Ghosts of the Marne, June 1940
With the failure of Guderian’s panzer group to break through at Ghent, General von Bock was forced to abandon the plan of cutting off British and Belgian forces in Flanders. Although German industry was well supplied by Soviet raw materials and could handle a long war with the Allies if the need arose, images from the Western Front in World War I cast a long shadow over the country. Hitler had made it abundantly clear that France needed to be taken down in 1940 (rumours persist to this day that Hitler was planning on backstabbing his Soviet ally in 1941 if this was successful).
Bock’s new plan, codenamed Fall Rot, hoped to use the concentration of Allied forces in Flanders to his advantage, by attacking the correspondingly weakened Allied (primarily French) positions between Lille and Sedan, encircling the French 9th Army and allowing the German forces to push on towards Paris. At the same time, Guderian’s panzers were kept facing the British on the Scheldt, to either tie down their forces or, if the British moved to reinforce the French further south, to make a resumption of the original offensive possible on short notice. Hoth’s panzers, which had been a major part of the quick success in the Netherlands, were transferred south, and would form the main striking arm of Bock’s attack.
The new offensive began on June 1st, and initially saw the same success that the first strike against France had. French intelligence and communications (which can generally be described as poor) had not noticed most of the movement of German troops away from the Scheldt, and while the French lines in the south were more than capable of keeping away the German holding forces that had been there a week earlier, they were unprepared to face the brunt of Hoth’s panzer group, which tore through the French lines at Sedan and captured Reims within four days. The other wing of the attack also quickly broke through the French lines at Douai and pushed through to Arras and St Quentin.
With German troops on the Somme and heading for the Marne, Daladier and the French generals were forced to take drastic action. First, the 9th Army was ordered to retreat towards Laon before Hoth would be able to surround them. Then Daladier asked Churchill to expand the RAF’s coverage of the front, as the French Air Force had been badly smashed up in the fighting (a move that upset many in Britain, only for Churchill to publicly ask them if they would rather lose the war completely). Then nearly 40% of the forces manning the Maginot Line (which had been a quiet sector since the end of 1939) were pulled from that front and sent to the Marne.
The last move is likely to be the reason that Hoth was stopped before Paris. Having outrun their supply lines, the panzers had been forced to steal fuel from civilian petrol stations, and while resistance had not yet been strong enough to make ammunition a serious problem, the arrival of an entire French army (and eventually the transfer of another from the Scheldt line) meant that Hoth could no longer rampage through the countryside. Bock’s forces managed to reach Laon before the French retreat, and much of 9th Army was forced to surrender, but the primary objective of the attack, the capture of Paris, had failed. The French campaign had cost the Germans a great deal of equipment, and its failure rendered the Germans incapable of any further offensive action for several months.
The Great March East, June 1940
Following the liberation of Wuhan, the Chinese military was divided. Although the Japanese positions in the southern half of the country looked to be collapsing, some generals still believed in the previous, largely successful, strategy of defence and waiting for the Russians to liberate China. Others sensed the opportunity in front of them, believing that the successful Wuhan Offensive should be continued all the way to the old capital of Nanjing. Chiang Kai-Shek had been of the belief that the defence was preferable, hoping to conserve his strength for the battle with Mao’s communists that would undoubtedly flare up again as soon as the Japanese threat had passed. As Wuhan fell, his thoughts about that future war changed: if the Red Army ever made it beyond the Great Wall, there was significant risk that Stalin would hand the recaptured territory to Mao. The thought of losing Peking, or even worse, Nanjing to the communists was enough for him to order the offensive continued.
Nanjing however, was a long way away, and likely impossible to reach in the short term without a total collapse of the IJA. In an attempt to boost morale, Chiang decided to order Nanjing as the next goal of the operation, with a subsidiary attack launched in the direction of Nanchang. Equipped with Soviet T-26 tanks and I-153 fighters, the Chinese army was in the best state it had been since the beginning of the war, and a massive advance along the Yangtze wasn’t nearly so unthinkable as it would have been a year earlier.
Japanese forces, still shaken from the fall of Wuhan and the need to deal with the ever-increasing number of partisans in their rear, still managed to put up a brave, at times fanatical, fight. Determined to please the Emperor, they inflicted heavy losses on Chiang’s forces, and managed to hold the Chinese out of Nanchang and Anqing (approximately half way between Wuhan and Nanjing), when Chiang was forced to finally call off the attack. The liberation of Hubei province had cost them a little over 100,000 men, but much more importantly it had shown to the world that China was once again a serious world power.
