Their Finest Hour (5 page)

On May 18 a reply was received from the President welcoming the continuance of our private correspondence and dealing with my specific requests. The loan or gift of the forty or fifty older destroyers, it was stated, would require the authorisation of Congress, and the moment was not opportune. He would facilitate to the utmost the Allied Governments obtaining the latest types of United States aircraft, anti-aircraft equipment, ammunition, and steel. In all this the representations of our agent, the highly competent and devoted Mr. Purvis (presently to give his life in an air accident) would receive most favourable consideration. The President would consider carefully my suggestion that a United States Squadron might visit Irish ports. About the Japanese, he merely pointed to the concentration of the American Fleet at Pearl Harbour.

* * * * *

On Monday, May 13, I asked the House of Commons, which had been specially summoned, for a vote of confidence in the new Administration. After reporting the progress which had been made in filling the various offices, I said, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” In all our long history no Prime Minister had ever been able to present to Parliament and the nation a programme at once so short and so popular. I ended:

Upon these simple issues the House voted unanimously, and adjourned till May 21.

* * * * *

Thus, then, we all started on our common task. Never did a British Prime Minister receive from Cabinet colleagues the loyal and true aid which I enjoyed during the next five years from these men of all Parties in the State. Parliament, while maintaining free and active criticism, gave continuous, overwhelming support to all measures proposed by the Government, and the nation was united and ardent as never before. It was well indeed that this should be so, because events were to come upon us of an order more terrible than anyone had foreseen.

Plan D
—
The German Order of Battle
—
German and French Armour
—
French and British Advance Through Belgium
—
Holland Overrun — The Belgian Problem
—
Accepted Primacy of France in the Military Art
—
The Gap in the Ardennes
—
British Difficulties During the Twilight War Phase — Progress of Plan D
—
Bad News of May
13
and
14
—
Kleist’s Group of Armies Break the French Front
—
Heavy British Air Losses
—
Our Final Limit for Home Defence
—
Reynaud Telephones Me Morning of May
15
— Destruction of the French Ninth Army Opposite the Ardennes Gap
— “
Cease Fire” in Holland — The Italian Menace
—
I Fly to Paris
—
Meeting at the Quai D’Orsay
—
General Gamelin’s Statement
—
No Strategic Reserve: “Aucune
” —
Proposed Attacks on the German “Bulge”
—
French Demands for More British Fighter Squadrons
—
My Telegram to the Cabinet on the Night of May
16
— Cabinet Agrees to Send Ten More Fighter Squadrons.

A
T THE MOMENT
in the evening of May 10 when I became responsible, no fresh decision about meeting the German invasion of the Low Countries was required from me or from my colleagues in the new and still unformed Administration. We had long been assured that the French and British staffs were fully agreed upon General Gamelin’s Plan D, and it had already been in action since dawn. In fact, by the morning of the 11th the whole vast operation had made great progress. On the seaward flank General Giraud’s Seventh French Army had already begun its adventurous dash into Holland. In the centre the British armoured-car patrols of the 12th Lancers were upon the river Dyle, and to the south of our front all the rest of General Billotte’s First Group of Armies were hastening forward to the Meuse. The opinion of the Allied military chiefs was that Plan D, if successful, would save anything from twelve to fifteen divisions by shortening the front against Germany, and then, of course, there was the Belgian Army of twenty-two divisions besides the Dutch Army of ten divisions, without which our total forces in the West were numerically inferior. I did not therefore in the slightest degree wish to interfere with the military plans, and awaited with hope the impending shock.

