THE HUMILIATION OF FRANCE

THE AVENGING OF VERSAILLES

The army that had been at the end of the First World War indisputably the greatest in the world, and which had started the Second World War as Germany's most feared opponent, had come to a sorry pass. Badly led, ill-trained, the victim of endless political crises which had stifled military planning throughout the Thirties, the French Army had been inflated to unmanageable ill-disciplined proportions by over-hasty mobilisation. The largely amateur colossus that sought to bestride the most professional mechanised army the world had seen seemed to know its deficiencies; to know it could not win; it seemed almost to be committed to losing even before its leaders urged it to successes it could not achieve. Low morale is the most pernicious of diseases in an army open to infection.

In fact, the French Government was on the way to overcoming many of the underlying problems of supply from which the French armed forces - notably the Armee de l'Air - suffered. Nationalised in 1936/37, the French aircraft industry had designed new aircraft but had produced few of them before 1940. Nonetheless, between January and June 1940, production increased to an extraordinary extent. By June 1940, the Dewoitine D.520, the French competitor to the Spitfire and a worthy opponent for the Messerchmitt 109, was being produced at the remarkable rate of one per hour, but there were too few pilots to fly them. The situation was too far gone. France must still be the only power in history to have emerged from losing a campaign with more aircraft than she had had when she started it.

With Dunkirk taken, the German Army turned its attention to the capture of the remainder of France - Operation Red. General Weygand, Allied C-in-C, had 66 divisions available to him - 65 French and one British - and found them facing a reinforced German army of 120 divisions in the line with a further 23 in reserve. Hitler and the OKW staff moved to a temporary headquarters in the Belgian village of Bruly-de-Pesche, and a new plan was devised to enable the predominantly armoured Army Group to make the best use of the terrain. The mass Panzer assault was to be made across the plains of Picardy, XV Panzer Corps from Longpre, and Kleist's Panzergruppe from Amiens and Peronne.

On June 5th, the Battle for France began, and the Germans found that, despite their numerical superiority, they made little progress and suffered considerable losses. By nightfall on the first day, General Erwin Rommel, later to be known as the charismatic "Desert Fox", and at this time in command of the 7th Panzer Division, was only 13km South of the Somme. For days, although some progress was made, the French managed to contain the German forces and inflict great damage upon them. Weygand's army was well dug-in, defending every street corner and hedgerow, and fighting with great tenacity and spirit. Somehow the spirit of Verdun had returned.

On June 6th, Rommel broke through West of Amiens, despite the fierce resistance, and advanced 32km. On June 7th he reached Forges-les-Eaux, near Rouen; on the 8th he advanced 72km and arrived at the Seine. Meanwhile, on the left of the German front, the German 9th Army had made progress across the wooded country of the Chemin des Dames, and on the right the 15th Panzer Corps had broken through the French 10th Army. Numerical strength was beginning to show dividends. The progress of the Germans forced General Besson to order General Frere to pull back the 7th Army to create a cohesive line with the 6th and the 10th, thus yielding a great deal of territory and sacrificing both men and weapons. Meanwhile, Rommel had swung back to the Channel at Fecamp, trapping General Ihler's IX Corps. On 12th June, Ihler was forced to surrender, and 46,000 French and British troops became prisoners.

On June 9th, Field-Marshal von Rundstedt's Army Group A had entered the campaign, against the French 4th Army and units of the French VII Corps. Seven French divisions fought gallantly against twice their numbers of fresh troops, inflicting heavy losses, and maintained high morale despite mounting odds. Their demeanour, skill and appetite for the fight could not have been more different from that of the earlier battles on the Somme. Throughout June 9th and 10th, the Germans made little progress, and were admiring of the quality of the French soldiers in their diaries and despatches. Then, inevitably, VII Corps' stand collapsed, and Guderian's Panzers crossed the Aisne and made South. On the evening of June 12th, he reached Chalons-sur-Marne.

By this time Weygand had only 27 divisions left in the field, Kleist's Panzergruppe had broken through from Peronne and Amiens, and the position was becoming irrecoverable without strategic withdrawal. On June 12th Weygand ordered a retreat to a line from Geneva to Caen; a far longer line to defend with 27 divisions than he had been defending only a week before with 66. On the 14th, the Germans entered Paris and found it almost empty. Only 700,000 people remained of a population of five million. The remainder had taken to the roads. Recognising the seriousness of the situation, and anxious to retain every soldier possible for the next crucial battle, Churchill ordered the immediate evacuation of all remaining British troops in France.

