Hitler's Panzer Armies on the Eastern Fron (5 page)

The Germans definitely moved too fast for the Allies. The French needed time but the blitzkrieg gave them none. So far, the panzers had not played a critical role; marching infantry could have almost moved as fast through the Ardennes and across the Meuse. But now, free of the narrow confines of the forest and river valley, von Kleist s panzers began to move faster than even their own high command could tolerate. With events on the ground happening at a tempo within the Boyd Loop of their own plans, the Germans became apprehensive of their own success and put the brakes on von Kleist s panzers.

At his Second Army headquarters, Huntziger assumed von Kleist would now wheel left and roll up the Maginot Line from the north. But von Kleist had no such conservative plan in mind. Instead, prodded by Guderian and Reinhardt, he convinced higher headquarters to allow him to turn his back on Huntziger and head west. The race to the Channel was on. Alert to potential dangers on the Panzer Group’s southern flank, the initiative passed to Reinhardt,
covered by Guderian on his left with Hoth guarding his right. French ‘B divisions uniformly gave way as XLI Panzer Corps destroyed the weak flank of the ‘interim line’ of General Andre Corap’s 9th Army. The 6th Panzer discovered an intact bridge at Montcy, hit the newly arriving French 2nd Armored and over 15/16 May, defeated the French formation in detail. Reinhardt pushed west and soon created a 60km-wide gap in the French line. Meanwhile, at Stonne, Guderian’s 10th Panzer and Grossdeutschland fought a tough defensive battle dominated by anti–tank guns (PAKs).
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Far too late – by the 15th, the French finally awakened to the danger of the Ardennes maneuver. That evening President Paul Reynaud telephoned British Prime Minister Churchill to say ‘We have been defeated . . . we are beaten’. At approximately the same point, the German high command began to doubt its own success. It turned out that the French threat at Stonne was more anecdotal than real. Therefore, during the night of 15/16 May, von Rundstedt ordered von Kleist not to cross the Oise River, instructions he duly passed down to his panzer corps. Guderian, nevertheless, kept moving west. During the 16th, he crossed the First World War battlefields near St Quentin on the Somme (significantly west of the Oise!), while Sixteenth Army infantry assumed the 10th Panzer and Grossdeutschland s defensive duties along the Panzer group’s southern flank.
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The concentrated panzer formations were having a decisive effect as an operational weapon.

Successes aside, von Kleist could not abide Guderian s refusal to obey the halt order. At 0700 on the 17th he flew to XIX Panzer’s headquarters and after a heated argument accepted Guderian s resignation. The corps commander immediately contacted von Rundstedt (visited by Hitler that day), who in turn told all parties to wait until List arrived to sort things out. Only when the Twelfth Army commander explained to Guderian that the halt order came from the OKH, and not from von Kleist, did the panzer corps commander relent. List and Guderian, without informing either von Rundstedt or von Kleist, made an under–the–table deal to continue west with a ‘reconnaissance in force . Army group headquarters later endorsed the move and by the end of the day Guderian stood over 100km beyond Sedan. Meanwhile, on von Kleist s right, newly arrived Hoepner repulsed a weak counterattack near Gembloux.
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Fortunately for them, nervousness at the strategic level and willfulness at the operational level had not robbed the Germans of momentum.

By the 18th Hitler backed off and the panzers were heading west again. De Gaulle used the pause to rebuild his tank strength back up to 155 vehicles, and at 0400 hours on the 19th launched another counterattack near Loan and Crecy. His 4th Armored Division, acting alone, could not halt four panzer corps. Stukas meted out a severe beating and by the end of the day, the French
lost over half of the attacking force. By now every panzer division except the 9th was within 75 km of the English Channel. In fact, von Kleist’s men started arriving at the coast on the 20th, the 2nd Panzer covering the last gap along the Somme between Abbeville and the mouth of the river at Noyelles in one day.
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The final threat to von Manstein’s dazzling plan came on the 21st in the form of an attack against Hoth near Arras by two battalions of seventy–four British tanks (north flank), plus about seventy French tanks (south flank). Allied forces under overall command of the British 50th Infantry Division, Major General Harold Franklyn, made a slight penetration into Hoth’s flank and inflicted some casualties on Rommel’s 7th Panzer. This caused a little anxiety among the Germans, including another overreaction by von Rundstedt, but, as before, the Allied response was too little, too late.
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Every Allied counterattack and been limited to the tactical realm with corresponding little effect, and so are relegated to the status of footnotes in the history of the campaign.

