Chapter 24 Chapter Twenty-Four

Yellow scheme (from "The Lost Empire of the World") big raid The hallmark of modern warfare is that the situation tends to take a turn for the worse on a large scale.In the spring of 1940, it took only seven days for the German armed forces to disrupt the world order.On May 10, Britain and France were still the victors of the Treaty of Versailles, and they were still the hegemons of the sea and land.By May 17th, France was a defeated and helpless country, and Britain was on the verge of life and death.In theory, our plan to attack France, the fall gelb (yellow option), has little chance of success.Judging from the figures of the balance of power between the two sides, the enemy can feel comforted, and it is us who have to worry about it.But after practice, the yellow solution (amendment) has won a big victory.Our soldiers, one by one.All proved to be better than the best soldiers in democracies.Our High Command learned the lessons of being defeated by an American tank battalion in World War I.It takes full advantage of the mobility afforded by the intensive use of a large number of armored vehicles and diesel engines.The so-called world hegemony of Britain and France has been exposed, and it is nothing more than a historical illusion with a false name.Of course, they still control the oceans and sources of raw materials, and they have more resources than we do to wage long wars, but if the will to use them is lacking, it is nothing.Persia was far richer in resources than Alexander the Great had.

In assessing Hitler, the historian must admit that he was aware of this weakness, and that we, the staff officers, were wrong in our estimation.We thought at the time that our old enemies were also making urgent preparations for war without losing the opportunity, but in fact their countrymen were unwilling to face the reality, and politicians were unwilling to tell the people the unpleasant truth.Adolf Hitler put the future of Germany, that is, the future of Europe, that is, the future of the present world order, on a violent armed raid.Its success exceeded everyone's expectations, and it was also unexpected by him.

Hitler not only ordered the attack despite the pessimistic objections of our staff officers, but almost at the last minute decided on the audacious Manstein plan: a massive attack with armored forces, through the impenetrable Ardennes, back to the Left side of the Maginot Line.The plan departed from the traditional Schlieffen plan, but was unexpectedly successful, propelling Runstead across northern France to the sea at astonishing speed, cutting the Allies in half and forcing the British to improvise the A small fleet crossed the sea and fled back to the country, and France's already shaky fighting spirit was completely lost.Thereafter, we marched southward, straight to Paris, where the resistance we encountered collapsed at the touch of a button.Thus Germany, under the command of a former corporal, accomplished in a few weeks what Kaiser Wilhelm II had failed to accomplish after four years of desperate fighting.

① Refers to Hitler. The key to our victory in France, technically, was that we concentrated a large number of armored vehicles on all the divisions as the vanguard, just like the cavalry, thus restoring speed and mobility on the battlefield of the industrial age. It is believed that such speed and maneuver would never be possible in trench warfare due to the power and range of mechanical fire.We know this from the military writings of the British tactician Fuller and the French tactician Charles de Gaulle, who summarized the lessons of the First World War. The French army had more armored vehicles than we did, but they ignored the advice of these Allied tacticians and distributed thousands of tanks among the various infantry divisions.The question of how to use the new automatic armored vehicles caused much debate during the interwar period.We draw on the soundness of men like Fuller, de Gaulle, and our own Guderian.Our opponents have taken the wrong advice.In addition, the use of dive bombing in conjunction with these new ground tactics played a role in accelerating victory.

Maginot Line The whole world was dumbfounded.For several months now, Western newspapers and magazines have been publishing maps of Europe showing imaginary fronts in the coming battle.It is said that Generalissimo Maurice Gamalin, the French Commander-in-Chief, dubbed "the world's first professional soldier" by the Western press, has hatched an ingenious plan to defeat us. The rumored Kammering Plan holds that in modern warfare, modern weapons give defense an advantage of roughly ten or fifteen to one over offense.One and a half million French soldiers lost their lives in the First World War, which shows that in the face of machine guns and cannons, the concentrated infantry attack tactics used by Napoleon are no longer effective, and there will not be another Versailles Deng battle.The new tactical idea is to build a Great Wall connected by fortresses in peacetime and equip it with the fiercest modern firepower. In the future, no matter how many millions of enemies the enemy invests in attacking, they will eventually be drowned in their own blood.

According to this theory, the French built a series of blockhouses and connected them with underground tunnels. This is the Maginot Line.Had Germany not attacked, between the Maginot Line Great Wall on land and the British Naval Blockade, our economic life would have been strangled, even if the Revolution failed to bring down Hitler and the Allies The army will finally deliver its final blow once and for all from the Maginot Line, forcing our generals to prostrate themselves and beg for peace as they did in 1918.This was the argument of the Western press during the "sit-in war". Knowledgeable military figures have raised some questions about this Maginot Line.They said: The project is indeed great, but is it too short?It starts in the Swiss Alps and stretches over a hundred miles along the Franco-German border to a place called Longcoullon—this is where it ends.Between Longcoullon and the English Channel, along the frontier of France and Belgium, there was a gap, a wide and flat strip at least as long as the Maginot Line itself.The reason why we barbarian Germans attacked from Belgium in 194 was because this loophole provided a smooth road to Paris.Can't we bypass this famous Maginot Line and come down this road again?

