Pod Insights The Rest Is History 621. The Nazis at War: Blitzkrieg (Part 2) About this episode When Hitler’s eye fell on Norway and Denmark, how did he and the Nazis enact their terrible plan of conquest? How did the Allies respond to this western campaign? And, how did the French fare against the furious German attack…?
Join Dominic and Tom as they discuss the next bombastic phase of the Nazis at war.
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Transcript 12,001 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:03 Dominic Sandbrook? This episode is brought to you by the Gates Foundation. We have touched on the fall of the Roman Empire a few times on this show, haven't we? But what our listeners may not know is that among the causes that historians talk about, it's not just barbarian invasions. There's also talk of a disease which people call Roman fever, which I believe we know now as malaria.
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2:49 Tom Holland? This episode is sponsored by Hive.
2:52 Dominic Sandbrook? History has always been a story of power. Who seeks it? Who seizes it? And how easily it can all slip away?
3:00 Tom Holland? The Caesar's, the Caliph's, the Sars. They conquered vast swathes of the world. They proclaimed themselves the favourites of the gods. And yet their empires crumbled away. It is easier to conquer than it is to control.
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4:17 Speaker 02 I speak to you for the first time as Prime Minister, in a solemn hour for the life of our country, of our empire, of our allies, and above all, of the cause of freedom. A tremendous battle is raging in France and Flanders. The Germans, by a remarkable combination of air bombing and heavily armored tanks, have broken through the French defenses north of the Maginot Line. If this is one of the most awe-striking periods in the long history of France and Britain, it is also beyond doubt the most sublime.
5:02 Speaker 02 Side by side, unaided, except by their kith and kin in the great dominions, and by the wide empires which rest beneath their shield.
5:15 Speaker 02 Side by side, the British and French peoples have advanced to rescue not only Europe but mankind from the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny which has ever darkened and stained the pages of history.
5:34 Speaker 02 Behind them, behind us,
5:39 Speaker 02 behind the armies and fleets of Britain and France,
5:44 Speaker 02 gather a group of shattered states and bludgeoned races: the Czechs, the Poles, the Norwegians, the Danes, the Dutch, the Belgians, upon all of whom the long night of barbarism will descend, unbroken even by a star of hope, unless we conquer, as conquer we must. As conquer, we shall.
6:17 Tom Holland? So that Dominic, it will stun you to learn, was a Winston Churchill. And it was his first radio address as British Prime Minister, delivered on the 19th of May 1940. And when he gave that address, he had been Prime Minister for only nine days.
6:33 Speaker 02 But never in history
6:36 Tom Holland? had anybody taken office against quite such a bleak backdrop. So we ended our previous episode with Hitler repairing his Great Attack in the West, an attack that huge numbers of people in the German High Command thought was a disastrous policy. But actually, in the short term, Hitler had been proved right because the blow fell on the Western armies on the 10th of May, the very day that Churchill had become Prime Minister. And what happens next is one of the great duels, one of the great dramas, not just in European, but all world history.
7:15 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. So this week, we're exploring the great turning point in the story of the Nazis, the events of 1940. But let's just remind ourselves where we ended last time. So Hitler in late 1939 crushed Poland, divided it with Stalin. He has escaped a possible coup by his own generals. He's also escaped a bomb attack in the Munich Beer Hall. And he has told his High Command to prepare an attack on France and England, as he calls it, at the earliest and most favorable moment. And that attack has been much postponed and timetabled for the spring of 1940. And we'll be coming to that attack and to Churchill's emergence as Britain's savior later in this episode.
7:57 Dominic Sandbrook? But first, somewhere we haven't discussed at all in the whole of this series, On the Third Reich, going back four seasons, and that is the North. And the irony being that the Nazis were so obsessed with their northern inheritance and their kind of their Nordic roots and Norse myths, but they never gave much thought to Scandinavia, really.
8:17 Tom Holland? But we mentioned the iron ore in Sweden, which I'm very excited about.
8:21 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, and that will come.
8:22 Tom Holland? But also you touched on Finland, didn't you? The fact that the Soviets were bogged down in the snows of that distant northern land.
8:31 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, it's like, listen to Winston Churchill.
8:34 Tom Holland? I know, I'm kind of infected by it.
8:36 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
8:36 Speaker 02 The brave people of Finland.
