The Danger Zone (DZ)

On 15 March 1940, less than two months before the launching of the German offensive in the West, Hitler summoned a meeting of General von Runstedt, the commander of Army Group A, the commanders of the individual armies under his command, and the commanders of the panzer forces, Heinrich von Kleist and Heinz Guderian.

The purpose of the meeting was for each of the generals to present their plan for the first phase of the looming offensive. Guderian was the last to speak. He began explaining what he’d do once he‘d crossed the Meuse.

As Guderian was speaking, General Ernst Busch, the commander in chief of the Sixteenth Army, interrupted him saying:

Well, I don't think you'll cross the river in the first place!

Hitler was silent. It was a disturbing suggestion. He looked to Guderian to – hopefully - firmly rebut this comment. Guderian turned to Busch and said: 

There's no need for you to do so, in any case.

Long after everything had gone better than anyone of those doubting generals at that meeting had imagined, Guderian spoke of a

hard task ahead, in whose successful outcome nobody at that time actually believed, with the exception of Hitler, Manstein and myself.

Hitler honestly had no idea of the breathtaking operations that Guderian was intending to unleash, as he lost it on more than one occasion when things were under way and going unbelievably as expected. Hitler wasn’t the sort of ally that Guderian was going to need when his panzers were racing ahead of the infantry – no one protecting the flanks or rear of the panzers.

Manstein had been gotten out of the way by Franz Halder the German Army chief of staff who detested the man on the personal level and hadn’t wanted Hitler to hear about Manstein’s ridiculous idea of attacking out of the Ardennes, something Hitler himself was keen to do. Until February 1940 Halder had, managed to keep Hitler in his cage – that was when Hitler’s Army adjutant, Schmundt, had brought the two together – and that plan became THE plan.

The only people who were involved with the execution of the Sichelschnitt (Sickle Cut) Plan, who believed in what Guderian was going to do, who were on the spot, were a few of his younger subordinate generals who increasingly believed in this insane plan. Realising what, until then, had been the largely unsuspected possibilities that slumbered in the German Panzer force. Luckily, commanding one of the panzer divisions, the 7th Panzer Division, was its new commander, Erwin Rommel. Rommel had in fact conducted a blitzkrieg in World War I, commanding infantry, not tanks, in what was going to be the style of the panzer blitzkrieg, exhilaratingly recounted by him in his 1936 book, Infantry Attacks describing his operations during the Battle of Caporetto in north Italy in 1918. His leadership of that Panzer Division resulted in his enemy calling it the ghost division, because no one knew where it was, advancing so swiftly once it was thrown into the fight.

In this programme I’m going to look at the disbelief of the German officer corp, with a few exceptions, at this wild scheme that Manstein and Hitler had cooked up.

Tag words: Blitzkrieg; Meuse River; General von Runstedt; Adolf hitler; General Heinrich von Kleist; Heinz Guderian; General Ernst Busch; Erich von Manstein; Franz Halder; Sichelschnitt Plan; Sickle Cut Plan; Erwin Rommel; 7th Panzer Division; Infantry Attacks; General Alfred Jodl; General Georg von Sodenstern; General Water von Brauchitsch; Schlieffen Plan; Bock; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Blitzkrieg Legend; Oberst i.G. Kurt Zeitzler;

The deception measures that the Germans put in place for their surprise attack out of the Ardennes forests, and then heading to Sedan, were remarkable and they never get much attention.

The German high command, and many officers, were worried that Manstein’s plans was a repeat of the massive gamble of the Schlieffen Plan that had been badly executed in World War I and had lost Germany the war.

In the Schlieffen Plan the German Army attacked through Belgium and then wheeled to the south. At the same time the French attacked into Alsace-Lorraine. The original Schlieffen Plans were to defend that Alsace-Lorraine area with weak German forces that the French would be able to drive back. It was, broadly, a repetition of the tactics used by Hannibal’s great victory over the Romans at Cannae in 216 BC. where the Roman Army, commanded by Gaius Terentius Varro, was lured into attacking the deliberately weak Carthaginian centre. As his legions plunged deeper into the centre, the Carthaginian cavalry enveloped both flanks and encircled and totally destroyed the Roman Army.

By the time the Schlieffen Plan was launched in 1914, over the years since it had first been planned, important aspects of the plan had changed. The Germans kept adding more forces to their southern wing. For reasons of German nationalistic pride, they couldn’t bear the French to succeed – which was the whole point of the Schlieffen Plan. The result was that the Germans defeated the French attack in the south which defeated their whole concept of luring the French armies forward there so that the German armies in the north could then wheel to the left, trapping all of the French armies.

In 1940 the German high command worried that Manstein’s plan involved the same sort of gamble that the Germans had made in 1914 which had failed. Everything staked on one throw of the dice. How could they be sure that the French, British and Belgians would advance forward into Belgium. The whole of Manstein’s plan depended on them doing just that. But then, remember the two German officers, one Major Helmuth Reinberger, who bungled their flight in appalling weather and bungled their way over the border of Belgium where they crash landed in January 1940, carrying some of the German plans to repeat the Schlieffen Plan.

