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

VICTORY IN THE WEST 657five bridgeheads across the main barrier, the Aa Canal, between Gravclines onthe sea and St.-Omer, and were poised for the knockout blow which wouldhammer the Allied armies against the anvil of the advancing German Sixth andEighteenth armies pushing down from the northeast and utterly destroy them.Suddenly on the evening of May 24 came the peremptory order from the HighCommand, issued at the insistence of Hitler with the prompting of Rundstedtand Goering but over the violent objections of Brauchitsch and Haider, that thetank forces should halt on the canal line and attempt no further advance. Thisfurnished Lord Gort an unexpected and vital reprieve which he and the BritishNavy and Air Force made the most of and which, as Rundstedt later perceivedand said, led ”to one of the great turning points of the war.”How did this inexplicable stop order on the threshold of what seemed certainto be the greatest German victory of the campaign come about? What werethe reasons for it? And who was responsible? The questions have provoked oneof the greatest arguments of the war, among the German generals involved andamong the historians. The generals, led by Rundstedt and Haider, have put theblame exclusively on Hitler. Churchill added further fuel to the controversy inthe second volume of his war memoirs by contending that the initiative for theorder came from Rundstedt and not Hitler and citing as evidence the war diariesof Rundstedt’s own headquarters. In the maze of conflicting and contradictorytestimony it has been difficult to ascertain the facts. In the course of preparingthis chapter the author wrote General Haider himself for further elucidationand promptly received a courteous and detailed reply. On the basis of ihisand much other evidence now in, certain conclusions may be drawn and thecontroversy settled, if not conclusively, at least fairly convincingly. As for responsibilityfor the famous order, Rundstedt, despite his later assertions to thecontrary, must share it with Hitler. The Fuehrer visited the General’s ArmyGroup A headquarters at Charleville on the morning of May 24. Rundstedtproposed that the panzer divisions on the canal line before Dunkirk be halteduntil more infantry could be brought up. ∗ Hitler agreed, observing that thearmor should be conserved for later operations against the French south of theSomme. Moreover, he declared that if the pocket in which the Allies wereentrapped became too small it would hamper the activities of the Luftwaffe.∗ This fact, established from the records of Rundstedt’s own headquarters, did not preventthe General from making several statements after the war which put the blame entirely onHitler. ”If I had had my way,” he told Major Milton Shulman, a Canadian intelligence officer,”the English would not have got off so lightly at Dunkirk. But my hands were tied by directorders from Hitler himself. While the English were clambering into the ships off the beaches,I was kept uselessly outside the port unable to move . . . I sat outside the town, watching theEnglish escape, while my tanks and infantry were prohibited from moving. This incredibleblunder was due to Hitler’s personal idea of generalship.” (Shulman, Defeat in the West, pp.42-13.)To a commission of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg on June 20, 1946(mimeographed transcript, p. 1490), Rundstedt added: ”That was a very big mistake of theCommander . . . How angry we leaders were at that time is indescribable.” Rundstedt madesimilar declarations to Liddell Hart (The German Generals Talk, pp. 112-13) and to theNuremberg Military Tribunal in the trial of United States v. Leeb (pp. 3350-53, 3931-32, ofthe mimeographed transcript).Telford Taylor in The March of Conquest and Major L. F. Ellis in The War in Franceand Flanders, 1939-40 have analyzed the German Army records of the incident and drawnconclusions that somewhat differ. Ellis’ book is the official British account of the campaign andcontains both British and German documents. Taylor, who spent four years as an Americanprosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, is an authority on the German documents.