8:39 Dominic Sandbrook? So Finland, formerly the Grand Duchy of Finland, had been part of the Russian Empire, three and a half million people. And Stalin had attacked us at the end of November 1939 because he'd given an ultimatum to the Finns to hand over a chunk of Karelia, the bit of Finland that is just above Leningrad, formerly St Petersburg. The Finns, to his great surprise, said no. Stalin sent in the Red Army. But the Red Army was useless at this stage because Stalin had killed all their generals as part of the great terror. He had purged them. And they were completely unprepared. We think of the Russians as supremely well-equipped to fight in the winter, but they were very unprepared compared with the Finns, who were wearing these kind of white camouflage uniforms and were on skis and were throwing Molotov cocktails at them.
9:22 Dominic Sandbrook? So that this is the war that gives us the Molotov cocktail. And basically, you know, Finland is clearly never going to completely win the war because it's tiny compared with the Soviet Union. Basically, the two sides had to agree a compromise. And in March 1940, the Finns handed over a chunk of Karelia, but Stalin then dropped his previous plan of basically turning Finland into a semi-absorbed client state, and he lets them keep their independence. And the result of this war, the Winter War, is that the Red Army have lost about 125,000 men killed, and another 300,000 have been incapacitated by wounds, or they've basically got disease, or they've got frostbites.
10:04 Tom Holland? And Hitler's been watching this, right?
10:05 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes.
10:06 Tom Holland? And so he thinks, ah, this demonstrates that the Soviet Army is rubbish, and therefore it will be easy for us to conquer it.
10:18 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. It's really important, actually, in Hitler's thinking, this so-called Winter War between Finland and the USSR, because Hitler, as he says to his top brass, "We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure of the Soviet Union will come crashing down." And this is what everybody believes, having watched what happened in Finland. Now, Finland is therefore preserved as a buffer in the north between Scandinavia and the Soviet Union. And so now Hitler can work on a plan to bring Scandinavia into his empire. And the key... Thing here, I know something that really excites you is iron ore.
10:54 Tom Holland? There's nothing I enjoy more than a discussion about iron ore. Can I give you some stats?
10:58 Dominic Sandbrook? I'd love a iron ore statistic.
11:00 Tom Holland? So Dominic.
11:01 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
11:01 Tom Holland? And listeners, here is some exciting iron ore stats and they come from The War in the West by my brother James Holland. By December 1939, British intelligence deduced that of the 22 million tonnes of iron ore imported in 1938, the equivalent of nine and a half million tonnes of that supply had come from sources now close to it. And so that is obviously a massive crisis for the Nazi war effort because without iron ore, they can't build their planes and guns and all that kind of stuff. And so that puts an absolute premium on the one remaining guaranteed source of iron ore, and that is Sweden. So you can see why this is a huge kind of determinant in Nazi war planning.
11:43 Dominic Sandbrook? Massive. It's absolutely massive.
11:44 Tom Holland? Isn't that interesting? I think that's interesting.
11:46 Dominic Sandbrook? It's fascinating. I think it's probably the most fascinating fact we've ever heard in the rest of history. So this iron ore is produced by mines in the north of Sweden. It comes out of Sweden through one port in particular, which is Narvik across the border in northern Norway.
12:03 Tom Holland? Which I think is a great name, Narvik.
12:05 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, I've been to Narvik actually.
12:07 Tom Holland? Have you?
12:07 Dominic Sandbrook? Kind of nondescript.
12:08 Tom Holland? But a good name.
12:09 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, but a good name. So Narvik is also ice free in winter, so you can bring iron ore all year round. Now, as soon as the war broke out in September 1939, Grand Admiral Raeder of the Kriegsmarine, which is the navy, went to Hitler and said, look, we have to guarantee this flow of iron ore from northern Sweden. In other words, we have to establish ourselves in Norway, which is neutral. Because if we don't, the Allies will. And if they get there first, we are in real trouble. And Raeder said to Hitler. This business of the winter war in Finland is a real issue because the Allies, I think, will use that as a pretext. They will send troops to help Finland against Stalin,
12:55 Dominic Sandbrook? and on the way, they will occupy Norway and northern Sweden.
13:00 Tom Holland? And the thing is, he's right, isn't he? Because actually, the Allies do have exactly such a plan.
