To Lose a Battle (37 page)

Hitler Weeps for Joy

As 10 May drew to a close, behind the scenes on the German side Hitler was well satisfied with the day’s events. As his train had arived at his
Felsennest
⁷
in the Eifel that morning, the Luftwaffe had been roaring overhead, going and returning on its sorties to destroy Allied air bases. When later the
O.K.W. Intelligence informed him that Gamelin had already reacted to the ‘matador’s cloak’ in the hoped-for fashion by rushing into Belgium, Hitler, after a sleepless night, was enraptured:

I could have wept for joy; they’d fallen into the trap! It had been a clever piece of work to attack Liège. How lovely
Felsennest
was! The birds in the morning, the view over the road up which the columns were advancing, the squadrons of planes overhead. There, I knew just what I was doing!

In his diary that night, General Halder commented succinctly on the advance of Kleist’s Armoured Group: ‘Very good marching achievements.’

Closer to the front, however, opinions were not quite so sanguine. In the Ardennes, despite the feebleness of the enemy reaction, there had been worrying bottlenecks and traffic snarl-ups, and only the superb organization and route discipline had prevented real chaos on the overloaded roads. What might have happened if Kleist’s Panzers had not had behind them the indispensable experience of the Austrian and Czech approach marches, and the Polish campaign, and if the Allies had attacked relentlessly from the air, surpasses the imagination. As it was, Rommel’s hold-up at Chabrehez meant that Hoth’s Panzer Corps on the northern flank of the thrust had failed to attain the day’s objective; while in the south, the Belgian frontier demolitions had caused the impetuous Guderian to fall behind schedule. And every minute counted! In fact, at Kleist’s H.Q. that night serious fears were expressed that the delays might have sufficed to give the French a good chance of regaining their balance. There had also been a first tactical disagreement between Kleist and Guderian. Taking an exaggerated view of the threat presented to his southern flank by the efforts of the French 2nd D.L.C., Kleist ordered the 10th Panzer to swing off course and move on Longwy instead of Sedan. Infuriated, Guderian demanded that the order be withdrawn, expostulating that ‘the detachment of one-third of my force to meet the hypothetical threat of enemy cavalry would endanger the success of the Meuse
crossing and therefore of the whole operation’. Guderian won, but Kleist remained anxious.

Thus, at the end of the first day, one finds a curious inversion of moods: in Gamelin’s G.Q.G., complacent optimism; in Kleist’s battle H.Q., nervous pessimism.

Chapter 10

Through the Ardennes

11 May

Soldiers of the West Front! The hour of the most decisive battle of the future of the German nation has come.

For three hundred years it was the aim of British and French Governments to hinder every workable consolidation of Europe, and above all to keep Germany in weakness and impotence…

Soldiers of the West Front! With this, the hour has come for you.

The battle which is beginning today will decide the fate of the German nation for the next thousand years.

Do your duty…

ADOLF HITLER
, Order of the Day, 10 May 1940

Rommel

As soon as day broke on Saturday, 11 May, the Panzers were once again on the move everywhere. Rommel, having concentrated and reorganized his forces during the night, swiftly smashed the courageous resistance of the Chasseurs Ardennais at Chabrehez. By the end of the morning, leading elements of his 7th Panzer had already reached the River Ourthe, the objective that had been denied him the previous night. On the other side of the river, parts of the French 4th D.L.C. had arrived. At Hotton, Lieutenant Georges Kosak’s sapper company had been detailed to demolish a bridge which had been inefficiently blown by the Belgians, his job greatly complicated by the masses of Belgian refugees streaming across it. At 1345 he finally succeeded in clearing the bridge, and detonated charges under it, just at the very moment when the first of Rommel’s armoured cars appeared on the opposite bank. Kosak then withdrew to Marche, some five miles behind the river. The French cavalry made no attempt to cover the destroyed bridges on the Ourthe, and within a matter of hours the German engineers had thrown pontoons across the undefended river.

Appearing with unexpected suddenness on the other side of the Ourthe, Rommel’s Panzers struck their first blow savagely at the dispersed French cavalry. At Marche, Lieutenant Kosak and his troop were surprised by machine-gun fire from a German armoured car. He leaped into a small French car and tried to make off:

… all of a sudden, a grey-green mass bars the road; with all my concerted strength, I brake, my hands clutching the wheel; the tyres make a noise like a large electric saw cutting wood; I swerve to the left. A quite brutal shock stops the car… the enemy armoured car manoeuvres; it is lying sideways on across the road, trying to turn about.

