As the French and British stumbled back across the fields of Flanders and the Panzer divisions pushed up from the south, an order was sent from German Army Group A headquarters at Charleville-Mézières to the commanders at the front. It was conveyed by telephone at 12.31pm on 24 May. The order was as follows:
At the Führer's orders the attack to the east of Arras with VIII and II Corps, in co-operation with the left wing of Army Group B, is to be continued towards the northwest. On the other hand, forces advancing to the northwest of Arras are not to go beyond the general line Lens-Béthune-Aire-St Omer-Gravelines (Canal Line). On the west wing, all mobile units are to close up and let the enemy throw himself against the above-mentioned favourable defensive line.
This was the famous 'Halt Order'. It came as a shock to General Heinz Guderian, in command of XIX Panzer Corps which was thrusting up the coast of the English Channel past Boulogne and Calais. It came as a welcome relief to Generalmajor Erwin Rommel. It came as a blessing to the hard-pressed British Expeditionary Force and their French allies. From the middle of Friday 24 May until the early afternoon of Sunday 26 May the order remained in force and the Panzers stood still, and when the order was lifted it took time to get moving again, so two and a half days were granted to the Allies in which to organise the defence of Dunkirk, from the beachheads of which nearly 200,000 British and 140,000 of their allies would escape.
It is not surprising that the Halt Order has been the subject of speculation and that various explanations, including the braggodocio of Reichsmarshall Herman Göring and the back-seat driving of Adolf Hitler, have been advanced for it. It has been suggested that Göring pressed Hitler to give the Luftwaffe the honour of destroying the British at Dunkirk. Another possibility put forward is that fear of the Flanders mud made Hitler hold back his tanks. The 'Golden Bridge' idea, the possibility that Hitler deliberately gave the British the chance to escape, has also been mooted. And, finally, it is said that Hitler over-ruled everyone and quite simply failed to appreciate the opportunity before him.
An Allied View
On 10 May the Germans had launched their offensive.
In accordance with the prudent provisions of Plan D, the French and British had advanced to lines of defence in Belgium to forestall the obvious enemy thrust through the Low Countries and across the French border to strike at Paris.
Now, a mere fortnight later, the BEF and the French 1st Army had been cut off and, together with the rapidly weakening Belgian Army, was beset by the mighty, mechanised monster that had sliced through France so effortlessly while the skies were riven with their screaming dive-bombers. Or so it appeared.
How could one resist? General Gaston Billotte, commanding No.1 Army Group and to whom Lord Gort of the BEF reported, could only remark:
Je suis crevé de fatigue – et contre ces Panzers je ne peux rien faire. [I am exhausted – and I can do nothing against these Panzers].
The ground was thoroughly prepared for popular myth-making.
The German View
Although their advance had seemed to the Allies some sort of juggernaut, hearts were in German mouths. The southerly strike by XIX Panzer Corps under Guderian had been a worrying business. After getting over the Meuse at Sedan, Guderian had persuaded his Group Commander, General Ewald von Kleist, that it would be wise to move on a bit to allow supporting formations to cross the river and was given leave to keep moving for twenty-four hours. He then left 10th Panzer and the Grossdeutschland Regiment to deal with the French threat to the south of the Sedan salient at Stonne and shot off westwards. On 15 May he was over the Ardennes Canal. On that day Rundstedt's fears were recorded in the Army Group A War Diary, speculating on the possibility of having to halt on the River Oise lest the French attack from the Aisne or in the Laon region. By the morning of 17 May Guderian was 30 miles (50km) away ready to leave Montcornet, northeast of Laon, and head for St Quentin. Kleist was not only angry but scared; the southern flank was terribly vulnerable and he hurried off to confront his over-enthusiastic subordinate. With Guderian offering his resignation and Kleist accepting it, only the intervention of Colonel-general List prevented Guderian's abdication of his command. That same afternoon Hitler visited Rundstedt's headquarters in Bastogne, having vented his apprenhensions on the staff of OKW (Armed Forces High Command) earlier in the day. His fears for the southern flank were also vivid.
