Adolf Hitler said to his generals of the invasion of Russia:

We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.

When I first heard that I thought what a boastful little dick. But now that I’ve looked closely at what happened during the Blitzkrieg invasion of France, maybe he wasn’t. So let’s join Hitler’s top panzer general, one of the geniuses behind the cataclysmic Fall of France, Heinz Guderian, as he’s circling in behind Moscow to bring about the fall of the Soviet Union and victory in World War II for Germany. Pushing his men forward like only a German panzer general of World War II could do.

Tag words: David Stahel; Retreat from Moscow; Adolf Hitler; Heinz Guderian; Panzer Leader; Wolfram von Richthofen; James S. Corum; VIIIth Air Corps; Franz Halder; Mungo Melvin; Manstein; Dr Abraham Twerski; Winter Offensive;

Assuming that Britain had come to terms with Germany in May or June 1940, after the loss of its Army, failing to escape from Dunkirk, and wondering if America would have continued to provide lend lease aid to the Soviet Union alone, and if it did, could the Soviet Union have survived the German Blitzkrieg unleashed on it on 22 June 1941 or more likely earlier.

Let’s have a look at the evidence.

Tag words: Dunkirk; Blitzkrieg; Soviet Union; Luftwaffe; Red Army; Molotov; Joseph Stalin; US Ambassador Steinhardt; AY Vishinsky; Winston Churchill; Theodore Roosevelt; Viktor Naidenko; Lend Lease; David Stahel; Retreat from Moscow; Communists; Georgi Zhukov; Pearl Harbour; Anastas Mikoyan; Edward Stettinius; Colonel Henry Aurand; Henry Morgenthau; Harry Dexter White; Andrei Gromyko; Litvinov; Adolf Hitler; Harry Hopkins; Volkischer Beobachter; rasputitsa;

In my last programme I looked at what Britain would do if the miracle of Dunkirk hadn’t happened. I concluded that Britain would most likely have come to terms with Hitler. Probably some time in June 1940. 

In just 12 months time, at the latest on 22 June, 1941, although probably much earlier without England involved in the war any longer, Hitler would turn on Russia.

British Historian, Alistair Horne, in his book To Lose a Battle wrote:

Had the BEF had been wiped out in northern France, it is difficult to see how Britain could have continued to fight; and with Britain out of the battle, it is even more difficult to see what combination of circumstances could have aligned America and Stalin's Russia to challenge Hitler.

In this programme I’m going to look at what might have happened to Russia when as Churchill had said of the looming Battle of Britain: The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Now that meant the Soviet Union.

Would Stalin have survived then? With the Panzers starting their engines lined up along the borders with Stalin’s Russia, and Guderian and the Panzer forces knowing how to fight a lightning war this time, base on their experience in France.

Tag words: Blitzkrieg; Lend Lease; Harry Hopkins; Alistair Horne; To Lose a Battle; Winston Churchill; Joseph Stalin; Heinz Guderian; Norman Gelb; Dunkirk: The Complete Story of the First Step in the Defeat of Hitler; Adolf Hitler; Theodore Roosevelt; fireside chat; Cordell Hull; Operation Barbarossa; Harry Truman; president Herbert Hoover; Colonel Yeaton; Ambassador Steinhardt; Maxim Litvinov;

The question for this programme is, if the Panzers had reached and taken Dunkirk before the British had gotten there, would Germany have won World War II in Europe?

Tag words: Len Deighton; Blood, Sweat and Toil; Dunkirk; Alistair Horne; To Lose a Battle; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Blitzkrieg Legend; Winston Churchill; Adolf Hitler; Lord Halifax; Paul Reynaud; Mussolini; Neville Chamberlain; Admiral Keyes; Lord Gort; King George VI; Marshall Pétain; Lloyd George; as Edward VIII; The Duke of Windsor; Mrs Wallis Simpson

It would have been the decisive moment for the Panzer generals to ignore Hitler’s halt orders and to keep on thrusting forward to take Dunkirk. But that didn’t happen. Circumstances were different now to just a few days before. Then they were lost somewhere in the French countryside and fairly free to do what they wanted, but now they were close together and operating in a very combined space at the Channel, with Hitler and Runstedt nearby.

The real kicker was why Hitler halted the Panzers – only a leader like Hitler could be motivated to do what he did, and why he did. Let’s cover a bit more background first as to how the halt order, when first made, went down, before getting to Hitler’s unique motivation for ordering the halt.

Tag words: Dunkirk; Blitzkrieg; Gerd von Runstedt; Adolf Hitler; von Bock; von Brauchitsch; Franz Halder; von Kluge; von Kleist; Heinz Guderian; Gravelines; Sepp Dietrich; Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler; Erich von Manstein; Sickle Cut Plan; Alfred Jodl; Wilhelm Keitel; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Blitzkrieg Legend; Göring; David Stahel; Retreat from Moscow;

On 23/24 May 1940 a final stop order was imposed on the panzers – the last one for the Operation Sickle Cut campaign before it was concluded. Time would reveal that the consequences of the various stop orders were disastrous for Adolf Hitler. But there’s always a silver lining in every cloud as they say and that was that the miracle at Dunkirk that these allowed were a blessing for Germany and the rest of the world.

One of the most intriguing questions about the very last halt order is, what was the motivation. Is it the extraordinary reason that Karl-Heinz Freiser suggests in his book Blitzkrieg Legend?

I believe that Hitler was such an extraordinary personality that Frieser’s idea about why Hitler did what he did in the last days of Operation Sickle Cut, can’t be ruled out.

Whatever else, the conduct of Hitler during the last few days of the Sickle Cut campaign set the tone for what was to come in all German military operations until his death in the final act of suicide in the Berlin bunker in April 1945.

