Read Online The Second World War by Antony Beevor - Free Book Online
Authors: Antony Beevor
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squadrons were coming and that others based in Britain were in action over France, but his audience was far from satisfied. That evening, Churchill sent a message from the British embassy to the War Cabinet asking for the other six squadrons. (For security purposeson an open line, it was dictated in Hindustani by General Ismay and taken down by a fellow Indian Army officer in London.) When their agreement was obtained shortly before midnight, Churchill went round to see Reynaud and Daladier to restore their courage. Reynaud received him wearing a dressing gown and slippers.
In the event, the extra squadrons had to be based back in Britain and fly across to fight on a daily basis. With the German advance there were insufficient airfields, and they all lacked repair facilities. Altogether, 120 Hurricanes based across the Channel which had been damaged in combat had to be abandoned in the headlong retreat. The pilots were totally exhausted. Most were flying up to five sorties a day, and because the French fighters stood little chance against the Messerschmitt 109, the Hurricane squadrons had to shoulder the brunt of a very unequal battle.
More and more reports came in of disintegration in the French army and bad discipline. Attempts were made to force units to stand and fight by executing some officers accused of abandoning their commands. Spy-mania took over. Numerous officers and soldiers were shot at random by frightened troops convinced that they were Germans in Allied uniforms. Panics were set off by wild rumours of German secret weapons and invented fears of a fifth column. Treachery seemed the only way to explain such a bewildering defeat, with the angry cry: ‘Nous sommes trahis!’
Chaos mounted with the growing volumes of refugees in north-east France. Including Dutch and Belgians, some eight million refugees are said to have taken to the roads that summer, hungry, thirsty and exhausted, the rich in cars, the rest in farm-carts or pushing loaded bicycles, prams or hand-carts with their pitiful possessions. ‘ They are the most pathetic sight ,’ wrote Lieutenant General Sir Alan Brooke, commander of the BEF’s II Corps, in his diary, ‘with lame women suffering from sore feet, small children worn out with travelling but hugging their dolls, and all the old and maimed struggling along.’ The fate of Rotterdam had struck fear into many. The vast majority of the population of Lille abandoned the city as the Germans advanced. Although there is no evidence that the Luftwaffe issued orders to its fighter pilots to strafe refugee columns, members of the Allied forces witnessed such incidents. The French army, which had relied on a static defence, was even less able to react to the unexpected with the roads jammed by terrified civilians.
9
Reverberations
JUNE 1940–FEBRUARY 1941
T he Fall of France in the summer of 1940 created reverberations, both direct and indirect, all around the world. Stalin was deeply disturbed. His hopes that Hitler’s power would be greatly weakened in a war of attrition against France and Britain had proved utterly wrong. Germany was now far more powerful with a large part of the French army’s vehicles and weaponry captured intact.
Further east, it represented a doubly serious blow to Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Nationalists. After the loss of Nanking, they had relocated their industrial base to the south-western provinces of Yunnan and Kwangsi, close to the frontier of French Indochina, believing that to be their most secure area with access to the outside world. But the new Vichy regime of Marshal Pétain began to bow to Japanese demands in July, and agreed to accept a Japanese military mission in Hanoi. The Nationalist supply route through Indochina was cut.
The advance of the Japanese 11th Army in that summer of 1940 up the Yangtze valley split the Nationalist armies and caused huge losses. On 12 June, the fall of the major river port of Ichang represented a terrible blow.
In the event, the extra squadrons had to be based back in Britain and fly across to fight on a daily basis. With the German advance there were insufficient airfields, and they all lacked repair facilities. Altogether, 120 Hurricanes based across the Channel which had been damaged in combat had to be abandoned in the headlong retreat. The pilots were totally exhausted. Most were flying up to five sorties a day, and because the French fighters stood little chance against the Messerschmitt 109, the Hurricane squadrons had to shoulder the brunt of a very unequal battle.
More and more reports came in of disintegration in the French army and bad discipline. Attempts were made to force units to stand and fight by executing some officers accused of abandoning their commands. Spy-mania took over. Numerous officers and soldiers were shot at random by frightened troops convinced that they were Germans in Allied uniforms. Panics were set off by wild rumours of German secret weapons and invented fears of a fifth column. Treachery seemed the only way to explain such a bewildering defeat, with the angry cry: ‘Nous sommes trahis!’
Chaos mounted with the growing volumes of refugees in north-east France. Including Dutch and Belgians, some eight million refugees are said to have taken to the roads that summer, hungry, thirsty and exhausted, the rich in cars, the rest in farm-carts or pushing loaded bicycles, prams or hand-carts with their pitiful possessions. ‘ They are the most pathetic sight ,’ wrote Lieutenant General Sir Alan Brooke, commander of the BEF’s II Corps, in his diary, ‘with lame women suffering from sore feet, small children worn out with travelling but hugging their dolls, and all the old and maimed struggling along.’ The fate of Rotterdam had struck fear into many. The vast majority of the population of Lille abandoned the city as the Germans advanced. Although there is no evidence that the Luftwaffe issued orders to its fighter pilots to strafe refugee columns, members of the Allied forces witnessed such incidents. The French army, which had relied on a static defence, was even less able to react to the unexpected with the roads jammed by terrified civilians.
9
Reverberations
JUNE 1940–FEBRUARY 1941
T he Fall of France in the summer of 1940 created reverberations, both direct and indirect, all around the world. Stalin was deeply disturbed. His hopes that Hitler’s power would be greatly weakened in a war of attrition against France and Britain had proved utterly wrong. Germany was now far more powerful with a large part of the French army’s vehicles and weaponry captured intact.
Further east, it represented a doubly serious blow to Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Nationalists. After the loss of Nanking, they had relocated their industrial base to the south-western provinces of Yunnan and Kwangsi, close to the frontier of French Indochina, believing that to be their most secure area with access to the outside world. But the new Vichy regime of Marshal Pétain began to bow to Japanese demands in July, and agreed to accept a Japanese military mission in Hanoi. The Nationalist supply route through Indochina was cut.
The advance of the Japanese 11th Army in that summer of 1940 up the Yangtze valley split the Nationalist armies and caused huge losses. On 12 June, the fall of the major river port of Ichang represented a terrible blow.
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