Stalin полностью

This brilliant plan of battle had been serendipitous. The first three versions of the German battle plan had called for an attack via the north, into the teeth of the French deployments, but inclement weather had compelled a delay in Hitler’s winter attack scheme, during which two careless German staff officers were shot down over France carrying a portfolio with staff maps. The battle plan could not remain the same. In the meantime, a German intelligence officer playing the part of the French and British commanders in war games had demonstrated to the German general staff that the enemy would position its top forces in Belgium, but only weakly defend the Ardennes, and would be slow to shift forces to counter a German attack there. The late-in-the-day fourth and final battle plan, under Erich von Manstein (b. 1887), a staff officer, hit upon the feint (by 29 divisions through northern Belgium and the Netherlands) and the massive “sickle cut” (by 46 crack divisions through the Ardennes).³² The plan was beyond audacious, and a nervous high command threw everything into the initial assault, without any reserve panzer divisions, on a very narrow front, in vulnerable columns 250 miles in length, with flammable fuel trucks in front. Yet the much-feared Western bombing raids and counterattacks against exposed German flanks did not materialize until it was too late.

Even then, decisive victory had come only after the German tank specialist Heinz Guderian ignored his orders and, exploiting his Ardennes breakthrough, suddenly raced for the Channel—a bold act of insubordination.³³ He had punched through to the Channel by May 20, a mere ten days into the war (admittedly, over high-quality French roads outside the Ardennes).³⁴ But neither he nor Hitler had expected this armored blitz to seal the fate of France (Guderian later called it “a miracle”). After all, once caught out by surprise, no foe remains passive. But even after being shown aerial photographs of German traffic jams in the Ardennes woods, the French brass did not manage to redeploy their formidable war machine to seize back the initiative, being, in effect, defeated psychologically.³⁵ Tactical military failures were compounded by administrative and political ones. Maxime Weygand, an ultrarightist, replaced the initial top French commander, Maurice Gamelin, and undercut the Third Republic’s civilian leadership; the lion of the Great War, the eighty-four-year-old Marshal Philippe Pétain, had been brought into government, and immediately plotted against it, too. France’s political class folded, opening the way for hard rightists to pursue their long-sought authoritarian regime in rump Vichy. Despite German air superiority, therefore, the defeat of France’s Third Republic was contingent—derived from egregious generalship, political treachery, and German audacity.³⁶

The myth of a planned blitzkrieg—annihilation of the enemy’s fighting capacity in a lightning strike—was born. The improvisation notwithstanding, armored warfare had succeeded spectacularly.³⁷ The French lost 124,000 killed and 200,000 wounded, while 1.5 million Western troops were taken prisoner; German casualties were fewer than 50,000 dead and wounded. (Mussolini had waited until Paris fell to attack southern France; Italy suffered some 4,000 casualties in direct fighting, the French 104.) The Wehrmacht became intoxicated by its swift victory, and bound ever more tightly to Hitler.³⁸ The Führer, unlike Stalin, had embraced integrated, independently operating armor and panzer divisions, overriding the conservatism of the majority of German generals and standing by Guderian, who had led a minority in the push for the novel formations.³⁹

More broadly, Hitler’s foreign policy recklessness had once again resulted in exhilarating success. It had taken Stalin 105 days to subdue the Finnish nation; it had taken Hitler less than half that time to subdue a nation ten times the size. “Stalin was very quick-tempered and irritable at that time,” recalled Khrushchev. “I had rarely seen him like that. At meetings he hardly ever sat down in his chair but constantly paced. Now he literally ran around the room and cursed like a longshoreman. He cursed the French and he cursed the British, asking how they could have let Hitler smash them like that.”⁴⁰