Second World War: Dunkirk and the Fall of France

Geoffrey Stewart, Christopher Summerwille

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781844158034
• eBook ISBN: 9781783409150
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War II
• Index: History

For sixty years the dramatic story of the Dunkirk evacuation and the defeat of France—the story of the German conquest of northwest Europe—has been the focus of historical study and dispute, yet myths and misconceptions about this extraordinary event persist. The ruthless efficiency of the German assault, the 'miracle' of Dunkirk, the feeble French defense—these still common assumptions are questioned in Geoffrey Stewart's highly readable and concise account of the campaign. The German victory was not inevitable

Campaign Chronicle

10 May: The Assault on the Netherlands

The Dutch had advanced warning of the attack from Colonel Hans Oster of the Abwehr, a brave and persistent anti-Nazi who had developed a close relationship with the Dutch Military Attaché, Major Sas, in Berlin. He had already been the recipient of a whole series of warnings since November 1939, as Hitler struggled to get an attack launched and faced repeated problems and resistance leading to cancellations. This of course weakened the impact of Sas’s warnings on the night of 9 May. Sas got through to the Defence Ministry in the Hague and delivered his news. He was infuriated to receive a telephone call an hour later questioning the likelihood of the impending attack.

The Dutch defence strategy rested on trying to hold the frontier on the River Maas for a time before falling back 10 miles to another temporary halt line along the River Raam in the Peel region. Finally it was hoped that Vesting Holland, Fortress Holland, could be held till relief arrived. This, utilising water obstacles (enhanced by deliberate flooding) and blockhouses, protected the capital, the Hague, and the great cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Time would be necessary for the reservists to report for duty. The Germans, appreciating this and the difficulties of successive water barriers, proposed to rely on speed, air power and guile. The main thrust would be by the Austrian 9th Panzer Division supported by a division of motorised SS infantry, south of the main rivers of the Netherlands and towards Tilburg and Breda. Subordinate attacks by infantry would take place into the northern frontier provinces of Groningen and Friesland. But the key would be a series of risky airdrops into Fortress Holland itself.

At 3am the Dutch finally accepted the warning as genuine and began to blow the Maas bridges. The Germans tried to seize the bridges by resorting to tricks of impersonation. At Maastricht this failed but notably at Gennep, further north, they succeeded in preventing this crucial railway bridge being blown. Helped by Dutch fascist sympathisers and pretending to escort German prisoners, a small force stopped the detonation of charges and enabled an armoured German train to roll across the river, followed by another troop train. Disaster had occurred by 4am as these were able to penetrate 10 miles and pierce the Peel Line, the blockhouses of which could then be assaulted from the rear. The 9th Panzer Division was then able to cross with supporting infantry. By the end of Friday the 10th, the Maas Line had fallen as Dutch troops pulled back to the already threatened Peel Line. To the north, the Germans advanced rapidly through Groningen and Friesland to the eastern end of the great dike on the northern edge of the IJsselmeer (Zuider Zee) and were then held by fortifications as intended. Others advancing through Arnhem, after a successful paradrop there, were held on the River Lek, the eastern defence of Fortress Holland.

Air power was to deliver the most devastating blows. At 3.30am most of the airfields in Holland were bombed, including Schipol, destroying much of the small Dutch Air Force. Most of Germany’s airborne troops, under Lieutenant-General Kurt Student, were now thrown into a desperate attempt to seize the Hague and Rotterdam. There were nearly 4,000 paratroopers and 12,000 specially trained airborne infantry packed into Junkers 52 transport planes. The long bridges at Moerdijk, 16 miles south of Rotterdam, were seized at 6.40am by drops to the north and south by 700 paratroopers. The same success was met with at Dordrecht, even closer to the great port city. Rotterdam’s airport of Waalhaven was seized and at 7am Ju 52s began landing. One of the most extraordinary moves by the invaders was the landing of twelve seaplanes on the Nieuwe Maas in the heart of the city at 5am. They promptly seized the Willems Bridge. More paratroopers landed into a sports stadium south of this initial invasion and then joined their comrades on the bridges after commandeering tramcars and driving them through the southern city. A fierce fight developed at the northern end of the bridge as Dutch infantry counter-attacked, but the Dutch could not stop the Germans gradually flying in more men and occupying the southern part of Rotterdam. Dutch ships joined in the attacks and in the afternoon a Dutch destroyer, Van Galen, began shelling the airport at Waalhaven. She was eventually sunk by German bombers. Dutch and British air raids were made on Waalhaven, which was also continuously shelled by artillery from the other side of the river.

