The Fall of France - Mark Gerges

okay time to get started good evening and welcome to the Kansas City Public Library I'm Henry Fortunato director of public affairs thank you for joining us in the second iteration of this month's stealth series stealth series it's it's not really been announced publicly but what it really is is not so great moments in French military history tonight's program marking the 75th anniversary of the defeat of France by Nazi Germany as well as the one we did two weeks ago commemorating the 200th anniversary of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo suggests that we got some possibilities here both of these programs attracted over 250 people I got to work on that I will say that both of these programs could not have been possible without our excellent and extraordinary partners at the Department of military history at the command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth yeah yeah absolutely you know over the over the nine years that I've been director of public affairs at the library we've entered into and developed a lot of partnerships but I cannot think of one that has been more resounding ly wonderful than with the folks at Fort Leavenworth and that's why you know continuing with our stealth series I want to suggest you look at that calendar in November we can examine the 62nd anniversary of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu when the French were defeated by the Vietnamese communists actually I'm kidding I won't be here in November but I am here tonight a little more than 75 years to the day when the world turned upside down in just six weeks the bear macht had shattered the French army the Third Republic collapsed a strange little quasi fascist rump state called Vichy France arose and outside of the successful evacuation from Dunkirk things looked pretty grim in the landmark study to lose a battle France 1940 first published in 1969 British historian Alistair Horne posed these questions who and what were responsible for Frances catastrophe in 1940 could the game have been played differently and at what point did the disaster become irredeemable these questions still resonate and tonight in what I know will be an excellent talk dr. mark T Gerges is going to address them and more mark is an associate professor in the department of military history at the command drama Staff College he earned a bachelor's in history and military studies from Norwich University in Northfield Vermont plus an MA and a PhD from Florida State University in Tallahassee his doctoral dissertation was on command and control over the British cavalry under the Duke of Wellington during the Peninsular war of 1808 to 1814 mark is also a 20 year veteran of the US Army with service in armored units in Europe the Middle East and the United States in addition to his work at Fort Leavenworth mark has also taught history at the United States Military Academy at West Point tonight's talk is Mark's second appearance at the library in 2011 he gave the lecture on Napoleon that was part of our great commanders series ladies and gentlemen please welcome mark Burgess okay I didn't realize it was part of a stealth series here on the the feets of France because Henry was very kind kind of jumping around a little bit on my my particular biography because I am much more comfortable talking about the Duke of Wellington Napoleon and the British Army fighting in Portugal in Spain that's really my research area and she could probably ask why did a nice employ a guy like I get sucked into the 20th century and part of it is a quote from Alistair Horne the book that Henry mentioned roster Horne talks about the vital France in particular Sudan he says it was the crisis for France for Western civilization and it would come to be regarded as one of the crucial moments of the 20th century and I would imagine that most people here tonight probably haven't thought about this as the crucial moment of the 20th century but let me go back a little bit of why I particularly find myself fascinated about this campaign and really have spent the last thirty years researching and looking into this campaign and I am a child of the 60s that are coming to age in the 70s and I was raised on things like the BBC series the world of war war movies patent all these other ones that kind of painted this tactical superiority of the Germans that you just knew that they were so unbelievably skilled at the tactical level that any sort of mechanized warfare was really a predetermined outcome and then I'm commissioned as an armor officer and I will spend my first tour in Germany as a tank platoon leader in the third Armored Division the northern portion of the central army group on our left flank was a German Corps we had a partnership battalion with the Panzer grenadiers or partnership of time as a Panzer Grenadier battalion we called our tanks Panzers and the US army at that time was on a Renaissance of its of its doctrine and looking at this this idea called air land battle and to do this they gone back to German philosophers sorpresa philosophers like Carl von Clausewitz talking about using in our own doctrine in our professional journals things like swear pumps the the main effort the finger your spritzen fuga that the finger touching to know the pulse of the the enemy and so all these terms are kind of in there and then I read a book and it was Alistair horns to lose a battle and we kind of in Germany at that time period we're really all IND about how good the Germans were and their superiority over the French and over over the Russians and then when you read Alistair horns book mr. horn paints a different picture he talks about really all these opportunities for the French just slipping away how these opportunities are there and the French are just acting too slowly they're just missing the opportunity they don't notice it at the time and it really piqued my interest and it was one of these things that I kept looking on and then in the 1990s I went to West Point and my boss there was a colonel Robert Dodi who was the head of the department he had written a book to lose a to the breaking point about the fall of Sudan and it focuses just on the 19th Paine is a core breaking through at the battle sadang and interesting enough there's really no tanks there this is just German infantry versus French infantry and it's a straight-up fight and it really again puts that blitzkrieg mythology that we've kind of chromed to just assume or to assume as correct to question then of course by the early 2000s car hide freezer who's a historian with the Bundeswehr the German army is going to publish a book first a German translated into English called blitzkrieg legend which he addresses specifically the myth of the blitzkrieg that has grown up in the fall France 1940 I also had the opportunity when I was first in the department of military history to do a staff ride its what the army calls our visits to battlefields but it's more than just a visit we actually do preparation beforehand the students have to do preparation and then they go out to the actual piece of ground and study what happened why does commanders make certain decisions and so in 2002 I was able to go to Sudan and actually study with some US army officers and French all sirs we're going to the French version the command General Staff College and walk this ground and look at the