Those who supported the Gamelin plan answered such questions with a sardonic smile, saying: It would be good, of course, to extend the line of defense through Belgium to the sea.But that is for the Belgians to decide, but they would rather stick to neutrality than engage in this line of defense.Extending this line of defense in France would have to pass through a 130-mile stretch of important industrial territory.Also, this had been considered in the past, but the government wanted to save money.Because the people are demanding shorter working hours and higher wages.The cost of extending the line of defense will be astronomically huge.Also, the groundwater table in these areas is too high, making it difficult to build tunnel systems.At the same time, Hitler was already in power by then, and extending this line of defense might have spurred the bellicose Führer into immediate action.

In short, France's brightest military thinkers decided not to complete the Maginot Line, but adopted the Camerin Plan.In the event of war, French and British troops would stand ready along the unfortified Belgian border.If the Germans really come from here again, the Allied troops under the command of Gamelan will jump out of their positions and join the 200,000 brave Belgian troops to stick to the natural defense line along the river.Because of the great advantages of being on the defensive in modern warfare, a German attack on such a narrow front would fail with heavy casualties. Result of plan execution

We did attack, though not quite along the line the plan laid out for us.Five days later, Generalissimo Kamaling was dismissed from his post.We passed through the Ardennes area considered "impassable", bypassed the northern end of the Maginot Line, and the army marched westward, across France, thus cutting off France, which jumped out of its position and rushed into Belgium on time according to the Ganmaling plan. Links to the British Army.Our Eighth Army, commanded by Kühler, also marched northward from Holland to meet them, leaving them in a tight siege.On the morning of May 15, the French Prime Minister called his Defense Minister and asked Gameling what countermeasures he had.According to history, the Secretary of Defense replied, "He has nothing."

The next day, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris held an emergency meeting, risking their lives from Winston Churchill, who flew here from London, asked Generalissimo Gameling at the meeting: "General, where are the reserves prepared to fight the German breakthrough?" According to Churchill's memoirs, the world's leading professional soldier replied : "au-cume." ("None.") General Weygand succeeded him.We easily took the Maginot Line from the rear, because the guns were all directed in the front direction.We captured the French soldiers waiting in the bunkers and tunnels, and shipped them all to the English Channel to fight against the British.We also seized all the food and equipment stored in this maze, leaving only a few light bulbs to light in these deserted concrete passages.Therefore, the Maginot Line has been preserved to this day.

