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This Day in Alternate History Blog
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France
1940 – alternatives My
take on this is that when reviewing famous victories, most of them are terribly
one-sided affairs. There was no
question that Zhukov and Koniev would take Berlin in 1945.
It was a matter of elegance. The
correlation of forces was such that however badly they command they could not
lose. There
are other battles where the correlation of forces cannot predict the outcome.
Wellington rightly called Waterloo a damned near run thing.
When a balanced action results in a world shattering victory [Cannae,
Midway] usually one side was very lucky and the other made endless errors.
My contention is that the German victory in France in 1940 was of this
category. I am working out of two
books – No End Save Victory edited by Robert Cowley and Strange Victory by
Ernest May – but also mentally referencing 40 years reading and discussion of
military history and wargame design. Start
with the correlation of forces, May 1940 May pp 477-478
Yes
German training was better than the Allied average. They had better radios, better doctrine, the initiative and a
united command [the Allies never did get their overly complicated four nation
command structure properly up and running before everything fell apart].
However the norm is that you need at least a 3-1 superiority at the point
of contact. Germany had that only
at a few selected points and only because of French errors and luck, as I will
demonstrate. Deployments A
= first line B
= second line Dutch
had 4 A and 7B divisions facing German 18th Army with 5A, 4B, 1
Panzer and the bulk of the German airborne forces [about a division although not
organized that way] In
Belgium the Allies had two French armies, the BEF and Belgians with 15 French A,
2 French B, 3 French armored divisions, 6 French motorized divisions, 9 BEF
Divisions [all basically motorized], 12 Belgium A and 10 Belgian B. Facing them
were 18 German A, 8 B, a para battlegroup that was largely destroyed taking the
key Belgian fortress and 2 Panzer divisions. At
the hinge in the Ardennes were two French armies in two separate army groups
[the German attack came roughly on the Army Group boundary always a danger area
as was well known from WW1] with 14A divisions, 4 B divisions, 2 motorized
divisions and 2 cavalry hybrid divisions. Facing
them were 30 German A divisions, 4 B, 7 panzer divisions, 4 motorized divisions.
Despite an overall inferiority the Germans managed superiority on the
attack sector. We will see why
below. Essentially
doing nothing in the Maginot Line and Westwall were 21 French A, 1 British A, 5
French B facing 8 German A and 11 German B.
In
reserve were 16 French A, 2 French armored, 1 French motorized.
There were 5 partially formed British divisions essentially being used as
labor troops around the Channel ports.
German reserves were 9 A and 10B. The
first major French failure was obviously intelligence.
They allowed themselves to be surprised strategically and operationally.
Strategically despite having enough forces to cover everything they
insisted on a plan for a dash into Belgium deep enough to link up with the Dutch
PLUS major forces to guard the Maginot Line. Fortified lines are supposed to free up troops for use
elsewhere. French intelligence was
so bad that they allowed their fortified lines to be screened by an inferior
force. The French plan only made
sense if they were sure the Germans would in fact make the main effort in
Belgium. To placate the British
stupidity [fears the Germans would invade Holland and then bomb Britain without
going further] they put a first rate French army on the British left to race and
link up with the Dutch. Allied
plans took account of French political problems, British absurd fears, Benelux
neutrality…everything but German capabilities. Operationally
they allowed themselves to be surprised by the actual day of the German advance.
This is not the place to go into endless discourses on signal to noise
ratio in the intelligence business. A
few retired French officers with radios, good field glasses and government paid
retirement homes on the Dutch – German, Belgian – German, and
Luxemburg-German borders could have made a world of difference if anyone in
Paris would have paid attention. The
cumbersome structure of the French government, French command, and inter-Allied
command arrangement make it unlikely that the Allies would have acted on the
data had they processed it in time {May points out that they had clear data on
the preattack German buildup at the Luxembourg border and did nothing}.
So I presume to begin that nothing changes up to the balloon going up.