Kosak then managed to reverse and swing behind some buildings, a second before the Germans opened fire. Outside Marche, he regathered his troop, and reckoning that escape seemed impossible, decided to take up a defensive position. The sappers buried a few mines and took over. A group of German armoured cars approached. The first one blew up with a devastating explosion on one of Kosak’s mines, which also knocked out a second vehicle. Benefiting from the ensuing disarray of the enemy, Kosak miraculously managed to escape to Ciney, where only the previous day he had experienced that ‘strange feeling’ on moving up through the first shuttered and frightened Belgian town. Here, less than ten miles from Dinant and the Meuse, the divisional commander, General Barbe, interviewed Kosak and declared ‘I am pleased with you.’

Throughout the day there was confused fighting on Rommel’s axis similar to that reported by Kosak. At times the tanks of the 4th D.L.C. attacked strongly, but their Renaults and Hotchkisses were both outnumbered and outclassed. Rommel’s own account of the day’s action describes how ‘prompt opening fire on our part led to a hasty French retreat’. On this first day of battle with the French he discovered ‘again and again that in encounter actions, the day goes to the side that is the first to plaster its opponent with fire. The man who lies low and awaits developments usually
comes off second best.’ His Panzers thus advanced, spraying the woods on either side of the roads promiscuously with machine-gun and cannon fire. Into these woods the French cavalry, horses and tanks mixed up with one another, scattered in disorder. By the evening of the 11th, Rommel was in fine fettle, having more than made up for the setbacks of the previous day. To his wife, he dashed off a second quick note:

Dearest Lu,
  I’ve come up for breath for the first time today and have a moment to write. Everything wonderful so far. Am way ahead of my neighbours. I’m completely hoarse from orders and shouting. Had a bare three hours’ sleep and an occasional meal. Otherwise I’m absolutely fine. Make do with this, please, I’m too tired for more.

The outstripped ‘neighbours’ to whom Rommel refers consisted chiefly of the 5th Panzer division on his right. Not led with Rommel’s élan, the 5th had become tangled up on the Ardennes roads and lagged badly behind. From the 11th onwards, it would never quite catch up, and Rommel would seize all the limelight on the right flank of the breakthrough thrust.

Reinhardt

On Rommel’s left, Reinhardt’s corps, consisting of the 8th and 6th Panzers who were to advance through Bastogne to Monthermé on the Meuse, also had their problems. Reinhardt had actually set off after Guderian, so as to make room for XIX Panzer Corps on the saturated and tortuous roads of the Ardennes. But in the afternoon the 6th found its route blocked by elements of Guderian’s 2nd Panzer which had strayed too far to the north. At 1520 orders were given for it to hold fast until the muddle was sorted out. Finally, the 2nd Panzer had to cede this route to the 6th; later it was also deprived by Guderian of another on the right of its axis, a factor that was to delay the division’s appearance at Sedan
on the critical day. In its approach march, the 1st Panzer too had suffered inconvenience by being ‘squeezed’ by the 10th Panzer on its left. Here Guderian appears to have been at least partly to blame; over-reacting against Kleist’s rescinded order for the 10th to swing southwards, at 0100 on the morning of the 11th he had instructed it to aim for the River Semois at Cugnon, several miles further north than Florenville where it was originally directed. Back at O.K.H. headquarters, Halder noted in his diary that Brauchitsch, the Army C.-in-C., wanted ‘to put pressure on Army Group ‘A’ (they report that route difficulties have been very great on account of numerous road destructions!)’. Had it not been for the apparently almost miraculous efforts of the mechanized engineers, who seemed to have been everywhere at the right moment, destroying Belgian anti-tank obstacles, replacing bridges, and constructing road detours, the hold-ups would undoubtedly have been far graver that day. As it was, the tank commanders cursed at the tangles and delays as their engines overheated, growled at the military police trying frantically to unsnarl the vast columns and continually threw nervous glances upwards into the dazzling clear blue sky. What fantastic targets these mile-long traffic jams offered the enemy air forces! How could they miss such an opportunity!