ground and try to figure out what had going on so see it's been pretty much a 30-year piece of why this campaign has has fascinated me so much and there's a number of reasons about mythology about the Allied collapse everything from the German tanks were just so much superior to the French they had more tanks the 5th column this this shadowy group of people who are cutting telegraph lines telephone lines sewing destruction and disorder in the French were area the bridges over the Meuse river not being blown the impenetrable this idea that the Ardennes Forest is impenetrable no one could go there the French are absolutely surprised by that and then also this defensive mentality of the Maginot Line hopefully as we go through the talk tonight I'll address all these particular ones if I don't address them directly we can talk about them as we go into the questions and answers I do want to point out in the photos real quick just a couple of things notice the victory parade in Paris this is a late June 1940 the victory parade go by the Arc de Triomphe from the sharp sound alizée notice the mechanization of the German army about 80% of the German army is going to be horse-drawn and foot powered throughout the entire Second World War and we tend to think about the Germans as being this this mechanized juggernaut and being so good on on just how in automobiles the first Autobahn is a section from Hannover to basil basil oh it started 1935 it doesn't get finished till 1967 German car ownership in 1940 is 1.5 percent of the population France at that time has 5 percent of the population and the United States with our love of automobiles is a 20 percent population so this mythology much more the German army is horse-drawn like this I also have two generals that will talk a lot about tonight one is Heinz Guderian armored Corps commander the 19th Panzer Corps I want you to notice both him and Erwin Rommel who's a Major General at that time commanding the 7th Panzer Division notice what's around their neck they have binoculars ok it's a general officer you really don't need binoculars unless you are upfront with the leading elements trying to make decisions trying to point it and that's part of the secret of this German success is the leading from the front that the German officers are going to do the man in the middle a little sad downcast is 68 your year old the gamma lean who's the French commander chief notice he does not have binoculars around his neck his headquarters have been sent on the outsets on the eastern outskirts of Paris does not have radios he doesn't want radios there he wantsto telephone lines coming in every hour on the hour a motorcycle courier leaves with dispatches for the front and part of this is just showing the differences of the mentality of the two sides as we go into into this but let me go back a little bit and talk about how we got here and I really need to start a little bit with the France in the 1920s and 30s July 14 1919 Bastille Day is the day of the great victory parade it lasts for about 12 hours the first contingents come by of all the Allied armies who fought with France and then the France are me for about six hours we'll pass going through all the different types of units and you would think that would be a celebration a thing of we've won and really the the mood of this victory parade is not so much that we won as we survived we got through it somehow and this is the mood that's going to really strike France as it goes throughout the the 1920s and 30s it's not a celebration that we've defeated our French or our German opponent it's that we survived in the effort that France has to do to do this is is immense we tend to being in the english-speaking world kind of thinking a lot about the British and over one if you're following along all the World War One commemorations for the Centennial it's so much on the British contributions but 75% of the frontline is held by French troops and that's a 1918 after the US Army comes in and takes a hundred miles out of the out of the front so the vast majority and the French have got a very macabre way of describing things you see that they had almost a half a million killed about 1.5 million wounded every year at the ATS unsere their their Military Academy they have a plaque that'll say the class year and they'll have the list of names of everyone who died defending France so they'll have say the class of 1916 and we'll have all the names of these officers who died defending France the only year that that doesn't have that is the class of 1914 and all the class of 1914 plaque says is the class of 1914 hundred percent of the graduates of science here that year will die in the next four years of the military age males between 18 and 27 years old 27% are going to die in the first world war and this means a huge poor part for France not only just the destruction for France it also means that 20 years later that they're going to have what they call the hollow years in 1914 when they call up the reserves at the mobilization they have about 1.2 million Frenchmen able to go to war 1940 that number is at 600,000 half of 1914 because of the halle years the young men who died during the Great War who don't have children don't get married and so are never born the other aspect is this lesson - Verdun 10-month battle the Germans initiate this and it's meant to be a meat grinder - absolutely bleed the French army white by using massive amounts of artillery fire they've picked Verdun because it's symbolic to the French nation and it is going to become this catastrophic fight for 10 months and the Germans kind of forget why they're fighting there and using the artillery fire and they will get drawn in but for the French army every single Infantry Regiment in the French army will rotate through Verdun and one of the lessons of this is just the absolute destructive power of modern firepower you can't send brave young men like you could in 1870 or back in the Napoleonic era to cross the beaten ground you have to rely on firepower to do that and then infantry will occupy the other aspect there's two forts at the Verdun area fort de menthe and veau which are going to hold out against the Germans with very very few defenders against at one point division level attacks and the other lesson is that these prepared defences have a huge benefit that you don't have to sacrifice your lives what it means is you come out of World War one is that the French and Germans start to diverge in their doctrine of what just happened in latter part March in April 1918 the Germans go on the offensive they're going to go on the offensive using what they call infiltration tactics it's not based on armoured vehicles it's by initiative and small unit actions and they're going to for the first time in the war restore mobility to the battlefield but they can't sustain it because of the losses they're going to take after the war the German army is reduced down to 100,000 man basically a big police force and during that time period 20 19 21 they're going to study what just happened and Hans one sect he was going to be head of the the Reich's fair interest enough sets up 57 committees he doesn't say what did we learn in the war he says what just happened what did we do about it what happened that we did not expect and what do you think that means for the future and so these 57 committees look at this and then in 1921 