This non–threat neutralized, the panzers now headed north with complete disregard to their rear security. By the 22nd, the bulk of von Kleist s men were closer to Dunkirk than the Allied armies. But one day later (with half of the group s panzers out of action mainly as a result of mechanical problems), Hitler, still insecure in his new position of warlord, again overestimated the remaining French strength and the corresponding danger to his southern flank. No sooner had von Kleist captured 30,000 POWs at Boulogne and Calais, taken Arras and turned north over the Aa Canal at St Omer on 24 May, then that evening Hitler issued another ‘halt order and pulled the panzers back. Along with von Rundstedt, the Fuhrer decided to leave reduction of the pocket to the Luftwaffe and infantry. Soon it became obvious that the British and French were evacuating Dunkirk and the infantry was too slow in closing in. Therefore, two days after holding back von Kleist, Hitler relented and told the panzers to advance up to the point where the bridgehead could be taken under artillery fire.
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With his panzer group reconsolidated, von Kleist pushed forward. Within a day his men were within artillery range of Dunkirk, but the massive panzer attack never materialized. In little more than a day the golden opportunity had passed. Von Kleist considered the entire Dunkirk operation a ‘patchwork’.
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There are many theories why Hitler did not press for the Vernichtungsschlacht on the Channel coast that was clearly within his grasp. Dunkirk, the most bungled encirclement battle on French territory until that at Falaise over four years later, meant that von Manstein s operationally brilliant plan ended as a strategic blunder of the first order. The long–term impact of allowing a third of
a million Allied soldiers to escape and the boost to British morale is as huge as unimaginable.

On 28 May, OKH divided the massive panzer group into two smaller ones and redeployed them south against the ‘Weygand Line’. Henceforth, Panzer Group von Kleist included XIV and XVI Panzer Corps, while Panzer Group Guderian consisted of XXXIX and XLI Panzer Corps, so it is appropriate to speak of both. The final phase of the Battle for France, Operation Red, began on 9 June, with the panzers moving out the following day. While von Kleist s men struggled initially against strong French defenses south of St Quintin, Guderian, having assembled in the battlefields southwest of Sedan over which he had just fought, preferred to have his panzers follow infantry breakthrough forces. Eventually both panzer groups broke into open country but the ensuing pursuit had none of the spectacular allure of the dash through the Ardennes. Guderian picked up the Marne and followed the river valley almost to the Swiss border. His men reached the frontier southeast of Besancon in force on the 17th. There his panzer group transferred to Army Group C and, taking the Maginot Line from the rear, completed what the Germans call the Battle of Alsace-Lorraine, collecting POWs in 10,000 multiples.
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Von Kleist and his reorganized panzer group had a more interesting hussar s ride through central and southern France during Operation Red. He attacked over the First World War battlefield of Chateau–Thierry, and once free of the initial defenses, began to eat up the French landscape in huge bites. The panzer group crossed the Marne on 12 June and the Seine two days later. Coming between Fontainebleau and Romilly, he cut a clockwise swath around Paris. By the 17th, he closed on the middle Loire, rounding up two French divisions and another 30,000 POWs in the process. On 20 June, he detached a Kampfgruppe under Hoepner via Lyon toward the Italian border, while the bulk of the panzer group followed the lower Loire toward the Atlantic coast. He passed through Tours and Cognac on his way to the Bay of Biscay and the Spanish border, which he reached on 30 June, over a week after the armistice had been signed.
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During the western campaign Panzer Group von Kleist had proven that concentrated armored formations functioning at the operational level could achieve strategic goals. Panzers, aggressively led from the front, acting in concert with other arms, including CAS and aided by the element of surprise, had been an unbeatable combination. The Germans had staked all on the risky maneuver over the Meuse and behind the bulk of the Allied armies and had won big. Every army in the world immediately took notice and began to reevaluate their own armored arsenals and theories.