The French Government, which had earlier moved to Tours, now moved again for Bordeaux. Premier Paul Reynaud made a desperate appeal to President Roosevelt to declare war on Germany and come to the rescue of France, but this plea fell on ears that, one suspects, would have liked to have heard but could not. In his reply on June 15th, President Roosevelt promised every aid short of military intervention. On June 15th, as 30,600 British troops were evacuated from Cherbourg, and the Germans captured Verdun, the French Army GHQ moved to Vichy. The next day, Guderian captured Besancon, and it became clear that events were moving swiftly towards an inevitable conclusion. Premier Paul Reynaud resigned, and the veteran Marshal Petain, the hero of Verdun in the Great War, formed a new government. The next day, June 17th, Petain asked the Germans and Italians (Mussolini having declared war on Britain and France on June 10th) for terms for an armistice. On the 18th, Rommel captured Cherbourg, and the 5th Panzer Division took Brest. The last RAF squadrons left France. All towns of more than 20,000 inhabitants were declared "open" and were ordered to surrender without resistance. Most, but not all, did just that. At Saumur, 2,300 cadets of the Cavalry School put up an epic fight under the command of Colonel Michon, and prevented the German 1st Cavalry Division from crossing the Loire for 48 hours. 200 cadets died. The 220,000 French troops holding the Maginot Line, the great fortification stretching from the Swiss border at Basle to Luxembourg, and which had been built to protect France from Germany, held out until June 25th. Sadly, the French governments of the Thirties had never found the budget or the political will in respect of Belgian and Dutch political sensibilities to extend the Maginot Line to the Channel, and the German armies, by taking Holland and Belgium before France, simply went round it.

During the period when British and French troops that could escape to Britain were being evacuated from the Atlantic and Channel ports, every worthwhile warship or supply vessel that was unable to put to sea was scuttled and put beyond service for the German invader. Five submarines, the destroyer Cyclone , tankers and fleet auxiliaries, and many smaller vessels that might have helped the enemy were ruthlessly put out of commission by the French. The battleships Paris and the Courbet , seven submarines, four destroyers, six torpedo boats and thirteen gunboats managed to reach Britain. The newly completed battleship Richelieu escaped from Brest and sailed to Dakar; the incomplete Jean Bart , after a breathtaking escape from St Nazaire under heavy Stuka attack, and fuelling at sea under fire, ran the gauntlet of the U-boats in the Bay of Biscay and reached Casablanca. They were not all so lucky. The French troopship Champlain was seriously damaged by a mine in the Bay of Biscay, and was subsequently finished off by U-65 on June 21st.

While tragedy without equal in the long and glorious history of France was unfolding in the North, one French General was succeeding in his objective far to the South. General Olry, commanding the French 14th and 15th Corps, was facing invasion by the Italians. Mussolini, who customarily waited until the horses were in the home straight before placing his bets, ordered the Prince of Piedmont, who had until that moment been under orders to conduct a defensive strategy, to attack in the Alpine region between Mont Blanc and the Mediterranean. Despite protests from Marshal Badoglio, Mussolini insisted, and the Italian 1st and 4th Armies, some 450,000 men, attacked the 185,000-strong Army commanded by General Olry on 20th June. During the next five days before the Government of Marshal Petain concluded an armistice with the Italians at Villa Inchesa, near Rome, on the 25th, the Italians made little progress against the magnificently trained and disciplined French Army of the Alps. The Italian 1st Army reached Menton, some two miles beyond the French initial line, but only by vast superiority of numbers. Once in Menton, the Italians became bogged down. At the Little St Bernard, the Alpini Corps failed even to take the French advanced positions. In the Maurienne Valley, after taking two villages, the Italian 1st Corps ground to a halt before French 75mm guns. On the Col de Mont Genevre, the 4th Corps made minimal progress, but took the Chenaillet redoubt, described by Mussolini with soaring hyperbole as one of the key positions in "the Maginot system of the Alps". He omitted to mention that the French artillery had inflicted appalling damage on the Italian fort at Chaberton. The Italian armour never managed to get into action. It was General Olry's victory. Despite the Armistice and Petain's capitulation, Olry's stand saved South-East France from Axis occupation. Remarkably, despite being outnumbered two to one, his forces had lost only 37 killed, 42 wounded and 150 missing. The Italians lost 631 killed, 2,631 wounded and 616 missing. Their performance did not please Adolf Hitler.

Nonetheless, France had fallen. The impossible had happened. As German formations completed the task of subjugating the French nation, de Gaulle broadcast to his country from London, where he was establishing the Free French forces to fight on. Churchill broadcast to Britain a message of indomitable courage and touching simplicity:

"Let us so bear ourselves that, if the British Commonwealth and Empire last for a thousand years, men will say, "This was their finest hour!''..

As Britain braced itself for the ordeal that was to come, Hitler planned the final humiliation for France, and his vengeance for the terms and manner of the Treaty of Versailles. For the signing of the Armistice on June 22nd, he had the original railway carriage in which the 1918 Armistice had been signed brought from the museum in Paris to the Forest of Compiegne, and set up exactly as it had been in 1918. And there he made General Huntziger sign with General Keitel the armistice that gave two thirds of France over to German occupation and disarmed and demobilised the proud French army. The final stroke was the requirement that France pay the costs of the German army of occupation.

The real cost to France was incalculable. The Battle of France had cost between 82,000 and 94,000 French lives and about a quarter of a million wounded. Almost 2 million French soldiers were prisoners of war. The British had lost 3,475 dead and 15,850 wounded since the invasion on May 10th, plus many thousands more to German prisoner of war camps. Germany had suffered the loss of 27,074 dead and 111,034 wounded.

Now Britain waited for invasion. On a clear day, the Germans could see Dover from Calais across the 22-mile-wide straits. How long would it be before they crossed?