The Germans will achieve operational and strategic surprise.
The French 1st Army group will move as planned into Belgium
with the French left racing to link up with the Dutch at Breda and thus make the
British happy. It
is here that I start proposing variants. Before
I do so a word on the French army. Its biggest defect was an extremely slow and extremely over
centralized decision cycle. Many of
credited the Germans with discovering a new mode of warfare, the Blitzkrieg.
This is bullshit. All
Guderian did in 1940 was apply the Storm system of 1917-18 with modern vehicles,
radios and aircraft. Essentially
the problem with the WW1 storm system tactically was that you lost contact with
all your units at X hour. Radios
were too big and too delicate. Phone
wire always got cut. The
operational problem of storm was two fold.
You couldn’t deploy your artillery or logistics quickly enough across
the moonscape that the barrage reduced the battlefield to before the enemy had
brought up reserves. The moonscape
came from bad / no radios [artillery firing blind therefore too many shells] and
not being able to use aircraft as flying artillery.
The French and British had failed to see how to do any of this for
various institutional reasons. That
is not why they lost. They lost
because they institutionally forgot the lessons of 1916-18.
Both Western armies were less capable than they were in 1918.
Either 1918 army with 1918 equipment holds the breakout at the Meuse to a
Michael 1918 offensive type of defeat [alarming but not a disaster].
The two had retrogressed, the French worst of all.
However, I am going to treat this as a given as changing it means going
back to the 20’s and 30’s. So
the French will fight well as companies but poorly as divisions and horribly as
armies. They will take too long to
redeploy and be too slow to react. They
will be the Army of the Potomac facing Bobby Lee. They
still had very good chances of winning. May
points first to the traffic jam that was the armored push through the Ardennes.
He hypothesizes that the Allies could have attacked the head to tail
snarled road columns during the three days they went through the Ardennes with
air. I feel this was beyond the Allies. The two Air Forces had spent decades refusing to be German
style flying artillery. This was
not going to change in three days even though the panzer columns had no fighter
cover – the German Air Force was tied up for the first three days dominating
the skies over Belgium and Holland. However
the French did send two hybrid cavalry divisions into the Ardennes.
I am not asking for them to be Speznatz.
However the two divisions underperformed a Belgian reserve bicycle
battlegroup. These Belgians did good recon and good delaying work before
pedaling away to rejoin the Belgian Army. The
two French divisions never managed to use their horses to get off road and scout
the German columns. They did less
to delay – knocking down trees, roadblocks, wrecking bridges than two
divisions of Napoleon’ s dragoons would have done facing the same situation.
There is no trick to using horses in bad terrain to go where wheels and
tracks cannot. Recon and reporting
are basic skills. So are delaying
tactics when terrain favors it. They
could easily have delayed the Germans enough for the slow French army to realize
the problem, react and get properly prepared on the Meuse.
One chance lost. Now
we come to a major French blunder. They
had a plan to meet the Germans in Belgium.
They had a second plan if the Germans fooled them and made the main
effort in Lorraine against the Maginot Line.
Simple prudence would have them prepare a 3rd plan in case the
main effort was at the hinge in the Ardennes. Even the French were somewhat aware that their reaction time
was slow and command style over centralized.
As there were only three realistic places for the Germans to attack – a
main attack across the Rhine into Alsace or through the Swiss mountains is
simply too absurd for words – making an extra plan was simple prudence.
It wasn’t done. Even the elementary steps weren’t taken.
The two armies left at the hinge were part of different army groups.
One was part of an Army group that had to juggle four other armies from
three different nationalities. The
Ardennes army was the command stepchild. The
other Ardennes army was part of a group whose main function was defending
Lorraine. Again it was the
stepchild. These are elementary
mistakes. Having made them, normal
WW1 practice would have been to put a command reserve force on the hinge between
the two armies, which was also the hinge between army groups.
