Posted on 05/25/2010 5:12:04 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Winston S. Churchill, Their Finest Hour
Winston S. Churchill, Their Finest Hour
I hate paying for the same real estate twice. Won’t the Germans just stay put!
They finally get him 3 months later.
These are the worst of times for the French - probably not seen since Caesar paid a visit a long time ago.
Radio Paris II allows Radio Paris I just to play music, so as not to bother listeners with news of the war.
The NY Times sure loved those 3 line banner headlines
Ping
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1940/may40/f17may40.htm
Germans occupy Brussels
Friday, May 17, 1940 www.onwar.com
On the Western Front... Troops of the German 6th Army (Reichenau) enter Brussels. Antwerp and the islands at the mouth of the Scheldt are also being abandoned but have not yet been taken by the Germans. The British and French forces in Belgium have now fallen back to the Dendre River. General Gort is now worried by the growing threat to his right flank and rear areas and, therefore, forms a scratch force to defend this area. General Mason-Macfarlane is put in command. [He has up till now been Gort’s Chief of Intelligence. Gort can be criticized for weakening this important department at such a vital stage.] In the main German attacks Guderian’s forces, exploiting the loophole in their orders allowing reconnaissance in force, reach the Oise River south of Guise. On the German left flank, the French 4th Armored Division (Colonel de Gaulle) attacks northward from around Laon. The Luftwaffe attacks them fiercely and prevents any real gains.
In Belgium... The government has moved to Ostend.
In Norway... The British cruiser Effingham goes aground and is lost while carrying men and stores to join the forces south of Narvik.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/25.htm
May 25th, 1940
UNITED KINGDOM: RAF Bomber Command: 4 Group (Whitley). Bombing - road/rail communications at Bapaume and oil targets Ruhr. 10 Sqn. Eleven aircraft. All bombed. 51 Sqn. ten aircraft. Nine bombed. 77 Sqn. Eight aircraft, seven bombed. All experienced moderate to severe opposition. 102 Sqn. Seven aircraft, all bombed. One damaged by Flak and one crashed on return.
2 Group - bombing - pontoon bridges across the Lys.
Luftwaffe raids continue, apparently testing out air defences. The North Riding of Yorkshire, and rural parts of East Anglia, were the latest victims. 8 civilians are reported hurt.
Dave Wadman adds: The other bomb was at Wickford, Essex at 0155hrs in the Luftwaffe’s dastardly attack against unsuspecting chickens!
The earlier raids in t’north started at 0142 when seven bombs were dropped at Teeside damaging buildings, gas mains and o/head power lines. One bomb hit Dorman Longs resulting in eight civilian injuries. A further six bombs hit Catterick airfied at about the same time but no damage was reported.
Destroyer ORP Slazak (ex-HMS Bedale) laid down.
Corvette HMS Asphodel launched. (Dave Shirlaw)
NORTH SEA: Minesweeping trawler HMS Charles Boyes mined and sunk in the North Sea. (Dave Shirlaw)
BELGIUM: German troops break through the Belgian front on the Lys and thrust towards Ypres, threatening to cut the British from the Belgian Army and especially from the coast. Under this threat to his rear, Lord Gort recalls the 5th and 50th divisions from the Lille area and sends them to Ypres to contain the enemy. Blanchard detaches the 2nd Light Mechanical Division for the same purpose.
FRANCE: Germany captures Boulogne and the Allies fall back to Dunkirk.
Lord Gort cancels plans to join Weygand’s offensive. Later in the day Weygand cancels his plans, blaming Gort. The French forces on the Somme River have not made any of the attacks claimed.
Destroyer FS L’Adroit bombed and sunk in shallow water off Dunkirk at 1200 by German Heinkel-111s.
The ship didn’t explode and lay on the beach of Malo-les-Bains. Only one man was injured, the rest of the crew was safe and served on shore batteries until the French capitulation. (Dave Shirlaw)
GERMANY: Himmler tells Hitler that through large scale emigration “the concept of the Jew will have completely disappeared from Europe.
U-149, U-150, U-452 laid down.
