Interesting info Western Europe 1939-1942

" During a war game at 12th Army ( Generaloberst List ) on 14 February 1940, which was attended by Halder, differences arose over the crossing of the Meuse River. Guderian wrote that " matters became even more muddled, when it turned out that the Generaloberst von Rundstedt had no clear idea of the capacity of tanks and advocated a careful solution. Now Manstein was missed." Conceivably Manstein was missed during the attack, since Rundstedt showed himself incapable if understanding and promoting Manstein´s ideas..."

From "Field Marshal von Manstein, a portrait" by Marcel Stein

 

I guess this photo is from the 1940 Hitler´s visit to Paris, possibly returning to Germany as he seems to be in no hurry to get into a car and Paris Center early in the morning...

 

Some photos from "Pionierbataillon 30" Lübeck in the west

 

Not sure but I think these photos are from the Western front...well, not sure of the last one ( check the trees ) but these came in the same group of photos.

 

Bought the Pionerbataillon Lübeck photo album and some more photos here:

 

" On 10 May alone, to establish air superiority on the first day of the operation, the Luftwaffe sacrificed no less than 347 aircraft, including virtually all of the transports used in the air landing operations in Holland and Belgium. By the end of May, 30% of the aircraft with which the Luftwaffe started the campaign were written off,another 13% had been seriously damaged."

Wages of destruction by Tooze

 

Great photos!

 

Kai that was a lot of aircraft losses... Interesting information as always!

 

Another golden oldie...

From Julian Jackson´s Fall of France (2003)

In the first stage from 10th May to 3rd June 1940 German losses : casualty rate 2,500 per day.

The second phase: 4th June to 18 June, when you´d expect the French troops to have been entirely demoralized, the casualty rate rose almost up to 5,000 per day for Germans!

Soe military reasons are found:

Weygand´s combative style initially had a galvanizin geffect effect after the torpid and distant leadership of Gamelin.

Second, soldiers who had experienced German air attacks in early May had become partially inured to them. at least to the shrieking of the Stukas.

Third, the High Command had altered its tactics. Abandoning the orthodoxy of the continuous front, Weygand adopted the "chessboard" defence system made up of Hedgehogs, points of resistance centred on a natural obstacle like a wood or a village, and protected by all round by artillery. The gunners were now instructed to fire at tanks on sight, like a revolver, rather than, as French doctrine previously prescribed, being employed only for concentrated fire under centralized control. This gave greater flexibility to the defence.

 

Ouvrage Four-à-Chaux

Fort that faced the German frontier as part of the Fortified Sector of the Vosges.

On 19 June 1940, the German 215th Infantry Division attacked in the area immediately to the west of Lembach, between the river Schwartzbach and Lembach. Later in the day, Four-à-Chaux and other ouvrages were bombed by Stukas with no significant effect. Four-à-Chaux's 135mm and 75mm gun turrets fired on the Germans throughout the day. The next day an attack was repelled with artillery support from Hochwald. Four-à-Chaux was heavily bombarded from the air and from German artillery during the period. The German advance continued into the Vosges region, but did not directly attack Four-à-Chaux with infantry. Four-à-Chaux formally surrendered on 1 July 1940.


Ouvrage Four-à-Chaux - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Some photos...

Channel area...mostly...











French POW

 

Nice photo Sevilla on the back...



Boys in the bunker...

 

Göring visiting the front 1940 from a Lufwaffe album photos.

 

By the time of the Munich crisis in 1938 a plan for emergency broadcasting had been evolved, and by the beginning of September 1939 equipment for implementing the plan was ready. Low-powered transmitters were dotted all over the country and a number of "portable" transmitters were mounted on lorries. During an air raid alert instructions would go out to the fixed transmitters- the pre-war ones that the Luftwaffe had pinpointed on their maps of Britain- either to switch off altogether or to reduce power, and broadcasting would then continue on various combinations of the new and old transmitters. Reception on the ground would hardly be affected, but aircraft homing would be impossible. Throughout the war this system operated effectively, and the BBC never helped the Luftwaffe home on to their targets.

From The last ditch by David Lampe

 

One section, "Phantom reconnaissance", had gone to war. During the retreat across France 1940 the men of Phantom reconnaissance had travelled the other way, reporting the precise positions of German units to the commanders of the retreating British forces.

The last ditch by David Lampe

 

Bletchley Park : The Machines


The Lorenz was an even more complex cipher machine than Enigma. Made by the Lorenz company, it was used exclusively for the most important messages passed between the German Army Field marshals and their Central High Command in Berlin. Its size meant that it was not a portable device like Enigma. Bletchley Park code breakers called the machine ‘Tunny’ and the coded messages ‘Fish’.

The great Cryptanalyst, John Tiltman broke the first Fish messages at Bletchley in 1941 using hand-methods that relied on statistical analysis, but by 1944 the Germans had introduced complications which made it virtually impossible to break Tunny by hand alone. Dr Max Newman and his team in the ‘Newmanry’ were assigned the task of building machines to break Tunny.

 

When the last of the 368,000 men had escaped from France , Britain could muster a mere 27 divisions to defend the entire country against the invasion. Some 840 AT had been left behind in France, so that now only 167 of these weapons were available. Half again as many field-guns had been left behind in France as there were now in all the arsenals in Britain. The 27 home defence divisions were so badly off for weapons that even the Crimean War field pieces of French manufacture that had recently been sent to the Finns, in a moment of what had not then seemed unbridled genorisity, would now have beeen very useful. Museums all over Britain were being ransacked for serviceable weapons, all among those ordered back into service were 100-year-old Howitzers.

By David Lampe the Last Ditch

 

So few military vehicles had been brought home from France ( Dunkirk ) that the few mobile defence units that could be raised in the summer of 1940 had to rely almost entirely on hired civilian motor coaches for their mobility. Eight hours´ notice was needed just to get these units on the road-more time than the first wave of Hitler´s armada would have taken to cross the English channel and unload its troops. These defence units would then have crept across the country very slowly, impeded by the absence of signposts which Field-Marshal Ironside, at that time the Commander-in-chief of Home Forces, had ordered to be taken down, and by the blackout. Any military convoys not well supplied with maps would almost certainly have got hopelessly lost, for the public were sternly cautioned that summer to give directions to no one. Ingenious military drivers who had to get around the country did manage to find their way, by reading the local authorities´ names on manhole covers or the addresses which were still posted up in most telephone kiosks.

By David Lampe the Last Ditch

 

Most Britons had never heard of Dr Franz Albert Six, but had the Germans occupied Britain, his name undoubtedly have become an English obscenity. For this man- short and narrow-shouldered and completely bold, with bat-wing ears, and an angry squint accentuated by pebble spectacles-althtugh only thirty-one years old in 1940, had been chosen to head the Gestapo in Britain.

The last ditch by David Lampe