Fall of the Low Countries

In October 1939, accepting the fact that the conquest of Poland, however impressive, would not prompt Great Britain and France to withdraw from the war, Adolf HITLER directed the High Command of the Armed Forces ( Oberkommando der Wehrmacht or OKW) to prepare for an offensive in the west. Although the leading German commanders believed the better course to be to await an Allied offensive, he insisted on striking within six weeks in order to forestall further Allied preparations. The first version of the plan for the attack, called Fall Gelb (Plan Yellow), was modeled on the old Schlieffen Plan, which had received a modified test in 1914. It was based on a main effort through Belgium north of Liege. A total of 37 divisions was to make this effort, while a subsidiary force of 27 divisions moved through the Ardennes region of Belgium and Luxembourg.

This was exactly what the Allied commanders expected. An attack against northeastern France was improbable because of the existence of the Maginot Line, the formidable belt of fortifications built in the 1930's from Switzerland to Longuyon, near the junction of the borders of Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. Because of the barrier of the hilly, forested Ardennes, Allied commanders considered a major attack there also improbable. Thus only the Liege area, leading to the flatlands of Flanders and thence to France's northern frontier, was supposedly open to the Germans.

Though built originally merely to protect Alsace and Lorraine until France could mobilize against a surprise attack, the Maginot Line had engendered a false sense of security in the war-weary country. French commanders were nevertheless conscious of the great gap reaching from the end of the line to the English Channel. They accepted the fact of the gap on the theory that France could not afford to fight along this line. In the first place, battle in the industrial Lille-Cambrai region would destroy or deny two thirds of the nation's coal resources. Secondly, accepting battle there would mean acquiesence in the surrender of Belgium. This France, victor over Germany in World War I and still a major power with reputedly the world's strongest army, could not accept.

It was apparent to French and British leaders that once the Germans attacked, the Allies had to move into Belgium. To provide time for this movement the Allied leaders depended on a delaying action by the Belgian Army, reinforced by the barrier of the Ardennes and the Meuse River, the large forts at Liege, the deep cut of the Albert Canal north of that city, and Fort Eben-Emael near the Dutch-Belgian border. (This fort was said to be the strongest single fortress in the world.) The major problem was the lack of consultation and coordination with the Belgians and the Dutch. Although the Low Countries realized that Nazi Germany would include them in any pattern of conquest against the West, they continued to hope that a policy of abject neutrality would forestall the inevitable.

The Allies planned nevertheless to advance into Belgium to the line of the Scheldt (Escaut, Schelde) River (Plan E). As the months passed without a German attack and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was increased to 10 divisions, this plan was replaced by a more ambitious decision to move to the Dyle River, a few miles east of Brussels (Bruxelles). Under Plan D, as the new concept was called, the Belgian Army was to fall back on the Dyle and the lower reaches of the Albert Canal to protect Antwerp (Antwerpen), the British were to defend the upper Dyle, and the French were to hold the Gembloux gap between the Dyle and the Meuse at Namur (Namen) and the Meuse itself where the river crosses the Ardennes. In the continued belief that the main German effort would be made in the Liege area, the supreme French commander, Gen. Maurice Gustave Gamelin, assigned to the Gembloux gap his strongest force, the mechanized First Army under Gen. Georges M. J. Blanchard. The second strongest force, the Seventh Army under Gen. Henri Giraud, ostensibly a reserve, was to move swiftly into the southern Netherlands to assist the Dutch. In keeping with the theory that the Ardennes itself was a considerable barrier, a weaker force, the Ninth Army under Gen. Andre Georges Corap, was to defend the Meuse from Namur to Sedan; and another weak force, the Second Army under Gen. Charles Huntziger, was to serve both as a bridge between Sedan and the garrison of the Maginot Line and as a hinge for the wide-swinging movement of the Allied armies into Belgium.

