Nor was the French air force called in to strike at the concentrated masses of German tanks. The headquarters of the Second Army told nearby air force units that their bombers were not needed because there was more than enough artillery on hand to deal with the Germans.

Guderian’s crossing of the Meuse was preceded by an intense bombardment that began at 10 a.m. on May 13 and continued for five straight hours. Two hundred Junkers Ju-87B Stuka dive bombers and 310 Dornier Do-17 bombers, escorted by 200 fighters, pounded the French positions. Taking advantage of the smoke that covered the valley, the Germans moved 20mm and 37mm automatic cannons, along with the new 88mm anti-aircraft guns, to the very edge of the river and fired point-blank into the French bunkers and gun emplacement barely 100 yards away.

One by one the French guns were smashed, their crews blinded by splinters or horribly mutilated by shells exploding within their bunkers’ restricted interiors. ‘The gunners stopped firing and went to the ground,’ General Edmond Ruby recalled. ‘Their only concern was to keep their heads well down. They did not dare move. Five hours of this torture was enough to shatter their nerves. They became incapable of reacting to the approaching enemy infantry.’ Many of the defenders fled in panic.

Under the cover of the bombardment’s smoke and explosions, German infantry began crossing the river in rubber rafts at 3:30 p.m. Once across, they rushed the French pillboxes and knocked them out one by one. By 2 the next morning, the Germans had built a pontoon bridge over the river, and tanks poured across it. A French counterattack by two tank battalions at dawn was easily repulsed by the 2nd Panzer Division. By the afternoon of May 14, all three of Guderian’s panzer divisions were across the Meuse and had advanced as far as 10 miles south of the river.

At that point, with the French line shattered, Guderian decided to ignore any possible threat to his southern flank. He boldly ordered his armor to turn west and head for Rethel, a French town on the Aisne River, 32 miles southwest of Sedan. Its capture would complete the rupture of the link between the French Second and Ninth armies. This would open the way to Paris, little more than 100 miles away, or to the English Channel, 50 miles farther west. However, after German intelligence warned Guderian that additional French tanks were moving toward Stonne, a village 10 miles south of Sedan, he decided to keep the 10th Panzer Division behind to defend his southern flank until additional infantry could be brought up.

The next day, May 15, a badly coordinated counterattack by the French 3rd Armored Division was easily repulsed, and the 10th Panzer Division joined its two sister divisions in their westward dash to the sea. By that night, a reconnaissance detachment of Guderian’s 2nd Panzer Division made contact with Reinhardt’s panzers at Montcornet, 40 miles west of Sedan. Only 24 hours earlier the German bridgeheads across the Meuse had been three isolated bulges; now they formed one continuous pocket 62 miles wide. For the Germans the way west lay open, with virtually no obstacles between them and the English Channel.

Panzer Group Kleist continued its dash to the Channel after breaking through the French front on the Meuse. By May 20, elements of Guderian’s panzer corps reached the Channel coast near Abbeville. They then advanced northward along the coast toward Boulogne and Calais. At the same time, Reinhardt’s panzer corps advanced north on the right of, and just behind, Guderian’s corps. It was followed in turn by the two panzer divisions of Hoth’s corps. Then on May 24, just as German tanks were about to move against the thinly defended canal line west of Dunkirk, where much of the BEF waited to be rescued, Hitler ordered an abrupt halt to the advance.

Why Hitler issued that order, when the panzers were closer to Dunkirk than almost all of the French and British troops, is one of the great puzzles of World War II. The rationale behind his decision apparently originated with General Kluge, the commander of the Fourth Army. On May 23, Kluge suggested to Rundstedt that the tanks should ‘halt and close up,’ a move that also would allow the Luftwaffe time to move its bases closer to the panzers’ area of operation.

Kluge’s argument made sense to Rundstedt. The army group commander was also concerned about the heavy losses his armor had suffered in the advance across France. Kleist reported that 50 percent of his tanks were unfit for action (although he did not mention that many of these vehicles could be repaired in a day or two). If the other panzer divisions had suffered comparable losses, Rundstedt feared, they would not be strong enough to carry out Operation Red, the second phase in the conquest of France.

