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Chapter III: The Battle of France and Fortress Italy, April-September 1940.
How about now
?
May 10th 1940 was also the day that the Battle of France commenced, based on the so-called Manstein Plan, devised by General Erich von Manstein. General Franz Halder had devised a plan similar to the Schlieffen Plan with an advance through middle Belgium, but it didn’t intend to deliver a knockout blow. It had the limited goal of throwing the Allies back to the river Somme, which would cost an estimated half a million casualties; Germany’s force would then be spent and the main attack would only begin in 1942. Hitler was disappointed with Halder’s plan and initially reacted by deciding that the German army should attack early, ready or not, in the hope that Allied lack of preparedness might bring about an easy victory. This led to a series of postponements, as commanders repeatedly persuaded Hitler to delay the attack for a few days or weeks to remedy some critical defect in the preparations, or to wait for better weather. Hitler also tried to alter the plan which he found unsatisfactory, without clearly understanding how it could be improved.
Whilst von Manstein was formulating new plans in Koblenz, Heinz Guderian, commander of the XIX Army Corps, Germany’s elite armoured formation, happened to be lodged in a nearby hotel. At this moment, Von Manstein’s plan consisted of a move directly north from Sedan against the rear of the main Allied forces in Belgium. When Guderian was invited to contribute to the plan during informal discussions, he proposed a radical and novel idea. Not only his army corps, but most of the Panzerwaffe should be concentrated at Sedan. This concentration of armour should subsequently not move to the north but to the west, to execute a swift, deep, independent strategic penetration towards the English Channel without waiting for the main body of infantry divisions. This might lead to a strategic collapse of the enemy, avoiding the relatively high number of casualties normally caused by a Kesselschlacht (“cauldron battle”). Such a risky independent use of armour had been widely discussed in Germany before the war but had not been accepted as received doctrine. Halder removed Von Manstein from his position on January 27th, but the latter’s indignant staff brought the case to Hitler. He proved enthusiastic about the Manstein Plan. The objections of other generals were ignored because, as Hitler argued, the slightest chance of decisive victory outweighed the certainty of defeat implied by inaction, given Germany’s hopeless strategic situation.
The battle consisted of two main operations. In the first, Fall Gelb (Case Yellow), German armoured units pushed through the Ardennes and then along the Somme valley to cut off and surround the Allied units that had advanced into Belgium. When British and adjacent French forces were pushed back to the sea by the highly mobile and well-organized German operation, the British government decided to evacuate the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) as well as several French divisions at Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo. After the withdrawal of the BEF, Germany launched a second operation, Fall Rot (Case Red), which was commenced on June 5th. While the depleted French forces put up stiff initial resistance, German air superiority and armoured mobility overwhelmed the remaining French forces. German armour outflanked the Maginot Line and pushed deep into France with German forces arriving in an undefended Paris on June 14th 1940. In the meantime, the Regia Aeronautica deployed two fighter wings and one bomber wing for a total of 144 aircraft and they distinguished themselves through their aggressive fighting style, which was decidedly uncharacteristic for the Allies. Luftwaffe pilots came to respect Italian pilots more than other Allied pilots.
Despite the fall of Paris, the French government decided not to surrender and the remnants of the French Army, roughly half a million men, withdrew to the French Alps and the Massif Central while about 90.000 BEF troops out of the original 198.000 redeployed by way of Marseille. By early July much of south-eastern France, roughly a third of the country, was still under Allied control and the situation was stabilized by 80.000 Italian reinforcements. Nonetheless, the situation looked grim: most of France’s population centres, most of its industrial areas and most of its coal and iron ore reserves were under German control.
