After Dunkirk, in fact, the Nazis did not have to fight: France was killed by fear. Horror swept through the whole country. Instead of mobilization and tough resistance in the center of the country, fighting in encirclement and big cities, while reserves are gathering in the south, the French chose to throw out the white flag and return to their old well-fed life.
Horror and panic
The fall of France happened in much the same way as Belgium. A stunning defeat of the Allies at the beginning of the campaign, the disaster of the best French divisions in Flanders. Shock and complete demoralization of French society and the army. If for the Belgians the fall of the "impregnable" Fort Eben-Enamel and the defense line along the Albert Canal was a stunning blow to the consciousness, then for France the Ardennes and Flanders, the uselessness of the powerful and expensive Maginot Line, were the same shock.
Before the start of the French campaign, the Germans carried out thorough intelligence and information training. They studied French society, the state of the army, armored and artillery troops, the defense system and the military industry. At the very beginning of the operation, the German special services struck at the psychology of French society. On May 9-10, 1940, German agents staged a series of arson and sabotage. Weapons and explosives for the saboteurs were dropped by aircraft of special squadrons of the Luftwaffe. The Germans, dressed in French uniforms, staged terrorist attacks in Abbeville, Reims, Dover and Paris. It is clear that they could not cause much damage. There were few saboteurs. However, the effect was powerful. The society began to panic, spy mania, search for hidden agents and enemies. As before in Holland and Belgium.
French society and the army fell under the terror of information. Various terrible rumors quickly spread throughout the country. The allegedly ubiquitous "fifth column" operates throughout France. Homes are being fired at the troops, mysterious signals are being transmitted. German paratroopers, who practically did not exist in France, are landing everywhere in the rear. They say that false orders are spread in the army. The officers who were supposed to give the order to destroy the bridges on Mass were killed by German saboteurs. In fact, the bridges were blown up in time, the Nazis crossed the river with improvised means.
As a result, masses of refugees swept over the French army. They were joined by thousands of deserters. Panic news hit the headquarters, rear and reserve units. German air raids exacerbated the chaos. The roads were clogged with crowds of people, abandoned weapons, equipment, carts, and military equipment.
Collapse of the French army
On May 10, 1940, the German offensive began in the West. The Allies at this moment had every opportunity to close the Ardennes. It was possible to allocate additional forces for the defense of this area, block, block the passages through the mountainous and wooded area. Throw in additional air forces, bomb the enemy motorized columns on narrow aisles and roads. As a result, Hitler's entire blitzkrieg plan collapsed.
However, the allies seemed to be blinded and together fell into idiocy. On the eve of May 10, radio intelligence detected an unusual activity of German stations in the Ardennes, where, as it seemed, was a secondary sector of the front. The Allies did not even conduct aerial reconnaissance of the dangerous direction. On the night of May 11, aerial reconnaissance discovered a motorized convoy in the Ardennes. The command considered it to be "night vision illusion." The next day, aerial reconnaissance confirmed the data. Again, the command turned a blind eye to the obvious fact. Only on the 13th, having received a new series of aerial photographs, the allies caught themselves and raised their bombers into the air to bomb the enemy. But it was too late.
The Meuse line was to be held by the 9th French army. The Germans appeared in front of her three days earlier than the French expected. It was a real shock for the French. In addition, they were already frightened by the stories of crowds of refugees and fleeing Belgian soldiers about the myriad hordes of German tanks. The French 9th Army consisted of secondary divisions, in which reservists were called up (the best units were thrown into Belgium). The troops had few anti-tank weapons, and the anti-aircraft cover was weak. French mechanized divisions were in Belgium. And then tanks and diving Ju-87s fell on the French. Goering's pilots seized air supremacy, mixed the French with the ground. Under their cover, tank divisions crossed the river. And there was nothing to meet them.
Hasty attempts by the French to put together a rear defensive line beyond the Meuse failed. Parts of the 2nd and 9th French armies mixed, turned into crowds of refugees. The soldiers dropped their weapons and fled. Many demoralized groups were led by officers. The area between Paris and the direction of the German tank attack was drowned in chaos. Hundreds of thousands of refugees rushed here, soldiers from scattered, demoralized divisions. Panic effectively wiped out two French armies. In Paris itself at that time they knew practically nothing about the situation on the northern sector of the front. Communication with the troops was lost. The command tried to find out the situation by calling the post and telegraph offices of those settlements where, according to proposals in the capital, the Nazis were moving. The news, often false, was late, and the French could not respond correctly to the threat.