in 1922 they published new doctrine based on those lessons they learned from the war what this and I bring this out because mechanization has nothing to do with the way the Germans want to fight this idea that we call blitzkrieg which of course is not a German word it's coined by a British correspondent the Germans would have fought this way whether they had wheeled vehicles whether they had tanks or if they were on foot it has nothing to do with the means of moving it had everything to do with what you want to do with the enemy the French take a different lesson from it this idea of the fire powers you have to have massive amounts of artillery and a senior commander has to be able to sit back and see where the real problem is going to be and then he can mass the artillery to fire against that position what that means is the commander can't be too far forward he has to be back have good communications has to be able to see and then move those assets around to be able to strike them and so the French doctrine starts to be what they call the methodical battle this idea that you use massive amounts of firepower don't send your young men there and then occupy it with tanks and infantry consolidate and then you move forward again and again the last aspect is just the Third Republic itself and we don't have time tonight to go into the problems with the left and the right in the Third Republic one of the issues though is in the 20 or the last ten years nineteen thirty nineteen for you there's 19 different Prime Minister's 19 different changes of government despite that despite the the fights between the left and the right in France France still spends a huge amount of effort and a huge amount of time modernizing their army preparing for the next woven Germany because they know they're right next door so let's talk about World War one and the German plan where one is what's known as the Schlieffen Plan a huge look through Belgium aimed towards Paris destroying to destroy the French army and one big throw it doesn't work in the summer of 1914 and you're going to settle down into a frontline that basically for about four years stays roughly where that green line is why is this important as you start to look at the French planning in the 1920s and 1930s and you should notice one thing on there I have is the Maginot Line that has now been built Maginot Line has been built directly between the Avenue of approach between the French and the Germans Maginot Line is not meant to sit behind and wait for the Germans to attack you it's meant to make the Germans go somewhere else which they do which means the Maginot Line works exactly the way it's supposed to work the French know this the Germans know this but it means you have to do certain other things and we'll talk about that in a second but if you look at that yellow triangle that yellow trying them from the coast down to about Strasbourg back to Paris has a huge percentage of the French heavy industry you want airplanes you want tanks you want heavy artillery you want munitions you can't allow a war on your own frontier again which means as wartime planning goes on in the 1920s and particularly in the 1930s the idea is you have to move forward as much as possible into Belgium and hold the Germans out of there so you can produce all those munitions you need to fight that's just showing where the front line was and where were won and why the French can't allow that to happen again so by the spring of 1940 and remember we have the war starts the 1st of September when the Germans invade Poland three days later Great Britain and France declare war on Germany Poland Falls after 28 days the entire world is shocked of how good the German army is except for the German army and if you look at the German army after-action reviews they talk about their infantry is not as good as the kaisers infantry of 1914 they have problems at every level from squad level with the soldiers with machine guns all the way up to divisions they have entire divisions that the structure just doesn't work soldiers don't take initiative they are afraid of shooting their weapons because the enemy will then shoot back that is a quote so there's all these issues that the Germans say that they're going to spend that ten months of what's known as the phoney war training and looking at in trying to address as opposed to the British and French you think we have our doctrine we're pretty good we're going to train but we're going to spend a lot of our time worrying on about our plan notice and I should have mentioned one of the key moments is 1936 March 1936 when Hitler marches back into the Rhineland the Rhineland has been dig militarized since the end of the first world war and Hitler says this is Germany I'm marching in putting troops in there and France and Great Britain do nothing by their lack of acting it convinces the new King Leopold in Belgium that we can't trust France and Britain to be our saviours and so what Belgium is going to do is declare themselves neutral now we're were one the Netherlands were neutral the Germans didn't go there they didn't go to the Switzerland makes perfect sense right except that's the only way drew me can get at France because of the Maginot Line but it does mean though is that for France and Belgium there is no defensive planning there is no talking and no preparations up until the day the Germans invade in May of 1940 Belgium is neutral so for the French they're going to have to do a race as soon as the Germans crossing the Belgium and the Belgians invite them in the French and the British are going to have to race forward sweeping like a big door up into what's known as the diol River line along the diol River if they're lucky and if they can get up there quick enough they actually want to extend that line up to Breda in the Netherlands so they have a continuous front within a Dutch forces up there they have to do about a hundred miles the Germans have to 100 miles so they have to get there quick so what the French are going to do is put the majority of their motor rised and mechanized forces up in the north to do that swing into Belgium you also notice the green arrows there that is the Belgian Army and their defense planning they are going to collapse um what their central portion of the country which has the majority of their population majority of their industry they aren't going to stay get defending the Ardennes if you've been through the Ardennes it's trees it's shale they have a really nice smoked ham that's about it so the Belgian plan is to move out of the Ardennes and move back into the central part the problem is it means there's no one in the Ardennes the French aren't there they're going to have to move into it the Belgians aren't there and it basically leaves all that area open to the Germans so let's talk a little bit about the force comparisons it's not as unbalanced as you think about equal in the number of divisions we'll talk about those in a few moments but if you look at the British Expeditionary Force the British Army is all mechanised actually should have motorized in their much their transportation is trucks in rubber wheels but they're the first arm in the world to go 100% internal combustion engine and get rid of the horse the Netherlands will bring ten the Belgians bring 22 but when you look at tanks the eyes outnumber the Germans almost two to one and if you