To Lose a Battle (65 page)

May 13. Astounding news… No wonder a German officer told me to-day that even the
Oberkommando
was a little taken aback by the pace…
May 14. We’re all a little dazed to-night by the news. The Dutch Army has capitulated – after only five days of fighting. What happened to its great water lines…?
May 15. Very long, stunned faces among the foreign correspondents and diplomats to-day. The High Command claims to have broken through the Maginot Line near Sedan… it seems almost incredible…
May 17. What a day! What news!… I would not have believed it except that the German land army has seldom misled us… At the
Rundfunk
to-night I noticed the military people for the first time spoke of a ‘French rout’…

But still the window-shoppers on the Kurfürstendamm, the strollers peacefully enjoying spring in the Tiergarten, continued to betray no visible excitement.

Hitler Nervous: Halder Confident

It was quite otherwise within the various headquarters of the German High Command. The hard-pressed Allied leaders would have been amazed, and encouraged, could they but have seen the nervousness, apprehension and confusion which by 17 May prevailed at the summit of the enemy camp – in sharp contrast to its very tangible successes. When one recalls the positions taken during the drafting of
Sichelschnitt
, a marked change in attitudes now becomes apparent among the German principals. Hitler for one – the gambler whose audacity had previously terrified his professional advisers – was showing signs of losing his nerve, whereas the cautious, professional Halder was now bursting with confidence.

On 10 May the Führer had taken up his battle H.Q. in an austere nest of concrete works belonging to the Siegfried Line amid the bleak uplands of Münstereifel. Even the mess was located in a bunker, while the focal point was a small wooden hut, no more than twelve feet square, serving as a map- and briefing-room where all the most important O.K.W. conferences took place. According to Jodl’s testimony at Nuremberg, life at the
Felsennest
resembled

a cross between a cloister and a concentration camp… a martyrdom for us soldiers; for it was not a military headquarters at all, it was a civilian one and we soldiers were guests there…

Although Brauchitsch and Halder had their O.K.H. H.Q. close at hand, so deep-rooted had Hitler’s contempt for his Army General Staff become that contact between the two headquarters was minimal, and strained. The Luftwaffe continued
to roar overhead, and Army units heading for the front poured down the roads past the
Felsennest
, but Hitler remained curiously remote from the battle, informed largely through the eyes of the sycophantic Keitel, who tells us that he ‘was on the road literally every other day, mostly in the area of Rundstedt’s Army Group’, of which the new Chief of Staff, General von Sodenstern,
¹
was an old friend of Keitel’s.

On 16 May, Hitler was already showing visible concern for the safety of the lengthening left flank of the Panzer breakthrough. The infantry divisions marching up to protect it seemed to be arriving much too slowly. Jodl noted that Hitler that day ‘was pressing hard for the transfer of all armoured and motorized formations from Army Group B to Army Group A’, while he was heard bellowing down a field telephone at Reichenau, commander of the Sixth Army, for procrastinating over the release of Hoeppner’s XVI Panzer Corps.
²
This and other interferences in the Army’s conduct of the campaign added to the tension already existing between Hitler and the O.K.H. Meanwhile Halder, its Chief of Staff, who had long since abandoned his cautious pessimism about
Sichelschnitt
(once he had been persuaded as to its intrinsic military virtues), in no way shared Hitler’s alarm for the left flank. Here lay the essential difference between the rational intellect of the professional and the irrational, instinctive functioning of the unschooled genius. In his diary for 16 May, Halder wrote with manifest satisfaction that ‘the breakthrough is developing along completely classical lines’. Following with scrupulous care the Intelligence reports from ‘Foreign Armies West’, which on the whole proved to be highly accurate, Halder noted that there was still no sign that the French were throwing their main reserves into battle, while by 1900 hours that evening incoming reports stated that all attacks
³
against the left flank had been warded off. By the next day, fresh intelligence from ‘Foreign Armies West’
made it quite obvious to Halder that there was also little danger now of a serious Allied counter-attack on the northern flank of the ‘Bulge’. In the opening entry for the 17th, Halder wrote in his diary that the ‘picture shows clearly that the enemy has still not taken any major measures to close the breakthrough gap’. He noted that the French had brought up ‘at least six divisions’ along the Germans’ critical southern flank, but ‘here we do not intend to attack, and his forces do not suffice for an attack’.

