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

British forces all the way to the Channel coast. It was a very, very tall order
indeed.
But what other choice was there? Hitler’s invasion of Poland had got
Germany in a terrible predicament. Do or die, a go-for-broke gamble, was
the only chance she had of wriggling out of it.
On this Friday, 10 May, Case Yellow was finally underway. Germany would
live or die by the sword. There could be no turning back. Hitler, at least,
was confident of success. Guderian believed in it, and so did his men and
his fellow commanders amongst the panzer elite. Von Brauchitsch and
Halder hoped it might work. Most of the rest of the army command,
however, did not share their Führer’s confidence. They went along with it
because they had no choice; only a miracle, it seemed, would save them.
At Führer Headquarters, reports were coming in regularly. Halder was
reading them all, assiduously noting them down in his diary. By 10 a.m.,
news had arrived that Panzer Group Kleist was advancing according to
plan; Fallschirmjäger (paratroop) units dropped into Holland to capture key
forts and bridges similarly seemed to be progressing well. The railhead at
Luxembourg, essential for the passage of supplies to the front, had been
captured. So far, then, so good. But what of the enemy? Were the British
and French northern armies moving into Belgium to meet the German
onslaught in the north? For Halder, the man responsible for organizing the
operation, these were desperately tense and long hours of waiting. And in
the same building was the Führer, the man just a few months earlier he had
planned to kill.
All morning and into the afternoon, Leutnant Siegfried Knappe and the rest
of the 87th Division moved not an inch. Everything was ready, as it had
been since 5 a.m.; ammunition loaded, guns jacked up to their carriages, the
troops standing around in march order. Siegfried spent the time talking to
Major Raake and the battery commanders, speculating about what lay in
store. Would it be over quickly? Or would it soon bog down into trench
warfare as it had a quarter of a century before? ‘It was a very long day,’
noted Siegfried, ‘just sitting and waiting for orders to move out.’
Way ahead, at the spearhead of Army Group A, Panzer Corps Guderian
was leading the race to the Meuse. Every man knew what was at stake.
Since 0530, the clock had been ticking; every minute counted. The