Hitler attacks France sooner

We can estimate. If Army Group A went through central Belgium instead of through Luxembourg and the Belgian Ardennes, and the other Army Groups followed the historical pattern, and all three were stopped at the lines you mention, then there's a fair bit we can say about how many divisions would be where. Please note that since the Netherlands could never resist the German onslaught without support from the British and French (which was not going to come), the country would fall and Army Group B with 22 divisions would occupy a very narrow piece of frontline indeed, west of Army Group A, after wheeling south.

I can't do the estimates very well myself because I can't picture the plan through Central Belgium, and I don't hae Army Group A's OOB. Anyone?

Why not? Rommel was never invincible, you know. He commanded only one Panzer division out of ten in the West at that moment, and he was required to follow orders just like every other field commander.

The problem is however that I don't know much about the state of the German armies in the west during the winter of 1939-1940, about which units were ready and at what stage of preparation the Allies were. Was the BEF in Belgium already by that time?

 

The Wehrmacht was in pretty bad state at that time.

2/3 of all division had run out of ammo, the rest had only ammo for 14 days of fighting. Just one third of small arms and artillery ammo was available. The Air Force lacked 65% of the 250 kg bombs and would have run out of ammo after 14 days, too.

50% of all vehicles had to be repaired, these repairs lasted until spring 1940.

From October 39 to May 40 the number of tanks increased:
Pz.III: 151 – 785
Pz.IV: 143 – 290
Pz.35/38: 247 – 381


The state of the soldiers was as bad as the state of the equipment:
The Army had 4,5 Million men.

1,1 million were active(??) soldiers
650.000 were fully trained reservists
800,000 were untrained
1,2 million were veterans from WW1

The inexperience of the officer corps was so severe, a Training Division was formed and 300 officers were given a three to four week crash course in modern warfare. The men trained crossing rivers and attacking bunkers in the meantime.
For comparison, France mobilized 6,1 million men in 39.

This helped, but in May 1940 25% of the german soldiers were older than 40, 50% had just a few weeks of training. Just 50% of all divisions were fully combat ready. This included 10 Armoured, 6 Motorized and 61 Infantry Divisions. 29 Inf. Div. were partially combat ready, 28 were ready for defence only, 9 were partially ready for defence only and 9 could only be used for securing rear areas.


Even in May 1940 the Allies had more and better men and equipment and a german attack in 1939 through Belgium would have definitely ended with a disaster. Not even allied blundering could have compensated for the gigantic shortcomings the Wehrmacht had at that time.

 

Why not? Rommel was never invincible, you know. He commanded only one Panzer division out of ten in the West at that moment, and he was required to follow orders just like every other field commander.

rommel 7th panzer division was also know as the ghost division. rommel pushed on and on, went of his path more than once, did things his way. this resulted that the french had no idea at all of were that division was and they were always amaized were it was because rommel was as fast as lightning and appeared on places nobody thought he would be able to get there.
Rommel could drive the french high command insane and force them to sent a lot of troops in the area were he was operation in order to stop him.

 

What if Rommel had faced Charles De Gaulle and his tanks? De Gaulle would have been more then a match for Rommel.

It is not given that Rommel would have beaten De Gaulle in a head on clash between their tank forces.

Another thing is what if Rommel had come face to face with General Koenig?

In North Africa Koenig held Rommel's Afrika Corps at bay for weeks untill his men ran out of ammo and the he was ordered to disengage from combat.

So Rommel defeating whoever he faces is not a given fact if Hitler sent everyone through Belgium, especially if you remember that historically Gamelin's biggest mistake was sending the best of the french army into Belgium, which left the Ardennes vulnerable.

 

bought me a book about the blitzkrieg a couple days ago and there it was. Hitler was planning the attack on the west to be a couple months after the attack on poland. the plan was a copy of the Von Schlieffen plan dated from 1914. this plan was called "fall geld" (plan yellow). armygroup B (the one who attacked holland)would consider 45 divisions and have the most panzerdivisions. armygroup A (the one through the ardennes) would have 23 division, attack trough the ardennes. it had to drew troops away from armygroup B and force the french to look on two fronts.

Von Manstein however sended a couple of memo's with some chanches. the OKW however sended him to stettin (a town in the east) to get ride of him. he met hitler their, proposed his chanches to the plan and the rest is history. armygroup B should become the smallest group with about 25 divisions (and only one panzer divisionà) to draw the allies into belgium. amrygroup A would consider of about 45 division (nine were panzers)they would break through the ardennes, destroy the weak french 2 and 9 army and race to the coast. this plan was called "sickle cut" (after the shape of the path of armygroup A)

 

In the actual operation AFAIK Army Group B had 22 divisions of which 3 were armoured, whereas Army Group A had 44 divisions (7 armoured). The smallest Army Group was C with only 17 divisions, infantry only.

 

didn't had the exact numbers so i made a small guess