The Germans weren’t happy about this situation. They didn’t know whether the enemy had captured all, some or none of their plans. But they didn’t scrap their plans. They just changed the way that they were going to execute them, that is until that fateful meeting between Hitler and Manstein in February 1940.

But that crash landing accident almost guaranteed that if the German Army went with Manstein’s Sichelschnitt (Sickle Cut), they knew for sure and certain that the French were going to walk into his trap. How was revealed in a book published in 1941 by a French man, André Maurois, during the war, called The Tragedy of France. He wrote this:

The Germans knew exactly what movements we would make in case of an invasion of Belgium because we were kind enough to stage a "dress rehearsal" for that, before their very eyes. Here is how that happened. One fine day, a German aircraft landed in Belgium. Its passengers were general staff officers who carried with them a. . . plan for the invasion of Belgium ...

....

This the Germans did magnificently as the campaign opened and before their hand had finally been shown and understood by the enemy – to their total horror.

Tag words: Blitzkrieg Legend; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Von Kielmansegg; Operation Sichelschnitt; Operation Sickle Cut; Erich von Manstein; Heinz Guderian; Schlieffen Plan; Cannae; Hannibal; Gaius Terentius Varro; Roman Army; Carthaginian cavalry; Major Helmuth Reinberger; Adolf Hitler; André Maurois; The Tragedy of France; the Dyle Line; Bernhard von Loßberg; Admiral Canaris; Abwehr; Army Group A; Army Group B; Maginot Line; Wehrmacht; Fort Eben Emael; Schwerpunkt; Gamelin; General Pierre Jacomet; Ardennes; Sedan

I probably shouldn’t be mentioning George Washington and Adolf Hitler in the same sentence, but I’m going to. George Washington said:

Success has many fathers. Failure is an orphan.

So the brilliant Operation Sichelschnitt (Sickle Cut) was claimed by Erich von Manstein, Adolf Hitler and Franz Halder as its father. If it had failed I think Manstein would have been given the credit by Hitler and Halder. Maybe I should have given a spoiler alert before I said that.

So let’s first look at Adolf Hitler, the man proclaimed to be the greatest military genius of all times (größte Feldherr aller Zeiten).

Tag words: Operation Sichelschnitt; Operation Sickle Cut; George Washington; Adolf Hitler; Erich von Manstein; greatest military genius of all times; größte Feldherr aller Zeiten; Nicholas von Below; von Rundstedt; General Jodl; Karl-Heinz Frieser; The Blitzkrieg Legend; Blitzkrieg; Heinz Guderian; Luftwaffe; Graf von Kielmansegg; Franz Halder; 4th Deployment Directive;

Manstein had seen the army high command’s hopeless, unimaginative plan, for the attack on France. He’d come up with a better idea – an attack through the impenetrable Ardennes Forest in Belgium in the centre using the new, and really untested, panzer divisions.

As fate would have it, the father of Germany’s panzer forces, Heinz Guderian was in the town of Koblenz where Manstein was also based as the chief of staff of Army Group A. Manstein should have been Chief of Staff of the German Army but that’s another story. That job had ended up with General Franz Halder. A remarkably capable and brilliant general but, to be honest, not in the class of Manstein.

Manstein and Guderian got together in Koblenz. Manstein revealed his plan for what would come to be known as Operation Sichelschnitt (Sickle Cut). The German Army manuals contained nothing about how to fight the war that Manstein so clearly so in his head, which he shared with Guderian. Together they were going to have to work out how to make this new way of war work. Together they ticked all of the boxes.

Selling it to the German High Command was now Manstein’s job. He needed to put a plan together on paper. That sounded like a plan!

Tag words: Erich von Manstein; Blitzkrieg; Ardennes Forest; Heinz Guderian; General Franz Halder; Operation Sichelschnitt; Operation Sickle Cut; Adolf Hitler; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Schwerpunkt; Major Helmuth Reinberger; General Gerd von Runstedt; Luftwaffe; War Directive No.6; Teilsieg; Matador’s Cloak; Sir Basil Liddell Hart; General von Brauchitsch; Leibstandarte; Grossdeutschland; Kriegsspiel; Oberst Gunther Blumentritt; Major Henning von Tresckow; Rudolf Schmundt; Major Gerhard Engel; General Alfred Jodl; Fall Gelb; Case Yellow; Rommel;

To be very British, and understated about it, the Arab Revolt between 1936 and 1939, had turned out very badly for the Muslims, discussed in Parts 32 and following.

But there’s always a silver lining in every cloud, and the silver lining in the Grand Mufti’s cloud was World War 2. And best of all Hitler offered the glittering prospect of a Final Solution to both of their Jewish problems.

And as lawyers say, Hitler and the Grand Mufti were ad idem on this topic – at one. This was one problem that Hitler really wanted to help permanently fix.