Hitler had further plans for his new weapon. Von Kleist’s panzer men had one more warm up before the penultimate test. Not to be outdone by German successes during the western campaign, during the autumn of 1940, Mussolini (against Hitler s advice) attacked Greece from Albania. The Italian Army immediately ran into trouble against the Greeks and their British supporters. To shore up Barbarossa’s southeastern flank Hitler had already been putting diplomatic pressure on numerous Balkan states, and now redoubled his efforts. During the winter of 1940–41 he concluded treaties to occupy Romania and Bulgaria. The recently renamed First Panzer Group deployed through the first country and into the second. Its mission was to attack through the Metaxas Line into eastern Greece in order to deny the British any opportunity to build airbases from which they could threaten Romania’s oilfields (Operation Marita).

In the meantime, Hitler concluded a treaty with Yugoslavia on 25 April, which was in turn invalidated by a
coup d’etat
a day later. In a rage the following day, Hitler demanded the destruction of the Yugoslav state. In Vienna on the 29th, von Kleist attended a planning conference for the upcoming operation. Subsequently, von Kleist turned his panzers 90 degrees from south to west and prepared to invade Yugoslavia on 8 April (they would attack two days early). He would assault along the Nis–Kragujevac axis, aiming to take the capital Belgrade from Morava River valley to the southeast. Under his command, von Kleist had the XIV Panzer and XI Army Corps, for a total of two panzer divisions, one motorized, one infantry and one mountain division, a much smaller force than the year before. The difficult terrain favored the Yugoslavs, who were expected to fight hard to defend their capital.
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With Luftwaffe CAS flying overhead, the 11th Panzer led von Kleist’s group through the main defensive line on the first day, 6 April. The Yugoslav 5th Army commander quickly pulled his men behind the Morava (four divisions and two brigades, with an additional three divisions on the border with Greece), but von Kleist pushed his men without regard to flank security. By the 9th his panzers had already rolled into Nis. Two days later, the Yugoslavs failed to hold at Kragujevac, losing 5,000 POWs there to the 11th Panzer. North of Nis, two Yugoslav regiments attacked that division s exposed lines of communication, a situation rectified that same day by elements of 5th Panzer (the mass of the 5 th took Pristina, also on the 11th). Von Kleist was not going to allow such a small diversion, no matter how well intentioned, to keep the panzer group from achieving its mission. By 12 April, closing in on Belgrade, XIV Panzer Corps slammed into the right flank of the Yugoslav 6th Army (facing Romania with two divisions and two brigades, reinforced by the 2nd Cavalry Division), rolling it up from south to north. In just a few days, von Kleist had advanced some 200km through rough terrain, overcome all
resistance and stood 60km from Belgrade. The following morning, with the panzer group commander at its head, the 11th Panzer entered the city.
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Mission complete, the First Panzer Group did not continue on toward Greece, but turned its attention to the upcoming war with the Soviet Union.

Against a much smaller enemy, the Germans employed almost as many panzers in the Balkan campaign as they had against the western Allies, so there could be but one outcome to the spring campaign. Von Kleist s role in 1941 had not been nearly as significant as the year before – against Yugoslavia he basically acted as a normal army headquarters versus a totally outclassed enemy. A legitimate question regarding both campaigns is: ‘Were the Germans that good or were the Allies and Yugoslavs that bad?’ The answer is ‘Yes’. In both cases their opponents stuck to a fixed plan and tried to fight a set-piece battle, so proved unable to improvise. The defenders thought in terms of cumulative destruction of forces and outmoded concepts of attritional warfare. Von Kleist used a doctrine of relational maneuver warfare wherein the destruction of the defensive
system
was paramount. The tactical battles near the front were not an end in themselves as in the attritional model, but merely a pre–condition for the next, decisive phase of the operation. Therefore, with the example of France, the tactical action along the Meuse River did not matter nearly as much as the deep penetration that followed.
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The fact that the French Army failed to perform in either phase doomed its nation.