Nevertheless, if in the after-light we look back upon the scene, the important paper written by the British Chiefs of Staff on September 18,
¹
1939, becomes prominent. In this it had been affirmed that unless the Belgians were effectively holding their front on the Meuse and the Albert Canal, it would be wrong for the British and French to rush to their aid; but that they should rather stand firm on the French frontier, or at the most swing their left hand slightly forward to the line of the Scheldt. Since those days of September, 1939, agreement had been reached to carry out General Gamelin’s Plan D. Nothing had, however, happened in the interval to weaken the original view of the British Chiefs of Staff. On the contrary, much had happened to strengthen it. The German Army had grown in strength and maturity with every month that had passed, and they now had a vastly more powerful armour. The French Army, gnawed by Soviet-inspired Communism and chilled by the long, cheerless winter on the front, had actually deteriorated. The Belgian Government, staking their country’s life upon Hitler’s respect for international law and Belgian neutrality, had not achieved any effective joint planning between their army chiefs and those of the Allies. The anti-tank obstacles and defensive line which were to have been prepared on the front Namur-Louvain were inadequate and unfinished. The Belgian Army, which contained many brave and resolute men, could hardly brace itself for a conflict for fear of offending neutrality. The Belgian front had been, in fact, overrun at many points by the first wave of German assault, even before General Gamelin gave the signal to execute his long-prepared plan. The most that could now be hoped for was success in that very “encounter battle” which the French High Command had declared itself resolved to avoid.

On the outbreak of the war eight months before, the main power of the German Army and Air Force had been concentrated on the invasion and conquest of Poland. Along the whole of the Western Front, from Aix-la-Chapelle to the Swiss frontier, there had stood 42 German divisions without armour. After the French mobilisation, France could deploy the equivalent of 70 divisions opposite to them. For reasons which have been explained, it was not deemed possible to attack the Germans then. Very different was the situation on May 10, 1940. The enemy, profiting by the eight months’ delay and by the destruction of Poland, had armed, equipped, and trained about 155 divisions, of which ten were armoured (“Panzer”). Hitler’s agreement with Stalin had enabled him to reduce the German forces in the East to the smallest proportions. Opposite Russia, according to General Halder, the German Chief of Staff, there was “no more than a light covering force, scarcely fit for collecting customs duties.” Without premonition of their own future, the Soviet Government watched the destruction of that “Second Front” in the West for which they were soon to call so vehemently and to wait in agony so long. Hitler was therefore in a position to deliver his onslaught on France with 126 divisions and the whole of the immense armour weapon of ten Panzer divisions, comprising nearly three thousand armoured vehicles, of which a thousand at least were heavy tanks.

These mighty forces were deployed from the North Sea to Switzerland in the following order:

Army Group B,
comprising 28 divisions, under General von Bock, marshalled along the front from the North Sea to Aixla-Chapelle, was to overrun Holland and Belgium, and thereafter advance into France as the German right wing.

Army Group A,
of 44 divisions, under General von Rundstedt, constituting the main thrust, was ranged along the front from Aix-la-Chapelle to the Moselle.

Army Group C,
of 17 divisions, under General von Leeb, held the Rhine from the Moselle to the Swiss frontier.

The O.K.H. (Supreme Army Command) Reserve consisted of about 47 divisions, of which 20 were in immediate reserve bexhind the various Army Groups, and 27 in general reserve.

Opposite this array, the exact strength and disposition of which was, of course, unknown to us, the First Group of Armies, under General Billotte, consisting of 51 divisions of which 9 were held in G.Q.G. (Grand Quartier Général Reserve), including 9 British divisions, stretched from the end of the Maginot Line near Longwy to the Belgian frontier, and behind the frontiers to the sea in front of Dunkirk. The Second and Third Groups of Armies, under Generals Prételat and Besson, consisting, with the reserves, of 43 divisions, guarded the French frontier from Longwy to Switzerland. In addition the French had the equivalent of 9 divisions occupying the Maginot Line – a total of 103 divisions. If the armies of Belgium and Holland became involved, this number would be increased by 22 Belgian and 10 Dutch divisions. As both these countries were immediately attacked, the grand total of Allied divisions of all qualities nominally available on May 10 was therefore 135, or practically the same number as we now know the enemy possessed. Properly organised and equipped, well trained and led, this force should, according to the standards of the previous war, have had a good chance of bringing the invasion to a stop.