notice the Germans 1500 of those are obsolete what they call Panzer ones and Panzer twos armed with either machine guns or a light cannon and a machine gun very thinly armed artillery particularly because of the French with their methodical battle a huge advantage to to 114 thousand tubes of artillery it's in fighters and bombers in particular that the Germans have a advantage not just in numbers but also in in just the quality of the aircraft think about the Luftwaffe who starts from zero in 1935 so all their aircraft is relatively modern new types they aren't taking aircraft that have been designed twenty years ago the bottom one is the the Messerschmitt 109 one of the finest fighters at the time and of course the Stuka dive-bomber that Ju 87 who has the Jericho trumpets on there their fixed landing gear designed to cause panic just so you know what that sounds like loud and scary and again and again seeing those come but let's take a look at the Germans a little bit more detail because while those numbers 157 look good when you actually look at it German army has been care compared to a spear with a steel shot I steal a head and a long wooden pole and in that steel shot a steel head you have the 10 Panzer divisions they're absolutely forces six motorized divisions infantry being moved round primarily by trucks and then you have the wooden shaft which are infantry 61 divisions that are fully capable of doing offense and defensive operations then you've got another 30 divisions that are conditionally able to do offensive defense then you've got 28 divisions that are only good for the defense and you get some that are only conditionally good for the defense all those divisions other than the 16 motorised the mechanized March on foot they move at the speed of soldiers boots just the way the Roman legions moved 2,000 years ago and this is going to be a huge piece of the problem for the Germans as they advance through France because that armored spearhead is going to move quickly sometimes 30 and 40 miles a day while the infantry likely to do 15 to 20 miles a day day after day that picture down there in the bottom showing the motorisation you can see the the German side cars motorcycles but you also see horses that are pulling mostly artillery much of the logistics logistics carts for the Allies the French have three armored divisions and these are known as division cross CA going back to the heavy cavalry almost no infantry these are meant to be that shock effect smash something one division the 4th armored division actually begins its forming on the 10th of May when the Germans attack they also have six more motorized divisions and then the six DL M's these light mechanized divisions which are pretty much the equivalent of a Panzer Division they are good bounce about 174 tanks with mekin on infantry and half-tracks the British armored and and motorised forces for the British Expeditionary Force so let's talk about how the German plan changes over time the Germans get done in in Poland and Hitler says we're going to now attack France and the German army says what we really don't want to and they are going to drag their heels talking about all the training they have to do talking about how bad the weather is the first plan that comes out and the term that the Germans used to this is fall Gelb or case yellow for the invasion of France the first phase of it and the first one that comes out in October 1939 pretty much looks like the Schlieffen Plan all over again three advances they meet up around Brussels form a big sweep and they sweep into France and try to win the war in one big fell swoop again by the 29th of October you see that this is starting to move a little bit farther south in a balance and this is where again chance starts to play a real factor in this campaign much of this influence is because of the chief of staff of Army Group a the German Army Group B is in the north and they are the main effort the Schware Punkt and Army Group B is in the south and their chief of staff is a guy named man Stein and man Stein doesn't like being the second fiddle he doesn't like being the supporting effort and so he is constantly coming up with plans saying this isn't going to work this is just going to repeat the sheathing plan of World War one we need to move more of the forces to the south and give it to Army Group a the Army Group I'm in that we're going to be able to go and do it he consistently is bombarding the army of the okw the Oberkommando the very mock the German Army Headquarters with these and then we're getting pretty tired of him by January they have moved forces south and you can see now that you have two big broad advances one from Army Group B in the north and then Army Group A in the South that is now starting to go through the Ardennes man Stein is continuing to say this isn't going to work this isn't going to work this isn't going to work and luckily for the Germans unluckily for France again fate happens to era they are having a big bore game up at Cologne in the in Germany and what they're going to end up doing is a German major with the Luftwaffe is going to fly up there with his buddy and a little Storch two-seat aircraft he's not supposed to fly up there but the weather is bad he decides to fly his buddy gets lost in crash lands in Belgium neutral Belgium and this major at this point knows I'm in serious trouble so he takes his put the plans which have the entire plans of the Germans in January in 1940 he goes off behind it a hedge to start destroying these plans his buddy stays with the aircraft a Belgian patrol comes along and he says and says no it was just me all by myself with the airplane but the Belgians notice some fire smoke coming out behind the hedge yeah it gets worse I should have started off with the German major goes behind the hedge to start the fire and his lighter doesn't work a Belgian a Belgian farmer comes along and says oh you're trying to start a fire I've got some matches here he starts the fire the Belgian patrol sees it they grab these two officers remember they're not at war now these are just neutrals that have crash-landed but they cease the plans and then they're going to do is take them back to their patrol post and the lieutenant in charge this patrol is going to call up saying what do you want me to do with these two majors and they leave the majors alone for a minute there's a big pot belly stove in the room it's January it's burning away they grab their papers run over the pot-bellied stove open the door and throw the maps into the the the stove the Belgians run over there they grab what they can they put it out as much as they can but the majors the German major say I don't worry about it we destroyed the plans nothing to worry about unfortunately the German intelligence starts picking up huge amounts of radio and telephone traffic in the Belgians and they realize that they got enough of the plan and that the the hojun British and the French now know exactly where we plan to attack and so the plan is compromised and just to remind you here's what the French and Belgian and the British plan looks like and if you notice as these two plans come together this is almost perfect for any of these options this is where they think the main battle is going to take place and this is where the French and British would put their best forces and so the fight will take place there it actually