In his new mood of complete confidence, Halder then went on to give voice to an opinion which signified a radical departure from the original
Sichelschnitt
blueprint, as well as representing a remarkable swing of the pendulum from his own earlier mood of conservative caution. So well did the overall situation seem to be developing, thought Halder, that ‘one may conclude that we can now consider continuing the operation towards a
south-westerly direction’.
⁴
In his view, France could at this point be smashed in one single battle, instead of the two separate operational phases called for in Manstein’s thinking. To Bock’s Army Group ‘B’ alone would fall the task of ‘encircling and annihilating the enemy north of the Sambre’, while Rundstedt’s Army Group ‘A’ should now swing away eccentrically to roll up the French to the south-west, with a possible right hook enveloping Paris. He could see no conceivable threat to the southern flank, ‘because for the time being the enemy is too weak’. Accordingly, at 1030 hours he telephoned Rundstedt’s Chief of Staff, Sodenstern, instructing him not to halt on the Oise, and not let his forces become pinned down along the southern flank. At midday, the O.K.H. C.-in-C., Brauchitsch, was summoned to Hitler and evidently experienced another of those disagreeable sessions that so discomfited him. Says Halder laconically:

Apparently little agreement of ideas. The Führer emphasizes that he sees the main danger coming from the south. (At present I don’t see any danger at all!) Therefore infantry divisions must be brought up as quickly as possible to protect the southern flank.

Rundstedt Supports Hitler

Distrustful as ever of his O.K.H. advisers, Hitler then set off himself that afternoon to see Rundstedt at his H.Q. in Bastogne. Arriving in a state of extreme nervousness, Hitler found Rundstedt’s views closely approximating to his own. (Indeed, in retrospect one may well wonder to what extent Rundstedt, in his recurrent anxiety, was the principal breeding ground for Hitler’s loss of nerve, not only during the period of 17 to 19 May, but also later at the time of the historically far more consequential ‘halt order’ before Dunkirk.) The utterances of all three Army Group commanders show them to have been completely taken aback by the initial successes of
Sichelschnitt;
after the Meuse crossings, Bock exclaimed ‘The French seem to have taken leave of their senses’, while by 18 May, Leeb, obviously overwhelmed by the speed of the German advance, was writing in his diary ‘It’s fantastic !’ But Rundstedt seems to have been the most surprised of the three; his loyal Chief of Operations and biographer, General von Blumentritt, refers to the Meuse crossings as a ‘miracle which Rundstedt could not understand’. At various crucial moments, Rundstedt shows himself to have been almost as strongly conditioned by his personal experiences of 1914–18 as any of his French opposite numbers. His own unit having come within sight of Paris in 1914, he could not forget how Kluck’s misguided change of direction had forfeited the victory apparently within Germany’s grasp, and upon no other German senior officer had the French Army’s capacity to recuperate from shattering reverses and fling itself into a devastating riposte left so ineradicable an impression. Any talk about a deviation to the south-west
⁵
immediately aroused in him the worst memories of Galliéni’s lethal attack on Kluck’s
flank which was the prelude to the Marne. His esteem for the French General Staff remained unshakably high, and (so Blumentritt tells us) from the earliest moments of the breakthrough he and Sodenstern had lived in expectation of the wily enemy launching ‘a great, surprise counter-offensive by strong French forces from the Verdun and Châlons-sur-Marne area, northwards towards Sedan and Mézières’.

