Battlefields: "Fall of France" 10 of 12

At dawn on Friday, 10 May 1940, Adolf Hitler plunged his bloody fists into the Low Countries and headed for France; at 5:00 PM that same evening, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of Great Britain. The new Prime Minister felt confident of victory then, but the French high command had made a grave miscalculation. Believing that the enemy would be coming through Belgium, as in 1914, the sixty-seven-year-old generalissimo Maurice Gamelin had sent the flower of the French troops and the entire British army?the British Expeditionary Force, or B.E.F. into Flanders. Instead, Nazi tanks struck through Ardennes Forest and crossed the Meuse. When the French defenders panicked, the panzers rolled up the entire Allied line all the way to the sea, trapping the Allies' force.
On the fifth day of the enemy offensive, the extent of the disaster began to emerge. Paul Reynaud, the French Premier, wired Churchill: "The German army has broken through our fortified lines south of Sedan." He then asked for ten more Royal Air Force squadrons "immediately." The Prime Minister sent four squadrons, then decided it was "imperative to go to Paris." At 3:00 PM on May 16th, he took off in an unarmed Flamingo, a civilian passenger plane, accompanied by Generals Hastings Ismay and Sir John Dill and his bodyguard Walter Thompson, an inspector from Scotland Yard.
Over the French coast Churchill peered down, and Thompson saw his face go grey. He was looking, for the first time, at the war's refugees. There were seven million of them fleeing from the Germans, swarming down the highways, shuffling, exhausted, aching from the strain of heavy loads on their backs. Barns, sheds, and garages had vomited into roads an extraordinary collection of vehicles: tumbrels, trucks, horse-drawn carts, and ancient automobiles with sagging loads of mattresses, kitchen utensils, family treasures, and bric-a-brac. Churchill later wrote: "Not having had access to official information for so many years, I did not comprehend the revolution effected since the last war by the incursion of a mass of fast-moving heavy armour." This German drive would not have to pause for supplies. As Charles de Gaulle had foreseen, the panzers would be filling their tanks at the filling stations of northern France

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[tool619]

yeah, but his stubborness on the 'no retreat' on the Eastern Front cost the germn army

[StaffanGoldschmidt]

the artillery shown are not 88 guns!!!!!!

[MrLasicak]

What irony, it was czech tanks orignaly designed to beat nazis, which reached chanell and cut of french and british forces. Benefit of Munich "bussines" :-/

[donthr]

french will ever be that low... easy traget

[serialkiller1990]

xD Thats a good one...

A week (or even less) later more than 5mln (1mln true soldiers xD)

11000 aircraft where combat ready (there where 35-40000 overall, and most (not all) of them was obsolete (look what Poles done, outnumbered and with inferior aircraft but still they had an huge advantage in numbers.

12000 tanks!?! 300 T-34?!?!?

You mean 15000 to 25000 overall, and 850 T-34, and 500 KV-1, against 750 PZII, 780, PZ35/38, 1000PZIII, and 440PZIV, event T-28 could deal with most of them.

[KronprinzAdam]

British and french have heavier tanks, but no concept of "panzerdivision". In 1940-41probably the best tank of the world was the Panzer IV. Russia had a few heavy tanks, including a very powerful model called "KV". US Sherman was comparable to the Pz IV and I think a little bit more powertul than Pz III. Stukas could operate just with air superiority: they were relatively slow. Fw190 replaced it later in the war.

[KronprinzAdam]

It was true in 1940-42 French and British were advancing slowly and their leaders had no realistic vision or perspective of victory. According to a BBC report, they were trying to block the german advance and in 2 or 3 years, ·"make a final advance into Germany" after a huge economical build-up. Germans circled them and left them in a hopeless situation. Russians in 1940 were beaten even by smaller finnish armies, although they had better tanks.

[RedPower012]

But yes leadership was very poor due to inexperience. Had the Russians even numbers it would have been much tougher on the Germans, not that they didn't complain about resistance as it was. With leadership and proper preparation however Russia could have actually pushed into Germany in 1941.

[RedPower012]

No the biggest problem was that the Russians were outnumbered. If you look at the numbers it apears that Russia has the numerical advantage, but if you investigate closer of the 11,000 aircraft in the Russian arsenal about 500!! were modern while the rest were biplanes, of the 12,000 tanks about 300 were t34s and 100 KV-1s. Of the 3.2 million troops only about 1 million were true soldiers. Now compare German 3.2 million troops, 3,600 tanks and 4,400 aircraft all modern and trained.

[diadorim1234]

"The Russian KV-1 and T34 had armor that almost no German tank could penetrate. "

Thats true, but also there design was superior and there 76mm gun more powerfull then the german 5,0 or 3,7. And the sturmovnik divebomber was superior to the stuka. All is all the russians had one the best armies in the world, unfortunatelly poorly lead...until 1942