The original plan for that campaign, drawn up in late 1939, called for the army to make a big push from the northeast, down through Belgium into coastal France, much as it had at the start of World War I. “You won’t get away with an operation like that twice running,” Hitler told his chiefs. But they’d put forward the predictable scheme partly to buy time and keep their Führer, known for being impulsive, from launching an offensive too soon. Any thought of proceeding with the plan was abandoned in January 1940, when a plane carrying German staff officers crash-landed in Belgium, a neutral nation leaning toward France and Britain, and documents revealing their intentions fell into French hands.

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Hitler demanded a new approach, based on “secrecy and surprise.” The result was Operation Sickle Cut, a bold alternative devised by General Erich von Manstein with input from Guderian. Manstein’s idea was to draw French and British forces northward into Belgium and Holland by staging convincing attacks there, while the main thrust unfolded to the south, around Luxembourg. That meant advancing through the Ardennes, a forested region with few roads, considered impassable by tanks. Guderian knew the area well, however, and felt sure panzers could get through so long as the Luftwaffe shielded them from Allied air raids. Beyond lay the French border and the Meuse River, flanked on the far side by an extension of the Maginot Line that was under construction. Once they had broken through that barrier, panzers would sweep westward across France like a scythe until they reached the Channel, cutting off Allied forces to their north.

The success of this plan depended on concentration and coordination. The French had more tanks than the Germans did, but most were dispersed along the front in support of infantry, and they had few reliable radios. By contrast, the Germans placed seven of their 10 armored divisions at the forefront of Army Group A, which would make the big push across the Meuse while Army Group B preoccupied the Allies to the north and Army Group C kept French forces pinned down behind the Maginot Line to the south. Guderian, whose corps now boasted three panzer divisions, would cross the Meuse at Sedan—the site of a crushing German victory over France in 1870—while other panzer leaders, including the hard-driving Maj. Gen. Erwin Rommel, would cross nearby.

Guderian hoped they’d be given a green light once they breached enemy defenses, but that remained to be seen. General Franz Halder, the army’s chief of staff, expected that panzer forces, after securing bridgeheads across the Meuse, would wait for the bulk of the army to catch up before launching a “properly marshaled attack in mass.” Guderian argued against that cautious approach, urging that panzers be allowed to exploit breakthroughs without delay and “drive a wedge so deep and wide that we need not worry about our flanks.” He soon won Halder over. But would Hitler, a former infantryman who believed in securing his flanks, prove daring enough as supreme commander to see this high-stakes gamble through to a triumphant conclusion?

On May 10, 1940, German troops launched conspicu­ous attacks in Holland and Belgium to draw French troops and the British Expeditionary Force northward into the trap while panzers advanced through the Ardennes. Intended to be furtive, that advance resulted in massive traffic jams, with vehicles clogging the roads for more than 100 miles between the German border and the Meuse River. Tank commanders looked anxiously aloft for Allied warplanes. One officer wrote that his strung-out panzer division presented an ideal target as it moved “slowly forward on a single road. But we could not spot a single French reconnaissance aircraft.” Quick work by the Luftwaffe destroyed many Allied planes on the ground and kept those that took off from detecting the advance by Army Group A before it gained momentum. Anticipating a long war, the French had removed hundreds of military aircraft to runways far from Germany, where they escaped harm but did nothing to deter this developing blitzkrieg.

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