Another factor that prompted Rundstedt to halt the panzers was a message that morning from General Walter von Brauchitsch stating that completing the encirclement of the enemy forces retreating toward Dunkirk would be handed over to Bock’s Army Group B so that Rundstedt could concentrate on preparations for the drive toward Paris. As far as Rundstedt was now concerned, his army group had completed the work it had been assigned in Sichelschnitt: break through the French front and advance to the English Channel. For Rundstedt, British historian Basil Liddell Hart remarked, Dunkirk ‘was now barely in the corner of his eye.’

Hitler, who had the final say in the matter, backed Rundstedt’s halt order. Like Rundstedt, he was worried about the German southern flank. Not wanting victory ripped from his grasp by an Allied counterattack across the Somme River — as victory had been snatched from the German army in the Battle of the Marne during World War I — Hitler wanted all the motorized formations to wait until infantry could be brought up to reinforce the southern flank. Moreover, he felt that the canals and marshy terrain surrounding Dunkirk were not really suitable for armored operations.

As a lance corporal in World War I, Hitler had seen British tanks bogged down by the very same terrain during the Poelcappelle offensive in October 1917. He also agreed with Rundstedt that it was vitally necessary to save the panzers for the next phase of the campaign. In addition, Hitler was apparently convinced by Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, who wanted a share of the campaign’s glory, that his Luftwaffe could finish off the British.

The tank commanders reacted furiously to the halt order. General Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma recalled that when he received the order, he was riding with his leading tanks near Bergues. From there, he said with some exaggeration, ‘he could almost look into the town of Dunkirk,’ only five miles to the north.

Thoma sent back radio messages to headquarters begging for permission to let the tanks push on. But his appeal had no effect. ‘You can never talk to a fool,’ Thoma later remarked. ‘Hitler spoiled the chance of victory.’

It is hardly surprising, considering the panzer generals’ hostile reaction to the halt order, that some of them concluded it was prompted by a secret political design. This impression was reinforced by General Rundstedt, whose headquarters the Führer visited during the morning of May 24 to discuss the halt order. After the war, Rundstedt told Liddell Hart that Hitler ‘deliberately let the bulk of the BEF escape, so as to make peace negotiations easier.’

To Guderian, on the other hand, the idea that Hitler purposely allowed the British to escape from Dunkirk was ‘an absurd theory.’ ‘It was by capturing the whole of Lord Gort’s forces,’ he argued, ‘that we might have brought the British to terms. To leave them with the units that would enable them to raise and provide the backbone of further armies was, on the contrary, tantamount to urging them to go on with the war and to strengthening their resolve.’

Yet that is exactly what happened. By halting the panzers, Hitler allowed the British to reinforce the Dunkirk perimeter sufficiently to permit more than 300,000 British and French troops to be evacuated to England over the next week and a half.

In effect, Hitler sabotaged Manstein’s plan when it was on the verge of producing complete victory over the Allies. Even though France was knocked out of the war soon after the German offensive resumed on June 5, the British refused to surrender. Hitler was compelled to initiate preparations for an invasion of England that summer. But due largely to the heroic efforts of the Royal Air Force, the Luftwaffe was unable to gain the prerequisite air superiority over the English Channel and the southern coast of England. As a result, Hitler was forced to postpone the invasion attempt indefinitely.

Hitler then committed his second major strategic blunder. Before Britain was defeated, he launched an invasion of Russia in June 1941. He thereby committed Germany to a two-front war, a mistake he had promised he would never be foolish enough to make. Had Britain not continued in the war following the debacle in France, Hitler’s forces might have succeeded in conquering Russia before the first snows of 1941 fell. But Britain’s refusal to surrender would tie up some 40 German divisions that otherwise could have seen action on the Russian Front and possibly helped Germany to defeat the Soviet Union.

Hitler’s inability to defeat Britain was due in no small measure to his failure to destroy the British army when he had the opportunity to do so. His sabotage of Manstein’s plan, by halting the panzers when Dunkirk was virtually undefended, was a mistake for which he, and Germany, would pay dearly.

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This article was written by Ronald E. Powaski and originally appeared in the November 2003 issue of World War II magazine. For more great articles subscribe to World War II magazine today!

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