Thus, already on May 15, the tanks of Kleist and Guderian broke through the French defenses. German mobile units took a risk, did not wait for the infantry. The tanks rushed westward, they rushed along the highway, meeting almost no resistance. Having covered 350 km in 5 days, Guderian's corps reached the English Channel on May 20. For the Allies, it was like a nightmare: the best French divisions and the British expeditionary army were cut off in Belgium and Flanders, deprived of communications. The Germans took a huge risk. If the allies had a competent command, proactive and brave commanders, prepared reserves in advance, the breakthrough of the German tank divisions turned into a "cauldron" and a catastrophe for them, and Berlin had to urgently reconcile or surrender. However, the German commanders took a huge risk and won.
The French General Staff was paralyzed by the collapse of the entire outdated war strategy, the schemes of the First World War, the mobile war, not provided for in the textbooks. France was not ready for the German blitzkrieg, the massive actions of the Panzerwaffe and the Luftwaffe. Although the French witnessed the Polish campaign and had an example of mobile warfare. The French generals underestimated the enemy. The French still lived in the past, and received an enemy from the future.
The Germans were not afraid to concentrate tanks in shock groups. The Allies had more tanks than the Nazis, and the French tanks were better, more powerful. But the bulk of the French tanks were distributed among the divisions along the front. The mobile units of the Germans acted swiftly, in isolation from the infantry. The slow adversary simply did not have time to react to the change in the operational situation. The flanks of the German armored divisions were open, but there was no one to hit them. And when the allies came to their senses a little, the Germans already had time to cover the flanks.
In addition, Goering's aircraft defended the flanks of the panzer divisions. The Luftwaffe was able to suppress the French air force with skillful strikes against airfields and a frantic intensity of sorties. German bombers attacked railways, highways, and places of concentration of troops. They cleared the way for the armored columns with their blows. On May 14, in order to prevent the enemy from crossing the Meuse, the Allies threw almost all of their air forces to the crossings. A fierce battle boiled in the air. The Anglo-French were defeated. Air supremacy became an important trump card of the Germans. Also, German aircraft have become a real psi weapon. Howling dive bombers became a nightmare for French and British soldiers, for civilians who fled in droves inland.
The millionth allied group was blocked by the sea. Weak attempts at counterattacks were parried by the Germans. The British decided it was time to flee across the sea. The Belgian army surrendered. German tanks could crush overwhelmed and demoralized enemies. However, Hitler stopped the mobile units, they were taken to the second line, and the artillery and tanks began to pull up. The hawks of Goering were entrusted with the defeat of the Dunkirk group. As a result, most of the British escaped the trap. The Dunkirk Miracle was due to two main reasons. First, Hitler and his generals did not yet believe that the battle for France had already been won. It seemed that there were still fierce battles for Central France ahead. Tanks are needed to continue the campaign. Secondly, the Nazi leadership did not want British blood. It was a kind of goodwill gesture so that after the surrender of France, Germany and England could come to an agreement. And the extermination and capture of the British army in the Dunkirk area would have embittered the British elite and society. Therefore, the British were pinched and allowed to leave.
The catastrophe in the Ardennes and Flanders broke the French military-political leadership. Commander-in-Chief Weygand, with the support of the "Lion of Verdun" Petain, was already thinking about surrender. The French elite (with rare exceptions) refused to resist and did not begin to raise the people to battle to the last drop of blood, refused the possibility of evacuating the government, part of the army, reserves, reserves and navy from the metropolis to the colonies in order to continue the struggle.
Refugees paralyzed the country
After Dunkirk, in fact, the Nazis did not have to fight. France was killed by fear. Horror swept through the whole country. The press, describing various nightmares, mostly invented, false, unwittingly worked for Hitler. First, the French were processed with a series of rumors from Holland and Belgium, then a wave of horror came from France itself. Dozens of reconnaissance parachutists turned into hundreds and thousands. The French were simply raving about German paratroopers, who captured entire cities from them. Small groups of agents and spies who carried out several acts of sabotage turned into an omnipresent and thousands-strong "fifth column".