However, the Germans had full freedom to choose the moment, the direction, and the strength of their attack. More than half of the French Army stood on the southern and eastern sectors of France, and the fifty-one French and British divisions of General Billotte’s Army Group No. 1, with whatever Belgian and Dutch aid was forthcoming, had to face the onslaught of upwards of seventy hostile divisions under Bock and Rundstedt between Longwy and the sea. The combination of the almost cannon-proof tank and dive-bomber aircraft, which had proved so successful in Poland on a smaller scale, was again to form the spearhead of the main attack, and a group of five Panzer and three motorised divisions under Kleist, included in Germany Army Group A, was directed through the Ardennes on Sedan and Monthermé.

To meet such modern forms of war the French deployed about 2300 tanks, mostly light. Their armoured formations included some powerful modern types, but more than half their total armoured strength was held in dispersed battalions of light tanks, for co-operation with the infantry. Their six armoured divisions, with which alone they could have countered the massed Panzer assault, were widely distributed over the front, and could not be collected together to operate in coherent action. Britain, the birthplace of the tank, had only just completed the formation and training of her first armoured division (328 tanks), which was still in England.

The German fighter aircraft now concentrated in the West were far superior to the French in numbers and quality. The British Air Force in France comprised the ten fighter squadrons (Hurricanes) which could be spared from vital Home Defence, eight squadrons of Battles, six of Blenheims, and five of Lysanders. Neither the French nor the British air authorities had equipped themselves with dive-bombers, which at this time, as in Poland, became prominent, and were to play an important part in the demoralisation of the French infantry and particularly of their coloured troops.

During the night of 9/10 May, heralded by widespread air attacks against airfields, communications, headquarters, and magazines, all the German forces in the Bock and Rundstedt Army Groups sprang forward towards France across the frontiers of Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg. Complete tactical surprise was achieved in nearly every case. Out of the darkness came suddenly innumerable parties of well-armed ardent storm troops, often with light artillery, and long before daybreak a hundred and fifty miles of front were aflame. Holland and Belgium, assaulted without the slightest pretext of warning, cried aloud for help. The Dutch had trusted to their water-line; all the sluices not seized or betrayed were opened, and the Dutch frontier guards fired upon the invaders. The Belgians succeeded in destroying the bridges of the Meuse, but the Germans captured intact two across the Albert Canal.

By Plan D, the First Allied Army Group, under General Billotte, with its small but very fine British army, was, from the moment when the Germans violated the frontier, to advance east into Belgium. It was intended to forestall the enemy and stand on the line Meuse-Louvain-Antwerp. In front of that line, along the Meuse and the Albert Canal, lay the main Belgian forces. Should these stem the first German onrush, the Army Group would support them. It seemed more probable that the Belgians would be at once thrown back onto the Allied line. And this, in fact, happened. It was assumed that in this case the Belgian resistance would give a short breathing-space, during which the French and British could organise their new position. Except on the critical front of the French Ninth Army, this was accomplished. On the extreme left or seaward flank the Seventh French Army was to seize the islands commanding the mouth of the Scheldt, and, if possible, to assist the Dutch by an advance toward Breda. It was thought that on our southern flank the Ardennes were impassable for large modern armies, and south of that again began the regular fortified Maginot Line, stretching out to the Rhine and along the Rhine to Switzerland. All therefore seemed to depend upon the forward left-handed counterstroke of the Allied Northern Armies. This again hung upon the speed with which Belgium could be occupied. Everything had been worked out in this way with the utmost detail, and only a signal was necessary to hurl forward the Allied force of well over a million men. At 5.30
A.M
. on May 10, Lord Gort received a message from General Georges ordering “Alertes 1, 2, and 3”; namely, instant readiness to move into Belgium. At 6.45
A.M.
General Gamelin ordered the execution of Plan D, and the long-prepared scheme of the French High Command, to which the British had subordinated themselves, came at once into action.