Battlefields: "Fall of France" 5 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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[Fridomfry]

Thanks for this documents. Actually, when the panzers struck through the Ardennes Forest and crossed the Meuse, the French defenders didn't "panick", on the contrary: They waited calmly for a 1917-style methodical offensive, to open fire only when the enemy had revealed his intentions and arrived at short range. Meanwhile, the Panzers had already pierced the French line and, more serious, the Stuka were bombing the French artillery.

They should have "panicked" a bit more

[JUNGLEOFEDEN]

all of these vids are great so far thanks

[klesks8686]

@0ktagon

Speer himself said it caused production problems, and they produced much less than they had projected, and attributed this to allied bombing.

[NishHammer]

@dandyjimbuckley in frame 1:46 you can see Hitlers Face , in the clouds...top left...strange..lol!

[dandyjimbuckley]

@0tkagon, Albert Speer / Total war footing. It's amazing, I think the "strategic" carpet bombing had more of an effect on German morale & civilian death than actually limiting arms production.

[0ktagon]

For those of you who say that British/American massive bombing of Germany greatly contributed to the allied victory explain just one the fact: why was the Third Reich able to increase its millitary production throughout the war, peaking production in october of 1944?

[Vanyaaynav]

@Fridomfry After 1940 the industry of all countries of the Europe worked to Germany. As from the countries of the Europe in the German army soldiers going on east front acted.

[UserUK201]

The French should have listened to Napoleon. "The static defense is equivalent to military suicide."

[UserUK201]

@Fridomfry Yes, but it is important to note that the real damage was done by the german's own divergence of 1/4th of the resources to aerial defense unnecessarily to air defense. the effects of allied bombing were actually quite limited.

[Fridomfry]

@communipaw2009. Wrong. From 1943, the western allies did air raids "round the clock": The British at night at low altitude, the USAAF in daytime at high altitude, compelling the Germans to keep considerable troops and equipment away from the fronts. This, added to the destructions, was a great relief for all allies on the fronts, including the Russians.

[communipaw2009]

@Fridomfry the western allies only did air raids at night and ruissa was in berlin way befor western allies got there and did all the air raids during the day

[Fridomfry]

@communipaw2009, sure the USSR took the bulk of the fighting after 1941, and accounted for 2/3rds of German losses. Yet remember also that:

- Until 1941 the USSR supplied Germany with all the raw material and oil which allowed the German war machine to beat western European democracies.

- then the USSR might have fallen, had it not received massive supplies of equipment from Britain and the US.

- the devastating air raids over Germany were entirely made by the Western allies.