On the night of May 15-16, Paris learned about the defeat of the 9th Army. The road to the capital was open. Then they did not yet know that German tanks would rush to the coast, and not to Paris. An animal panic began in the city. People rushed out of the city in droves. Nobody thought about the defense of the French capital. Taxis disappeared - people were running on them. The government made panicky statements, exacerbating the chaos. So, on May 21, Prime Minister Paul Reynaud said that the bridges across the Meuse were not blown up due to inexplicable mistakes (in fact, they were destroyed). The head of government spoke about false news, treason, sabotage and cowardice. The commander of the 9th Army, General Korapa, was called a traitor (later the general was acquitted).
This hysteria spurred the general madness. Traitors and agents were seen everywhere. Millions of people poured into France from north and east to northwest, west and south. They fled on trains, buses, taxis, carts and on foot. Panic took the form of "save yourself, who can!" Normandy, Brittany and Southern France were packed with people. Trying to cope with the waves of humanity, the French Civil Defense Corps, hastily created on 17 May, began to block roads. They tried to check the refugees, looking for agents and saboteurs. As a result, a new wave of fear and monstrous traffic jams on the main roads.
In fact, France surrendered out of fear. Instead of mobilization and tough resistance in the center of the country, fighting in encirclement and big cities, while reserves are gathering in the south, the French chose to throw out the white flag and return to their old well-fed life. In fact, the Reich could not fight for a long time at the same pace. Everything was built on the basis of lightning war. The German economy was not mobilized, military supplies and fuel were already running out. Germany could not continue the battle on the ruins of France.
However, the advancing German divisions met almost no strong and organized resistance. Although the large cities of France, if combat-ready units and decisive, tough commanders like de Gaulle were settled there, could delay the enemy for a long time. Obviously, the Germans themselves did not expect such an effect from the combination of information, psychic and military methods of war. Neither massive bombing of cities, nor demonstrative pogroms of individual cities in the spirit of Warsaw and Rotterdam, nor psychic threatening flights of bombers, as over Copenhagen and Oslo, were needed. The French were paralyzed. Moreover, Hitler then did not have modern tools for suppressing and enslaving people (like the web of the Internet, CNN and BBC networks). The Germans managed with relatively simple means and won.
In France, as before in Belgium, there was a mental catastrophe. Any strange phenomenon was attributed to spies. Many foreigners were suspected of being "agents of the enemy" and suffered. Panic and fear gave rise to hallucinations and aggression. Many Frenchmen were convinced that they had seen paratroopers (who were not there). Civilians, and soldiers alike, vent their fear on the innocent, who fell under the hot hand, and who were mistaken for paratroopers and spies. On a number of occasions, monks and priests have been persecuted. The press wrote that in Holland and Belgium, paratroopers and agents of the enemy disguised themselves in the clothes of the clergy. It happened that peasants beat up French and British pilots who escaped from downed planes.
Thousands of people in France were arrested, deported and imprisoned. They were mistaken for representatives of the "fifth column". Its ranks included German subjects, Flemish and Breton nationalists, Alsatians, foreigners in general, Jews (including refugees from Germany), communists, anarchists and all the "suspicious". For them, concentration camps were organized in France. In particular, such camps were established in the Pyrenees region. When Italy entered the war on Hitler's side on June 10, thousands of Italians were thrown into the camps. Tens of thousands of people were arrested. Some were thrown into prisons and sent to concentration camps, others were sent to labor battalions and the Foreign Legion (a large French penal battalion), and still others to the mines of Morocco.
Thus, fear and panic broke France. They forced the French elite to capitulate. The enormous military-economic potential of the country and the colonial empire were not used for a life-and-death struggle. Hitler won with comparatively small forces and minimal losses. The former leading power in Western Europe fell. The Nazis got the whole country with almost no losses, with cities and industry, ports and transport infrastructure, reserves and arsenals. This victory inspired the Nazis unprecedentedly. They felt like invincible warriors, before whom the whole world trembles, for whom there are no longer barriers. In Germany itself, Hitler was deified.
The Fuehrer showed the Germans that the war can be not protracted, bloody and hungry, but swift and easy. Victory in the West was achieved with minimal losses, material costs, and no mobilization effort. For most of Germany, nothing changed at that time, peaceful life continued. Hitler was at the height of his glory, he was adored. Even the German generals, who were terribly afraid of war with France and England and plotted against the Fuhrer, now forgot about their plans and celebrated victory.
