The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

messages from Gamelin and Georges revealed that the French C-in-C had
been stunned by the rapidity of the German advance. At about 7.30 the
following morning, 15 May, Churchill received a telephone call from
Reynaud. ‘We have been defeated,’ he said. For a moment, Churchill did
not say anything, so Reynaud added, ‘We are beaten; we have lost the
battle.’ The Prime Minister tried to reassure him, but to no avail.
Soon after, he spoke to Général Georges, who seemed to have partially
recovered from the previous day’s breakdown. Georges admitted that there
had been a serious breach of more than ten miles, but assured Churchill it
was now plugged. In this, of course, Georges was hopelessly misinformed.
In fact, the French Ninth Army had crumbled apart at the seams and a gap
of some fifty miles had been punched in the line up to sixty miles deep. The
French First Army had also had its front pierced on a 5,000-yard front. The
BEF had repulsed all attacks along its stretch of the line, but the French
Seventh Army had retreated west of the Scheldt in the north, while the
Belgians continued to falter along their part of the line. By 11 a.m., news
had arrived that the Dutch had surrendered. No wonder Reynaud had
believed it was as good as over.
It is true that Gamelin had been completely fooled by the German deception
plans – so much so that when reports of massed German columns in the
Ardennes filtered through he repeatedly refused to take them seriously. Yet
with an army of that size and armament, it should have been quite possible
to prevent the German breakthrough. Just six panzer divisions could and
should have been stopped in their tracks. But this had not happened.
There is no question but that France had been severely traumatized by
the events of the 1914–18 war; all the combatants had, but it had been
largely fought on French soil. This in itself, however, was not why the
French had crumbled so spectacularly along the Meuse front. Rather, it was
due to a completely different approach to battle from the German one, albeit
one that had not developed at all since the last war; the only difference was
that now they had better equipment and better defences.
Military doctrine centred around the concept of ‘the methodical battle’,
whereby everything was prepared in great detail and carried out according
to a prearranged plan. This led to very rigid centralization and an adherence
to top-down orders, which in turn ensured there was little or no scope for
initiative in low-level commanders. The result was that the French army