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

Sedan, ensnaring the bulk of the Allies’ northern front in a huge
encirclement before they had time to effectively respond.
Halder might have been convinced, and so too von Brauchitsch, but it
was palpably clear that the majority in the army believed it was a fatally
flawed plan that had not one chance of succeeding. On 17 March, Guderian
and the senior commanders of Army Group A had a conference with Hitler
at the Reich Chancellery. Guderian was the last of the army and corps
commanders to brief Hitler on his plan. On the fourth day after the advance
began, he told the Führer and his army group superiors, he would reach the
Meuse. By the end of the fifth he would have established a bridgehead
across it.
‘And then what are you going to do?’ Hitler asked.
‘Unless I receive orders to the contrary, I intend on the next day to
continue my advance westwards.’ He added that in his opinion he should
drive straight to the Channel coast.
General Busch, who commanded Sixteenth Army consisting almost
entirely of infantry divisions, said, ‘Well, I don’t think you’ll cross the river
in the first place!’ He was speaking for almost all Army Group A’s senior
officers, including its commander, von Rundstedt.
Hitler, visibly tense, turned to Guderian, waiting for his response.
‘There’s no need for you to do so in any case,’ Guderian replied. The
last thing he wanted was slow, cumbersome, infantry divisions lacking
almost any mechanized transportation getting in his way.
Not only were most of Army Group A against the plan, but so too was
much of Army Group B. Its commander, Generaloberst von Bock, called in
on Halder in his Berlin apartment and pleaded with him to abandon it
entirely. ‘You will be creeping by ten miles from the Maginot Line with the
flank of your breakthrough,’ he told Halder, ‘and hope the French will
watch inertly! You are cramming the mass of the tank units together into the
sparse roads of the Ardennes mountain country, as if there were no such
thing as air power! And you then hope to be able to lead an operation as far
as the coast with an open southern flank two hundred miles long, where
stands the mass of the French Army!’ This, he added, transcended the
‘frontiers of reason’.
There was much sense in what von Bock said. On paper, it looked
hopelessly optimistic. And von Bock knew, as Halder knew, that of the 135
divisions earmarked for the offensive, large numbers were far from being