The Manstein Plan is one of the names used to describe the plans of the German Army during the Battle of France in 1940. The original invasion plan was a compromise designed by Franz Halder and did not satisfy anyone. Several documents containing details of the plan fell into the hands of Belgium during the Mechelen incident of 10 January 1940 and the plan was revised several times. Versions of the plan increased the suppression of attacks by the Army Group A through the Ardennes, which progressively reduced the attacks by the Army Group B through the Low Countries to the diversion.
Incidentally, in the final version of the plan, the main attempts of the German invasion were carried out against the Ardennes, the weakest part of the Allied line, where the defense was handed over to the second-level French division, while the Seventh Army, the most powerful part of France's strategic reserves, for an effort to join the Dutch Army further north, in the Breda variant of Plan D, the plan of Allied dissemination.
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Manstein's plan is a partner of the French Dyle Plan for the Battle of France. Lieutenant General Erich von Manstein disagreed with the 1939 German version of Fall Gelb (Case Yellow), the plan for the invasion of France and the Low Countries , designed by Franz Halder. The original Aufmarschanweisung N Â ° 1, Fall Gelb (The Campaign No 1, Case Yellow), is a plan to push Allied forces back through central Belgium to the Somme river, in northern France, in parallel to the 1914 campaign World War One. On January 10, 1940, the Mechelen Incident occurred, when a German airliner carrying documents with sections of the operational plan for Fall Gelb fell in Belgium, prompting another review of the invasion plan. The Fall Gelb had been revised by Halder, did not fundamentally change it in Aufmarschanweisung N Â ° 3, Fall Gelb , Manstein was able to convince Hitler at a meeting on 17 February, that Wehrmacht strategy should attack through the Ardennes, followed by progress to the coast.
Maps Manstein Plan
Prelude
Manstein, the Group A army chief of staff, initially formulated his plans in October 1939 in Koblenz at the instigation of his commander General Gerd von Rundstedt, who rejected Halder's plan, through competition and therefore would not lead to a decisive victory over France.. Manstein initially thought of following the annihilation theory (Vernichtungsgedanke), imagined the swing from Sedan to the north, quickly exterminating the Allied army in the battle of the cauldron ( Kesselschlacht ). When discussing his intentions with Lieutenant General Heinz Guderian, commander of the Panix XIX Corps, the latter proposed to turn it into a strategy to avoid the main body of Allied troops and quickly advance with armored divisions into the English Channel, to cause the Allies to collapse by catching them off guard and cutting off the path their supply. Thus Guderian introduced the true "Blitzkrieg" elements to the plan, while Manstein initially objected to this aspect, primarily out of fear of the long, open wings created by such progress. Guderian convinced him that the danger of a French counterattack from the south could be avoided by a simultaneously destructive secondary attack southwards, in the general direction of Reims.
When Manstein first presented his ideas to the OKH, he did not mention the Guderian and made his swing northward as a major effort, while a limited number of armored divisions protected the left wing of this movement, acting in a classical cavalry strategic reconnaissance role. These changes do not reflect the change of mind on his part but are included because the original conception is too radical to be accepted and many conservative generals also consider Guderian too radical. His views were rejected by Halder and Walther von Brauchitsch. Reforming them in a more radical sense did not help and by the end of January, Halder got rid of Manstein by making him promote the commander of the XXXVIII Army Corps in eastern Germany. (Manstein and Halder were old rivals: in 1938 Manstein had been the successor of Ludwig Beck's chief of staff but had been overthrown when the latter fell into disrepute with Hitler over the Blomberg-Fritsch affair.) On September 1, 1938, Halder replaced Beck instead of Manstein.
At the end of January, Lieutenant Colonel GÃÆ'¼nther Blumentritt and Major Henning von Tresckow, part of Manstein's staff, contacted Hitler Army attaché Lt. Col. Rudolf Schmundt (old acquaintance of Tresckow's) when he visited Koblenz, who told Hitler about the affair. February 2nd. Having found Halder's plan unsatisfactory from the start, Hitler ordered a strategy change on February 13 in accordance with Manstein's thinking, after hearing the outline. The general was invited to the Reich Chancellery in Berlin to explain his plan to Hitler on February 17, during a luncheon in the presence of Alfred Jodl and Erwin Rommel. Although Hitler immediately feels antipathy towards Manstein for being too arrogant and aloof, he listens without speaking to his explanation and is impressed by Manstein's logic. "Certainly a very clever person, with good operational rewards, but I do not believe him," Hitler said after Manstein left.