The question one could ask was what had been happening on the Italian front, which wasn’t much. The Regia Aeronautica had launched several small-scale bombing raids against Bregenz, Innsbruck, Salzburg and Klagenfurt, later followed by Graz, Linz, Munich and Vienna (primarily using the SM.79 medium bomber, which was a very popular aircraft in the Regia Aeronautica). The latter four cities meant a lot to Hitler because he had lived there and he was outraged because the Luftwaffe hadn’t managed to prevent them from being bombed. He treated Hermann Goering to several temper tantrums and the stress induced the Luftwaffe leader to give into his morphine addiction even more. Goering could only mumble in response that the Luftwaffe couldn’t defend southern Germany’s airspace with the bulk of its strength deployed to support the blitzkrieg in France. Strategically, the bombings were of limited value, but the propagandistic value, particularly of symbolic targets like Munich and Vienna, was great. Mussolini said “these attacks are small, but they’re pinpricks right into the heart of the German. This is vengeance for the sinking of the Roma.” The retaliatory raid on Milan was of limited success, but nonetheless angered Mussolini, who stepped up Italy’s efforts to aid France.
Italy did well, despite its many shortcomings. During the interwar years and 1939, the strength of the Italian military had dramatically fluctuated due to waves of mobilization and demobilization. In response to the Anschluss, Italy had increased its defence budget by 50% in 1938 and by another 50% in the 1939 fiscal year; additionally, France had allowed Italy to produce a few dozen Renault R35 tanks under license while the British had sold them fifty Vickers 6-ton tanks for a bargain price. But despite these substantial investments, the Italian army wasn’t expected to be ready for war before 1941-’42. By the time Italy entered the war, over 1.55 million men had been mobilized in what was a painfully slow mobilization. The Regio Esercito (Royal Italian Army) had formed 75 divisions out of this influx of men. However, only twenty of these divisions were complete and fully combat ready by the time France fell. A further 32 were in various stages of being formed and could be used for combat if needed, while the rest were not ready for battle at all. So in total, the Regio Esercito could muster 52 divisions, of which three fifths were of mediocre quality (and the rest not much better). On the upside, Italian soldiers were highly motivated as the government had painted the picture of being enslaved by Germany in the event of a defeat. Mussolini, however, knew better than to attempt an invasion of Germany across the inhospitable border and instead played it safe by safely keeping his army behind his Alpine shield and sending support to France.
German success in summer 1940 after only about eight weeks of combat profoundly changed the geopolitical landscape. The French Army had previously been thought of as the strongest army in the world and France as the dominant continental power, but in two months’ time it had been supplanted by Germany. What hope could there be for Italy, a country with a developing and still predominantly agrarian economy and with a largely non-mechanized, obsolete army?
Indeed, Italy’s situation looked hopeless: though considered a great power, Italian industry was lacking in critical military areas like automobile production, which didn’t equal more than 15% of that of France or Britain. Italy still had a predominantly agricultural-based economy, with demographics more akin to a developing country (high illiteracy, poverty, rapid population growth and a high proportion of adolescents) and a proportion of GDP derived from industry less than that of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Sweden, in addition to the other great powers. In 1940, Italy produced 374.000 cars compared to the roughly 2.5 million in Britain and France. Besides that Italy produced, 4.4 million tonnes of coal, 10.000 tonnes of crude oil, 1.2 million tonnes of iron ore and 2.1 million tonnes of steel that year. By comparison, Great Britain produced 224.3 million tonnes of coal, 11.9 million tonnes of crude oil, 17.7 million tonnes of iron ore, and 13 million tonnes of steel in 1940. Germany annually produced 364.8 million tonnes of coal, 8 million tonnes of crude oil, 29.5 million tonnes of iron ore and 21.5 million tonnes of steel. Most of Italy’s raw material needs could be fulfilled only through importation, and no effort was made to stockpile key materials before the entry into war (stockpiling commenced only in March 1940).
Italy, however, did have at least one factor working in its favour, namely geography: the Italian border was ridiculously easy to defend. In 1931, work had commenced on the “Alpine Wall”, and after the Anschluss the defences on the Italo-German border were emphasized (those on the Swiss, Yugoslav and French borders, on the other hand, were somewhat neglected. The Alpine Wall was composed of three zones: the first zone was only intended to slow down the enemy and inflict casualties; the second zone consisted of heavier fortifications capable of resistance in isolation; the third zone, the “zone of alignment”, was an assembly area for counterattack, into which the enemy was to be directed. Three types of fortifications were provided: “Type A”: the largest fortifications, generally built into mountainsides; “Type B”: smaller point-defence fortifications; and “Type C”: widely distributed shelters and rallying points.