Tag words: Arab Revolt; Grand Mufti; Haj Amin al-Husseini; World War 2; Holocaust; Genocide; The Final Solution; Adolf Hitler; American Christian Palestine Committee; Glubb Pasha; Herbert Hagen; Adolf Eichmann; Nazism; Führer; Joachim von Ribbentrop; Major General Erwin La Housen; Abwehr; National Socialism; Waffen-SS; Fawzi al-Qawuqji; General Erwin Rommel; Afrika Korps; Suez Canal; SS Einsatzkommando Afrika; SS Obersturmbannführer Walter Rauff; Wilhelm Melchers; Dieter Wisliceny; SS General Oskar Dirlewanger; Dr. Heinrich Willerman; Alois Brünner;

British collective punishment, increasing British military deployments to Palestine, especially after the British did the disgraceful Munich deal with Hitler in 1938 which freed up considerable military forces, and the impact of combined British and Jewish intelligence, made fighting and beating the Arab Revolt so much easier.

As I have demonstrated over many programmes, the Muslim population in Palestine, were overwhelmingly citizens of other countries and not people who were born in the land area comprising the British Mandate of Palestine.

That naturally lent itself to gaining considerable intelligence from the Muslims. Instead of fighting the British, the Muslims in the British Mandate were more naturally inclined to fight each other. Disciplined guerrilla organisations avoid that pitfall, but the Muslim revolt was not remotely a disciplined organisation.

This one story tells just how outclassed the Muslims were in this fight with the British, with the aid of Jewish intelligence. The Jews were bugging conversations in the Grand Mufti’s ultra secure, impregnable, residence that the British Army was reluctant to attack because of the strength of the position.

Tag words: collective punishment; Adolf Hitler; Muslim; Jews; Palestine; British Mandate; Grand Mufti; Haj Amin al-Husseini; Nashashibi clan; Michael Hughes; Britain’s Pacification of Palestine; al-Qawuqji; al-Mua`rada forces; Ngo Dinh Diem; South Vietnam; effendi; fellahin; Mao Zedong; Guerilla Warfare; General Sir Robert Haining; Colonel Gilbert MacKereth; Sûreté; General Sir John Dill; Arab Revolt; Vietnam War; Viet Cong; Walid Khalidi; Lewis Andrews; Walter Moffatt; Peel Report; Chaim Weizmann; Balfour Declaration; Colonial Secretary, Malcolm MacDonald; Zionist Congress; Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact; Arab Higher Committee; Irish Free State; Michael Collin; Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921; Vietminh; Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement 1998; North Vietnamese; battle of Dien Bien Phu;

The Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 had consequences that are still being felt and lived to this day. One good thing came out of it, if you’re a Muslim – not if you’re an Israeli though – and a really bad thing came out of it, if you’re a Muslim, not an Israeli which, I would say on balance, outweighs the good that the Muslims got.

To be fair, the good thing was an accident so let me tell you about it.

Tag words: Arab Revolt of 1936; Muslim; Israeli; Grand Mufti; Haj Amin al-Husseini; Arab Higher Committee; Nashashibi Clan; effendi; notables; King Abdullah; League of Nations; Palestine; League’s Mandate Commission; Fawzi al-Qawuqji; Michael Hughes; Britain’s Pacification of Palestine; Oren Kessler; Palestine 1936; Qassamite gunmen; Zvi Danenberg; Israel Chazan; The Bible; Genesis 16:12;

This programme is about how the Muslims, remarkably, and unwittingly, created the Israeli Defence Forces that would, at least so far, allow Israel to survive the fury of its overwhelming numerous and powerful enemies attempts to crush it. Of course Israel has to win every war. If it loses one it will all be over for it, in a massive blood bath.

Maybe this programme could be called how the Muslims shot themselves in both feet.

Tag words: Muslims; Israeli Defence Force; Arab Higher Committee; Rebel fighters; mujahid; Michael Hughes; Britain’s Pacification of Palestine; Wing Commander Ritchie; Palestine; havlagah; Jews; British Mandate; Yishuv; General Officer Commanding, Archibald Wavell; Special Night Squads; SNS; Sir Harold MacMichael; High Commissioner of Palestine; Colonial Office; Arab Revolt; Grand Mufti; Haj Amin Al-Husseini; Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshall Sir Cyril John Deverell; Moshe Shertok; Ben Zvi; Haganah; Palmach; Frank Kitson; Captain Ord Wingate; Laurence of Judea; Iraq Petroleum Company; IPC; Palestine Electricity Corporation; police; supernumeraries; ghaffirs; notrim; temporary additional constables; special constables; private police officers; auxiliary port police force; temporary additional police; a special frontier protection unit; Jewish settlement police; Jewish supernumerary police; special auxiliary police; railway protection police; night watchmen; special policemen; Iraq Petroleum Company TAPline protection force; Army special night and Q units; T E. Lawrence; Lawrence of Arabia; Plymouth Brethren; Charterhouse school; General Reginald Wingate; Hejaz; London's School of Oriental Studies; John Bunyan; He Who Would Valiant Be; To be a Pilgrim; Jerusalem; Trevor-Royle;