039 - The Allied Clusterf k - The Battle of France - WW2 - May 25 1940

I'm not making it up. Why would I make it up? That is what happened. All right. May 25, 1940. You have plans for your war, but your enemy attacks you in a way no one has before. He has broken through your lines and a whole army is in danger of being surrounded. Confusion reigns, and if you have some bad luck, the whole situation could become in some ways a black comedy farce. I'm Indy Neidell. This is World War Two. Last week the Netherlands surrendered to the invading Germans. The French fought well in Belgium at the Battle of Hanut, but had to withdraw because the German breakthrough at Sedan further south left them exposed. That breakthrough was spectacular indeed, and by the end of the week, German panzers were streaming west across northern France. There were other things that happened last week that I did not have time to cover, so I will get to them first. In Norway back on the 12th, French foreign legionnaires supported by naval guns landed near Bjerkvik. They managed to take it under heavy fire, capture Elvegårdsmund with hand-to-hand combat, and reach the southern tip of Øyjord Peninsula, a springboard for an attack on Narvik. Meanwhile, German General Feuerstein's 2nd Gebirgsdivision is advancing north from Trondheim, 1,200 kilometers to relieve the German forces in Narvik. On the 13th, Claude Auchinek assumes command of the Allied land forces there. The Allies now see that if they take Narvik, in order to hold it, they will also have to hold the town Bodø to prevent the Germans from coming from Trondheim. However, because of the German success in France and Belgium, the Allies reassess their commitment to Norway. This week, they first recommend Narvik be captured before a total evacuation, but then tell Auchinek to leave as soon as possible and to attack Narvik to cover the evacuation and to deny the Germans future iron supplies by wrecking the port. His operations are at a standstill though, because he's waiting for proper air support to be established at Bardufoss. They get their first complement of aircraft the 24th, and the campaign, now in its final stages, is suddenly a lot less one-sided and shows what might have been done earlier. In Britain on the 18th, American Tyler Kent and Russian Anna Volkow are arrested as spies. Kent, a clerk in the US Embassy in London, has access to correspondence between British PM Winston Churchill and American President Franklin Roosevelt, and Volkow has been passing it to Germany through Italian diplomats. She is a member of the Right Club, a pro-fascist organization. Now this week, Captain Ramsey MP is detained, also a Right Club member, and on the 23rd, Oswald Mosley is arrested. He is a former member of Parliament and founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists. There was a notable death in China last week. On the 16th, Chinese General Zhang Zishong dies in North Hubei, resisting the Japanese, according to Hans van de Ven. Further reports declared that when Zhang died, he had been leading an attack, had suffered wounds to his arms and chest, but had refused to be taken behind the lines. He is, and will be, the most senior Chinese General to die in this war, and the only army commander to die on the field while directing his army. The Japanese give him a respectful burial. The Chinese Nationalists will recover his remains and bring them to Chongqing, the capital, where they will be welcomed by Chiang Kai-shek. Zhang's heroic status will grow to cult status in future. Back on the 13th, the Chinese 33rd Army Group reaches Tongbaishan and cuts Japanese communications for several days, but the main part of that group had been encircled by the Japanese in the Dehong foothills, and it was there that Zhang is killed. By the beginning of this week, the Chinese think the Japanese are pulling back to their original bases and pursue them, but only on a very narrow front, so a Japanese counterattack pushes back the Chinese. After that, part two of the battle for Yichang begins, with the Japanese planning to root out and destroy the Chinese still in the Dehong Mountains, take Yichang itself, and secure Chiang Chi. That's the plan. And there are plans afoot all over the place. This week the Soviets, who already have a military presence in the Baltic states, are not so subtly to the world at large, preparing for a full takeover, staging local conflicts. For example, the Soviet government accuses Lithuania of kidnapping Soviet soldiers. In Germany, Admiral Erich Raeder mentions to Adolf Hitler for the first time that it might be necessary to invade Britain. And in Britain itself, Parliament passes the Emergency Powers Act, giving the government great power over British people and property. But what about the active war in Europe? As the week begins, the British invasion of Iceland is complete, but the German one of France and the Benelux countries continues. On the 19th, most German armor is stopped to regroup between Perron and Saint-Quentin. Charles de Gaulle's French 4th Armored Division tries again to attack the Germans north from around Léon. He makes progress this time, but is soon ordered to pull back. That same day, in telephone conversations between London and the British field commanders, the possibility that they may need to evacuate the continent is raised for the first time. On the 20th, the German armor advances again. Amiens falls in the morning and Abbeville in the evening. Advanced units even reach the coast at Noyelles. Germany now has a corridor at least 20 miles wide- that's 32 kilometers- from the Ardennes to the Channel. Now, the obvious thing that the Allies must do at all costs is break through this corridor before its walls can be fortified, since that would totally cut off all the Allied forces to the north. French Commander Maurice Gamelin was planning something like that, but he was replaced last week, and his replacement Maxime Weygand now revives the plan, but the delay imposed by the dismissal and appointment gives it only really a slim chance of success. Weygand wants to attack the German flanks from the north and south near Arras, where the line is thinnest, to break up the encirclement of Belgium and northeastern France. So the next day, the British attack Erwin Rommel's division around Arras. This attack begins very well, because the British Matilda tanks are semi-invulnerable to German anti-tank guns. After a minor panic, the Germans