Posted on 05/18/2010 4:35:36 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Winston S. Churchill, Their Finest Hour
Had Hitler not held up the drive and trapped and captured the BEF, would an invasion of England succeeded?
Once again, reference made to the concentration of ships at Pearl.
I never had any clue as to how long we dangled that piece of fruit before the Japs.
Dyle Line, we hardly knew you.
The average American reading these articles probably realizes France just went down for the count, just like Poland. And notice how the French have thrown the Dutch and Belgians under the bus, claiming their lines in the Sedan sector were “weak” because they sent troops to help the Dutch and Belgians.
I have to think the Germans would have been more likely to try it, at least. It would still have been a dicey operation but if they could have somehow established a bridgehead there would have been less resistance.
btt
I see that 70 years later the same guys are still writing press releases for Hamas. Substitute Palestinian for German and Israeli for Allied.
Hitler’s first “stop” order has been the subject of some dispute, but doesn’t get as much attention as the second one issued in the next 10 days or so. Hitler wasn’t the only one who thought the panzers should pause and let the infantry catch up. His opinion was shared by Rundstedt, and Kleist carried out the order without objection. Halder, Brauchitsch and of course Guderian saw no need to stop. Halder and Brauchitsch got Hitler to rescind the order the next day, and Guderian more or less ignored it anyway.
I wouldn't say we dangled them. Pearl Harbor is in the middle of the Pacific with nothing for thousands of miles. The assumption was that we would know about an enemy approach several days beforehand and the ships could be deployed.
Obviously the systems in place to spot the enemy failed and we were attacked. As Admiral Nimitz later pointed out, it was probably BETTER that we didn't know. If the ships had been sent into the Pacific to intercept the Japanese the losses would probably have been much worse, this is because the Japanese ships at the time were faster and better equipped.
Perhaps I am reading this with a more sensitive eye. Hindsight is indeed 20/20.
It’s always more difficult in hindsight.
Nimitz always felt that if we had known and sent the fleet out to intercept the Japanese it would have been a disaster. He said that far more ships would have been lost at sea and thousands more men would have died. He believed that this would have cost us a full year in the Pacific Theater.
The other thing to consider is WHERE else should the Pacific fleet have been? Having the fleet at Pearl Harbor made sense, it was closer to the South Pacific, but remote enough to “seem” safe. Let’s say the fleet had been based in San Diego and the Japanese had been able to make an attack similar to the one at Pearl Harbor, THAT would have been a far bigger disaster.
By all rights MacArthur should have been relieved for allow his combat airplanes to be destroyed on the ground after having a full day notice of war.
I find it educational that back in 1940 the press saw the German penetration better than the French and Allied leadership. Today, they would have been too busy covering for Renaud, Deladier, and Gamelin to see it.
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1940/may40/f18may40.htm
Germans advancing west
Saturday, May 18, 1940 www.onwar.com
On the Western Front... St. Quentin and Cambrai are taken by German panzer units. Farther north German 6th Army (Reichenau) takes Antwerp.
In Holland... Artur Seyss-Inquart is appointed Reich Commissioner for Holland.
In Paris... Reynaud appoints a new Cabinet in an attempt to strengthen the French conduct of the war. He himself takes the Ministry of Defense, Marshal Petain is deputy prime minister and Mandel is Minister of the Interior. General Weygand, even older than Gamelin but far more vigorous, has been recalled from the Middle East to take over Supreme Command. Although these changes probably do strengthen Reynaud’s team, especially his own new office, they will turn out to have been ill-advised. Some of the new men, Petain in particular, will become deeply pessimistic about the outcome of the war and will in time bring Reynaud down when he himself would have preferred to fight on.
In Britain... Tyler Kent, a clerk at the US Embassy in London, and Anna Wolkoff, a Russian emigree, are arrested on spying charges. Kent has had access to the correspondence between Churchill and Roosevelt, and Wolkoff has helped pass it to Germany via Italian diplomats. Kent’s diplomatic immunity is waived by the United States ambassador. Wolkoff has had connections with a pro-Fascist organization, the Right Club.