The flank attack Kleist feared then took place. The unfortunate Colonel Charles de Gaulle, long an advocate of specialised armoured warfare, was given command of a partially formed 4th Armoured Division with which, woefully under-manned and pitifully equipped though it was, he hit the Germans at Montcornet on that same 17 May. He lost some 35 of his precious tanks and shot up some of Guderian's transport, but the fact that the Panzers rolled forward once more speaks for itself.
The British commander, General Lord Gort, had come to the conclusion that he had to fall back to the coast with eventual evacuation as a possibility. In order to secure his southern flank he wanted to hold Arras, and the defenders of the town, Petreforce, under Major-general R. L. Petre, needed help. He therefore set up Frankforce, under Major-general Harold Franklyn, 'to support the garrison in Arras and to block the roads south of Arras, thus cutting off the German communications from the east . . . [and] occupy the line of the Scarpe on the east of Arras' and to make contact with the French on their left. General Billotte, when appraised of this plan, agreed that the French would attack at the same time with two divisions towards Cambrai. In the event this additional attack did not take place in concert with Frankforce's strike west of Arras, but was made on the following day.
On the afternoon of Tuesday 21 May two columns under the command of Major-general G. le Q. Martel moved south from the Vimy area. The two tank battalions and three battalions of Durham Light Infatry, together with four Royal Artillery batteries and a motor-cycle reconnaissance battalion of Northumberland Fusilers, made up the two columns of the advance. They ran into Rommel's 7th Panzer which had the SS-Division Totenkopf on its left and 5th Panzer on its right. Rommel had to intervene personally to steady his men and help throw the British back. By nightfall the British were obliged to withdraw, leaving Arras without the planned support and having suffered serious losses. This is what is often called the British counter-attack at Arras. The Germans were shaken by the experience. In his report Rommel declared that he had been hit by no fewer than five divisions. Nervousness was reinforced by the French foray towards Cambrai the next day.
On the northern front in Belgium Army Group B had been making steady but painful progress. The Belgians, to the surprise of the invaders, still resisted and the British alongside were falling back in good order. From the south Guderian had turned north and was fighting for Boulogne. The Guards had left the port for England on the evening of Thursday 23 May, but the French were still holding on and would continue to do so until Saturday. At Calais 1st Panzer had arrived on Thursday and would be relieved by 10th Panzer in due course, but the town would hold until the early hours of Monday.
The situation was therefore, as far as the Germans could see, that the allies were caught in the embrace of two army groups. They held two ports, just, on the west and then all the coast from Gravelines to the Wester Schelde, the waterway serving Antwerp. They thus had control of the ports of Zeebrugge, Ostend and Dunkirk as well as a hold in the west, however secure, on Calais and Boulogne. It may well be that the British planned an evacuation through Ostend which had excellent facilities. Bruges was still in Belgian hands, but the line was being pushed in towards Ypres in order to drive a wedge between the Belgians and the British. How long the Belgians could keep going was uncertain, but probably not for long, it was surprising that they had lasted until then. South of Ypres, including Lille and an equal distance beyond, the French First Army held a salient while, running northwest, the British and elements of the French had a line along the La Bassée Canal, properly called the Canal d'Aire. Somewhere there was the considerable remnants of Rommel's five divisions. It appeared that a German victory was assured but that the Allies still had considerable strength to strike back.
The Terrain
The published data on the lands marked out for invasion was substantial. Complaints are heard of lack of maps, but they refer to maps of such scales as 1:25,000 – maps that can be used to appreciate terrain over which a battalion might attack. On the broader front the macro-data was good. On 29 February 1940 the Generalstab des Heeres Abteilung für Kriegskarten und Vermessungswesen, the army war map organisation in Berlin, published a massive information package for the forthcoming invasion. It included a geological map of Flanders, Artois and the lands north of the Somme. This was accompanied by booklets, one giving landscape photographs of the relevant countryside and another had detailed essays on the nature of the soils and rocks. This last drew on the work of such scholars as the British L. Dudley Stamp and the American D. W. Johnson who had done detailed work on this area in the 1920s. For example, the diagram of the dugout (which may be seen in Peter Doyle's book, page 24) that appears on page 14 of the German handbook of 1940 is clearly based on the work of Alfred H. Brooks, published by the US Geological Survey in 1920. This was a work of scholarship and evidently for commanders miles away from the front, this was essential reference material.