The attempt to seize the capital, the Hague, went even more seriously wrong and eventually had to be abandoned. The invaders aimed to seize three airports. Some 120 paratroopers landed at Valkenburg at first light and drove off the defending troops, but many of the heavily laden Ju 52s, flying in reinforcements, bogged down on the soft runways blocking further landings. Twenty-six aircraft tried to land on a nearby beach but many were wrecked and others strafed by the Dutch Air Force. By evening the Dutch had recaptured Valkenburg and driven the German survivors into defensive pockets. The drop on Ockenburg airfield was a disaster, with most of the paratroopers missing their drop-zone. The flat airfields were easy to miss in the early half-light. Many were captured and others forced to hide. The attack on the third airfield of Ypenburg, east of the capital, went little better. Paratroopers were scattered and Junkers 52s, landing reinforcements, were shot up and wrecked. At 5pm a squadron of British Hurricanes intervened, mainly shooting up wrecked German aircraft. By 7.30pm the commander designated to capture the Hague – and who had himself had to land in a field – admitted failure to German Headquarters and was ordered to abandon his task and try to help the small band of German troops holding on at the northern end of the Willems Bridge in Rotterdam. All was now going to turn on the struggle for this great Dutch port and city.

10 May: The Assault on Belgium

Although the thrust through Belgium was not the vital point of attack or Schwerpunkt, it had to be sufficiently threatening to convince the French that it was. Von Bock’s Army Group B contained three Panzer divisions. The weakest was involved in the dash through southern Holland to link with the airborne attack. Two others, under General Höpner, would form the spearhead of Bock’s thrust, making for the crucial Gembloux Gap, where the French expected them. The initial German objective was crossing the Meuse (Maas) and the adjoining Albert Canal. The key points were the bridge in the Dutch city of Maastricht, the bridges over the Albert Canal and the great Belgian fort of Eben Emael to the south of Maastricht, guarding a crucial crossing. The fort had been built in 1932 to prevent an easy repeat of 1914. It was generally regarded as a piece of formidable modern engineering. Shaped like a wedge, it measured 900 yards by 770 and it took twenty minutes to walk from the main entrance to the furthest gun batteries within the fort. It had two huge 120mm guns and several 75mm, as well as machine guns and 60mm anti-tank guns covering the approaches. Hitler took it sufficiently seriously as an obstacle to devote considerable amounts of his own time to the problem of its capture. Accurate scale models were made and much research carried out as to how to take it. A special unit was trained to land by glider on the roof of the fortress at first light, others were to land near the Albert Canal bridges at the same time. The whole operation was timed to be three hours before any official declaration of war.

A combination of circumstances aided the Germans, not least the number of false alerts over the past few months. The Dutch had passed on the warnings from Sas on the evening of the 9th and various other indications of action were being gathered by Belgian Intelligence but in January, the prompt Belgian response to warnings of an impending invasion had cost the then Belgian Army Chief his job, when it turned into a false alarm. His successor was thus understandably inclined to be cautious in responding to the warnings that were flooding in on the 9th. It was not until 1.30am Belgian time that full alert was put out to the entire Belgian Army. The garrison at Eben Emael was composed of second rate and inexperienced troops and the gun that was to be fired as a warning to get men to move rapidly to combat positions was out of order and needed an hour to repair. In addition and affecting the whole Belgian Army’s response to the alert was the announcement on the 9th that leave was to be increased from two to five days a month. Large numbers of officers and men concluded that the alert in the early hours of the 10th could hardly be genuine, coming just after the announcement of increased leave.