These border defences were manned by the elite of the Italian army: all six Alpini divisions and all twelve Bersaglieri regiments. They were interspersed with regular divisions, the idea being that the presence of elite units would improve the performance of the rank and file ones. The Alpini were forces especially trained for Alpine warfare. The Bersaglieri were composed of recruits selected for their above-average size and stamina, their ability to endure intense physical training and their qualification as marksmen. Only very few men qualified for the Alpini divisions, and they gave equally sized elite SS units a run for their money whenever an equal confrontation took place. During the course of the war, no matter the reverses Italy experienced, the requirements to join the Bersaglieri weren’t relaxed and so their quality wasn’t diluted.
Though British officers, especially in the early war years, generally and not completely without justification, dismissed the Italians as mediocre, they often spoke respectfully of the Alpini and the Bersaglieri. These units fought valiantly with plenty of examples of courage and acumen when the Wehrmacht invaded. They inflicted higher casualties than German generals, who had a dismissive attitude of Italian strength due to their WW I experiences, had anticipated. They had expected Italy to fold quickly, and Hitler was frustrated when that didn’t happen. Churchill spoke of “Fortress Italy” as “a foothold against the forces of evil” when he met with French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud between July 23rd and 26th 1940 in the so-called Ajaccio Conference (Ajaccio being the capital of Corsica and the interim capital of France). They agreed that Italy would form the cornerstone of the Allied war effort.
How about now
?Chapter III: The Battle of France and Fortress Italy, April-September 1940.
In April 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway to protect shipments of iron ore from Sweden, which the Allies were attempting to cut off by unilaterally mining neutral Norwegian waters. Denmark capitulated after a few hours, and despite Allied support, during which the important harbour of Narvik was temporarily recaptured by the British, Norway was conquered within two months. British discontent over the Norwegian campaign led to the replacement of the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, with Winston Churchill on May 10th 1940.
May 10th 1940 was also the day that the Battle of France commenced, based on the so-called Manstein Plan, devised by General Erich von Manstein. General Franz Halder had devised a plan similar to the Schlieffen Plan with an advance through middle Belgium, but it didn’t intend to deliver a knockout blow. It had the limited goal of throwing the Allies back to the river Somme, which would cost an estimated half a million casualties; Germany’s force would then be spent and the main attack would only begin in 1942. Hitler was disappointed with Halder’s plan and initially reacted by deciding that the German army should attack early, ready or not, in the hope that Allied lack of preparedness might bring about an easy victory. This led to a series of postponements, as commanders repeatedly persuaded Hitler to delay the attack for a few days or weeks to remedy some critical defect in the preparations, or to wait for better weather. Hitler also tried to alter the plan which he found unsatisfactory, without clearly understanding how it could be improved.
Whilst von Manstein was formulating new plans in Koblenz, Heinz Guderian, commander of the XIX Army Corps, Germany’s elite armoured formation, happened to be lodged in a nearby hotel. At this moment, Von Manstein’s plan consisted of a move directly north from Sedan against the rear of the main Allied forces in Belgium. When Guderian was invited to contribute to the plan during informal discussions, he proposed a radical and novel idea. Not only his army corps, but most of the Panzerwaffe should be concentrated at Sedan. This concentration of armour should subsequently not move to the north but to the west, to execute a swift, deep, independent strategic penetration towards the English Channel without waiting for the main body of infantry divisions. This might lead to a strategic collapse of the enemy, avoiding the relatively high number of casualties normally caused by a Kesselschlacht (“cauldron battle”). Such a risky independent use of armour had been widely discussed in Germany before the war but had not been accepted as received doctrine. Halder removed Von Manstein from his position on January 27th, but the latter’s indignant staff brought the case to Hitler. He proved enthusiastic about the Manstein Plan. The objections of other generals were ignored because, as Hitler argued, the slightest chance of decisive victory outweighed the certainty of defeat implied by inaction, given Germany’s hopeless strategic situation.