U-104 launched. (Dave Shirlaw)
NORWEGIAN CAMPAIGN: HMS Illustrious, having passed her acceptance trials, is officially commissioned into the Royal Navy. She will remain at Devonport for minor alterations until June 2. Thoughts are given to committing her to the NORWEGIAN CAMPAIGN, but cooler heads prevail, and she will instead embark on a shakedown cruise to the West Indies.
At 1545, HMS Ark Royal (Flagship, Vice-Admiral Air) and HMS Furious depart Scapa escorted by DDs HMS Antelope, HMS Campbell, HMS Amazon, HMS Encounter, and HMS Viscount bound for the Clyde. Meanwhile, HMS Glorious continues her approach to the Narvik area. (Mark Horan)
U.S.A.: Destroyer USS Gwin launched. (Dave Shirlaw)
http://worldwar2daybyday.blogspot.com/
Day 268 May 25, 1940
With 1st Panzer Division only 10 miles from Dunkirk (plus 2nd & 6th Panzer Divisions ready to tear up the coast) Hitler maintains his orders to hold them in their current positions. British, French and Belgian forces continue to fall back towards the Channel coast in an orderly retreat, covering each other’s flanks, under pressure by Bock’s Army Group B from the North and West. British Expeditionary Force uses the respite to reinforce defenses around Dunkirk, including the many canals.
Despite Guderian’s orders to leave Calais to the Luftwaffe, 10th Panzer continues to attack. British and French defenders fall back but still hold the city and harbour, where small fishing and pleasure boats begin evacuating the wounded. http://www.dean.usma.edu/history/web03/atlases/ww2%20europe/EuropeanTheaterGIF/WWIIEurope13.gif
In the evening, General Lord Gort decides to withdraw the BEF to Dunkirk, following assurances from War Minister Anthony Eden on May 23 that naval and air forces would be available for an evacuation by sea.
that hesitation and Hitler’s reigning in of his prize war horse Guderian probably saved the British Isles from invasion and the BEF from complete capture and destruction.
If I remember correctly from Speer’s book, Hitler was much like the current regime in that he just would not make a decision often times until it was too late.
Interesting Editorial on “Railroads in War.” Baldwin got some things right, he got some things right at the wrong time, and on others he’s just plain wrong.
What Baldwin has right is that each army relies upon railheads for it’s main logistic needs, and that as an army travels away from the railheads and attendant supply dumps, supply of the forward units is relegated to truck traffic. The farther the army travels from the railhead, the more difficult to sustain the momentum of the offensive. This is the concept I call the “Logistic Limit.” Or I call it the “Logistic Law” because it has the immutable features of a Law of Nature. No army can operate offensively beyond it’s logistic means to sustain that offensive. If it tries to do so, the results are usually disastrous.
What Baldwin has right, but at the wrong time, is how this may impact German operations. He believes the Germans may have overstretched their logistic limit. Nope, not quite. Not in this campaign. It’s close, but English Channel was within the logistic limit of the panzer forces. Until the railroads are appropriated for military traffic, the Germans are going to stay on the Somme-Aisne line in northern France. Just as unfortunately for the French, the rail network in northern France and Belgium is highly developed, of the same gauge as the German, and the German advance has been so rapid that the rail net has been seized more or less intact. Those German infantry divisions won’t have to stop on the Somme very long.
But why Baldwin was right at the wrong time is that this article should have been written 15 months later, when German forces reach Smolensk at the end of their logistic limit. Then the Russians will have a much less developed rail net, of a different gauge, and much of the infrastructure will have been evacuated or destroyed. It is the attempted advance beyond Smolensk in Operation Typhoon, with weak logistic support, and in the awful conditions of the Rasputitsa, that will doom the Wehrmacht in Russia.
Where Baldwin is just plain wrong is his assessment of the German army as being some sort of mechanized juggernaut. Juggernaut it was, but it was far from mechanized. In fact, the Wehrmacht had far fewer motor vehicles per unit than the French or the BEF. It is one of the great ironies of this battle that the Germans with legs and horses were faster than the extensively motorized French. It was not what they had, it was how they used it. And they got a reputation for being mechanized, when they weren’t.
A machine gun to try and get Trotsky eh? I would have gone with something more subtle, like an icepick.
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