As the Germans prepared for attack in November 1939, an invasion scare gripped the Allies, but bad weather forced postponement of the attack. After repeated postponements because of weather conditions, the attack was firmly scheduled for Jan. 17, 1940. A week before the target date, however, a German plane strayed off its course and was forced down in Belgium. On the two officers aboard the Belgians found orders for the air phase of the invasion. This prompted an alarm of even greater proportions than before, and some French forces began moving toward their assigned sectors along the Belgian border. German observers could not help but note the nature of the French deployment, particularly the weakness of the armies at the hinge near Sedan. Of even greater consequence was the fact that the information gained from the fliers confirmed General Gamelin's view that the invasion was to come through the Liege area and not through the Ardennes.

In the meantime, Hitler and several of his subordinates had begun to question the basic concept of Plan Yellow. Indeed, even before the November target date, Hitler himself had forced a change in plan that shifted the main effort from north of Liege to both sides of the city. Col. Gen. (later Field Marshal) Gerd von Rundstedt, commander of Army Group A, which was to drive through the Ardennes, insisted that the main effort be made through that sector with armored divisions to the fore. In an audience with the German leader, Rundstedt's chief of staff, Lt. Gen. (later Field Marshal) Erich von Manstein, apparently provided the final arguments needed to change Hitler's mind. After weather again forced the cancellation of the target date, Hitler postponed the offensive until spring and ordered a basic alteration in the plan. Army Group B in the north, commanded by Col. Gen. Fedor von Bock, was reduced to 28 divisions, only 3 of which were armored. Rundstedt and Army Group A in the Ardennes had 44, including 7 armored divisions. With the main thrust moving via Sedan, Rundstedt was to drive to the channel, trapping French, British, and Belgian armies in Belgium.

Meanwhile, the Allies failed to profit materially from the eight months' respite that they had gained between the declaration of war and the onset of major hostilities in the west. They still felt no real sense of crisis, for they continued to consider the speed of the Polish campaign attributable less to German strength and to a new mode of warfare than to Polish weakness. Although some effort was made to extend the Maginot Line fortifications to the coast, it produced little more than a shallow antitank ditch and a few widely spaced blockhouses. Modern equipment for the French armies and the BEF remained a promise rather than a reality. Allied timetables for troop movements still resembled those of World War I. Corap's Ninth Army, for example, planned on five days for the move to the Meuse covering the Ardennes while only cavalry units sought to delay the Germans east of the river. The Allies, and particularly the French, still looked on tanks as servants of the infantry, parceling them out to infantry divisions rather than massing them in hard-hitting armored formations in close liaison with tactical aircraft.

The Allies actually were superior numerically to the Germans. The French, Dutch, Belgians, and British together had approximately 4,000,000 men available, in contrast to about 2,000,000 Germans who might be used against them. As of May 1940, 136 German divisions were in the west, as opposed to 94 French divisions in northeastern and northern France, plus 10 British, 22 Belgian, and 9 Dutch divisions. In tanks, too, the opposing forces were relatively equal. The Germans had 2,439 tanks in the west; the Allies, 2,689. Nor were German tanks vastly superior except in speed. Created as infantry support weapons, French tanks were heavily armed and armored but lacked appreciable speed and cruising range. In aircraft the Germans enjoyed some advantage in over-all numbers, with about 3,200 planes to 1,200 French and 600 British planes, but in fighter aircraft alone the two forces were approximately equal. Only in antiaircraft and antitank weapons were the French markedly inferior. The difference in opposing forces thus was less a question of numbers and quality than of a variance in approach to modern warfare. The Germans had developed new methods based on quick breakthroughs by armor supported by mobile artillery and aircraft, followed by rapid exploitation of the resulting gaps. In addition, a kind of war-weary lethargy still gripped both France and Britain, as is evidenced by their relatively slow industrial mobilization. Not until Hitler invaded Denmark and Norway in April 1940 was the full portent of the Nazi threat accepted in the two nations. By that time it was too late.