The battle consisted of two main operations. In the first, Fall Gelb (Case Yellow), German armoured units pushed through the Ardennes and then along the Somme valley to cut off and surround the Allied units that had advanced into Belgium. When British and adjacent French forces were pushed back to the sea by the highly mobile and well-organized German operation, the British government decided to evacuate the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) as well as several French divisions at Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo. After the withdrawal of the BEF, Germany launched a second operation, Fall Rot (Case Red), which was commenced on June 5th. While the depleted French forces put up stiff initial resistance, German air superiority and armoured mobility overwhelmed the remaining French forces. German armour outflanked the Maginot Line and pushed deep into France with German forces arriving in an undefended Paris on June 14th 1940. In the meantime, the Regia Aeronautica deployed two fighter wings and one bomber wing for a total of 144 aircraft and they distinguished themselves through their aggressive fighting style, which was decidedly uncharacteristic for the Allies. Luftwaffe pilots came to respect Italian pilots more than other Allied pilots.
Despite the fall of Paris, the French government decided not to surrender and the remnants of the French Army, roughly half a million men, withdrew to the French Alps and the Massif Central while about 90.000 BEF troops out of the original 198.000 redeployed by way of Marseille. By early July much of south-eastern France, roughly a third of the country, was still under Allied control and the situation was stabilized by 80.000 Italian reinforcements. Nonetheless, the situation looked grim: most of France’s population centres, most of its industrial areas and most of its coal and iron ore reserves were under German control.
The question one could ask was what had been happening on the Italian front, which wasn’t much. The Regia Aeronautica had launched several small-scale bombing raids against Bregenz, Innsbruck, Salzburg and Klagenfurt, later followed by Graz, Linz, Munich and Vienna (primarily using the SM.79 medium bomber, which was a very popular aircraft in the Regia Aeronautica). The latter four cities meant a lot to Hitler because he had lived there and he was outraged because the Luftwaffe hadn’t managed to prevent them from being bombed. He treated Hermann Goering to several temper tantrums and the stress induced the Luftwaffe leader to give into his morphine addiction even more. Goering could only mumble in response that the Luftwaffe couldn’t defend southern Germany’s airspace with the bulk of its strength deployed to support the blitzkrieg in France. Strategically, the bombings were of limited value, but the propagandistic value, particularly of symbolic targets like Munich and Vienna, was great. Mussolini said “these attacks are small, but they’re pinpricks right into the heart of the German. This is vengeance for the sinking of the Roma.” The retaliatory raid on Milan was of limited success, but nonetheless angered Mussolini, who stepped up Italy’s efforts to aid France.
Italy did well, despite its many shortcomings. During the interwar years and 1939, the strength of the Italian military had dramatically fluctuated due to waves of mobilization and demobilization. In response to the Anschluss, Italy had increased its defence budget by 50% in 1938 and by another 50% in the 1939 fiscal year; additionally, France had allowed Italy to produce a few dozen Renault R35 tanks under license while the British had sold them fifty Vickers 6-ton tanks for a bargain price. But despite these substantial investments, the Italian army wasn’t expected to be ready for war before 1941-’42. By the time Italy entered the war, over 1.55 million men had been mobilized in what was a painfully slow mobilization. The Regio Esercito (Royal Italian Army) had formed 75 divisions out of this influx of men. However, only twenty of these divisions were complete and fully combat ready by the time France fell. A further 32 were in various stages of being formed and could be used for combat if needed, while the rest were not ready for battle at all. So in total, the Regio Esercito could muster 52 divisions, of which three fifths were of mediocre quality (and the rest not much better). On the upside, Italian soldiers were highly motivated as the government had painted the picture of being enslaved by Germany in the event of a defeat. Mussolini, however, knew better than to attempt an invasion of Germany across the inhospitable border and instead played it safe by safely keeping his army behind his Alpine shield and sending support to France.