It would have been SOP in 1917-18. It
wasn’t done. It would have saved France.
Another chance lost. In
the event, the Germans attacked straight off the march.
The French had presumed that even if the Germans sent motor units through
the Ardennes, they would have to wait for the artillery to come up, giving the
French time to counter the move. The
Germans were able to do this attack off the road march mostly because of two
extraordinary commanders. One was
Heinz Guderian whose corps made one of the two breakthroughs.
There is no way he would not have gotten his command.
He was the creator of the panzer forces and one of the army command’s
fair-haired boys. The
other was a divisional commander named Erwin Rommel. He had been a brilliant mountain jager in WW1 [a Speznatz
type commando] but was regarded in the army as unsuited for higher command.
He was felt to be one of those all balls, no brains type that didn’t
fit into the mould to go to staff school, etc.
As a result he was given a meaningless assignment handling Hitler’s
entourage for the occupation of Prague and again during the Polish campaign.
He was just the sort of physically active storm officer to appeal to the
old front fighter Adolph. As
patronage Hitler gave him a Panzer division for the 1940 campaign.
Rommel had no armored or motorized training. He treated a tank division as a storm division from 1918 with
better weapons. He made a highly
unlikely breakthrough that unhinged Corap’s 9th Army by his usual
commando style of leading the spearpoint from the front while trusting his staff
to keep his division running. His
companion division did not do as well. Another
bit of German luck. Back
to Guderian: on the march through the Ardennes there were almost no attempts at
air interdiction. One of the few
was a blind bombing of a small town in the forest.
Destroyed one staff car outside Guderian’s temp HQ and the shrapnel
almost took his head off but didn’t actually hit him. Without him the attack fails at the Meuse and later.
Another bit of German luck. Guderian
gets to the Meuse with three divisions. He
was supposed to have two but disobeyed orders and lied to his superiors [he left
just enough of 10th Panzer division as a flank guard to fake signals
traffic to fool his own bosses]. Kleist
has a fight with him but doesn’t relieve him.
Another bit of German luck. Guderian
asks for a delay in making the crossing, to allow artillery to come up.
Kleist overrules him and makes it stick [the only time he will make an
order stick with Guderian during the campaign but also the only time he was
correct – hours counted]. Another bit of German luck. Kleist
also overrules Guiderian’s careful air attack plans. Kleist’s orders do not reach the air HQ on time so the
planes use Guderian’s attack plan for prolonged loiter attack which is much
more effective. Another bit of
German luck. Both
sides had B divisions. Older
reservists, reserve cadre, not enough weapons, not enough training.
The French put one of theirs on the hinge, the 55thID.
However even for a B Reserve unit it performs poorly.
Although it was in the same position from mobilization in September to
the attack in May it never completes its defenses – blockhouses, minefields,
etc. By constantly shuffling
companies out of the line for labor duty and training it manages to destroy what
little unit cohesion it has. Companies
are given to other battalions when they return to the line, battalions to other
regiments. Despite knowing for
three days that the real war is one, no one at regiment, division, corps or army
command checks to be sure that this shuffled mess knows its defense assignments,
who is on whose flanks, checks that communication lines are in between adjacent
units, prepares fire plans for the artillery – nothing.
On the day of the attack some blockhouses cannot be used because the
company with the keys has moved and locked them.
This is staff school 101 folks. We
are talking moron level here. A
competent command inspection in 1915-18 would have sacked the lot of them.
Nobody looked. Nobody cared.
All eyes are on Belgium. With
essentially the entire German air force and three panzer divisions plus the
elite Gross Deutschland regiment attacking this lone division across the Meuse
the isolated companies hold for most of the day inflicting massive losses on the
Germans. By dusk the division is
starting to unravel but French command is ignoring the problem.
Any competent corps commander from the Great War brings up his reserves
and seals the breach. Again it
would have been a defeat but not a disaster.