The greatness of France has disappeared from the stage of history.Germany's sworn enemy for centuries has finally met its doom.Strategically, they were wrong about how to use industrial power in warfare.They have wasted the power and wealth of the country on a great tragic joke, building half the city wall out of steel and concrete.Tactically, when Generalissimo Camerin said "aub cune," French military history had come to an end. shadow of victory At the High Command, the victory over France was both euphoric and somewhat unsettling.Those of us who attended the signing of the armistice watched with heavy hearts as the Führer danced his quick victory dance in the Compiègne sunshine.Our mood is mixed: on the one hand, we are proud of the great achievements of the German army and their heroic reversal of the defeat since 1918; Anxiety about making a tragic mistake.These errors were completely concealed under the rose-like brilliance of victory, and were hidden from the common world.At that moment, Germany was like a young girl at an army ball, and everyone smiled at her because the handsome officers looked at her adoringly and shyly, without knowing a single A deadly cancer had sprouted in her body. This cancer, which was already afflicting Germany at that time, was amateur military command.But no one noticed except for a few people at the top of the headquarters.We have seen symptoms of this in the smaller Norwegian campaign.We had hoped that the inexperienced military leader, having had first-hand experience of that victory, would be determined to carry out a major raid on the Western Front. However, six days after the breakthrough, when Rundstedt advanced towards the sea with Guderian's armored forces as the vanguard, and the enemy fled, Hitler's nervousness was severe. It was as impossible as saying that the Hottentots would launch a counter-offensive—thus ordering Runstedt to stop advancing, wasting two days of precious time. Fortunately, Guderian found a reason and was allowed to conduct "powerful reconnaissance" westward. So he simply ignored the order of the head of state and went straight to the coast like lightning. ①A black nation in South Africa was regarded as a barbaric nation by the colonialists. Then an incredible tactical error was made.The British Expeditionary Force was retreating to the seaside helplessly, and was about to be overtaken by the faster Guderian's dense tanks to cut off the retreat, but the head of state ordered Guderian to stop at the A River, only nine miles away from Dunkirk, And tank divisions were not allowed to advance for three consecutive days!To this day no one really knows why he did it.Military historians have been arguing about this, each with a theory, but none of them contribute to the understanding of the truth.During these three days, the British rescued their troops from the beaches of Dunkirk.Explaining these circumstances is enough to solve the mystery of the "Miracle of Dunkirk". If Hitler did not order Guderian to stop the advance, the armored forces would have reached Dunkirk one step ahead of the enemy and cut off their retreat.Britain will lose more than 300,000 soldiers and generals in the big pocket of Flanders, that is, most of their trained ground troops.In the section "Absurd Armistice on the A River", I elaborated on the absurdity of the argument that Dunkirk was surrounded by swamps, overgrown with thickets, and criss-crossed with ditches and thus unsuitable for tanks.The actual situation is that Guderian marched after delaying the crucial seventy-two hours.But the first golden opportunity for a quick victory in World War II slipped from our hands.Hermann Göring's Luftwaffe was assigned to take out the British in place of the stalled Panzer Divisions, and it's possible that Hitler would have preferred a Nazi Air Marshal to his distrustful Army Staff for the kill.How well Goering accomplished can be found in historical records. But it seems indisputable that, if not the final victory, we have at least conquered France.Yet on June 6, Hitler was once again insane, and even the mere achievement of this came into question.He suddenly announced that Paris was not the target of the advance; the next step for our army should be to penetrate southeast and take the Lorraine Basin, so that France would lose its coal industry and arms industry!Fortunately, the momentum of the operation was so strong that not even the Führer could stop it, and we took Paris just as several armored divisions were unnecessarily marching into Lorraine. his worst mistake But the worst of all mistakes: the German Armed Forces arrived in the English Channel without knowing what to do next, with no plan in advance!History will forever be amazed by this fact.We have reached the seashore, millions of men, armed to the teeth, elated with victory, and across the strait, a mere forty miles wide, is a defeated, disarmed and hors d'oeuvre foe, but our man who never The wrong leader had somehow overlooked the details of how to get into England, and he was so firmly in control of all actions that no one could move without his nod. Yet this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do great things.Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon also made mistakes as big as Hitler in their time.But they have the "talent of commanders", the ability to balance and save the consequences of mistakes, and they have the ability to spot and seize favorable opportunities with the fastest speed and courage.True, we had no plans to invade Britain, but did Britain ever have a plan to cross the Channel from Dunkirk in a flotilla of flimsy boats?Despite their defeat, and despite the heavy bombing of the Luftwaffe, they managed to get 300,000 men across the sea out of necessity.So, why can't our most powerful army in the world, which is at the climax of victory, come to a "Dunkirk pursuit", cross the strait with a force composed of several armored divisions, and land on the shore of the future? What about the fortified, defenseless shore?There is nothing on the ground in England to stop us from marching towards London.The rescued expeditionary force was already a group of mobs with their helmets and armor removed.All of its equipment was lost in Flanders.The national army is a poor motley army composed of old people and children. Standing in the way of our invasion will be the two fighting forces that cannot be ignored, the Royal Air Force and the British Fleet.But if Hitler seized the first opportunity in June to send the invasion force across the Channel with all the ships (thousands) available on the waters of Northwest Europe, the British fleet would be caught off guard, as was the case with the Norwegian campaign. like that.We're across the channel before it can rally to strike back.The air battle in Britain would be fought over the Channel in conditions greatly favorable to the Luftwaffe. We will certainly suffer significant losses as well.The offensive phase and supply problems cost us dearly.We had to gamble again.But looking back at history afterwards, is there any other way to do it?In June 1940 I wrote a memorandum for discussion at the High Command precisely on the essentials of planning such a large cross-sea raid.I have written several times to archivists in the United States and Germany asking them to send me a copy of the memo, but have never received a reply.The memorandum is nothing more than an unadorned relic, and I have no way of knowing if it still exists.The yordle didn't say a word at the time and gave it back to me, and that's how it ended up. Aborted Invasion Plan The "Sea Lion" invasion, which was haphazardly concocted in the ensuing months, turned out to be a waste of time and useless.Once the United Kingdom has recovered its breath and established coastal defenses, it will require an extremely complex military organization to cross the strait.Hitler never really made it happen.He lacked the determination to make a bold attempt to fight against Britain. He just let Goering waste his air force on bombing the airfields deep in the British interior, while the army and navy spent weeks arguing about this battle plan. Go, it has been arguing until the summer, everyone is playing football back and forth, but they are not willing to take on the task.In the end, the sea lion project was finally abandoned.Germany undoubtedly had the factories and military power needed to mount an invasion, but not the leadership needed.At a time when a little more daring in battle could win the whole world, Hitler recoiled; and the expert generals could do nothing, for they were all at the command of the layman. This was the real "victory" won by the "Führer principle" in the summer of 1940.Looking back at history, he should not be the leader who danced the jig. Translator's note: Long's remarks on the Maginot Line and the French leadership are very incisive, there is nothing more to say. My friends in the Royal Navy categorically deny the possibility of the Germans crossing the Channel even in June.Of course, they thought, the British would devote all the ships they had to drowning the invaders.This issue can be discussed, but my People think that what Long said is very reasonable.German submarines (which he did not mention in the text) would retaliate against the defending British fleet in the narrow strait.Long was not convincing enough to blame Hitler for the lack of a concrete invasion plan by the General Staff.If they had prepared a workable plan, he would have adopted it as he had adopted the Manstein plan.From Only a rough research plan by the Naval Staff seems to be found in the files, and no other plans for the invasion appear to be found.The German General Staff in World War II had a strange tendency to look at the present and not ask about the next step, perhaps they were unwilling to think about the next step.