German success in summer 1940 after only about eight weeks of combat profoundly changed the geopolitical landscape. The French Army had previously been thought of as the strongest army in the world and France as the dominant continental power, but in two months’ time it had been supplanted by Germany. What hope could there be for Italy, a country with a developing and still predominantly agrarian economy and with a largely non-mechanized, obsolete army?
Indeed, Italy’s situation looked hopeless: though considered a great power, Italian industry was lacking in critical military areas like automobile production, which didn’t equal more than 15% of that of France or Britain. Italy still had a predominantly agricultural-based economy, with demographics more akin to a developing country (high illiteracy, poverty, rapid population growth and a high proportion of adolescents) and a proportion of GDP derived from industry less than that of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Sweden, in addition to the other great powers. In 1940, Italy produced 374.000 cars compared to the roughly 2.5 million in Britain and France. Besides that Italy produced, 4.4 million tonnes of coal, 10.000 tonnes of crude oil, 1.2 million tonnes of iron ore and 2.1 million tonnes of steel that year. By comparison, Great Britain produced 224.3 million tonnes of coal, 11.9 million tonnes of crude oil, 17.7 million tonnes of iron ore, and 13 million tonnes of steel in 1940. Germany annually produced 364.8 million tonnes of coal, 8 million tonnes of crude oil, 29.5 million tonnes of iron ore and 21.5 million tonnes of steel. Most of Italy’s raw material needs could be fulfilled only through importation, and no effort was made to stockpile key materials before the entry into war (stockpiling commenced only in March 1940).
Italy, however, did have at least one factor working in its favour, namely geography: the Italian border was ridiculously easy to defend. In 1931, work had commenced on the “Alpine Wall”, and after the Anschluss the defences on the Italo-German border were emphasized (those on the Swiss, Yugoslav and French borders, on the other hand, were somewhat neglected. The Alpine Wall was composed of three zones: the first zone was only intended to slow down the enemy and inflict casualties; the second zone consisted of heavier fortifications capable of resistance in isolation; the third zone, the “zone of alignment”, was an assembly area for counterattack, into which the enemy was to be directed. Three types of fortifications were provided: “Type A”: the largest fortifications, generally built into mountainsides; “Type B”: smaller point-defence fortifications; and “Type C”: widely distributed shelters and rallying points.
These border defences were manned by the elite of the Italian army: all six Alpini divisions and all twelve Bersaglieri regiments. They were interspersed with regular divisions, the idea being that the presence of elite units would improve the performance of the rank and file ones. The Alpini were forces especially trained for Alpine warfare. The Bersaglieri were composed of recruits selected for their above-average size and stamina, their ability to endure intense physical training and their qualification as marksmen. Only very few men qualified for the Alpini divisions, and they gave equally sized elite SS units a run for their money whenever an equal confrontation took place. During the course of the war, no matter the reverses Italy experienced, the requirements to join the Bersaglieri weren’t relaxed and so their quality wasn’t diluted.
Though British officers, especially in the early war years, generally and not completely without justification, dismissed the Italians as mediocre, they often spoke respectfully of the Alpini and the Bersaglieri. These units fought valiantly with plenty of examples of courage and acumen when the Wehrmacht invaded. They inflicted higher casualties than German generals, who had a dismissive attitude of Italian strength due to their WW I experiences, had anticipated. They had expected Italy to fold quickly, and Hitler was frustrated when that didn’t happen. Churchill spoke of “Fortress Italy” as “a foothold against the forces of evil” when he met with French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud between July 23rd and 26th 1940 in the so-called Ajaccio Conference (Ajaccio being the capital of Corsica and the interim capital of France). They agreed that Italy would form the cornerstone of the Allied war effort.
- Onkel Willie
- Word Count: 2k