makes the French even more bold they say ah we know where the Germans are going to come so we're not just going to go to the diol River we're going to go all the way up to Breda even farther and be more offensively minded the Germans on the other hand say our plan is absolutely compromised what are we going to do the immense line has been constantly bombarding their headquarters with these ideas they finally have gotten tired of him and he will be promoted up and out of the Western Front he's given a corps command in Poland he's given his third star and as he moves across Germany to take up his command and Poland Hitler decides he's going to have a reception for all these brand new promoted lieutenant generals Hitler's heard about nan Stein's plan and wants to talk to him but he doesn't want to interfere with the army and so he can't just call man Stein to Berlin and so he has this receptionist as man Stein walks in the room he says tell me about your plan and here's the plan it is now making the main effort down to Army Group A with seven out of the ten Panzer divisions sweeping through the yard dance sleeping just past the left flank of the Maginot Line and that instead of trying to win the war in one big campaign like they did in World War one to just go to the channel coast to isolate and destroy the French and British forces up here it's taking all the good British and French divisions the elite divisions out of it and then they'll do a phase two just to remind you here's how the two of them look when you put the two together and you kind of see how lucky those the Germans are that there's majors crashed and how much that the French bought that that plan was not going to change after they got a copy of the plan so they have laid most of their mechanised motorized divisions are up with semeth Army and the British Expeditionary Force and the first army these are the absolute best of the Allied forces that are going to be there as you go down then when you start getting the Third Army and second army you start getting good armies because what their fear is is that the Germans if they do penetrate will come around the flank of the Maginot Line we've put all this money into the Maginot Line it's only good if you attack us straight on if you come around the flank that's the problem and so you start seeing good forces back with the second the Third Army in particular the second fear of the French have is going to be that you get the Germans go directly to Paris if you go and try to take Paris then the country itself is going to fall and the third and least likely and in their minds least dangerous is if they turn to the channel coast because we have lots of time we can counter-attack and we can and do something about it and that kind of shows you a little bit of just how well this plan works because it kind of hits exactly what the French are fearing the most and getting them all ready trying to react to the wrong thing so let's talk a little bit about Sudan and and go look at the little bit of the fight of the Sudan 90th Panzer Corps under Heinz Guderian made up of three Panzer divisions the 1st 2nd and 10th absolutely elite of the German army the 1st Panzer Division obviously is the first one raised this is kind of the model division of the German army and the gross Deutschland Infantry Regiment is a regiment made up of volunteers from throughout all of Germany it's the greater Germany and again this is an elite regiment of infantry also facing them is 147th fortress Infantry Regiment and 103 bunkers fortress infantry units are designed to be in fortresses they can't move at around which is okay you can put your less healthy maybe your people who are in and best of shape because they're going to be sitting in their bunkers at all well times but you can bypass bunkers so between those bunkers they're going to have what they call interval troops and in the sector of Sudan the interval troops are going to be made up of the 71st and 55th Infantry Division both of these divisions are what they call be type reserve divisions be type reservists have 20% of their four of their fill during peacetime when war comes they get the other 80% from reservists that are called back to the colors the reservists for these reserve divisions in particular are reservists who had served on active duty in the period 1922 1924 so they're all over 40 the rest the army calls them the crocodile's because of their wrinkled skin and high hat this is probably some of the worst divisions in the French army facing up against the absolute best divisions here Sudan you can see the Meuse river which flows from here downstream off to the left there's high ground here what they call the boy Tamar Fay and you can see the French have put a considerable amount of engineering effort into making this a very very tough pleat place to cross I know it's a little busy right now so let me take off the background and just show you what that looks like and you start to see this is not an undefended piece of ground none of the bridges over the Mews the river will be left up every single one to be burnt up and there's chairs over here yes anyway but what you should notice from this all these bunkers with machine guns heavy machine guns some of them with cannons you start noticing the second line down here which are open rectangles those are the positions that have not been completed or started yet many of those are planned and so while you get along the river and the main line of resistance these bunkers that have been done the ones the second line of troops have not been finished what it means is in Sudan area it's a very brittle defense if you get through that first line you pretty much can continue to penetrate through relatively easily here's the Meuse river this was in December of 2002 you can see some of these concrete bunkers still there if you go to Sudan area get the book blitzkrieg legend has a wonderful map that has absolutely has the number of every bunker so you can actually go to the bunker and know exactly which one you're at but those are machine-gun bunkers and where the second Panzer Division is going to cross and here's what the machine-gun fields of fire look like it is absolutely well sited and has interlocking fields of fire all across the Meuse river these are well done bunkers so let's talk quickly about the approach marks through the again our dance we can talk a little bit at some of the problems that the the 19th Panzer Corps will have I places like beau Dodge and Bologna are blown in in Belgium but it takes them about 58 hours to get through the Ardennes which is okay because the French have done wargames they think it takes 60 hours to get through the Ardennes the problem is the French do what's known as mirror imaging they give the Germans the same capabilities that they have the French will then build up huge amounts of artillery huge amounts of ammunition and that would take about seven more days so even though the Germans get to the Meuse river in two days it'll take them to day nine before they're ready to assault the problem is of course the Germans don't plan on using heavy amounts of artillery fire they plan on using those Stuka dive-bombers that we showed before as their mobile fire despite that the 19th Panzer Corps starts at 3 o'clock starting at noon time the Stukas start to come in and attack they come in in flights a 40 aircraft the