Tag words: Karl-Heinz Freiser; Blitzkrieg Legend; Blitzkrieg; Operation Sickle Cut; Adolf Hitler; Dunkirk; Halt Order; Chief of the Imperial General Staff, CIGS; General Sir Edmund Ironside; Gerd von Runstedt; General Georg von Sodenstern; Franz Halder; Erich von Manstein; General Edvard von Kleist; British counter-attack at Arras; Hinez Guderian; von Kluge; aufschließen; close up; General Bock; Reinhardt; von Brauchitsch;

The British attack at Arras on 21 May, which had been completely seen off that same night, was then all done and dusted in the minds of the panzer commanders, including Rommel. But the view from the front, looked very different to the view at the headquarters.

The consequences of this hopelessly executed British attack, that ended in failure, and was easily brushed aside by Rommel, was to win the Allies World War II – with a little help from Rommel.

Tag words: Arras Counter-attack; Erwin Rommel; Adolf Hitler; Rudolf Schmundt; Wilhelm Keitel; General Wernher von Blomberg; Franz Halder; Heinz Guderian; Dunkirk; Kenneth Macksey; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Blitzkrieg Legend; Von Kleist; Von Kluge; Gerd von Rundstedt; Lorette Heights; Sickle Cut Plan; Erich von Manstein; Panzer Corp Reinhardt; Winston Churchill;

The Germans had crossed the Meuse River on 13 May. On 14th May Guderian had ordered the Panzers to wheel westward to the Channel. The only thing slowing their dash were was Army Group commander Runstedt and the Corp commanders. Then, of course, there was the great panic by the Führer on 16 May – waiting for the counter-attack by the French Army into the flank of the Panzers – the 1940 version of the Miracle on the Marne that had robbed the Germans of victory in 1914. But that never came. It was not ever coming – or was it?

But on 21 May, 11 days after the opening of the German offensive, 8 days after the crossing of the Meuse, and 7 days after Guderian unleashed the panzers against his orders, finally the British Army struck into that long exposed Panzer flank at Arras. Was this the beginning of their end? The long awaited Miracle on the Marne?

Tag words: Blitzkrieg; Erwin Rommel; Miracle on the Marne; Sir Basil Liddell Hart; the Rommel Papers; 4th RTR; 7th RTR; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Blitkrieg Legend; Matilda Tanks; Oberleutnant Most; Hauptman Schraepler; SS Totenkopf; 88; Arras; Luftwaffe; Rommel-Album;

The French began calling Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division la division fantôme (the ghost division), because it moved with such incredible speed that the French never knew where it would turn up. The German high command probably agreed with the name because Rommel never hesitated to go off the grid, mainly so that they couldn’t rein him in.

Like Julius Caesar’s exciting diary of his conquests in Gaul, Rommel kept his own diary – which is all the more interesting because he died before the war ended, so it wasn’t revised to suit the facts after the war. His diary’s a thrilling account of Rommel’s World War II, as fast paced as his exploits, with an excellent accompanying commentary by Sir Basil Liddell Hart.

Here's a brief extract about how Rommel’s division was a ghost division not only to the French but also to his own side. This is taken from his diary immediately after this fight in Avesnes:

Meanwhile, I had sent repeated signals to Corps through the divisional staff asking whether, in view of the success of our break-through of the Maginot Line, we should not now continue our advance over the Sambre. Receiving no reply — wireless contact had not been established — I decided to continue the attack at dawn with the object of seizing the Sambre crossing at Landrecies and holding it open. I issued orders by wireless to all other units to follow up the Panzer Regiment's advance to Landrecies [11 miles west of Avesnes].

Tag words: Blitzkrieg; Erwin Rommel; 7th Panzer Division; la division fantôme; the ghost division; Sir Basil Liddell Hart; Julius Caesar; Major i.G. Heidkämper; Oberst Karl Rothenburg; David Irving; The Trail of the Fox; The Rommel Papers; Sickle Cut Plan; Erich von Manstein; Von Bock; Panzer Corps Hoepner; General Graf von Kielmansegg; Fritz von Halder; Adolf Hitler; Joseph Goebbels

Rommel is one of the most exciting and inspiring military leaders of all times. His exploits from World War I, recorded in his 1936 book Infantry Attacks, telling about his actions as a junior officer in World War I. His actions in the Battle of Caporetto in 1917 gives the first insights into Rommel’s unique gifts as a commander, and especially how he was going to wage war in France in 1940 and in North Africa between 1941 and 1942.

Luckily for Rommel he never served on the Eastern Front. He was a Nazi, as so many of the top generals of his age were during the Third Reich, and he would most likely have become involved in war crime activity against the Jews and the Russian partisans. But thankfully that never happened.

This tribute to Rommel’s chivalry was delivered by Winston Churchill on the news of Rommel’s forced suicide after the attempt on Hitler’s life on 20 July 1944. Part of that tribute is a reference back to this praise, surprisingly from Winston Churchill in the House of Commons, in January 1942 when he said of Rommel:

We have a very daring and skilful opponent against us, and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great general.

Rommel’s most astounding accomplishments happened over his few days in the dash to the English Channel in 1940 at the head of the 7th Panzer Division. The time has come to tell you about how Rommel disobeyed Hitler and the senior generals in his dash to the Channel, as they were trying to slow things down to a pace that they could understand, but not win the campaign.

Tag words: Blitzkrieg; Erwin Rommel; Infantry Attacks; Winston Churchill; 7th Panzer Division; Adolf Hitler; Erich von Manstein; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Bltizkrieg Legend; World War 2; General Georg von Sodenstern; General von Brauchitsch; Ardennes; Meuse River; von Kluge;