CAMPAIGN 265 FALL GELB 1940 (2) Airborne assault on the Low Countries DOUGLAS C DILDY ILLUSTRATED BY PETER DENNIS Series editor Marcus Cowper CONTENTS ORIGINS OF THE CAMPAIGN CHRONOLOGY OPPOSING COMMANDERS German commanders • French commanders • British commanders • Belgian commanders • Dutch commanders OPPOSING PLANS Fall Gelb plan • The French ‘Plan D’ • Belgian defensive plans • ‘Fortress Holland’ – the Dutch defensive plan OPPOSING FORCES German forces • Allied forces • Neutral forces • Orders of battle, 10 May 1940 THE CAMPAIGN Unternehmen ‘F’: The Luftwaffe strikes Holland: 10 May • Gruppe Nord – the coup de main • Gruppe Süd – the original ‘Bridge Too Far’ • Meanwhile, at the frontier • Panzers to the rescue The ‘Matador’s Cloak’: The Luftwaffe strikes Belgium: 10 May • The ‘Matador’s Cloak’ unfurled: 10–11 May • The tank battles at Hannut and Gembloux: 12–15 May • The bitter retreat: 16–20 May • A change in the air: 15–21 May • The road to Dunkirk: 21–28 May AFTERMATH THE BATTLEFIELD TODAY FURTHER READING GLOSSARY ORIGINS OF THE CAMPAIGN The neutral states have assured us of their neutrality … This assurance is sacred to us and as long as no other nation violates their neutrality, we will also honour it with painstaking punctuality. Adolf Hitler, 1 September 1939 – the day Germany invaded Poland On 27 September 1939, only hours after the surrender of the Polish Army besieged at Warsaw, Adolf Hitler met with the commanders-in-chief of the three Wehrmacht services and announced his intention to invade France through ‘Belgium and the Dutch appendix of Maastricht’. The Führer’s objective was to reach the Channel coast in order ‘to defeat … the French Army and the forces of the Allies fighting on their side, and at the same time to win as much territory as possible in Holland, Belgium, and Northern France, to serve as a base for successful prosecution of the war against England’. He was anxious to quickly and decisively end the war that – on the Western front at least – had already expanded beyond his initial designs. Hitler and his Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) and Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH) generals in conference at the planning map table. To Hitler’s right is Franz Halder, the OKH chief of staff and architect of the Fall Gelb plan; to his immediate left is Generaloberst Walther von Brauchitsch, the chief of the army (OKH), with Generaloberst Wilhelm Keitel, the chief of the OKW, looking on. (IWM HU75533) To achieve this aim and to do so before winter, in little more than three weeks the OKH (Oberkommando des Heeres, the army high command), under direction of General der Artillerie Franz Halder, developed Aufmarschanweisung Fall Gelb (‘Deployment Directive, Case Yellow’). It was a hastily prepared improvisation calling for an offensive directly through Belgium and southern Holland, with the initial assaults swinging around the north and south sides of the fortress-ringed city of Liège before driving to the coast. When the initial draft was issued on 19 October, it naturally employed only those German forces then arrayed in the West. Nine days earlier Generaloberst Fedor von Bock and his Heeresgruppe Nord (Army Group North) staff, fresh from their victorious conquest of northern Poland, arrived at Düsseldorf and was retitled Heeresgruppe B. Generaloberst Gerd von Rundstedt’s Heeresgruppe A was established at Koblenz a fortnight later. Three armies deployed along the German frontier opposite Belgium and southern Holland. After some reorganization these became, from north to south, Generaloberst Walter von Reichenau’s Armeeoberkommando (AOK) 6, Generaloberst Günther Hans von Kluge’s AOK 4, and General der Kavallerie Maximilian Freiherr von Weichs zu Glon’s AOK 2. These were soon reinforced by General der Artillerie Georg von Küchler’s AOK 18. In total these comprised 43 divisions, including nine panzer and four motorized infantry. Luftwaffe Generalmajor Hans Jeschonnek, the chief of staff of the ObdL (Oberbefehlshaber der Luftwaffe), was the avid proponent for including the subjugation of the Netherlands, in its entirety, in the Fall Gelb plan. Once authorized, it was up to the Luftwaffe to devise the means – an airborne invasion – for its accomplishment. (NARA) Heavily mechanized, Reichenau’s AOK 6, followed by AOK 18, was to attack through the ‘Maastricht Appendix’ – the sliver of the Netherlands on the east bank of the Maas River, extending south between Belgium and Germany, just north of Liège – while Kluge’s AOK 4, followed by AOK 12, was to bypass Liège to the south and then merge with Reichenau’s army in central Belgium for the drive to the Channel coast. With another 22 infantry divisions, Heeresgruppe A was to provide flank coverage to the south. Alarmed at the absence of Holland from the territory to be occupied, Luftwaffe Chief of Staff (COS) Generalmajor Hans Jeschonnek met with Hitler on 30 October to object that, ‘if no Dutch territory is occupied, the English will take possession of Dutch airports’. Initially Hitler was unmoved, but 12 days later Jeschonnek was back, protesting that ‘Holland must be occupied, because England will violate Holland’s air sovereignty and then we will not be able to protect the Ruhr area’. Constantly worried that the British might pre-empt his initiative by forcibly taking small neutral European nations into its sphere, Hitler ordered his personal military staff, the OKW, to direct the OKH to include the conquest of Holland in their Fall Gelb planning. At first, only the three divisions of AOK 18’s X Armeekorps (AK) were assigned, but in the January modification to Fall Gelb Küchler’s entire AOK 18 was given the mission to subjugate the Netherlands. Meanwhile, the OKH recognized the difficulty of the proposed advance into Belgium, especially the crossings of the Meuse/Maas River. To secure bridgeheads and to place forces in the rear of the enemy, the Army staff added the Luftwaffe’s neophyte, ad hoc airborne corps to land at Ghent and block Allied mobile forces, and to seize Meuse River crossings at Namur and Dinant, Belgium. These revisions were under consideration when, on 10 January 1940, the airborne portion of the plan landed in the laps of the Belgian border forces – a Messerschmitt Bf 108 ‘Taifun’ (‘Typhoon’) courier aircraft force-landed in error at Mechelen-sur-Meuse, on the Belgian side of the river. On board was Major Helmuth Reinberger, the commander of the Luftwaffe’s Fallschirmjäger (‘paratrooper’) school at Stendal, who was carrying the entire ‘airborne annex’ of the Fall Gelb plan. Temporarily assigned as communications officer to Fliegerführer 220 (the Luftwaffe’s coordinating HQ for airborne operations) to help integrate the Luftwaffe’s air assault forces into the army’s invasion plans, Reinberger was headed for a planning conference in Köln. To avoid the winter railway delays being experienced in the Ruhr, Major Erich Hoenmanns, a reserve officer in charge of camouflaging the small Loddenheide airfield near Münster, offered him a flight in a new Taifun. Against the stringent German security regulations, Reinberger accepted. Approaching the Rhine, Hoenmanns encountered winter fog, wandered off course and when he attempted to switch fuel tanks, he accidentally shut off the fuel completely (this was only his second flight in a Bf 108), forcing a ‘dead stick’ landing on the west side of a wide river he thought was the Rhine. It was the Maas, and before Reinberger could destroy the contents of his dispatch case, both majors and the airborne plans for Fall Gelb were collected by Belgian police. Once Belgian King Léopold realized the papers’ significance, to elicit guarantees of British and French assistance, a synopsis of the captured information was shared with the would-be allies. The subsequent investigation, primarily involving the German military attaché’s interview of the two majors in the Belgian jail, falsely assured the OKW that the ‘dispatch case burned for certain’. Meanwhile, the entire concept of operations was under thorough reconsideration by Hitler, Halder, and the OKH staff. By 18 February it was so completely revised that it totally reversed the roles, dispositions and objectives of the German forces. Watching his plan unfolding in various ‘command post exercises’ Halder became convinced that Heeresgruppe A needed an additional, armoured army and, since the potential for a breakthrough was much greater by crossing the Meuse near Sedan than by assaulting the much more heavily defended Maas around Liège, the Panzers should be concentrated in the south, approaching through the Ardennes. Meanwhile, Hitler, who had his own reservations, had just discussed the same concept with Generalleutnant Fritz Erich von Lewinski