Plan
Manstein took no part in planning and returned to eastern Germany. Halder had to revise the plan again, which became Aufmarschanweisung NÃ, Â ° 4, Fall Gelb . The new plan conforming to Manstein's thinking in the Army Group A will provide a major boost to the invasion through the Ardennes in southern Belgium. After crossing the Meuse River between Namur and Sedan, Army Group A will turn northwest to Amiens, while Group B Army performs a fraud attack in the north to lure Allied troops forward to Belgium and pinch them. The revision was a substantial change in emphasis, in which Halder no longer imagined a simultaneous secondary attack to the west but made it a major effort ( Schwerpunkt ). Dash for Abbeville has been removed, river crossings forced by infantry and there will be a long consolidation phase, while a large number of infantry divisions cross into bridgeheads. The armored division must then advance along with the infantry division, not in an independent operational penetration. Halder rejected the idea of ​​a simultaneous attack south to occupy the area France wanted to use as a counter-attack, to defeat attempts before it began.
Battle
The five panzer divisions of Panzergruppe von Kleist advanced through the Ardennes, XIX Panzer Corps with three panzer divisions on the south side towards Sedan, against the Second French Army and XLI Panzer Corps with two panzer divisions on the north side, to MonthermÃÆ' Â ©, against the French Ninth Army. The XV Corps moved through the Upper Ardennes to Dinant with two panzer divisions, as the guards called against the counter-attack from the north. From 10-11 May, XIX Panzer Corps involves two divisions of the Second Army cavalry, surprising them with a much larger force than expected and forcing France back. The Ninth Army in the north also sent two cavalry divisions forward, which were withdrawn on May 12, before they met German troops. Corap needed a cavalry division to strengthen the defense in the Meuse, as some of the infantry troops had not arrived. The most advanced German units reached the Meuse in the afternoon. The local French commander thought that the German parties were far ahead of the main body and would wait for him, before attempting to cross the Meuse. From May 10, Allied bombers have been sent to attack northern Belgium to delay Germany's progress, while the First Army rises but the attack on the bridge in Maastricht is a costly failure, 135 RAF day bombers reduced to 72 operational aircraft on May 12th.
Against the plan, Guderian and other panzer generals, Rommel among them, disobeyed orders and quickly advanced to the English Channel. The panzer troops captured Abbeville and fought at the Battle of Boulogne and the Siege of Calais, temporarily stopped by Hitler on 17, 22 and 24 May, then advanced again and fought in the Battle of Dunkirk.
The effects of the Manstein Plan were devastating for the Allies: their ground forces were cut in half, and the northernmost troops were besieged by Army Group A and B, leading to Operation Dynamo: evacuation from Dunkirk. The losses in the north and the resulting lack of mobile backup caused the defeat of the remaining French and British troops, and the fall of France.
Aftermath
Analysis
This glorious success came as a surprise even for Germany, who barely dared to hope for such a result. Most of the generals strongly oppose the plan because it is too risky; even those who support it mainly do so out of desperation because Germany's geostrategic position looks so desperate. Calculate Ciano later in the war observes that "the victory has a hundred fathers, but the defeat is the orphan" and Fall Gelb will not lack males. The two most prominent are Hitler and Halder. Since Hitler disliked Halder's original plan, he had suggested many alternatives, some of them in resemblance to Plan Manstein, the closest being the proposal he made on October 25, 1939. Immediately, Nazi propaganda began to claim that victory was the result of Hitler's military genius; Hitler said,
Of all the generals, with whom I spoke of a new attack plan in the West, Manstein is the only one who understands me!
After the war, Halder claimed he was the main discoverer of the German plan, supporting this with the fact that he had begun to consider changing the main axis to Sedan as early as September 1939 and the original proposal of Manstein was too traditional.