Defeat of the Netherlands

It took the Germans only five days to defeat the Dutch Army, a force of about 400,000 men under Lt. Gen. Henri Gerard Winkelman. Before daylight on May 10, parachutists landed near Rotterdam and The Hague. They captured bridges vital to Dutch defensive plans and airfields where reinforcements could be landed from transport planes soon after daylight. There and elsewhere a sizable body of fifth columnists (German nationals or Dutch Nazi sympathizers) aided the invaders. By this daring, revolutionary strike from the air, the Germans in the first blow had pierced the perimeter of the final Dutch defense line, the so-called Fortress of Holland protecting Rotterdam and The Hague. The German Eighteenth Army, led by Gen. (later Field Marshal) Georg von Kuchler of Bock's Army Group B, launched the ground attack at dawn, the main column striking through the southern Netherlands to envelop the Dutch south flank. This column captured a railroad bridge across the Maas (Meuse) River intact, forcing the Dutch to relinquish their first line of defense along the river that night.

Beset by German planes, advance guards of the French Seventh Army reached Breda on the second day, May 11, there to try to hold with the Dutch forces that had fallen back from the Maas. Two days later, however, on May 13, the French were forced to retreat toward Antwerp. Meanwhile a German armored division made contact with the airborne troops near Rotterdam. While Queen Wilhelmina and the Dutch government left for England, the remainder of the Dutch Army withdrew into the Fortress of Holland. On the morning of May 14, the Germans warned that if resistance continued, Rotterdam and Utrecht would be destroyed from the air. Two hours before the ultimatum was to expire, the Luftwaffe leveled the business section of Rotterdam, inflicting 30,000 civilian casulties. With the tiny Dutch Air Force wiped out, the nation's final defensive line already breached, and no hope of Allied aid from any source, General Winkelman surrendered late on May 14.

Onslaught in Belgium

Elsewhere in Bock's Army Group B, the Sixth Army under Gen. (later Field Marshal) Walter von Reichenau attacked just before dawn on May 10 to jump the Meuse and the Albert Canal north of Liege and swing southwestward into the Gembloux gap. Taking out the guns of Fort Eben-Emael was essential to the army's progress. In a minutely planned operation, German parachutists and glider troops landed within the fortress and quickly seized key points. The garrison was forced to surrender around noon on the second day, May 11. The line of the Meuse and the Albert thus compromised, the Belgians began to fall back to the Dyle that night under cover of advance contingents of British and French troops. Meanwhile, strong German units advanced on Liege. They occupied the city on May 12, but although they seized a number of the big forts, others held out, the last falling on May 29, though without influencing the general course of the campaign.

By May 15, the Sixth Army had been built up against the Dyle Line, while the main column of the Eighteenth Army in the Netherlands swung southwestward against the Belgian left flank near Antwerp. Although the French First Army fought valiantly in the Gembloux gap, by the morning of May 16 French armor had incurred disturbing losses. So strong was the Sixth Army's onslaught against the Dyle Line that the Allies had considerable justification for continuing to believe that the main German effort was in the north. But it would now be only a question of time before Rundstedt's Army Group A, its panzer columns shielded at first by the forests and valleys of the Ardennes, made its full weight felt in the south.

Army Group A controlled six armies, three in line and three in reserve. The northernmost army, the Fourth under Gen. (later Field Marshal) Hans Gunther von Kluge, pointed an armored corps of Dinant. In the center an armored force called Panzer Group Kleist after its commander, Gen. (later Field Marshal) Ewald von Kleist, was the equivalent of an army with two armored corps and a follow-up corps of 5 motorized divisions. The corps in the north under Gen. Hans Reinhardt had 2 armored divisions aimed at the Meuse around Montherme; the other, with 3 armored divisions under Gen. (later Col. Gen.) Heinz Guderian, was aimed at Sedan. South of Panzer Group Kleist the Sixteenth Army under Gen. (later Field Marshal) Ernst Busch was to cover Kleist's south flank east of the Meuse. Once Kleist achieved his penetrations, three other armies were to move forward to protect the south flank of the drive to the sea.