Guderian

On Guderian’s front, the principal action on the 11th was fought by the 1st Panzer. Having moved his tanks up in strength to the positions just east of Neufchâteau that had been seized the previous day by ‘Operation Niwi’, the divisional commander, General Kirchner, now swept aside the few remnants of the Chasseurs Ardennais in order to strike forcefully at the French 5th D.L.C. Near Suxy, south of Neufchâteau, some thirty tanks bearing the white oak-leaf emblem of the 1st Panzer broke through the French positions and swiftly surrounded a battery of 105-mm, field-guns. These were modern weapons, but they were completely unsuited for combating armour. The whole battery was swiftly destroyed,
a first unpleasant foretaste of what was to await the defenders on the other side of the Meuse. Shaken, General Chanoine, the commander of the 5th D.L.C., ordered the
groupement
forming his right wing to fall back on the Semois. Meanwhile, north of Neufchâteau, his left wing was also being hard pressed, and during the course of the day Chanoine received Huntziger’s permission to withdraw his whole division across the Semois. But, insisted Huntziger, the Semois must be held at all costs, and to bolster the line there, he expedited a battalion of the 295th Infantry Regiment, borrowed from one of General Grandsard’s ‘B’ divisions, the 55th – which was holding the key sector at Sedan.

To the right of the 5th D.L.C., the 2nd, licking its wounds from the previous day, was left relatively alone. The explanation for the failure of the 10th Panzer to resume its attack seems to lie in the confusion caused over its change of axis and the resulting bottlenecks, but this apparent switching of enemy emphasis from the 2nd D.L.C. front to the 5th resulted in adding to the bafflement of Huntziger. Was Guderian’s main effort aimed at Carignan and the northern anchor of the Maginot Line, as it might have seemed on the 10th, or now at Sedan? On its right, the 2nd D.L.C. was left somewhat in the air by the withdrawal on the evening of the 10th of the Third Army’s cavalry screen (the 3rd D.L.C.), which, abandoning Esch, fell back across the Franco-Luxembourg frontier. Much more serious, however, was the threat presenting itself to the other flank of Huntziger’s cavalry detachments. To the left of the hard-hit 5th D.L.C. lay the 3rd Spahi Brigade, an élite North African unit under the command of General Corap’s Ninth Army. Its role was to ensure liaison between the cavalry screens of the two armies. Because of the lagging behind of the 6th Panzer, in whose approximate path the Spahis stood, they were attacked on neither the 10th nor the 11th. Nevertheless, on learning of the 5th D.L.C.’s withdrawal, the Spahi commander, Colonel Marc, pulled his brigade back across the Semois even more precipitately – the consequences of which were to be particularly unfortunate the following day.

Thus as 11 May ended, the situation of Huntziger’s cavalry was as follows: the 2nd D.L.C. was still capable of resistance, but the 5th was battered and was left holding a twenty-mile front on which two of the most powerful German Panzer divisions (the 1st and 2nd) were advancing. Both flanks of Huntziger’s cavalry screen were in the air, and the whole of it had withdrawn across the Semois. Here was the last natural barrier between the French frontier – and Sedan. It was not much of a barrier! On staff officers’ maps, the Semois may look imposing; along its upper reaches it is in fact little more than a very pretty trout stream, not unlike Hampshire’s River Itchen, meandering in countless loops through water meadows and wooded banks. In many places it is shallow enough to wade across; in others, narrow enough for a not particularly expert thrower to land a hand-grenade on the far side. Its numerous convolutions would make it hard for an extended defence force to prevent a determined and numerous enemy infiltrating across it. The principal route over the Semois, and the one heading directly for Sedan, lay through Bouillon. Here the physical features for a resolute defence – dominating heights and clearly observable approach roads from which Panzers could not easily deploy – were more promising. But it was clear that Bouillon would be the scene of Guderian’s major effort for the 12th. Nevertheless, an extraordinary atmosphere of business-as-usual still prevailed there.

Like Rommel’s 7th Panzer, Kirchner’s 1st was now leading both its neighbours. Heading west from Neufchâteau until it had reached the important road junction of Fays-les-Veneurs, it had then swung southwards to face for the first time towards Bouillon and, beyond it, Sedan. By nightfall on the 11th, the leading tanks of the 1st Panzer Regiment had actually reached the Semois at Bouillon. Immediately they came under heavy anti-tank fire from the far bank, which knocked out a tank. An undestroyed stone bridge was then discovered, but just as the Panzers were about to cross it the French blew it up. Captain von Kress managed to cross by a ford discovered by regimental reconnaissance, but shortly afterwards he was bombed
in error by twenty-five Stukas. The 1st Panzer Regiment was withdrawn, and it was decided to resume the attack the next morning, using the division’s motorized infantry.