Manstein's plan is often seen as the result of or the cause of the mid-20th century Revolution in military affairs. In the previous hypothesis, described by Fuller and Basil Liddell Hart immediately after the event, the Manstein Plan is presented as a natural result of the evolution of German military thought in the twenties and thirties by Hans von Seeckt and Guderian, adopting the ideas of Fuller. or Liddell Hart. If true, an explicit Blitzkrieg doctrine would be established in 1939 and be the basis of the plan for the Polish Invasion; Manstein's plan will be the most spectacular implementation. The doctrine will be reflected in the organization and equipment of the army and the Luftwaffe and will be very different from France, Britain and the Soviet Union, except for individual contributions such as Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Charles de Gaulle, Fuller and Liddell Hart. That the earliest plan by Halder or Manstein and Halder's final plan is incompatible with this doctrine is an anomaly, to be explained by circumstances.
In the final hypothesis, promoted by Robert Allan Doughty and Karl-Heinz Frieser, Manstein's plan is to return to the principles of the 19th century Bewegungskrieg (war maneuver), adapted to modern technology abruptly and departure the unexpected from established German doctrine, through the Blitzkrieg elements provided and administered by Guderian. The influence of Fuller and Liddell Hart in Germany was limited and exaggerated by the authors after the war; no explicit Blitzkrieg doctrine can be found in German military records before the war. German tank production has no priority and plans for Germany's war economy are based on the premise of a long war, not a quick victory. This hypothesis allowed gradual adoption of thirty equipments and the integration of technologically advanced military into the Bewegungskrieg doctrine known to all the great powers before 1940, the distinction between nations varied on a theme.. The Polish invasion was not a Blitzkrieg campaign but the classical battle of destruction fought according to Vernichtungsgedanke (annihilation theory). The lack of Blitzkrieg elements in the plan for Fall Gelb is seen as unusual; only after the Meuse crossing at various points, the sudden success of the escape and defiance of Guderian and other tank commanders during a rush along the Somme valley, whether Blitzkrieg had been adopted as an explicit doctrine, in this view making Operation Barbarossa a deliberate first campaign Blitzkrieg .
Guderian presented the situation in his 1950 post-war book Erinnerungen eines Soldaten Memories of a Soldier published in English as Panzer Leader, according to the second hypothesis, describes himself as the sole vote of the reactionary majority of the German officer corps. In 2006, Adam Tooze wrote that a quick victory in France was not a consequence of a logical strategic synthesis but "risky improvisation" to overcome the strategic dilemma faced by Hitler and the German military leader before February 1940. The Allies and Germany were not interested in recognizing the importance of improvisation and chances in a sensational victory of 1940, the making of the Blitzkrieg Myth convenient to the Allies, to hide the inadequacies that have led to defeat. Rather than using technological determinism, German propaganda emphasized the machine of the German and Allied armies, pairing it with the heroic individualism of the German army, especially in the film Sieg im Westen (1941). OKW describes victory as a consequence of the "... dynamic revolutionary of the Third Reich and his National Socialist leadership".
Tooze writes that a debunking of technological interpretation of the German triumph in France should not lead to the conclusion that it was Manstein's genius or the superiority of the German army that led to victory. No synthesis of Germany's great strategy, the course of the 1940 campaign depended on the economic mobilization of 1939 and the geography of Western Europe. During the winter of 1939-1940, the quality of German armored forces was substantially improved and the plan associated with Manstein was not the revolutionary departure from traditional military thought but the concentration of superior power at the decisive point, the synthesis of "materialism and military arts". The German army did all its armored units to attack and fail, would not have a mobile unit to counter the Allied counterattacks. The high casualty but quickly ended the campaign was intolerable. The Luftwaffe is also fully committed but the Allied air forces withstand substantial reserves, in anticipation of longer campaigns. The Luftwaffe was able to gain air superiority but with far greater losses than the army. On May 10, the Luftwaffe loss was 347 aircraft and at the end of the month 30 percent of the Luftwaffe the aircraft had abolished and 13 percent badly damaged. The concentration of units in the Ardennes was a tremendous gamble and the Allied air forces were able to bomb the columns, chaos could have happened. The "brave" maneuver of the Army Group A only involved about twelve armored divisions and motor vehicles, while most German troops stormed on foot, supplied from railheads.