Already by 15 May the Army Group ‘A’ War Diary is expressing Rundstedt’s concern about his southern flank:

the question has arisen for the first time as to whether it may not become necessary temporarily to halt the motorized forces on the Oise… the enemy is in no circumstances to be allowed to achieve any kind of success, even if it be only a local one, on the Aisne or later in the Laon region. This would have a more detrimental effect on operations as a whole than would a temporary slowing-down of our motorized forces.

The War Diary continues:

The extended flank between La Fère and Rethel is too sensitive, especially in the Laon area… an open invitation for an enemy attack… If the spearheads of the attack are temporarily halted, it will be possible to effect a certain stiffening of the threatened flank within twenty-four hours.

In consequence, Rundstedt had issued orders to Kleist on 16 May instructing the Armoured Group to mark time and
not
cross the Oise before the 18th. Now Hitler in his visit to Army Group H.Q. on the following day accorded Rundstedt his complete support, declaring:

the decision at the moment depends not so much on a rapid thrust to the Channel, as on the ability to secure as quickly as possible an absolutely sound
defence
on the Aisne in the Laon area and, later, on the Somme… All measures taken must be based on this, even if it involves temporary delay of the advance to the west.

Fortified by his talks with Rundstedt, Hitler drove back to the
Felsennest
with renewed rage against his O.K.H. advisers. That night Halder summed up in his diary: ‘A very disagreeable
day. The Führer is enormously nervous. He is anxious about our own success, doesn’t want to risk anything and would therefore be happiest to have us halt.’ His visit to Army Group ‘A’, added Halder, ‘has only caused unclearness and doubt’. From the O.K.W., Hitler’s devotee Jodl concurred. ‘A day of great tension,’ he wrote. ‘The C.-in-C. of the Army [Brauchitsch] has not carried out the decision of building up as quickly as possible a new flanking position to the south… Brauchitsch and Halder are called immediately and ordered peremptorily to adopt the necessary measures at once.’ Halder was forced to abandon the ‘south-west operation’; though, bravely, he still clung to his original viewpoint.

Kleist Orders Guderian to Halt

Meanwhile, what was the net effect of all this discord at the top on the actual executants and their conduct of operations? As previously noted, Kleist, the Armoured Group commander – activated by Rundstedt – had already made two unsuccessful attempts to put a brake on Guderian. There was little love lost between the two generals, with their totally different personalities and doctrines of warfare, and during the last argument (on the night of the 15th) tempers had risen. Then, very early on the morning of the 17th, Guderian received a message from Armoured Group H.Q.:

the advance was to be halted at once and I was personally to report to General von Kleist, who would come to see me at my airstrip at 0700 hours [German]. He was there punctually and, without even wishing me a good morning, began in very violent terms to berate me for having disobeyed orders.
⁶
He did not see fit to waste a word of praise on the performance of the troops. When the first storm was passed, and he had stopped to draw breath, I asked that I might be relieved of my command.

The angry Kleist, says Guderian, was ‘momentarily taken
aback’, but then he nodded and ordered Guderian to hand over to his most senior divisional commander, General Veiel of the 2nd Panzer.

Guderian was shaken to learn that Hitler himself, the former fairy-godmother of the Panzer arm, ‘who had approved the boldest aspects of the Manstein plan and had not uttered a word against my proposals concerning the exploitation of the breakthrough, would now be the one to be frightened by his own temerity’. Guderian signalled to Rundstedt, announcing his intention to fly to Army Group H.Q. that afternoon to report on what had happened. Back came the answer: Guderian was to remain at his headquarters and await the arrival of General List, commander of the Twelfth Army, ‘who had been instructed to clear this matter up’. Meanwhile, until List arrived, Guderian’s Panzers were also to stay put. On his arrival early that afternoon, List

asked me at once what on earth was going on here. Acting on instructions from Colonel-General von Rundstedt he informed me that I would not resign my command and explained that the order to halt the advance came from the O.K.H. and therefore must be obeyed.