The German attacks achieved their objectives for the most part. The bridge nearest the fortress was blown before paratroopers could reach it, but the two others at Veldwezelt and Vroenhoven, just to the north, were successfully seized intact. In the case of the latter, a quick-thinking and quick-moving German paratrooper was able to extinguish the lit fuse before it detonated the charge under the bridge. At the other, the Belgian defenders were handicapped by having no primed grenades, leaving much of their ammunition in lorries too far away from their defensive positions and finding that many of their weapons refused to fire. It was a dismal saga for the defenders and a triumph for the dawn invaders. By 8.45pm the Germans had relieved the paratroopers on the bridges and sent them back to Maastricht to recuperate.

Nine gliders landed on the roof of the fortress itself. Luckily for them only one of the machine-gun positions capable of firing onto the roof was manned at the time but opted not to fire at the first glider down. The invaders immediately attacked one of the casements of the big guns. A hollow charge was used, which blasted a hole in the casement, causing devastation to the Belgians underneath. Each casement was sealed from the rest of the fortress by steel doors but the Germans tossed grenades down the shaft. Other casements were captured but not all the guns facing the Albert Canal bridges were knocked out. The garrison seems to have made no real attempt to recapture the roof and attempts by neighbouring Belgian units at 12.30 and 5pm were driven off. The fort had not been captured but partially deactivated. German troops crossed the Albert Canal in rubber boats after darkness fell and preparations were made to ensure the surrender of the fort next day.

To the south, the German invasion triggered the Allied advance into Belgium under the Dyle Plan. It was 6.50am before the Belgians invited British and French assistance. The Light Mechanised Corps, under General Prioux, composed of two DLMs, moved over the frontier at noon towards the Gembloux Gap to cover the advance of General Blanchard’s First Army. Gort’s British Army began to move about 1pm, its advance led by armoured cars of the 12th Lancers. The front assigned to it ran from Louvain to Wavre, which was to be held by three British divisions. Five others were to be in support. The Commander of II Corps, Lieutenant-General Alan Brooke, recorded in his diary that night:

Everything so far has been running like clockwork and with less interference from bombing than I anticipated – 3rd Division started off at 2.30pm this afternoon and by now its advance elements should be approaching the Dyle.

German air interference was of course deliberately minimal, as the charge into Belgium was just what their plan required. Near the coast, Giraud’s Seventh Army began its advance to aid the Dutch, its lead elements crossing into Belgium at 10am. Most of the force was not, however, on the move till late afternoon.

10 May: The Assault on Luxembourg and the Passage Through the Ardennes

At 4.35am elements of the 1st Panzer Division crossed the Sauer river and entered Luxembourg. It was one of three Panzer divisions under the command of Hurrying Heinz Guderian, the father of German tank warfare. Guderian hoped to reach the Meuse at Sedan, 85 miles away to the west, in three days. To the north of Luxembourg two more Panzer divisions, under General Reinhardt, faced a longer and even more difficult journey, largely through Belgium, but facing the same difficult terrain of the wooded Ardennes. Small winding roads followed the sinuous valleys. Along these, Reinhardt would have to push his Panzers down to the Meuse at Montherme in France. The most northerly of the Panzer force, under Hoth, also had two Panzer divisions, one of these was the 7th under Rommel. In many ways these had the easiest journey to make, aiming to reach and cross the Belgian Meuse at Dinant, south of Namur. Hoth’s Corps was to protect the flank of the true Schwerpunkt, making for Sedan. Rommel, however, was not the man to take a subsidiary role and he had a drive and energy to match Guderian.

Initially, the major problem was traffic control. The ‘greatest traffic jam known up to that date in Europe’ was being enacted by the German Army and it was highly vulnerable to air attack. An officer in the 1st Panzer Division recalled stopping at a major road junction in Diekirch:

Again and again I looked with anxious eyes at the beaming blue sky; for what a target the Division offers as long as it is compelled to progress by moving slowly forward along a single road. But not once does one French observation plane appear.