The Channel Coast is a natural barrier, just a few hundred kilometers from the German border and over that distance, the supply of motor vehicles from the railway can function, using a dense and dense western European road network in the midst of a very farm progressing from Western Europe, unlike in Poland where it is much harder to maintain momentum. Tooze concluded that although Germany's 1940 victory was not determined by brutal force, the Wehrmacht did not rewrite the rules of war or succeeded only because of the spirit of the German army and French pacifism. Opportunities against Germany are not so extreme that they can not be overcome by better planning for attacks based on the familiar principle of Bewegungskrieg (war maneuvers). The German army managed to concentrate a very strong force at a decisive point but took great speculation that could not be repeated if the attack failed. When Germany tried to repeat its 1940 success against the Soviet Union in 1941, there was little left over as a reserve. The Red Army has a greater numerical superiority margin, better leadership and more room for maneuvering and the Napoleonic principle of superior power concentration at a decisive point is impossible for Germany to achieve.
In the edition of Breaking Point in 2014, Doughty describes how in a 1956 publication Fuller wrote that the Battle of Sedans was a "paralysis attack" he had designed in 1918 and incorporated into the 1919 Plan. Doughty wrote that although Germany hopes for a quick victory, there is little evidence to support Fuller and that if military theory later labeled Blitzkrieg influential in the corps of German officers, only those like Manstein and Guderian have fully accepted me t. The disagreement between Kleist and Guderian that led Guderian to resign on May 17, indicates the concern of Germany's high command of the speed of movement and vulnerability of Panzer Corps XIX. Doughty suggests that the development of the Manstein Plan suggests that the forces sent through the Ardennes were intended to follow the familiar strategy of Vernichtungsgedanke intended to besiege and destroy Allied troops in Kesselschlachten (battle of a cauldron). The 20th century weapons are different but the methods are little changed from those of Ulm (1805), Sedan (1870) and Tannenberg (1914). When German troops broke through on May 16, they did not attack the French headquarters but advanced westward by means of a cavalry attack.
Doughty writes that Fuller had summoned a sophisticated army of German troops, an armored knife hammer, covered by fighters and diving hunters acting as artillery airfields, to break through a sustainable frontline at some point. XIX, XLI and XV panzer corps have been operating as a major force through the Ardennes but the most effective Allied resistance in south and southwest Sedan is reduced by a combined operation of infantry, tanks and artillery, a fact that is ignored for a long time. after 1940. Luftwaffe bombers did not act as flying artillery and the main effect was on May 13, when the bombing undermined the 55th Division's morale. Air strikes help ground troops to advance but destroy several tanks and bunkers, mostly taken by the skill and determination of German infantry, sometimes aided by firearms of anti-tank weapons, accompanying weapons and some tanks. Fuller's writing is in many early reports of the Battle of France, but since then new studies have added nuances, dwelling on the complications and chaos of military operations. Manstein's plan led to more than simple tanks flowing through the Ardennes and fields in northern France; German infantry toughness and training should be recognized, along with the efforts of engineers and artillerymen, who received the XIX Panzer Corps at Meuse.
Doughty also wrote that the success of the German army can not be adequately explained without reference to the mistakes of France. The French strategy is particularly vulnerable to attacks through the Ardennes; operationally, the French commander failed adequately to react to the breakthrough of the squeezed panzer squad. Tactically, Germany is often able to overcome the usually inadequate French defense. French military intelligence failed to predict major German attacks, expecting it in central Belgium until the end of May 13. Military intelligence has made a fundamental mistake by recording information in accordance with their assumptions about German intentions and not paying enough attention to German capabilities or information that shows that they are not in line with expectations. Doughty writes that France's failure was caused by an inadequate military system and much to do with the success of the German invasion. France has been preparing to fight a methodical battle based on gunfire, against opponents who stress shock and speed. French training for centralized and slow-moving battles keeps soldiers unable to counter-attack or bold movements. The French army lost the initiative, controlled at important points and then the deep German penetration made the disorder of the French order's order worse.
Sichelschnitt
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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