A key to the map gives comments on the land, the 'various surfaces', under a number of headings of relevance to military decisions. These are: predominant soil types, rock strata and water content; predominant terrain forms, ground cover and land use; passability both by traffic and on foot over open terrain and temporary tracks or roads; obstacles and road block possibilities; permanent fortification and field defence suitability; artillery considerations; airforce considerations; drinking water supply; building material and aggregate extraction. Each of these topics receives specific comment, and the handbook offers broad commentary.
Of the terrain the Germans now faced and the Allies held, the coastal plain and dune belt, the handbook says:
In wet weather wide areas become boggy and impassable on foot. Vehicles can, in general, only move on the roads available which are very numerous and mostly fortified. These and the little railways run throughout on dykes; these form, with the numerous, in general not very wide, waterways, canals and ditches, a dense mesh of sections suitable for delaying defence.
At a breach or conscious destruction of the dykes, especially at high or spring tides, it will flood to a depth of 1.5 metres [5 feet] and be impassable, even if, according to the map, the height is between 1 and 3 metres. When the ebb tide takes the water away, there remains marsh.
Drainage results through the collecting canals, from which the water reaches the sea through the great sluices of Calais, Gravelines and Dunkirk.
This does not sound like tank country.
The chalk uplands over which the Panzers had advanced are indicated in green on the geological map published in Berlin that February. Guines, due south of Calais, sits on the edge of the chalk, overlooking the area not merely marked with purple, but hatched to show that it lies below sea level. The surface is described as 'peat, with groundwater near the surface'. Guderian's 1st Panzer had already ventured into this area without serious mishap and was facing Gravelines. Here the purple lacks the hatching and the description is that much more encouraging. The surface is said to be of silt and clay, and in wet weather, while the soil is glutinous mud, the metalled roads are passable both by vehicles and on foot, although reconnaissance of all roads is necessary. The dense network of canals, however, does not prevent the whole area turning into marsh when wet, leaving only dyke-top roads for movement of any kind.
The line along which the Germans then stood runs southeast from Gravelines, following the white area on the map along the canalised River Aa to Watten and on by St Omer, Aire, and Béthune to La Bassée. Beyond, and inland of the purple area inside the yellow of the dunes, is a great blue area at this stage occupied by the Allies. It is bounded on the east by a crescent of dark yellow, showing a line of low hills known to veterans of the First World War as the Passchendaele Ridge. This blue surface is described by geologists as Ypres Clay. Infantry and tankmen of the previous war used more colourful terms. In dry weather, such as prevailed during the attack on the Messines Ridge in June 1917, the going was good. In wet weather, such as encountered during the Third Battle of Ypres or Passchendaele as it is also known, from 31 July 1917 until November that year, the conditions for fighting were intolerable. The Ypres Clay is impermeable, so water does not sink in but tries to flow off. Traffic and shellfire create mud, shellholes make muddy ponds and the terrain is soon reduced to a quagmire in which vehicles cannot move and men can even drown.
The Decision to Halt
On Thursday morning, 23 May, German commanders were contemplating the High Command's orders for Army Group B to maintain its attacks on a broad front while Army Group A put in a thrust towards Dunkirk and Ypres. Kleist protested that half his tanks were now out of action and he was expected to guard the Somme front, deal with the Channel ports and now to launch a renewed attack eastwards; it was too much. On the same day OKH (Army High Command) decided to transfer the 4th Army, which included XV Panzer Corps with 5th and 7th Panzer, to the command of Army Group B. While all this was going on in the army, Göring was telephoning Hitler to propose that the Luftwaffe should be tasked with the destruction of the British Army, leaving the German Army merely to occupy the vacant ground.
Rundstedt's Army Group A was spread all across the landscape. The mechanised units had rushed on at a pace that had broken the Allies in two, but the bulk of the army was still using horse-drawn transport and foot-slogging it to catch up. The replacement of Kleist's force on the Somme with infantry was delayed by this, as was the consolidation of the southeastern flank of the French-held salient based on Lille. The scatter shows clearly on the situation map for 25 May. While Army Group B has a tight wedge of divisions threatening the junction of the British and Belgian armies, Army Group A is all over the place, and it was now proposed to send the Panzers into the flatlands with little support. What was more, Kleist reported that, for the first time, the RAF had air superiority. Not only was it possible to fly out of English airfields, but, unknown to the Germans, British radar cover included the Pas de Calais.