first flight is at 5,000 feet the next one's at 12,000 feet there's a third group that's circling around just waiting for any moving targets and they just continue to kill off and bombard these particular fortifications the fortifications themselves take very little damage if you go there today and look at these some of the big bunkers you might see a scab where 250 pound bomb hit it it's about a quarter inch scab of concrete that's lifted off what it does do though is all the interval troops that are in foxholes out behind in around those bunkers or the artillery that can't be in bunkers because of their firing positions it hits them very very heavily and you heard what these stupid dive bombers for three hours would sound like as they prep the battlefield but they start crossing at 3 o'clock and the French absolutely stop them dead at a 4 out of the 6 crossing points no one from 2nd Panzer gets crossed then no one from the main assaults and tenth Panzer gets crossed and only in the 1st Panzer Division area and the gross Deutschland Regiment are there going to be any successes and part of the reasons the successes again goes to this season initiative lower level leadership one is a staff sergeant rhubarb and he has seven engineers who are going to get across in a rubber boat with explosions esposa --vs and they're going to start just blowing up bunkers they go the wrong way they're supposed to be blowing up bunkers here to help their division the 10th Panzer cross but rube arts being shot at those are the ones he starts going for and what ends up happening is rebirthing is men and he has to continue to send men back get more explosives most of his men get killed and wounded he gets more guys they end up taking out many of these positions that allows the 1st Infantry Regiment of the 1st Panzer Division to cross 1st Panzer is going to get across and they're going to get to their objectives by about 8:30 at night they're led by Lieutenant Colonel Minh Balch who's an exceptional leader he'll be an army group commander by 1944 but ball gets there his men are tired his men have taken heavy losses he looks up from his positions and knows that this area the blue Itamar PHA is the key ground it's 2nd Panzer divisions objectives but he says we got to take those objectives we can't sit here because he knows 2nd Panzer divisions not cross the river and he'll leave his troops up there by 11:30 night they start occupying positions up on top the boredom are fake why is this important well again the French are just reacting just a little too slow they know that there has been a pinprick some limited Crossing is the Meuse river they start sending reinforcements there the reinforcements start showing up about 12:00 12:30 at night they drive into what they think are going to be the secondary positions and help thicken the line and as they start to drive up here on the boy de marsay they find Germans and it absolutely starts a desperate firefight they're going to fall back and of course the reports go up immediately the Germans are a lot farther along and a lot deeper than we ever imagined that they're going to be by the 15th and some historians say this is the day the battle France is lost here's the situation in the morning of the 15th the Germans across in the 13th they spend the 14th consolidating the bridge heads and there's three small bridge heads one it's Tut Sudan one up here at Monterey and then Rommel up at des Knoll and they're separate about about 60 miles and French reserves are starting to move up but the French reserves are moving up to this area called The Gambler gap and everything that the Allies are looking at is up and game below because that's where they expect the main battle to take place if you look at the New York Times here French meet Nazis in clash a 1500 tanks it's a huge armored battle two German Panzer divisions versus two French dlm s the division light mechanical under general Rene produce Calvary Corps and the French when they're fighting the battle they want to with their first line troops stop the Germans the Germans are unable to penetrate Perot's Calvary Corps is meant to cover the advance of first armies the first army can get up to their positions and they do that and if you look at the losses fourth Panzer loses almost half their tanks but here's the problem a fourth Panzer third pants are advancing the French retreating if you lose the tank because it ran out of fuel or the track broke or you have some kind of mechanical problem in your French you destroy the tank and continue retreating so the Germans can't get it if you're the German in your tank runs out of fuel or throws a track you stay there and you fix your tank so while they destroy forty to forty-five percent of the tanks on the 14th and 15th many of those tanks the next week or so will come back into the fight there's only about 40 tanks that are permanently destroyed out of this fight but this is on the 14th and 15th while that crisis is taking place that's done this is where the Allied main efforts is focused this is where their effort is focused and it's only going to be late in the afternoon on the 15th where they suddenly realize how bad this crisis Gamelin who's been sitting in Paris has allowed the army commander in this front to pretty much control the battle he has not been playing an active role and what ends up happening is both the 9th army and the 2nd army look at what they considered the most dangerous 2nd army it's the Germans are going to come around here and come around we're done and come around the imaginal line so 2nd army pulls back this way 9th army the same thing they're worried about their flank and they pull back the other way and basically what ends up happening is you have a gate open for the Germans by the night of the 15th because no senior commander is consolidating and coordinating the battle the German commanders at their level are excusing the British French commanders that level or reacting on their own when you look at 7th Panzer Division for example and you look at Rommels advance that advance is 75 miles deep it's one mile wide 75 miles deep 1 miles wide this is the opportunity they had to smack them in counter-attack but what ends up happening is the French are just a little too slow they're a little bit too behind this start positions they they give for their troops to actually start the counter-attack by the time the troops get there to occupy them are already in German hands the first ASEC divisions the the armored divisions of the French they send their big heavy Shar be tanks by rail and then they use the roads for their fuel trucks and maintenance elements the tanks are by rail get ahead the other ones are moving on the road and right between the two columns it goes the Germans so now you have all the tanks the north with no fuel no maintenance and it's again it's just all this little just falling behind falling behind timeline there's going to be fighting in stone we're running little out of time so I won't go into detail we can talk about captain below and you're a the French char B it's going to do what the Germans called the amok fart this crazy run it goes into the town of stone pushes out the gross Deutschland regiment destroys 13 German tanks lined up on the road comes down destroys an anti-tank gun turns the hairpin curve goes down to the bottom destroys another anti-tank gun turns around cab