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

were the Allied troops there going to get their supplies from? Only Dunkirk
remained. Cool, rational thinking should have revealed to von Rundstedt
that the ammunition supplies of the enemy trapped there must surely be
small indeed.
Yet von Rundstedt was demonstrating what he had made clear all along:
that he neither understood nor approved of the kind of fast, mobile warfare
Guderian and the progressives had been preaching. Hitler was showing – as
if any more proof were needed – that he had no understanding of modern
warfare either. His decision to rescind von Brauchitsch’s order was made
because he felt his authority had been challenged – how dare von
Brauchitsch make such a decision without clearing it with him first! He had
always mistrusted the OKH and now he had been humiliated in front of von
Rundstedt. Incredibly, Hitler, a hair’s breadth away from achieving one of
the most complete and remarkable victories ever, was prepared to sacrifice
this to his desire to impress his authority over his subordinates. His
compulsion to put von Brauchitsch and Halder back in their boxes overrode
any sound military logic.
At any rate, the order to halt now had the written authority of the
Führer, and this time Guderian had no choice but to abide by it. In so doing,
however, the opportunity to annihilate the entire BEF, and with it very
possibly to win the war, was lost.
‘Our spirits rise and fall,’ noted Henry Pownall, ‘sometimes, most of the
time, the position seems perfectly hopeless…then the clouds lift a little and
there seems just a chance of seeing it through. It’s a wearing existence.’ The
halt order was a godsend to Lord Gort, whose southern flank was now
looking increasingly fragile. On the night of the 23rd, 5th and 50th
Divisions were pulled back from Arras and the River Scarpe to the east of
the city; it was these two hard-pressed divisions that were still earmarked
for the great ‘Weygand Plan’ counter-attack on the 26th. Other troops had
been shuffled around to shore up the fragile line closer to the coast around
the town of Cassel. Rations were low, ammunition supplies critical, and the
Luftwaffe had apparently complete mastery of the sky, making air-supply
drops impossible. Gort and Pownall’s task was to try to fill any breaches as
the German forces pressed forward and tightened the noose around them.
But then an intercepted German message revealing the halt order gave
them cause for one of their rises in spirits. ‘Can this be the turn of the tide?’