Today's update was supposed to be longer, but until the end of June sleep takes precedence over writing for me.
From
A war to be won, history of the second World War, by Alan Millett; Harvard University Press, 2000
..Fall Rot started in the dawn of August 10 as twenty german divisions commanded by Halder advanced towards Lille. Finally, after two months of stagnation, things were moving again in the Western front.
… As the allies expected, the germans seemed to be trying to cut the BEF from the French army by attacking towards the Channel. The allied defenses around Lille had been strengthened according to such predictions, and for the first days, and despite armoured and air superiority, the germans made little progress.
…for the first five days, the allies commited large armoured forces to defend Lille, in hopes that if the germans were stopped there, they would burn their last armoured reserves and would be unable to resume the offensive in what was left of 1940. In August 15, Rommel’s tanks had bypassed Lille, that was still defended by a sizeable british and French garrison, and were advancing slowly towards the Somme. The allied airforces were still contesting Luftwaffe’s superiority, and in August 16 Gamelin wrote confident that “the worst had already past”. Manstein’s bluff had been successful.
…Halder’s diversion movement towards Lille had been successful in drawing most of the French armoured forces away from Manstein’s main line of offensive towards Paris, as the allied armies discovered with dismay in August 16, when Fall Rot actually started. Attacking on a wide front between Valenciennes and the Meuse, 90 german divisions smashed through the French lines enjoying total air and armour superiority and headed south, towards Cambrai, Sant-Quentin and the Marne river. The French command was paralyzed by surprise. In two days, the germans were at Sant-Quentin and had taken thousands of prisoners, and in August 23 the german avant-garde was reaching Laon and Soissons and had broken through the French main defense line.
…By August 20, the allied air command realized that the campaign in Flanders and Picardie was lost and that the BEF had to be evacuated from Belgium. Despite King Leopold’s protests, evacuation through Ostend and other Belgian ports still in allied hands would continue by the rest of August, while Belgian and French troops held the ports against the german pressure. It is debatable if Hitler could have won a greater victory by ordering a greater pressure against Ostende, since the bulk of the german attack was now deep into France, and the Flanders offensive had always been seen as a diversion. Despite great losses, the british managed to salvage most of their heavy equipment and evacuate their soldiers to Britain.
From
My War: reminiscences of the Great Independence War, by Enríque Líster, Ed. Espasa, Madrid, 1969
….after resisting the nazis for three months, General Rojo gave the order to retreat from sedan in August 25. the germans had taken the French by surprise, and in 10 days had arrived near Reims and menaced our way back to Spain. I left my command post that morning, proud that my men had not been defeated in battle and my divisions started the long withdrawal. Little they know that it would end in Andalucia, more than one year later.
…The germans almost caught us, and our rear lost many men prisoners to the Nazis. The Luftwaffe also took a heavy toll amongst our tanks and artillery. Almost all the heavy equipment of the Spanish Expeditionary force was lost in the retreat from Sedan to Chalons, where we tried to set up a defense line now that the Maginot had been flanked. We tried to help the French in their counterattacks against the exposed german flank, but we had lost too much equipment, and we were under too heavy pressure from Madrid to run away from the germans and avoid getting trapped in northern france.
From
Charles de Gaulle, by Ian Mitnick; Random House, New York, 1992
…De Gaulle had been a vocal opposer of Gamelin’s plan and had called for an allied counteroffensive to be started in late July to expel the Germans from western Belgium, but despite Reynaud and Hauteclocque’s support, his views had little influence. When Fall Rot started, he commanded the 4th French army based at Reims, and as such, was directly in the way of the german juggernaut that was charging towards Paris.
…De Gaulle’s counterattack was partially successful in allowing the French and Spanish forces east of Reims to withdraw and avoid being encircled by the german advance, but lack of air support and numerical inferiority meant that his counterattack was doomed. Despite relieving german pressure from Reims and forcing Hoepner’s panzer divisions to retreat at the other side of the Aisne, the main german advance towards Paris was only delayed.
…In August 30, as the germans reached the Marne and the battle for Paris started, De Gaulle traveled to Tours, where the French government had moved, to become undersecretary of defense charged of coordination with the British and Spanish forces. By this day, it was becoming clear that resisting in northern France would be futile, and that the allied forces would have to withdraw to the Loire. The plans for Fortress Bretagne were put in action by these days.
From
Time, August 1950.
…Ten years after the battle that led to the german occupation and that would be the first to show the world the horrors of urban warfare in the 20th century, Paris is slowly filling the scars from the war.
…Despite suffering a comparatively mild damage when compared to Moscow, Madrid, Lisbon or Warsaw, or to other French cities like Bourdeaux or Orleans, Paris still suffered during the two fierce battles fought in the city during the past war. And, for the French, the slightest scratch in Paris is a terrible wound. The Eiffel tower survived miraculously a german artillery barrage, but the same cannot be said about the Arc de Triumphe, whose restoration is now being finished. Although most other landmarks were more or less untouched –it is rumoured that Hitler, the frustrated artist, ordered that the center of Paris had to suffer as little damage as possible-, entire districts were heavily damaged and almost levelled during the three weeks of the First Battle of Paris in September 1940. Montmartre, where the avant-garde started shaping our century fifty years ago, will never be the same, not after days of house-to-house fighting between the desperate French defenders and two german divisions.
…The battle started in August 30, as the german artillery attacked the city from its avant-garde positions only 30 km north of the city centre. The French army rushed thousands of soldiers to defend the city to the last man, but it was clear that the campaign had been decided by the german rupture of the French lines at Sant-Quentin two weeks before. The germans tried the same gambit that in 1914, but this time the nazi panzers proved successful when their parents’ cavalry had failed. For the following weeks, as the german forces crossed the Seine and chased the allied armies, the defenders of Paris would fight an heroic battle that would be the first of many urban battles in both fronts of the second world war.
German troops entering Sant Quentin, August 16 1940.
A spanish Toro destroyed near Chalons-sur-Marne, September 1940
The defense of Paris.