On Friday 24 May, at 11.30am, Hitler arrived at Rundstedt's headquarters, now in Charleville-Mézières. Rundstedt put it to him that his army should stand firm while the infantry made the pace east of Arras. He also informed Hitler of the switch of the 4th Army to the northern command. Hitler approved the former and over-ruled the latter. At 12.31pm the Halt Order was issued. Colonel-general Halder, Chief of Staff at OKH, was compelled to recast his instructions, but attempted to preserve part of his plan by issuing a permissive instruction allowing advances up to a line Dunkirk, Cassel, Estaires, Armentières, Ypres, Ostend. It was welcomed by Army Group B, but, because the manner of carrying out orders was their business, Army Group A did not relay the message to the front.
The factors that did not, according to the sources available, get discussed at all were the terrain and the weather. As far as the terrain was concerned, what was there to discuss? For everyone not actually on the ground the danger was clear. At the first drop of rain all movement would be confined to made-up roads and if put to it the allies would doubtless open the sluices just as the Belgians did in 1914. So even if the current fine weather held, water was still available.
To the immediate situation they faced must be added the requirement of taking the step after the next. The next step was, one way or another, the reduction of the allied salient. The one beyond that was the conquest of the rest of France, a vast country still in possession of substantial forces and for the defeat of which the Panzers were vital. There were no reserves, these Panzers were it. And, according to Kleist, half of them were out of action. So, the terrain was unsuitable for tanks, the infantry of Army Group B were thronging the eastern side of the salient, the Luftwaffe had made mincemeat of Warsaw and Rotterdam and are ready to do the same to the Channel ports and the Panzers had to be conserved. Four good reasons for the Halt Order.
The Reaction
Guderian writes that he and his fellows were 'utterly speechless'. He recollects that the order said that Dunkirk, and Calais too if it proved difficult to take, should be left to the Luftwaffe. In admitting he quotes from memory he gives himself an excuse for inaccuracy. The halt order actually made it clear that Guderian was to create a line against which the allies could be crushed. Instead he continued his policy of creeping forward when forbidden to move at all.
South of the La Bassée Canal Rommel was in cheerful form. On 24 May he wrote to his wife to say that all was going well and that if anything the weather was not merely lovely but that there was too much sun. On Sunday 26 May he wrote again, saying,
A day or two without action has done a lot of good. The division has lost up to date 27 officers killed and 33 wounded, and 1,500 men dead and wounded. That's about 12 per cent casualties. Very little compared with what's been achieved . . . Food, drink and sleep are all back to routine.
On 25 May Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, the German commander-in-chief, implored Hitler to permit Army Group A to advance, but was refused. Halder noted in his diary,
. . . our political leadership feels that the decisive battle must be fought not in Flanders, but in northern France. But in order to camouflage this political objective, we are told that the terrain in Flanders, with its many waterways, is not suitable for armoured operations . . . Another thing, the Luftwaffe, on which so much hope is now being placed, is completely dependent on the weather
Halder fails to point out that, in the terrain into which he wishes to send the tanks, the weather is also crucial for the Panzers. Nor does he mention the intensity of the Lutfwaffe attacks on the Channel ports that day.
On Sunday 26 May the situation appeared to be static, with the French southeast of Lille not merely resisting, but undertaking counter-attacks and the Belgians standing firm, save for a crack in the line at Courtrai, while signal traffic suggested a build-up of allied forces south of the Somme. At 3.30pm the order to move once more was given. Calais fell later that day and Guderian's force attempted to move forward that night and made some progress on the Monday. The essential change came on the Ypres front where the Germans broke through at Zonnebeke and the King of the Belgians signalled Gort to warn that they could hold out very little longer. The message failed to arrive and it was nearly midnight, surrender hour for the Belgians, before Gort was aware of the collapse of the northern front. No alternative to evacuation now existed for the allies.