below opens his hatch to look at everyone following him and he's all alone and he then turns around has to go back up the hill when they goes back to his french starting positions there's a hundred and forty holes in his tank that have not penetrated an incredible amount of damage these Sharpie tanks are able to take the tad of stone and a two day period will change hands 17 times all right and that just shows and part of this is fighting as the 3rd Armored Division of France and the 3rd North African division elite units first line units against the gross Deutschland and the 10th Panzer German tanks continuing to move out there will be a slight counter tact at a row on the 24th of May and again it's just a little too late a little too slow the counter-attack is supposed to be four divisions two French two British French divisions don't go because we're really busy we can have a hard time getting to the start point so Lord Galt Gort with the British Expeditionary Force creates what's known as Frank force for the commander Franklin supposed to be fifteen thousand men two divisions for tanks but again what ends up happening it is in two divisions it's two battalions 2,000 men they attack and they make it surprisingly good impression will cause some panic in the 7th Panzer Division with Rommel it will have one major effect is that it shows Hitler and wounds dead the the commander of the Western Front that the southern flank is not secured of this big Panza corridor and Hitler order with what's known as the halt order the halt order stops the Panzers so that the Luftwaffe can do the destruction of the northern army group it allows that breathing room for the miracle of Dunkirk and you can see between the the the halt order 24th you start seeing that line continues to get smaller and smaller till it's back around the French port a Dunkirk 26 to the 2nd of June they evacuate over three hundred thirty thousand men from the pocket almost all the you British Expeditionary Force with none of their equipment 121,000 French Belgium's who will then transport go across Britain back on boats come back to Cherbourg be handed new rifles and go into the fight all over again seven hundred ships Royal Navy ships and small boats will take place and they're going to lose almost two hundred and ninety of those so this is not a you know this is we say a miracle it's a hard fought off miracle and I should mention I preach dynamo is not the only withdraw by see that they're going to do when the French surrender at the end of June there will be a second called Operation aerial from the Channel ports Lahav and Cherbourg it will bring off another one hundred twenty one thousand soldiers case red fall rot is the German follow-up on the 5th of June the French with this crisis and late may have brought in Marshall Pathan the hero of Verdun as the vice chief or vice prime minister he's 84 years old he's brought in because he is the hero of Verdun not because he's expected to do anything than its Patong it also brings in Maxine the gand who is was the chief of staff under foix and he is brought in he's 74 years old he's are sending three years old he is replacing a 68 year old and he's brought on because of that that that connection to the victory in foix inveigle ins going to come up with a plan that basically creates a hedgehog checkerboard pattern of Defense's all throughout this area basically any little town is is turned into a fortified area the French are 360-degree security so they could be bypassed and they are supposed to fight until they are overwhelmed in between these towns and fortified areas the French mechanized divisions are supposed to be there to counter-attack the problem is is you've lost 24 infantry divisions 1 armored division to either the 5 Calvary divisions and 6 out of 7 mechanized divisions up in that northern pocket where the French start the world with 104 divisions they have about 50 43 divisions for this second phase the French army fights very very well starting on the 5th of June the Germans are held up for almost three entire days before they're able to push through because the French have no reserves they have everything there in the line and once you wear that down they're going to they're going to break out and it starts the foot race all over France I should say footrace it's a internal combustion engine race the French are just on foot Paris is going to their French government move out on the 10th of June by the 17th Pathan will become Prime Minister and he will start talking about an arm assist the arm assist will be signed to come in the same place the same Park that the German surrender takes place in 1918 the Germans go and get the railway car which is in a museum they bring it out to the spot Hitler gets on there they have the opening portion of the ceremonies he then leaves they then do the surrender there is no negotiations it's here's your here's your of your surrender they then take the railway car to Berlin where it's going to be destroyed by the Royal Air Force later in the war and then they raise the park at Compiegne that had been there to the victory of nineteen into eighteen the only thing they leave is a statue to marshal Foix they don't take down the Maginot Line 52 major fortresses and the Maginot Line none fall to the Germans there will be some about ten minor fortresses that will fall but the Maginot Line worked exactly the way it was supposed to it made the Germans come somewhere else the dirt that British lose eighty five thousand killed wounded and their countries of course divided up into free and then occupied France the British lose all their equipment all their tanks all their trucks the only thing that you have is trained manpower Lord Gort with the British Expeditionary Force brawling them at Dunkirk probably saves Britain and saves saves the West then the Germans it's not a cakewalk one hundred fifty six thousand casualties in a six-week campaign so let's talk a little bit about the reality of campaign it really hit comes down to training it's the junior varsity the worst divisions in the French army against the absolute lead of the German army this idea of methodical battle of trying to get all this perfect intelligence and being able to synchronize your fires just doesn't work when your opponent is trying exactly the opposite of moving quickly and rapidly and going as deeply as possible the campaign plan you take away all their motorized and mechanized divisions you really don't have much else you can do after that in the last thing of course is impenetrable Ardennes hardly that particular picture is taken from a monument outside of Sudan it's a monument to the 1st Infantry Division the big red one at Fort Riley it's from 1918 it's when the US Army moves through the Ardennes we know you can go through the Dan's the French know the Germans now you have to do something to stop people from going through it that's a char B that's actually at Stone that's not Ouray but it's a similar one thank you very much any questions that was fantastic mark um all I ask is that because we don't have too many people here we don't have microphones so please repeat the question and we'll do about five then we'll be done okay good yes sir yeah the questions about the role of air power all together and you know part of it is because of France and because of Norway also which had been invaded in April the fear is