I wholly agree.
Its funny how we sometimes look for the “right” answer. In life, and especially in geo-politics, there are often no good choices. You make the decision(s) that will hurt you the least.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/18.htm
May 18th, 1940
UNITED KINGDOM: RAF Bomber Command: 4 Group (Whitley). Bombing - oil refinery at Hanover. 51 Sqn. Four aircraft. Three bombed, one FTR. 58 Sqn. Four aircraft. Three bombed. 77 Sqn. Seven aircraft. Six bombed, one shot down by Bf110, crew rescued. Bf110 claimed destroyed. 102 Sqn. Eight aircraft. Seven bombed.
2 Group: 15 Sqn ( Blenheim) 6 aircraft to attack columns approaching Le Cateaux and destroy a bridge there. 3 aircraft FTR. 40 Sqn. Flew from Abbeville to bomb troops near Landacres meeting little opposition.
Tyler Kent, an American clerk at the US Embassy in London, and Anna Wolkaff, a Russian national, are arrested by the British for spying. Kent has had access to the Churchill/Roosevelt correspondence. The US Ambassador waives Kent’s diplomatic immunity for the British.
Churchill to Roosevelt: “I do not need to tell you about the gravity of what has happened. We are determined to persevere to the very end, whatever the result of the great battle raging in France may be. We must expect in any case to be attacked here on the Dutch model before very long and we hope to give a good account of ourselves. But if American assistance is to play any part it must be available soon.”
The Battle of France is now in its ninth day and, of course, Roosevelt has been briefed on it. Briefed on it perhaps by information supplied by his defeatist ambassador to The Court of Saint James, Joseph Kennedy. But by now Roosevelt is becoming aware of his problem Joseph Kennedy and perhaps has other sources - perhaps the British Ambassador to the United States, Lord Lothian or perhaps his ambassador to France William C. Bullitt. In any case, with the confused situation in northeastern France, one has to wonder how any accurate information was available. Again Churchill warns the president about the prompt offer and delivery of American aid. However, in this dispatch there are no softening phrases such as Mr. President, I must warn you. . . Churchill is more direct.
Jay Stone
Destroyer HMS Niblack launched. (Dave Shirlaw)
NORTH SEA: In the North Sea, U-9 encountered an enemy submarine, but neither boat attacked. (Dave Shirlaw)
GERMANY:
U-137, U-138 launched.
U-451, U-757, U-758 laid down. (Dave Shirlaw)
NORWEGIAN CAMPAIGN: (Mark Horan) HMS Ark Royal continued to maintain the fighter patrols over the convoy, dispatching sections at 0030 and 0300. The former, three Skuas of 800 Squadron, chased off a single He-111 with damage, the only interception of the entire affair.
At 1700, Ark reaches position 70.06N, 13.16E. At 1710 and 1830 Ark dispatched Skua sections to patrol Narvik, but neither sighted enemy aircraft. Meanwhile, at 1810, the three Royal Navy carriers joined forces, the first time in the war that three carriers had operated together.
HMS Glorious then flew off the remaining five Walrus amphibians of 701 Squadron to Flag Officer Narvik at Harstad, while Ark sent off a single Swordfish to photograph the conditions at Bardufoss landing ground.
Cruiser HMS Effingham goes aground on a rock pinnacle in the Norwegian Sea off Narvik at 67 17N 13 58E. A subsequent investigation showed that the marked position of the rock had been obscured by a thick pencil marking. After salvaging usable equipment, Effingham is destroyed by gunfire on 21 May. (Alex Gordon)(108)
Battleship HMS Resolution was badly damaged by one 1000-kg bomb during an attack by German Ju88 aircraft of II/KG 30 off Narvik. The bomb penetrated three decks before detonating. (Dave Shirlaw)
WESTERN FRONT: The Wehrmacht High Command announced:
Enemy air assaults have been aimed at various cities along the North German coast, especially Hamburg and Bremen, and at cities in West Germany. As in all previous instances, the attacks were made indiscriminately on non-military targets, except for one military barracks. The German Wehrmacht High Command makes this point expressly, in the light of the consequences that are to follow.