Now, at last, it rained. As the British and French fell back, fighting as they went, the task became one of keeping the sides of the bag in place to allow troops to pull back towards the canal between Bergues and Furnes, a postion flanked with friendly marsh. Rommel, once across the La Bassée canal on Tuesday 28 May, moved northeast to Lomme, just outside Lille, to shut off the French there. Guderian's Panzer Corps was being relieved by the XIV Motorised Corps on Wednesday 29 May, the day 1st Panzer took Gravelines.
Guderian felt the matter had been mishandled. He wrote:
The operation would have been completed very much more quickly if Supreme Headquarters had not kept ordering XIX Army Corps [Panzer Corps] to stop and thus hindered its rapid and successful advance. What the future course of the war would have been if we had succeeded at that time in taking the British Expeditionary Force prisoner at Dunkirk, it is now impossible to guess . . . Unfortunately the opportunity was wasted owing to Hitler's nervousness. The reason he subsequently gave for holding back my corps – that the ground in Flanders with its many ditches and canals was not suited to tanks – was a poor one.
And there the argument is usually left to rest, with Hitler responsible for irrational fears and Guderian the hero of the new warfare. The war diary of the Kleist Group records that Guderian made an inspection of the ground that day, Wednesday 29 May, and reported to the Chief of Staff as follows:
(1) After the Belgian capitulation continuation of operations here is not desirable as it is costing unnecessary sacrifices. The armoured divisions have only 50 per cent of their armoured strength left . . .
(2) A tank attack is pointless in the marshy country which has been completely soaked by rain. The troops are in possession of the high ground south of Dunkirk; they hold the important Cassel-Dunkirk road; and they have favourable artillery positions . . .
Furthermore 18 Army [of Army Group B] is approaching . . . from the east. The infantry forces of this army are more suitable than tanks for fighting in this kind of country, and the task of closing the gap on the coast can therefore be left to them.
The echoes of the verdict of the geological handbook and map are striking. Irrational and loathsome though Hitler was in many instances, here he was exercising a prudent caution. The Halt Order was based on a number of factors and was a logical outcome of considering them. There had been attacks by the allies on the Panzers which Guderian minimised and Rommel exaggerated, each for his own purposes. The speed of the advance had left the Germans thin on the ground. Above all, there was just what Guderian had warned against, terrain on which an armoured attack would break, terrain beyond their capacity – when it rained. And it did. If the tanks had gone in, they would not have come out, and if they had not come out General Weygand's line north of Paris might have held. If the Halt Order contributed to the losing of the war in the long term, it also made it possible to win in the short term.
Martin Marix Evans
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Professor Peter Doyle of the University of Greenwich for his helpful comments which have prevented at least some of the errors that would otherwise mar the geological information, and Nigel Read for translation of the German military maps and manual. All errors are, of course, those of the author alone.
Suggested reading
Anon., Militärgeographische Beschreibung von Frankreich, Teil I, Nordost-Frankreich, (Berlin, 1940)
Benoist-Méchin, J., trans. Peter Wiles, Sixty Days that Shook the West, (London, 1963)
Colville, J. R., Man of Valour: The Life of Field Marshal the Viscount Gort, (London, 1972)
Doyle, Peter, Geology of the Western Front, 1914-1918,(London, 1998)
Ellis, L. F., The War in France and Flanders 1939-1940,(London, 1954)
Guderian, Heinz,Achtung - Panzer!, trans. Christopher Duffy, (London, 1992)
Guderian, Heinz, Panzer Leader, trans. Constantine Fitzgibbon, (London, 1952)
Horne, Alistair, To Lose a Battle: France 1940, (London, 1969)
Rommel, Erwin, ed. B.H. Liddell Hart, The Rommel Papers, (London, 1953)
Snyder, Louis L., Encyclopedia of the Third Reich, (London, 1998)
Jacobsen, H.-A. and J. Rohwer, eds., trans. Edward Fitzgerald, Decisive Battles of World War II: the German View, (London, 1965)
Wehrgeologische Übersichtskarte von Flandern, Artois, Oberboulonnais und Niederboulonnais, (Berlin, 1940)
About the author
Martin Marix Evans is the author of a number of books for Osprey, including Passchendaele and the Battles of Ypres 1914-1918, Retreat Hell! We Just got Here! – The American Expeditionary Force in France 1917-1918 and The Boer War – South Africa 1899-1902. Martin has just finished The Fall of France – Act with Daring, due for publication in May 2000.