed at The Hague was one parachute battalion and two air-transported regiments, under General Graf Sponeck. This attack was foiled, though it caused much confusion.

The invasion of Belgium also had a sensational opening. Here the ground attack was carried out by the powerful 6th Army under Reichenau (which included Hoppner’s 16th Panzer Corps). It had to overcome a formidable barrier before it could effectively deploy. Only 500 airborne troops were left to help this attack. They were used to capture the two bridges over the Albert Canal and the fort of Eben Emael, Belgium’s most modern fort, which flanked this waterline-frontier.

That tiny detachment, however, made all the difference to the issue. For the approach to the Belgian frontier here lay across the southerly projection of Dutch territory known as the ‘Maastricht Appendix’, and once the German Army crossed the Dutch frontier the Belgian frontier guards on the Albert Canal would have had ample warning to blow the bridges before any invading ground forces could cross that fifteen-mile strip. Airborne troops dropping silently out of the night sky offered a new way, and the only way, of securing the key bridges intact.

The very limited scale of airborne forces used in Belgium was in extraordinary contrast to the reports at the time that German parachutists were dropping at scores of places, in numbers that cumulatively ran into thousands. Student provided the explanation — to compensate the scantiness of actual resources, and create as much confusion as possible, dummy parachutists were scattered widely over the country. This ruse certainly proved most effective, helped by the natural tendency of heated imaginations to multiply all figures.

According to Student:

The Albert Canal venture was also Hitler’s own idea. It was perhaps the most original idea of this man of many brain-waves. He sent for me and asked my opinion. After a day’s consideration I affirmed the possibility of such an enterprise, and was ordered to make the preparations. I used 500 men under Captain Koch. The Commander of the Sixth Army, General von Reichenau and his chief of staff General von Paulus, both capable generals, regarded the undertaking as an adventure in which they had no faith.

The surprise attack on Fort Eben Emael was carried out by a Lilliputian detachment of 78 parachute-engineers commanded by Lieutenant Witzig. Of these, only 6 men were killed. This small detachment made a completely unexpected landing on the roof of the fort, overcame the anti-aircraft personnel there, and blew up the armoured cupolas and casemates of all the guns with a new highly intensive explosive — previously kept secret. . . . The surprise attack on Eben Emael was based on the use of this new weapon, which was silently transported to the objective by another new weapon — a freight-carrying glider.*

* pp. 163-4.

The fort was well-designed to meet every menace except the possibility of enemy troops dropping on top of it. From the roof of the fort Witzig’s handful of ‘sky-troopers’ kept the garrison of 1,200 men in check until twenty-four hours later when the Germans’ ground forces arrived on the scene.

The Belgian guards on the two key bridges were likewise taken by surprise. At one bridge they actually lit the fuse to blow up the bridge — but the crew of a glider got into the blockhouse on the heels of the sentries to extinguish it in the nick of time.

It is notable that on the whole front of the invasion the bridges were blown up everywhere by the defenders, according to plan, except where airborne attackers were used. That shows how small was the margin between success and failure on the German side — since the prospect of the invasion turned on the time-factor.

By the second morning sufficient German troops had arrived over the canal to burst through the shallow Belgian line of defence behind. Then Hoppner’s two panzer divisions (the 3rd and 4th) drove over the undemolished bridges and spread over the plains beyond. Their onsweeping drive caused the Belgian forces to start a general retreat — just as the French and British were arriving to support them.

This breakthrough in Belgium was not the decisive stroke in the invasion of the West, but it had a vital effect on the issue. It not only drew the Allies’ attention in the wrong direction but absorbed the most mobile part of the Allied forces in the battle that developed there, so that these mobile divisions could not be pulled out and switched south to meet the greater menace that on May 13 suddenly loomed up on the French frontier — at its weakest part, beyond the western end of the incomplete Maginot Line.

For the mechanised spearheads of Rundstedt’s Army Group had meantime been driving through Luxembourg and Belgian Luxembourg towards France. After traversing that seventy-mile stretch of the Ardennes, and brushing aside weak opposition, they crossed the French frontier and emerged on the banks of the Meuse early 011 the fourth day of the offensive.

It had been a bold venture to send a mass of tanks and motor-vehicles through such difficult country, which had long been regarded by conventional strategists as ‘impassable’ for a large-scale offensive, let alone for a tank operation. But that increased the chances of surprise, while the thick woods helped to cloak the advance and conceal the strength of the blow.