BELGIUM: Antwerp capitulates.
Bruges: King Leopold has set up an improvised HQ in a remote chateau at Bruges, a few miles from the coast at Ostend. The atmosphere is sombre. The Germans have in Brussels; Antwerp is about to fall; the French in panic over the Sedan breakthrough, have begun withdrawing their forces from the Belgian front without informing the British or the Belgians; and the roads of Belgium and northern France are choked with refugees.
Lord Gort, the BEF commander, learned of the French decision by chance when a British officer visiting General Billotte’s First Army Group HQ noticed a message awaiting dispatch. The Belgians were told the following day. “It came like a shout out of the blue,” says General Olivier Derousseaux, Leopold’s deputy chief of staff. “We had to shake ourselves back into action.”
The British and Belgian armies began withdrawing along a 50 mile front without interference from the enemy, most of the Panzers having been taken south to the Sedan sector. But the French 7th Army, pulling back from the mouth of the Scheldt, cut through the British and Belgian lines, causing chaos.
FRANCE: At dawn, the Panzer Divisions, now set free by their High Command, cross the Sambre Canal, towards Le Cateau, and the Oise, towards Saint-Quentin. In the north, after an encounter with Char-B tanks held him up all morning in the Le Cateau area, Rommel seizes Cambrai in the afternoon.
In the south, the 2nd Panzers capture Saint-Quentin at 9 am. The 1st Panzers on their left push on towards Peronne and its bridges, which it seizes from local troops at 1 pm. and then sends out patrols on the left bank of the Somme as far as Chaulnes.
Now that the German Panzers have broken out of their bridgeheads over the River Meuse and are advancing west, the Allied command and control system is becoming increasingly numbed. The Blitzkrieg which overcame the Poles is in danger of doing the same to the British and French. The French High Command is sending out orders which are out of date. At 9.45 am, when the enemy was already at Saint-Quentin, Giraud addressed an order to his Army according to which “his instructions had not changed: the Sambre Canal (and the Oise) must be held, at the same time the area west of the canal must be cleared of the enemy which had infiltrated between Saint-Quentin, Bohain and Solesmes”. Similarly, at GHQ in the morning, “the impression was that things were better,” wrote the Chief of Staff. Road and rail communications were working smoothly, and they still believed in containing the enemy in a pocket and being able to patch up the front.
At 10 pm Reinhardt’s Panzer’s fell upon Le Catelet, where 9 Army’s CP was set up, and dispersed it. Later the commander of 9 Army, General Giraud, is captured.
At the end of the day Georges realises how impossible it is to contain the enemy on the Cambrai-Saint-Quentin line. He therefore orders the “2nd Region” to block the crossings on the Somme, west of Peronne, and to give the defence posts artillery support.
Then at 11pm in his Order No. 122, he made this decision. “In the eventuality of the westward thrust of the German armour, towards the Maubeuge-Peronne front, not being stopped head-on we must prepare for the extension of our barrier over the whole length of the Somme, from Peronne to the sea. The 7 Army must try to erect this barrier on the Crozat Canal and the Somme from Ham to Amiens. The barrier would be prolonged from Amiens to the sea.”
In the evening, Billotte orders the withdrawal of Belgian, British and French armies to the line of the lower Escaut and Dender: on the canal from Terneuzen, middle Escaut at Ghent, Valenciennes, Bouchain.
Arras: British forces in Belgium and northern France, threatened by the sweep of Panzers towards the Channel and by the disintegration of the French 1st Army, are planning a counter-attack against the 7th Panzer and the motorised SS Totenkopf divisions near Arras.
Paris: Prime Minister Reynaud has recalled Marshal Philippe Petain, the defender of Verdun in the Great War, to his cabinet as vice-premier. M Reynaud himself has taken over the Ministry of War from Daladier who now becomes Minister of Foreign Affairs. Another veteran of the Great War, Georges Mandel, becomes Minister of the Interior with responsibility for defeating the “Fifth Column”.
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