BlairWitch749
Banned
Blair Witch I am getting a little bit sick and tired and your sweeping statements like "morale was in the shitters", the "LW chopped them up badly" and so on.
Your statement that morale was in the shiters, flies in the face of all the evidence obtained from interviews of individual soldiers and reports from the field dated from mid June 1940. Morale was actually rather high in the French Army during June 1940 and the bulk of the soldiers and officers on the field wished only to fight on against the Germans.
The Luftwaffe was in poor shape in mid June 1940, most units were still based in the Benelux and nothermost France. Rebasing them north of the Seine and in places like Normandy would have taken at least two weeks if not more. At the same time, aircrafts factories in Toulouse and Bordeaux where still churning out D520 and Bloch MB155 and production was on the increase. Air units in southern France could also still rely on hundreds of planes of various types and unlike the Germans there was no need to rebase them. Enough to gain supremacy of the air? No but this would have been enough to contest it.
At the start of Fall Rot, the panzers starting positions were above the Somme river alongside all their fuel depots and supply dumps. In mid June the panzers were therefore 200kms away from their starting positions and running out of fuel. Resupplying took place, but only by air with the help of Ju52 planes. There is plenty of evidence about this in the German archives proving this fact by the way.
Yugoslavia was completely encircled by hostile powers from the start and made several mistakes in its forces deployment, namely to cover the borders instead of defensive lines in the interior. As it was you can even make the argument that the Yugoslav campaign was a botched job, considering the speed and the ease at which partisans groups organised themselves throughout large areas of the country mere months after the invasion.
There is no way on Earth Spain will fall in six weeks. Frankly, considering the terrain and the infrastructure that's simply not possible, real war is not Hearts of Iron II style war. You might say that the political division of the country would help the invader, but I don't think its a given. Spaniards have a long track record of uniting themselves despite their divisions against whoever invades their country. Dr Strangelove can confirm or infirm this.
My comment on morale wasn't about squads and platoons; it was the army as a hole, and this is born out by the very high levels of POW's the Germans took; it was not the battle of the frontiers or Verdun where French command and the troops themselves where willing to die en masse rather than surrender; Rommel's division alone took 100k prisoners; and the Germans captured 1.5 million frenchmen before the political towel was thrown in; they where just done; even if the panzers have to pause for 10ish days for restocking etc after overrunning far western france and encircling the maginot line they will still be well positioned to drive on Toulon and Marsailles even without Italian pressure and complete the campaign
I said the Germans could operate 300 miles from a railhead which was true, but not that they could do it all at once; they would have to stop halfway, pause, regroup bring up supplies then bound forward again; Spain would have to committ their field army to the border as well because once they germans are past it, there is simply too much front for Spain to defend and the Germans will go around them for indirect advances to the rear; and with their mega deficiencies in artillery of all kinds and numerical inferiority, it would be a game quickly lost