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

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The Go-for-Broke Gamble
AT HALF-PAST MIDNIGHT, the Führer Train seamlessly switched tracks, and
instead of continuing north towards Hamburg began steaming west. Hitler
had been on sparkling form, which had spread throughout the train creating
a lively, buoyant atmosphere. Four hours later, Amerika finally hissed to a
stop. It was still dark. The station had been stripped of its place name, but it
was Euskirchen, a small German town between Bonn and Aachen, close to
the Belgian border. Heading out into the clear, chill morning air, Hitler and
his entourage clambered into a six-wheeled Mercedes. Christa Schroeder
sat in the car as first light revealed nameless villages as they sped by.
Eventually, they halted in a hilly, wooded region before a command bunker
dug deep into the side of the hill, which, she soon learned, was to be
Hitler’s new temporary Führer Headquarters. Its name was Felsennet, and at
some 1,200 feet high the hidden entrance held a commanding view towards
the Belgian border less than twenty miles to the west.
Around the same time as the Führer Train had come to a halt, Siegfried
Knappe was already up and ready, mounted on his horse, Schwabenprinz,
checking the batteries to make sure the cooks had their fires going and the
men were being roused before the alert was given. Half an hour later, at 5
a.m. exactly, Siegfried was able to report to his boss that each battery was in
position and ready to move out the moment the orders arrived.
Siegfried would have a long wait, but for those in the vanguard of the
advance, the moment had finally arrived. At 5.30 a.m., General Guderian
crossed the Luxembourg border near Wallendorf in the company of his lead
units in the 1st Panzer Division. Two minutes after that, Hans von Luck, in
his armoured scout car and with his motorcycles ahead of him, crossed the
Luxembourg border as well. Meanwhile, in the north, Generaloberst Fedor
von Bock’s Army Group B was also beginning its thrust into Belgium,
supported by Luftwaffe paratroopers and more than 1,500 bombers and
dive-bombers. From his position on the Dutch border, Hellmuth Damm
heard the reams of bombers droning overhead. It was these aircraft that had
done so much to help roll over the Poles the previous autumn, and with