genannt von Manstein. When Halder presented the Führer with an entirely rewritten Fall Gelb plan which shifted the Schwerpunkt (main weight of the assault) to the south wing of the offensive, Hitler immediately ordered it implemented. Under this revision, Heeresgruppe A became the main striking force with four armies totalling 45 divisions and 75 per cent of the Wehrmacht’s mechanized forces. Heeresgruppe B’s role was changed to providing a powerful and convincing feint, frequently referred to as the ‘Matador’s Cloak’, as well as subjugating Holland. For these dual purposes Bock was left with two armies of 28 divisions, only three of which were armoured, and the Luftwaffe’s small two- division airborne corps. Bock’s forces were divided between Reichenau’s AOK 6, which was to cross the Maas and drive into Belgium, and Küchler’s AOK 18, which was to subdue and occupy the Netherlands. The real question was how to use the new, untried weapon of Generalleutnant Kurt Student’s ad hoc Luftlandekorps (‘Air-Landing Corps’). With the shift of the Schwerpunkt to the south, airborne assaults at Ghent and the Meuse crossings became superfluous. Instead, after much discussion and debate, it was decided to use the Fallschirmjäger element (the paratroopers of the Luftwaffe’s 7. Fliegerdivision) to seize the Maas and Rhine bridges, opening the ‘back door’ to the Dutch defensive redoubt, and to neutralize Fort Eben Emael, which guarded the bridges entering northern Belgium. Simultaneously, the air assault element (the army’s specially trained 22. Luftlande Division) would be inserted into airfields surrounding The Hague in a bold coup de main (in German strategischer Überfallen or ‘strategic assault’) to quickly eliminate the Netherlands from the contest altogether. On the western side of the front, some Allied leaders thought that Reinberger’s plans were a deliberate Nazi plant. But to most they made perfect sense and confirmed their anticipation of a German drive across Belgium to outflank the Maginot Line. Convinced of this, the Allied Supreme Command worked hard to get the Belgians and Dutch to join in the collective defence and allow the establishment of strong defensive positions as far forward as possible. The two small nations, however, clung fiercely to their neutrality, fearful of provoking a German invasion and hoped that, when the inevitable occurred, the Allies would speedily come to their aid and assist in their defence. In all of this, the neutrals were naïve, the French were fooled, and the British were caught in a disaster not of their own making. CHRONOLOGY 1939 1 September Germany invades Poland, starting World War II in Europe. 3 September Britain and France declare war on Germany. 10 September The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) begins arriving in France. 27 September OKW initial planning conference for the assault on the West. 9 October Hitler’s ‘War Directive No. 6’ orders the OKH to begin planning the invasion of northern France and the Low Countries. 19/29 October OKH produces the original/revised Fall Gelb plan for the Western offensive. 14 November OKW directive to OKH to include the conquest of Holland in Fall Gelb plan, amplified the following day with amending directive specifying an offensive up to the Dutch ‘Grebbe Line’. 15 November Général d’Armée Gamelin, Supreme Commander of Allied Armies, adopts the Dyle Plan designed to meet the German invasion in Belgium while the Maginot Line holds the French frontier. 20 November Hitler’s ‘War Directive No. 8’ orders the OKH planning to be flexible enough to shift the Schwerpunkt of Fall Gelb from Heeresgruppe B to Heeresgruppe A if an opportunity for greater success in the south presents itself. 1940 10 January A German courier aircraft mistakenly lands near Mechelen, Belgium, and copies of the airborne portion of the Fall Gelb plan are captured. 25 January Fall Gelb plan is revised to include the occupation of Holland, placing the panzer units on 24-hour notice, and emphasizing the need for surprise. 7, 14 February Heeresgruppe A ‘war games’ convince OKH Chief of Staff General Halder that a major revision of the Fall Gelb plan is necessary. 18 February Halder delivers to Hitler a completely rewritten draft OKH plan which places the Schwerpunkt of the attack through the Ardennes. Hitler orders the Fall Gelb directive to be changed accordingly.