History Forum / War History / World War II / July 2009

von Mellenthin didn't fight in key 1940 battles, and his accounts have
largely been debunked. Only those about the desert war stand up to
scrutiny IIRC.

He is demonstrably lying in his accounts of the eastern front, and his
assessment of the western situation relies on "some far removed Hitler
toady on the high command" in the first place. Why is a toady better
when quoted by someone else?

Actually, German defenses in the west and Allied capabilities to
breach them have been discussed in this group before. The material
about German assets is drawn from German archives. You may want to
search the group's archives.

Germany had 42 divisions in the west, over good defensive terrain. The
French had some 60 divisions in all of France at the time
(mobilizing), the British had none. A 3-2 ratio for an attack in
difficult terrain isn't good. The Luftwaffe would have air superiority
as well, despite what it had sent to Poland.

Are these valid reasons?

This is from a post I wrote here a few years ago, you can find more if
you look for the relevant threads.

"I looked at the French plans and the one shred of hope is that no
hasty offensive is being envisioned against the Siegfried Line" (The
Ironside Diaries p.78 - this is not an exact quote, but retranslated
from notes I took a long time ago)

"Without any willingness of Belgium to participate in such an
operation, any offensive would have had to be launched at precisely
that portion of the German border best covered by the defenses of the
Westwall (...). there was perhaps some truth to the view that, if the
French army did move after it had completed mobilization, there would
in any case not have been time for its slow advance to make itself
felt before the bulk of the German army could be returned to the
Western Front from its
victory in Poland." Weinberg, "A World At Arms"

"A number of commentators have suggested that a significant
opportunity existed in September 1939 for an Allied strategid
offensive in the West while operations in the East occupied the bulk
of the German army. Unfortunately, two major factors worked against
such a possibility. The first and most obvious was the problem of
Belgian neutrality. (...) Moreover the French army possessed neither
the training, doctrine, nor leadership for a major offensive through
Belgium into the Rhineland. (...) Complicating French strategy in
September 1939 was the fact that both in terms of forces available and
fortifications, German western defenses had undergone a significant
improvement from the previous year. (...) Given the area that the
[German] First Army had to defend, its assigned strength was
sufficient to prevent the French from breaking into the Rhineland
while the German army was crushing Poland in the east". Williamson
Murray, "The Strategy of the 'Phoney War': A Re-evaluation", this is
an article in the February 1981 issue of "Military Affairs". There are
a few paragraphs about that topic, which go into more detail.

Let's start with Churchill. From Vol 1, chapter 26 "The Front in
France", pp.428-429 of my Mariner Books edition, I find the following:

"Since the case of an advance through Belgium without Belgian consent
was excluded on grounds of international morality, there only remained
an advance from the common Franco-German frontier. An attack due
eastwards across the Rhine, north and south of Strasbourg, opened
mainly into the Black Forest, which, like the Ardennes, was at that
time regarded as bad ground for offensive operations. There was
however the question of an advance from the front Strasbourg-Metz
north-eastward into the Palatinate. Such an advance, with its right on
the Rhine, might gain the control of that river as far north as
Coblenz or Cologne. This led into good fighting country; and these
possibilities, with many variants, had been a part of the war-games in
the Staff Colleges of Western Europe for a good many years. In this
sector however the Siegfried Line, with its well-built concrete
pillboxes mutually supporting one another and organised in depth with
masses of wire, was in September 1939 already formidable. The earliest
date at which the French could have mounted a big attack was perhaps
at the end of the third week of September. But by that time the Polish
campaign had ended. By mid-October the Germans had seventy divisions
on the Western Front. The fleeting French numerical superiority in the
West was passing. A French offensive from their eastern frontier would
have denuded their far more vital northern front. Even if an initial
success had been gained by the French armies at the outset, within a
month they would have had extreme difficulty in maintaining their
conquests in the east, and would have been exposed to the whole force
of the German counter-stroke to the north.

This is the answer to the question 'Why remain passive till Poland was
destroyed?'. But this battle had been lost some years before."

Now to Liddell Hart.

In "The German Generals Talks" (chapter "How Hitler beat France - and
saved Britain " p.107 of my edition), I find the following reference
to the Phoney War though not specifically to September 1939: "In that
sense [the American derision of Allied inactivity] was hardly just,
since the Allies lacked the equipment needed to take the offensive -
as later events showed".

In "History of the Second World War", chapter 2, pp.18-20 of my
edition (I'm translating it back into English so it may not match the
original verbatim):

"Could Poland have resisted for longer ? Could France and Great-
Britain have done more to alleviate German pressure upon Poland ? In
the light of the armed force numbers, as we now know them, the answer
to both these questions would at first sight seem to be positive. In
*numbers*, Poland had sufficient strength to stop the German forces or
at least to significantly delay their advance. Similarly, on the face
of the raw figures it appears that the French should have defeated
those German forces remaining in the West. [I'm editing out the whole
section about the numbers, which figures that are grossly exaggerated
for the French, only slightly less so for the Poles, misleadingly
presented for the British, and wrong for the Germans] But the question
of knowing if Poland could have resisted and if France could have more
effectively helped her takes a far different turn upon closer
examination, by taking into account the foreseeable handicaps and the
new combat technique that was first implemented in 1939. From this
modern point of view, it seemed impossible, even before the beginning
of the conflict, to change the course of events".

Since Liddell Hart is considered a guru of military history, I can't
resist posting some of what he writes about Poland: "In the case of
the Poles, their military principles were archaic, as well as, in a
large measure, the way their forces were organized. (...) In addition,
the Polish leaders still placed their trust in the value of a great
mass of mounted cavalry and they maintained a pathetic faith in the
possibility of executing cavalry charges. In that regard, it could
without be stated
without risk that their ideas were over 80 years backward, since the
futility of cavalry charges had already been demonstrated during the
American Civil War".

But on to chapter 3, "The Crushing of Poland". The last section of
that chapter reads thus:
"For their part, the French troops had contented themselves with
drawing a small salient in the western German front. This seemed to
be, and actually was, but a weak effort to alleviate the pressure
levelled against their ally. Given the weakness of the German troops
and defenses, it was natural to form the impression that more could
have been done. But in that case, too, the conclusion suggested by a
comparison of the troop strengths doesn't resist a more serious
analysis." He goes on to blame two factors:
1. geography: the French had to attack a narrow sector where the
Germans had concentrated their defenses and liberally sown with mines,
2. a "perfectly archaic" mobilization system which made the French
unable to start their offensive until around September 17th by which
time "the fall of Poland was so obvious". Essentially, the French are
blamed for fielding a massed conscript army instead of a smaller, hard-
hitting professional mechanized force.

So Liddell Hart blames the Poles and the French for scoring very low
on the Liddell Hart index of blitzkrieg. He doesn't blame the French
for their idleness - he says that given their wrong choice of an army
there wasn't anything else they could do - and he definitely doesn't
claim that an Allied offensive in September 1939 could have had
decisive effects since in fact he says the very opposite.