The Empire of the Setting Sun, July 1940
For the Japanese, Hubei was the least of their problems. The Red Army, despite its endless logistical problems (mostly stemming from the enormous distance from Moscow and the limited capacity of the Trans-Siberian Railroad), was growing increasingly powerful, while Japan had effectively reached the limit of what they could commit to the defence of Manchukuo without drastic changes at home or leaving China entirely (an option that would cause, at minimum, a military coup).
By July, Vatutin felt that he had enough forces and supplies to make the next push. With approval from Stalin, a massive offensive began across the entire front line. Leading the charge were eighty enormous KV-2 tanks, brand new and totally impervious to any weapon in the Japanese arsenal. Armed with a cannon that wouldn’t have been out of place on a destroyer, the KV-2 could serve as either a mobile artillery piece or as a tank killer with devastating effect (one Soviet gunner claims that one round shot from his tank was able to slam through one Japanese Type 95, come out the other side and obliterate a second tank behind it). Japanese infantry had it no better, as Vatutin unleashed the mighty ‘Katyusha’ multiple rocket launchers, which could flatten most of a square kilometre in seconds.
Harbin had been designated as the objective of the offensive, which was planned to take almost a month. After taking it in just three days, and taking down four Japanese divisions with it, Vatutin (under Stalin’s orders) expanded the offensive. Pushing past whatever Japanese resistance got in his way, Vatutin aimed to take Port Arthur, the site of an embarrassing Russian defeat in 1905.
Despite many Japanese tactical errors, the Soviet offensive did not go completely to plan. July 7th, 1940, saw the combat debut of the Mitsubishi A6M ‘Zero’ fighter, which quickly showed itself to be a significantly better aircraft than anything currently fielded by the Red Air Force. Highly trained Japanese pilots fielding the Zero were able to achieve incredible kill ratios against Soviets who were mostly using I-16s.
Even with the fearsome Zero, the Kwantung Army was unable to stop the Soviet advance, which took the Manchukuoan capital of Hsinking on July 19th and then Mukden on the 29th, effectively cutting the entire Japanese Army in China off from Korea, forcing the IJN to handle the supply requirements of more than 600,000 soldiers. Vatutin would eventually reach Port Arthur in late August, but by then the battle for Manchukuo had been long decided.
The Minsk Conference, July 1940
The failure of the Wehrmacht to deal France a fatal blow in the spring left Germany with a major problem: Romania had formed alliances with both France and Poland, while Germany was dependant on foreign oil which was mostly supplied by the Romanians. Although Romania hadn’t taken any hostile action against the Axis yet, the fact that Romania was still selling oil to the French, and the suppression of the pro-Axis Iron Guard movement caused great alarm for Hitler.
Hitler’s solution was to propose a conference with Stalin, Mussolini and representatives from Hungary and Bulgaria, meeting in Minsk on July 27th, where they spent three days creating a plan to divide Romania that would guarantee Germany access to the Ploesti oil fields. Hitler also offered Hungary and Bulgaria lands that they lost to Romania and Yugoslavia in the Treaties of Trianon and Bucharest, in exchange for their joining the Axis Pact and in Bulgaria’s case, basing rights for Red Fleet ships. All of the guarantees in the original Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact were reaffirmed, giving Stalin the ‘green light’ to take his share of Eastern Europe. Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria and the USSR eventually agreed to go to war with Romania and Yugoslavia some time in September 1940.
Negotiations with Mussolini proved less successful. Although Hitler had offered Mussolini a great chunk of Yugoslavia and all of Italy’s claims to French lands, Mussolini knew that the situation in France cast into doubt Hitler’s ability to make good on the promises regarding the French territories (while Italy’s military was inadequate for any protracted war against the Allies). Mussolini had also felt insulted when Hitler formed the alliance with Stalin in 1939, in open violation of the Anti-Comintern Pact, without even consulting the Italians, and was wary of the reaction in Italy to joining an alliance with the hated communists. When Mussolini left the conference, Hitler was known to be quite upset to see the man he had looked up to for fifteen years abandon him. It would be the last time the two ever met.
With Hitler’s guarantee of non-interference, Stalin felt ready to finally take control of the lands promised to him in 1939. On July 30th, Stalin sent ultimata to the three Baltic States, effectively demanding that they allow the Red Army in or face war. Although they briefly considered opposing Stalin, his determination in Manchukuo and Finland convinced them to agree to Stalin’s demands. Within days they were reorganised into new Soviet Republics.
- BNC