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Tanks

2,439

2,689

Aircraft

3,200

2,400

[This includes all French (about 1,200), British in France (about 600), and Belgian and Dutch]

This gave the Germans a superiority only in aircraft, and even that depended upon what aircraft were counted, and on the inclusion of all types, as well as the exclusion of the Royal Air Force equipment retained in Britain.

What really mattered in all this, however, was less what either side had, than what either side thought the other had. Ultimately, the key factors were two: the French high command believed itself vastly outnumbered by the Germans, and it lacked a Hitler to force it to go ahead and fight anyway.

For the paradox was that if the French believed themselves outnumbered by the Germans, the Germans knew that they were outnumbered by the French. It was only on Hitler’s oft-repeated demands that the German General Staff could be made to take the initiative at all. After his peace offer in October, he had ordered the General Staff to prepare for an offensive; they did not feel up to it, and between the lateness of the season and their dragging their feet, the offensive was gradually put off through the winter and into the spring. Finally, they produced Plan Gelb, or Plan Yellow, calling for a drive through the Netherlands and Belgium to secure the Channel ports, a sort of short-range Schlieffen Plan. This far they were in line with French strategic thinking.

Through the winter, however, the plan evolved. As early as November, when there was an invasion scare in the West that ended only with the advent of bad weather, Hitler and some of his subordinates began to have second thoughts. The original plan called for a drive north of Liège; Hitler now changed it to straddle Liège, that is, he moved the axis of the attack farther south. Finally, he was convinced by von Rundstedt’s chief of staff, General Erich von Manstein, that the plan ought to be reversed. Instead of making the main effort in the north, the Germans would go through the Ardennes; instead of Schlieffen, there would be “Sichelschnitt,” a “sickle cut” that would slice through the French line at its weak point and envelop the northern armies as they rushed to the defense of the Belgians and Dutch. Manstein was an infantryman and was uncertain about the Ardennes; he approached General Heinz Guderian, the recognized German tank authority, who said it could be done. Hitler jumped at it immediately, and the plan was turned around. The assumptions on which the French had planned their campaign were now totally invalidated.

The tempo of events could not be completely disguised; it is impossible to move hundreds of thousands of men, their equipment, and supplies into a place for battle without anyone noticing, however hard one tries to hide it. As May opened and the long days came, the reconnaissance flights increased, the sound of birds was increasingly drowned by truck and tank engines; spring and war—the one so fruitful and the other so destructive—lay heavy on Europe.

In the early dawn of May 10 the Germans struck. There were the usual Luftwaffe attacks at Allied airfields and communications centers, and by full day the Germans were rolling forward all along the Dutch and Belgian frontiers. The whole plan depended upon making the Allies think it was 1914 all over again. Therefore, the initial weight of the attack was taken by General von Bock’s Army Group B advancing into Holland. Strong infantry and armor attacks were carried out, along with heavy aerial bombardment, and paratroop and airborne landings on key airfields at The Hague and Rotterdam, and bridges across the major rivers. The Dutch hastened to their advanced positions, some of which they managed to hold for two or three days, others of which they were levered off almost immediately.

The whole campaign of Holland took a mere four days. The French 7th Army, rushing across Belgium to the rescue, arrived on the 12th, just in time to bump into oncoming German armor in full cry; the French, caught up in a wave