rise-and-fall-of-the-third-reich-william-shirer-pdf

VICTORY IN THE WEST 645time securing air and naval bases from which he could harass and blockade theBritish Isles. It is obvious from his various harangues to the generals at this timethat he thought that after such a defeat Britain and France would be inclinedto make peace and leave him free to turn his attention once more to the East.Even before the original plan for Fall Gelb had fallen into the hands of theenemy it was anticipated by the Allied Supreme Command. On November 17the Allied Supreme War Council, meeting in Paris, had adopted ”Plan D,”which, in the event of a German attack through Belgium, called for the FrenchFirst and Ninth armies and the British Expeditionary Force to dash forward tothe principal Belgian defense line on the Dyle and Meuse rivers from Antwerpthrough Louvain, Namur and Givet to Mezieres. A few days before, the Frenchand British general staffs, in a series of secret meetings with the Belgian HighCommand, had received the latter’s assurance that it would strengthen thedefenses on that line and make its main stand there. But the Belgians, stillclinging to the illusions of neutrality which fortified their hope that they yetmight be spared involvement in war, would not go further. The British chiefsof staff argued that there would not be time to deploy the Allied forces so farforward once the Germans had a tacked, but they went along with Plan D atthe urging of General Gamelin.At the end of November the Allies added a scheme to rush GeneralHenri Giraud’s Seventh Army up the Channel coast to help the Dutch northof Antwerp in case the Netherlands was also attacked. Thus a German attemptto sweep through Belgium – and perhaps Holland – to flank the Maginot Linewould be met very early in the game by the entire B.E.F., the bulk of theFrench Army, the twenty-two divisions of the Belgians and the ten divisions ofthe Dutch – a force numerically equal, as it turned out, to that of the Germans.It was to avoid such a head-on clash and at the same time to trap theBritish and French armies that would speed forward so far that General Erichvon Manstein (born Lewinski), chief of staff of Rundstedt’s Army Group A onthe Western front, proposed a radical change in Fall Gelb. Manstein was a giftedand imaginative staff officer of relatively junior rank, but during the winter hesucceeded in getting his bold idea put before Hitler over the initial opposition ofBrauchitsch, Haider and a number of other generals. Manstein’s proposal wasthat the main German assault should be launched in the center through theArdennes with a massive armored force which would then cross the Meuse justnorth of Sedan and break out into the open country and race to the Channel atAbbeville.Hitler, always attracted by daring and even reckless solutions, was interested.Rundstedt pushed the idea relentlessly not only because he believed init but because it would give his Army Group A the decisive role in the offensive.Although Haider’s personal dislike of Manstein and certain professionaljealousies among some of the generals who outranked him led to Manstein’stransfer from his staff post to the command of an infantry corps at the endof January, he had an opportunity to expound his unorthodox views to Hitlerpersonally at a dinner given for a number of new corps commanders in Berlin onFebruary 17. He argued that an armored strike through the Ardennes would hitthe Allies where they least expected it, since their generals probably, like mostof the Germans, considered this hilly, wooded country unsuitable for tanks. Afeint by the right wing of the German forces would bring the British and Frencharmies rushing pell-mell into Belgium. Then by cracking through the French at