It was the French High Command, however, which contributed most to Hitler’s success. The shattering effect of the Ardennes stroke owed much to the design of the French plan — which fitted perfectly, from the Germans’ point of view, into their own remodelled plan. What proved fatal to the French was not, as is commonly imagined, their defensive attitude or ‘Maginot Line complex’, but the more offensive side of their plan. By pushing into Belgium with their left shoulder forward they played into the hands of their enemy, and wedged themselves in a trap — just as had happened with their near-fatal Plan XVII of 1914. It was the more perilous this time because the opponent was more mobile, manoeuvring at motor-pace instead of at foot-pace. The penalty, too, was the greater because the left shoulder push — made by three French armies and the British — comprised the most modernly equipped and mobile part of the Allied forces as a whole.

With every step forward that these armies took in their rush into Belgium, their rear became more exposed to Rundstedt’s flanking drive through the Ardennes, Worse still, the hinge of the Allied advance was guarded by a few low-grade French divisions, composed of older men and scantily equipped in anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns, the two vital needs. To leave the hinge so poorly covered was the crowning blunder of the French High Command, under Gamelin and Georges.

The German advance through the Ardennes was a tricky operation, and an extraordinary feat of staffwork. Before dawn of May 10 the greatest concentration of tanks yet seen in war was massed opposite the frontier of Luxembourg. Made up of three panzer corps, these were arrayed in three blocks, or layers, with armoured divisions in the first two, and motorised infantry divisions in the third. The van was led by General Guderian, and the whole was commanded by General von Kleist.

To the right of Kleist’s group lay a separate panzer corps, the 15th, under Hoth, which was to dash through the northern part of the Ardennes, to the Meuse between Givet and Dinant.

The seven armoured divisions, however, formed only a fraction of the armed mass that was drawn up along the German frontier ready to plunge into the Ardennes. Some fifty divisions were closely packed on a narrow but very deep front.

The chances of success essentially depended on the quickness with which the German panzer forces could push through the Ardennes and cross the Meuse. Only when they were across that river-barrier would the tanks have room for manoeuvre. They needed to get across before the French High Command realised what was happening and collected reserves to stop them.

The race was won, though with little margin. The result might have been different if the defending forces had been capable of profiting from the partial checks caused by demolitions that were carried out according to previous plan. It was unfortunate for the security of France that these were not backed by adequate defenders. The French had been foolish to rely on cavalry divisions to delay the invaders.

By contrast, an armoured counterstroke against the flank of the German advance at this stage would probably have paralysed that advance — by its effect on the higher commanders. Even as it was, they were momentarily shaken by the shadow of a stroke towards their left flank.

Seeing how well the advance was going, Kleist had already, on the 12th, endorsed Guderian’s view that the crossing of the Meuse should be tackled without waiting for the infantry corps to arrive. But arrangements had been made for a heavy air concentration, including twelve squadrons of dive-bombers, to help in forcing a passage. These appeared on the scene early in the afternoon of the 13th, and maintained such a hail of bombs as to keep most of the French gunners down in their dug-outs until nightfall.

Guderian’s attack was concentrated on a one-and-a-half-mile stretch of the river just west of Sedan. The chosen sector provided a perfect setting for forcing a passage. The river bends sharply north towards St Menges and then south again, forming a pocket-like salient. The surrounding heights on the north bank are wooded, thus providing cover for attack preparations and gun-positions as well as fine artillery observation. From near St Menges there was a wonderful panoramic view over this river-salient, and across to the wooded heights of the Bois de Marfee which form the back-curtain on the far side.

The assault was launched at 4 p.m., led by the panzer infantry in rubber boats and on rafts. Ferries were soon in operation, bringing light vehicles across. The river-salient was quickly overrun, and the attackers pressed on to capture the Bois dc Marfee and the southern heights. By midnight the wedge was driven nearly five miles deep, while a bridge was completed at Glaire (between Sedan and St Menges) over which the tanks began to pour.

Even so, the German foothold was still precarious on the 14th — with only one division yet across the river, and only one bridge by which reinforcements and supplies could reach it. The bridge was heavily attacked by the Allied air forces, which enjoyed a temporary advantage as the weight of the Luftwaffe had been switched elsewhere. But the anti-aircraft artillery regiment of Guderian’s corps kept a thick canopy of fire over the vital bridge, and Allied air attacks were beaten off with heavy loss.

By the afternoon all three of his panzer divisions were over the river. After beating off a belated French counterattack, he made a sudden turn westward. By the following evening he had broken through the last line of defence, and the roads to the west — to the Channel coast — lay open to him.

Yet that night was a trying one for Guderian — though not owing to the enemy: