Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "\"Blitzkrieg\" - What most people get Wrong - Myth vs \"Reality\"" video.
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As to the massive gamble of the German army in 1940, I will let others say it for me. Attacking France...
Wages of Destruction, Prof Adam Tooze:
"There’s always a problem in history of determining after something’s happened what the balance of probabilities was before it happened. And the German plan is a plan which is again a spectacular gamble, and it succeeds because the forces in the German offensive are concentrated in an extraordinarily tight pack which is going to drive through the Ardennes in a single offensive move all the way across northern France to the Channel. This is an operation of unprecedented logistical risk and gives the opponents of Germany - Britain, France, Belgium and Holland - the chance, if they’re sufficiently well organised, to mount a devastating counterattack on Germany and on the pincer moving across northern France. And for this reason the Germans fully understand that if this plan fails they’ve lost the war. So it’s, rather than simply the result of a series of coincidences, more that the Germans are simply taking a very, very high risk gamble. The gamble bears the possibility of total victory, which is what they ultimately achieve over France, but also a risk of catastrophic defeat which they’re fully conscious of."
Wages of Destruction, Page 371.
"The German army that invaded France in May 1940 was far from being a carefully honed weapon of modern armoured warfare. Of Germany's 93 combat ready divisions on May 10 1940, only 9 were Panzer divisions, with a total of 2.438 tanks between them. These units faced a French army that was more heavily motorised, with 3,254 tanks in total."
....Half the German tanks that invaded the west were armed only with a machine gun!! The German Army was not on equal footing with the French when in fact it was vastly inferior.
"By May 1940 Britain had 7 regiments equipped with 28 light tanks plus 44 scout carriers each. There was also 1 regiment of armoured cars with 38 Morris light reconnaissance cars. There was also an Army Tank brigade with two regiments of infantry tanks. That gave a total of 308 tanks 23 of which had a 2pdr gun the rest had machine guns. Ist Armoured Division started to arrive in France from late May. However many of the Cruiser tanks were so recently issued that their crews had only been half trained on them and many lacked wireless sets, sighting telescopes and even armour piercing ammunition."
-Source The Great Tank Scandal, David Fletcher
Dutch, Belgian, UK & French tanks in total were 4,200 tanks.
Prof Tooze, page 371/372.
"Nor should one accept unquestioningly the popular idea that the concentration of the Germans tanks in specialised tank divisions gave them a decisive advantage. Many French tanks were scattered amongst the infantry units, but with their ample stock of vehicles the French could afford to do this. The bulk of France's best tanks were concentrated in armoured units, that, on paper at least, were every bit a match for the Panzer divisions."
Page 377
"The Germans not only committed "all" their tanks and planes. In strictest conformity with the Schwerpunkt principle, they committed them on an astonishingly narrow front"
"the Luftwaffe sacrificed no less than 347 aircraft, including virtually all its transports used in the air landings in Holland and Belgium".
Page 378
"if Allied bombers had penetrated the German fighter screen over the Ardennes they could have wreaked havoc amongst the slow moving traffic"
"highly inflammable fuel tankers were interspersed with the fihting vehicles at the very front with the armoured fighting vehicles"
"The plan called for the German armoured columns to drive for three days and nights without interruption".
....The drivers were put on "speed" pills.
Page 379
"success would not have been possible had it not been for the particular nature of the battlefield. The Channel coastline provided the German army with a natural obstacle to pin their enemies, an obstacle which could be reached within few hundred kilometres of the German border."
"the Germans benefited from the well made network of roads"
"In Poland in 1939 the Wehrmacht had struggled to maintain the momentum of its motorized troops when faced with far more difficult conditions."
"a close analysis of the of the mechanics of the Blitzkrieg reveals the astonishing degree of concentration achieved, but an enormous gamble that Hitler and the Wehrmacht were taking on May 10."
Page 380
"because it involved such a concentrated use of force, Manstein's plan was a "one-shot affair". If the initial assault had failed, and it could have failed in many ways, the Wehrmacht as an offensive force would have been spent. The gamble paid off. But contrary to appearances, the Germans had not discovered a patent recipe for military miracles. The overwhelming success of May 1940, resulting in the defeat of a major European military power in a matter of weeks, was not a repeatable outcome"
Tooze, page 373:
"In retrospect, it suited neither the Allies nor the Germans to expose the amazingly haphazard course through which the Wehrmacht had arrived at its most brilliant military success. The myth of the Blitzkrieg suited the British and French because it provided an explanation other than military incompetence for their pitiful defeat. But whereas it suited the Allies to stress the alleged superiority of German equipment, Germany's own propaganda viewed the Blitzkrieg in less materialistic terms."
Tooze page 380.
"In both campaigns [France & Barbarossa], the Germans gambled on achieving decisive success in the opening phases of the assault. Anything less spelled disaster".
....If the belt broke the whole movement stopped. The Germans thought they had formulated a version of Blitzkrieg in France that was a sure-fire success. They used this in the USSR, just scaling up forces. They did not have the intelligence to assess properly, that the reason for their success was allied incompetence not anything brilliant they did.
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