Still less were there any harassing attacks by Allied bombers or fighters. The bulk of the Allied Air Forces was engaged in covering the advance into Belgium of the BEF and Blanchard’s 1st Army.

The 1st Panzer Division crossed into Belgium from Luxembourg at Martelange and here encountered resistance for the first time. The opponents were the 4th Company of the Chasseurs Ardennais. There were further delays at Bodange by the 5th Company. Fierce resistance, minefields and demolitions held the division up for eight hours and showed what might have been accomplished. The Belgians, however, retired north before being replaced by advanced forces of the French Ninth Army’s cavalry – another sign of ineffective inter-Allied cooperation. The 10th Panzer Division, moving by the most southerly route, ran into light French scouting forces from Huntzinger’s 2nd Army at Etalle and lost two senior regimental officers in the fighting – indicative of the German tradition of leading from the front. The most northerly of Guderian’s forces, the 2nd Panzer, was the slowest, with a series of S-bends in northern Luxembourg to navigate. This force also found that the 1st Division had highjacked one of the roads dedicated to the use of the 2nd. The result was the division did not reach Belgium till the 11th. It was conflicts over road use like this that led Kleist, Guderian’s superior, to threaten to shoot any officer using the wrong road.

Friday, 10 May had been a day of clear blue skies – a portent of the luck the Germans were going to enjoy with the weather and in other respects for the next few weeks. Perhaps the only ominous development for Germany was the appointment in London on this day of the 64-year-old Winston Churchill as British Prime Minister.

11 – 12 May: The Battle for Rotterdam and the Netherlands

Throughout Saturday fighting continued in and around Rotterdam. Vastly outnumbered, those troops who had landed to the north of the city fought desperate defensive actions to avoid capture. This was particularly hard on the Dutch inhabitants of Valkenburg, where the German paratroopers had retired to and now faced shelling from surrounding Dutch infantry. In Rotterdam the airborne attackers stubbornly tried to enlarge their hold but most of the city remained in Dutch hands. The key lay in the progress of the 9th Panzer Division under Dr Ritter von Hubicki. It crossed into the Netherlands via the Gennep Bridge and raced across to Tilburg by the morning of the 12th. Contact had also been made with some of the advanced forces of Giraud’s Seventh Army near Breda, and a tank battle ensued that inflicted heavy losses on the light Panzer Is and IIs of which the 9th Division was composed. The French did not press their advantage but waited for reinforcements and in the best First World War tradition, sought to seal off the Germans from the south rather than pressing on to the Moerdijk Bridge. This enabled the 9th to reach the bridge and it was then reinforced by an SS motorised division. The chances of frustrating the bold German bid to seize the Netherlands was slipping away.

11 – 12 May: The Matador’s Cloak Continues to Attract the Bull

The invasion of Belgium has been likened to the matador’s cloak that induces the bull to charge, so that as it passes it can be struck in the flank. The best part of the French and British Armies were charging – or more accurately sedately advancing – into Belgium on the 11th, whilst the matador’s sword was making its way through the Ardennes. The British Field Force moved up to the Dyle Line and the biggest problem proved to be not the Germans but the Belgians. As the 3rd Division took up its position near Louvain, the local Belgian commander objected and on the 12th the British corps commander spent fruitless hours trying to get the Belgian king to resolve the problem. The French General Georges finally ordered the Belgians to move.

The British air contingent was in action on the 12th, trying to destroy the Albert Canal bridges that the Germans had seized on the 10th. One of the bridges was damaged but for the loss of several aircraft. By the end of the 12th there were only seventy-two out of the original 135 operational bombers with the British air contingent. The RAF also l...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Maps
• Background
• Campaign Chronicle
• Aftermath
• Appendix I - Biographical Notes
• Appendix II - Glossary of Terms
• Bibliography
• Index