Another chance lost. On
the 14th and 15th the French brought up 6 good reserve
divisions. The Germans slowly
expanded the bridgehead. The French
reserves were committed piecemeal to small counterattacks. These attacks were never coordinated. Guderian was able to get his three divisions across the Meuse.
The French also put all six divisions south and east of Guderian, leaving
the West side to two somewhat battered B divisions.
By 1918 standards this was pathetic.
Why herd Guderian towards the one direction, west, where there are other
major German forces and where a straight thrust can cut off the Allied army
group in Belgium? Had DeGaulle’s
armored division been sent he probably could have stopped the penetration, which
would have only left Rommel to contain. He
was kept in reserve despite being known as the best French armored expert.
Yes his division was still being formed but had he been given a rump
corps with the 3rd Armored and 3rd Motorized he would not
have botched the Stonne battles the way Hutziger did.
Had Lattre de Tassigny [commander of the 1st Free French Army
44-45 and later of the Indochina War where he beat Giap several times] been
given the A reserve infantry divisions instead of just his own 14th
the gap would have been sealed. With
it all, with all the German luck and French errors, a few good officers could
still have saved the day. Instead
French party politics had created a supreme commander, Gamelin, who played army
politics with assignments. DeGaulle
wasn’t used earlier because his patron Petain was out of favor at that moment.
Lattre de Tassigny was kept at the divisional level because his patron
Weygand wasn’t recalled from Syria until after the battle was lost.
Gamelin’s political patron was Daladier.
Daladier’s government had just fallen when the Germans attacked.
Had the party crisis come a few weeks sooner Gamelin would have been out
and either Georges or Weygand in with Petain probably as War Minister.
If this happens the right men are used and France does not fall. Even
with all of this there is one last crisis.
On May 17th Kleist flies out to Guderian’s forward HQ and
gives him a halt order. Guderian is
roughly half way to cutting off the French.
Guderian has a fit and Kleist relieves him. If this relief sticks the Allies get a chance to recover and
either seal the bulge or evacuate Belgium with their armies mostly intact.
Instead Kleist is overruled later in the day.
Precisely by who and how remain in doubt.
Kluge and Halder both claim credit afterwards.
Similarly neither Rundstedt nor Hitler take credit for the halt order
after the fact although one or both is by far the more likely source than Kleist. Kleist would have been prepared to relieve Guderian for lying
and insubordination, not for rapid advance without regard to his flanks.
Kleist proved this again and again in Russia.
Not only is Guderian’s ouster overruled but Kleist is not allowed to
enforce the halt order he was forced to give.
Guderian is allowed a reconnaissance in force that amounts to continuing
the advance. He reaches the sea at
Abbeville in strength three days later and France has effectively lost the war.
I do not regard the proposed counterattacks against the German flanks
seriously. To me the last French
chance comes with the double reversal – Guderian is left in command and left
free to do as he wishes. Still,
this German victory was a near run thing. Without
having a better army the French could have won the campaign if not the battle.
Remember that a long war favors the Allies.
Their economic position is better. Their
rearmament was first hitting its stride. They
did not have to take Berlin to win. If
they do not lose either the blockade strangles Germany or Stalin stabs Hitler in
the back. I
welcome comments and discussion. This
campaign changed the course of the world but it was not inevitable or even
obvious that it would turn out this way. A
German advance that leaves the West in the field produces a very different
world. Hitler is seen as a flash in
the pan. Stalin is never seen as
one of the triumphant forces of democracy.
He may take Eastern Europe but he will be seen as a thug who helped
Hitler. Because of the Fall of
France and then Barbarossa the old conservative parties of Europe were forever
tagged as collaborators while the Reds who actively worked to undermine France
became social patriots because they switched lines 41-45. This has changed the politics of Europe to this day.
Without this victory the US never enters WW2.
Japan never risks Pearl Harbor. Luck,
command stupidity and some integral French flaws got us here.
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