On the French side the error of the high command n placing two mediocre armies in the Ardennes sector against what was to be the main German effort was compounded by the dispositions ordered by the army commanders. General Huntziger (Second Army) put his strongest divisions in the Maginot Line; his weakest (newly mobilized reservists), along his left boundary near Sedan. General Corap (Ninth Army) put his two weakest divisions along his right boundary near that city. Thus the main German thrust of Kleist's armor was destined to strike not only the two weakest French armies but their weakest portions as well.

As Rundstedt and his subordinate commanders learned on May 10, there was some reason for the French theory that the Ardennes is a difficult barrier for major attacks. It took all of the first day for the armor to cross the undefended northern portion of Luxembourg. Yet on the second day the columns picked up momentum, and the cavalry of the Belgian Chasseurs Ardennais and of Corap's Ninth Army could do little to stay the German tanks. French aircraft were absent, preoccupied with the presumed main effort in the Gembloux gap. By nightfall of May 11, Guderian's columns had reached Bouillon, on the serpentine Semois River only a few miles from Sedan. Although a blown bridge forestalled further advance for the night, the armored corps forced a crossing early the next day, and by nightfall it overlooked the great loop in the Meuse at Sedan that had played a vital role in the defeat there in 1870 of the army of Napoleon III. Meanwhile, Reinhardt's armor reached the Meuse near Montherme and Mezieres, north of Sedan. Although both Reinhardt and Guderian prepared to cross the Meuse on May 13, the honor of the first bridgehead fell to the 7th Panzer Division of the Fourth Army, under the command of Gen. (later Field Marshal) Erwin ROMMEL. A column of the division reached the Meuse at Dinant on the evening of May 12, narrowly missed taking a railroad bridge intact, and then sent a patrol across during the night over an old dam or weir. Under concealment of a fog soon after daylight on May 13, reinforcements crossed in rubber assault boats. Night fell with Rommel holding a bridgehead a mile deep.

Neither Guderian nor Reinhardt had yet built up sizable forces for an assault crossing of the Meuse near Sedan, but an attack was ordered for the afternoon of May 13 in the hope of catching the French before they were prepared for it. To compensate for the absence of heavy artillery, hundreds of fighters and Stuka dive bombers began to bomb and strafe French positions four hours before the assault began. Confronted with this terrifying new departure in warfare, some of the defending French reservists panicked. Nevertheless, the French made their enemy pay dearly in the actual assault. Artillery and machine guns cut down half of the German troops, but the other half got across the river. Three out of four attempted crossings succeeded, and by midnight a pontoon bridge spanned the Meuse. The next day, May 14, General Huntziger hastily counterattacked Guderian's south flank with a cavalry division, though without appreciable success. Guderian's 2d Panzer Division plunged on to the west, seizing two bridges intact across the Ardenness Canal. The spectacular drive from the Meuse to the Channel coast had begun.

In the meantime, Reinhardt's armored corps had greater difficulty. French artillery and small-arms fire beat back two crossing attempts at Mezieres and Montherme. Not until almost nightfall, after tanks had arrived to deliver point-blank fire across the river, was a crossing achieved, and then only at heavy cost. All through the next day, May 14, the status of the bridgehead remained in doubt as the French mustered local reserves against it, but by the morning of May 15 Reinhardt's engineers had put in a pontoon bridge, and reinforcements poured across it. The French fallacy in failing to establish defenses in depth then became painfully apparent: by evening advance contingents of Reinhardt's armor were 35 miles beyond the Meuse, close to Guderian's flank. Army Group A had made a gap 50 miles wide in Second and Ninth Army positions. The breakthrough was complete.