do stop the attack with some 88 guns, and since the British force has no air support and is quite small, the attack cannot continue. That day, the 21st, Weygand sets off in the morning to try and organize a really big combined counterattack. This is the day where it descends into the realm of farce. Weygand waits for two hours at Le Bourget for a plane, and then flies to Betun, but finds it deserted except for one soldier who drives Weygand to a post office so he can call Gaston Billotte, commander of the French 1st Army Group in northern France and Belgium, who has himself just spent hours looking for Weygand near Calais. So Weygand then flies on to Calais, but only after eating an omelette at a country inn. On the wall is a picture of the signing of the 1918 armistice. Weygand, of course, is in that picture standing with Ferdinand Foch. So Weygand gets to Calais, but can't find Billotte, but gets a message that Belgian King Leopold wants to meet him and Billotte in Ypres. His car then crawls through refugee crowded roads for a few hours to Ypres, where three meetings happen. First, Weygand meets King Leopold. Weygand wants him to have his army retreat to the west to shorten the Allied line and allow the Allies a southern attack. Leopold is against giving up so much Belgian territory and thinks his men can't really take much more fighting, and says he needs Lord Gort's opinion first. Gort is the commander of the British Expeditionary Force and does not know about this meeting. So Billotte then arrives and has a meeting with Weygand. Billotte, according to all accounts, has by this time already given up hope for the French. He does, though, think that the British could launch an attack. So Weygand asks Leopold to shorten the line to allow the British to attack with Belgian assistance. Leopold can maybe go for this, but still wants to talk to Gort. Weygand leaves, and Gort then finally arrives on the scene for a third meeting. He is a bit skeptical of the BEF's ability to do such an attack as proposed, though he does not refuse it. By the time Weygand gets to Paris, though, he thinks Gort not turning up at Ypres is a deliberate snub, which it is not. And also, by this time, Billotte is in a coma from a car wreck, and will die two days later without awakening. And for a couple of days, there is no one to give orders to the French 1st Army Group. All during this time, the German army and armor are streaming through the gaping hole in the Allied lines. On the 22nd, the Germans at the coast turn to the north and make for Boulogne and Calais. Also the 22nd, Weygand meets with Churchill and French PM Paul Reynaud and says that will do the counterattack from the south, break through, and link up with the BEF to the north. Frere is assembling south of the Somme, but in reality has around six divisions stretched over 100 km. The 23rd, Churchill hears that Gort's position is vulnerable. He's also told, though, that Frere has taken Amiens. This is great news, though totally untrue. Still, if believed, it makes an attack southward worth doing. But that night, Gort decides to withdraw his men from the exposed salient near Arras. He is not abandoning the attack plan, just recognizing the reality of the situation and moving parallel to the coast, not toward it. But many French think they are being abandoned. Weygand now thinks there will be no attack southward, even while Gort and Georges Blanchard, who takes over from the deceased Billotte, discuss the actual details of the attack. Finally, at 6pm on the 25th, as the week ends, Gort calls off his part. The Germans have broken through the Belgians near Cortres on the Luce and Gort has to head north to plug the gap to keep open a route to Dunkirk on the Channel Coast. On the coast now, though, even though the Germans have attacked both Boulogne and Calais- Boulogne falls at the end of the week- the main German armored force is ordered to halt the 24th, an order confirmed by Hitler. They have reached a line from Béthune to Gravelines, and sure, it's not great terrain for armor, but the Allied defenses are weak here. David Somerville writes, The pause, which lasts until the morning of the 27th, gives the French and British time to strengthen this position and is generally seen as being the move which makes the evacuation of the BEF possible. The motives for Hitler's decision can only be guessed. Now, there are several possible reasons for this order, which I will go into next week in detail. Here is how this week ends in the field. Gort, as I said, cancels the preparations he's made to join Weygand's offensive. Weygand will cancel the whole thing, blaming Gort. But the French forces on the Somme have not, despite claims to the contrary, made any attacks. So the Germans have stopped advancing for the time being, China loses a general in the field, the Allies are going to leave Norway, and there is chaos and confusion among the Allied high command in Western Europe. Well, there is chaos and confusion in the general population as well. I mean, what do the French people think of all this? This lightning invasion and breakthrough? In Paris, there is just plain disbelief at first, but when the truth sets in, so does panic, and all over northern France begins a mass flight of civilians. And this seriously damages both military communications and morale in general. Think, northeastern France was occupied for four years in WW1, and the people there damn sure don't want to go through that again. Lille has 200,000 inhabitants, 90% of them leave, just 800 people remain of 23,000 in Charte, and the French army is trying to move and maneuver amid this ocean of humanity. And how tough do you think that is? I'm going to end with this. In the month after the invasion began, 8 million people leave their homes, the largest mass migration in Western European history. People forcibly removed from their homes, or people who feel they have to leave them. This is not a new thing in times of war, but the first half of the 20th century is perhaps the pinnacle for this. For an earlier forced mass exodus, check out the Greco-Turkish war in our Between 2 Wars series right here. Our TimeGhost member of the week is Robby Rachid. Oh, hi Robby, I've met Robby actually. Well, Robby, you and the rest of the forces are literally the only people keeping this show afloat. So to those of you who haven't, join us on timeghost.tv or patreon.com. Subscribe, activate notifications, see you next time.