that there's going to be the sneak attack and so much of the Allied air power even some of the best squadrons of France are stationed in North Africa because they expect they're gonna have plenty of time to move them from North Africa back up there which is going to hamper their their their peace and this the Royal Air Force is going to play a huge role and as is the the French Air Force and the problem is just that the Germans have got the ability experience from the Condor Legion in Spain of moving airfields quickly staying up behind the front dowdy is going to say we need 52 squadrons to to defend Britain and it's not that Churchill gets it backwards he has already gotten down to thirty six squadrons left in Great Britain because Churchill keeps going to Paris and saying here what do you need what do you need what do you need and the French continue to say we need air power we need air power we need air power so part of it is just the German the German aircraft are all relatively new French British aircraft they have British battles this terrible aircraft fires low range entire squadrons will go in there's one day with their attack in the Meuse river bridgeheads they attack with 71 aircraft 40 of them gets shot down it is the heaviest casualties of any comp already for their raf in its history and so the disparity just gets worse and worse and worse ironically when you get towards Dunkirk now you start to have Royal Air Force flying from airfields and can't who can start staying over the battlefield and it starts to level it off a little bit at that time period but the fight about when is too much when do you not support France anymore is a huge contentious issue the French think that they were stabbed in the back by the the evacuation at Dunkirk Gort for his his piece the first eight days the campaign he gets zero orders from his army commander the French army commander he works for the British Expeditionary Force just kind of sits there they fight but not really heavy piece the only time they start to really worry about Gordon the BEF is when they want them to counter-attack at a rah and that's where courts going to play a role so hopefully that answered it listen yes sir look the problem is and part of it is when you oh the thank you Mike repeating the question the question is about the Germans are going to look at other people like JFC for Guderian actually hires a translator who takes British newspaper reports of mechanized experiments translates it into German and the question is whether the French did something similar yes I mean there's talk there's looking at what's going on in Spain as the Civil War is going on part of the problem is is you start getting into this this this this fight of the Third Republic de Gaulle for example is going to write a book called towards a professional army and it really says we don't need this huge expansive conscript army we need a small professional force that are motorised mechanised and when you look at that he tries to publish it 35 36 right at the time where the Oh bloom in the Popular Front have been elected this leftist government they look at it not as a means of making the army better but as a means of making the army more reactionary and fascist and so when you start talking about you know improving the army a lot of it gets wrapped up in internal politics and not necessarily any kind of logical peace so yeah they do do quite a bit part of this when the French use history in the interwar period they want to go and prove what they think is right so they think firepower is what is going to be good so they go back and they tell people go back to the first war show me where the use of mass amounts of firepower worked and so the historians go back and they write all these articles about how great firepower was ever done and how it worked in the defenses or I've failed it self supporting they never go back and say show me when it doesn't work because there's just as many examples when firepower doesn't work as it does they reinforce what they already think other questions yes sir did any of you attack yet any segments of the Maginot Line yes there's going to be attacked in a mid part of June on some of the forts l'affaire Tay on the Maj Maya it's not one of the big fortresses it's part of the outlined ones but part of it is to make sure you have newsreel photos of the German army taking Maginot Line forts part of the other thing is Rommel thinks he's gone through the extension of the Maginot Line I mean the Maginot Line ends where it ends for two reasons one is you don't put a wall behind your allies if you expect them to be good allies the other part is these are the Low Countries there's not a big difference between the water table so you can't build these huge fortifications up in the the plains up there in northern France there are much like you saw it's Adhan these fortress these these pillboxes but they're more individual fighting positions and when wobble breaks through a Denault he thinks he's broken through a minor section of the Maginot right-right his wife Lou say hey I broken through the Maginot Line aren't I wonderful but yeah the Germans will attack Lavetta too to show that they can do it and they take some huge losses as they do it yes sir oh you know I think the question is about was there a - a typical fortress on the Maginot Line and I really I should have put some photos in here the Maginot Line fortresses the Maginot Line fortresses are these huge sectors all you see above ground are are pillboxes and disappearing gun turrets but when you have interlocking tunnels in there some of the larger fortresses actually have rail networks they have little trains that move between them because the distances are so great underground barracks a command post in munition bunkers bakeries kitchens all these things built underground so you have these huge underground cities the only thing you see is these little pop-up pill boxes and there is a section of the Maginot Line down to the south of Verdun that's been restored that if you ever go over there you can actually take a look at but it's it's a huge massive undertaking one time for one more question I'm getting this yes sir the question is about the Germans supply the logistics on this campaign very very tenuous with the armoured divisions as they move forward they are using much of the same way they did when they go down into Austria for the Anschluss they're using basically just gas stations on the road there cap I mean literally they're capturing fuel supplies Rommel at some points is at absolutely they're moving fuel forward the troops are talking about how they have almost no feel feel their first halt orders after seven days and they're exhausted one of their panzer regiment commanders actually just falls down from physical exhaustion but they're moving fuel forward but they're capturing what they can in there as much as possible but it's very tenuous it is pretty much luck when they get the halt order they love it because it allows them to resupply and start fixing tanks all right well thank you you you

Channel: The Kansas City Public Library

Views: 130,183

Rating: 4.7660165 out of 5

Keywords: Kansas City Public Library, Battle Of France (Military Conflict), France (Country), World War II (Military Conflict)

Id: yWwLcykedcs

Length: 67min 38sec (4058 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 30 2015