After the fall of Poland, the Germans turned their attention back to Europe.
Different from attacking Northern Europe first in history, this time the Germans were more fully prepared and they could execute the yellow plan according to the prepared plan, which was to attack France.
However, just as Manstein opposed the plan in history and tried his best to persuade the German army to modify the offensive plan, so that the main force of the German offensive would change from being in Belgium and the British and French allied forces to breaking through the Ardennes and bypassing the Maginot Line. This time Germany
Manstein's plan was still adopted.
The only difference from history is that this time not only did the Germans have enough time to prepare for the attack, but the French also got an extra year to consolidate their defenses.
And because of Chen Mo's intervention, the British put pressure on Belgium, allowing the French to complete the entire Maginot Line of Defense they planned, built a large number of fortifications on the border between France and Belgium, and built a
A balanced line of defense.
However, for the entire Western Front battlefield, this only allowed the French to persist a little longer.
According to the Germans' original yellow plan, they will be divided into three parts to attack France. The main force will attack Belgium on the north side of the Maginot Line and invade the flat areas inside France.
The other two attack groups were one to attack the Maginot Line head-on, and the other to attack the Ardennes between Belgium and the Maginot Line, which played a role in attracting and containing the attention of the French.
But strategic geniuses like Manstein proposed a fantastic attack plan, which was to concentrate the main force of the German army in the Ardennes area and launch an attack on France from here, bypassing the Maginot Line and the heavy concentration of troops in Belgium.
The main force of the British and French coalition forces opened the French defense line in the gap between the two.
Historically, the Germans predicted that attacking the well-defended Maginot Line would suffer huge casualties, so they chose to attack Belgium to avoid the French's carefully prepared fortresses and fortifications.
The Ardennes were not even considered by the Germans.
In fact, the French did not consider that the Germans would attack from here.
Because the entire Ardennes is a forest plateau, with both mountains and forests, the rugged terrain is not conducive to the deployment and attack of the German mechanized troops.
According to the estimates of the British and French forces at the time, even if the Germans attacked from the Ardennes, they would need at least fourteen days to pass here, and these fourteen days were enough for the British and French forces to regroup their troops and build a new line of defense.
Therefore, the number of troops defending the Ardennes Forest is the smallest, and it is also the weakest defense area for the British and French forces.
Even though this time and space had the influence of Chen Mo, the French strengthened the defense on the Belgian border, allowing the entire Maginot Line to be completed and consolidated as planned, but they still responded to the German offensive direction as they did historically.
judgment.
This is not surprising. Even though the situations in the two time and spaces are different, the terrain is fixed, and there are only a few directions in which large groups of modern mechanical troops can deploy and attack.
Unless mages or gods of Chen Mo's level take action to change the terrain of France and Belgium on a large scale, or the Germans simply get crazy and attack from the south of France, otherwise, in Belgium, the Ardennes and Maginot, the Germans will eventually
You have to choose one.
This is also the reason why the French built a defensive line here, because based on the situation at the time, the Germans had no other better choice but to break through from this area.
grain boil
But the reason why geniuses are geniuses is that they can think of ways that others can't think of.
Manstein was undoubtedly a real genius in strategy. He chose the Ardennes, which no one was optimistic about, and broke the rules by choosing this place as the direction of attack, and won the support of the German head of state.
Under such circumstances, unless a genius of the same level as Manstein appeared within the British and French forces, and could see through his plan, they would be able to block the direction of the German attack.
However, not only did the British and French forces lack such talented military strategists, but they also chose to believe in the Germans' original yellow plan because of the Germans' intelligence deception. Belgium was set as the main battlefield and heavy troops were assembled to resist the German attack.
However, when Guderian led the German mechanized armored forces to launch an assault on France, the French suddenly discovered that the Germans not only launched an attack from a direction they had not expected, but also at a speed that far exceeded their expectations and imagination.
.
It took the Germans only three days to pass through the Ardennes area that the French thought would take them two weeks to cross, and captured Sedan.
For three days, the German tanks, armored vehicles and infantry never stopped for a moment. Just as their general said, once the tanks started, they would never stop halfway.
The Germans didn't even give the soldiers time to sleep, so in three days and three nights of sleeplessness, they broke through the Ardennes area at a speed beyond the imagination of the French.
The German troops who arrived at Sedan immediately launched an attack on the fortress carefully built by the French, and quickly captured it and opened up the French defense line.
Of course, the French did better this time than in history and were able to complete the entire planned Maginot Line of defense on the Belgian border. However, this outdated defense line built under the guidance of World War I thinking was facing Germany.
When modern mechanized armored forces attack, they are already a whole era behind in tactical thinking.
With the trinity of cooperation of aircraft, tanks and infantry, and the three-dimensional attack, the German blitzkrieg became more efficient after being tempered in the Polish campaign, and the cooperation between the various arms became more tacit, and the effect was beyond
It reflects the understanding of the military generals of Britain and France in this era.
A strong fortress is supposed to be the core of resisting enemy attacks. The artillery and firepower points placed inside the fortress are supposed to kill a large number of enemies, allowing the enemies to bleed their blood in front of the impregnable fortifications, just like during World War I.
But the cooperation between aircraft and airborne troops did not give them any chance to perform.
Planes dropped paratroopers to the top of the fortress, attacked from top to bottom, directly broke through the defense of the fortress from the inside, and opened the gate of the fortress. This happened more than once during the German attack.
Although solid fortifications and permanent artillery positions provided protection to the defenders, they were also a shackles because they limited the original mobility of the troops.
The immovable artillery and machine guns could not even turn their muzzles to resist the airborne troops attacking from behind.
The fortress garrison of a thousand people could not even withstand the attack of 700 airborne troops. The fortress, which was expected to hold for at least several weeks, fell within a few hours.
This is a dimensionality reduction attack in tactical thinking. It is a direct collision between the old-fashioned trench warfare-style defensive thinking of World War I and the new offensive thinking of blitzkrieg in World War II. The result is undoubtedly self-evident.