13:05 Dominic Sandbrook? They do, and this may surprise a lot of listeners. The Allies absolutely had such a plan. Churchill, now running the Admiralty, the navy in Britain, is especially keen on it. So, under his aegis, Britain and France draw up a plan to invade Denmark and Norway. Basically, if you're invading Norway, you have to take Denmark as well because it's right next door. They would have landed troops at Narvik, they would have seized the Swedish iron mines, and then would have then pushed troops further on into Finland to help the Finns against Stalin, who at this point, they kind of perceive as Hitler's ally, his partner in crime. Now, they ended up scrapping this plan, basically in part because the Norwegians and the Swedes got wind of it.
13:48 Dominic Sandbrook? And they said, "What? You're planning to occupy us."
13:51 Tom Holland? Yeah, that's not good, is it?
13:52 Dominic Sandbrook? "That's outrageous." But the threat is still there. So, on the 20th of February, Hitler summoned one of his generals who was called Paul von Falconhorst, and said, "I want you to come up with a plan to invade Norway and Denmark." And this is a very good indication of the mad way that Hitler does business.
14:09 Tom Holland? It's so funny.
14:10 Dominic Sandbrook? So, he calls to this guy Falconhorst and says, "And by the way, I need this plan. You've got until 5 o'clock this afternoon." I don't know what time it is, is it lunchtime or something?
14:20 Tom Holland? Yeah, you've got kind of three hours.
14:21 Dominic Sandbrook? And also, "You can't tell anyone about it and you can't get any help."
14:25 Tom Holland? So, he goes to a bookshop, doesn't he, and gets a Biderka, a guide
14:28 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
14:29 Tom Holland? to Scandinavia.
14:30 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, and he books himself into a hotel, Falconhorst, with this guidebook. And sort of in desperation, he hasn't even got any maps or anything, he's just got a guidebook, desperately scribbling, I don't know, in hotel notepaper or something. The plan to invade Norway and Denmark. Hitler is convinced this will be very easy. And by the end of March, Grand Admiral Raed has said, "Come on, we need to hurry up." They set the date for the 9th of April. Now, in the meantime, they obviously need a reason to go in and ideally they will have a local collaborator. And Raeder, the admiral, says to Hitler, "Look, I've got the perfect person. There's this bloke from Norway. He runs a fascist party called the Nationale Samling, I think, I don't know how my Norwegian
15:14 Dominic Sandbrook? pronunciation is. And this bloke's name is Vidkun Quisling. And Quisling, you'll be delighted to hear this, Tom, he's the son of a Lutheran pastor. Surely everybody in Norway is the son of a Lutheran pastor.
15:25 Tom Holland? At least 30%, I would guess.
15:27 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. He'd got the highest marks in the history of the Norwegian Military Academy, this bloke Quisling, and he'd worked very closely with the explorer-turned-refugee campaigner, Fritjof Nansen. Anyway, there's only about 10 people in Norway, so if you've got those high marks in the academy, you can thrive in Norwegian politics. So Quisling was Defence Minister very briefly. Then in the 1930s, he sort of got really into Nordic nationalism and he formed his own Nazi-style party and he called himself the Fuhrer of this party, spelt in an entertaining Norwegian way.
16:02 Tom Holland? Yeah, so it's an O with a dash through it.
16:04 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. But he never did well, they were very poor. They never got more than 2.5% of the vote.
16:10 Tom Holland? So that's what, about six people voting for him?
16:12 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. They never managed to elect a single Norwegian MP. Anyway, Raeder brings him to Hitler and introduces him to Hitler, this guy Quisling, and Hitler thinks, "He's a bit useless." However, he's the only person they've got, so they decide to back him anyway. And Quisling does turn out to be genuinely useful to the Germans because he was Defence Minister, so he's able to give them details of all Norway's defences.
16:40 Tom Holland? So overt treason.
16:42 Dominic Sandbrook? Completely. I mean, he really is a Quisling, and of course, that's where the name comes from.
16:45 Tom Holland? Yeah.
16:46 Dominic Sandbrook? Now, in the meantime, the Allies, finally, unbelievable, they've actually got their act together and decided to do something. So the French have finally got rid of their dithering prime minister, who was Deladier, a socialist, and they've replaced him with somebody from the other end of the political spectrum, the centre-right Paul Reynaud. And Reynaud is a very clever man, kind of, you know, very impressive in many ways. He's extremely short, actually. He's five foot three. So that's his defining characteristic. And he, Deladier, people used to say of Deladier, he made no decisions at all, but Reynaud makes a decision every five minutes. And a lot of them are mad. So he's very like Churchill.
17:27 Tom Holland? He loves kind of mad invasions of remote distant places. That's his vibe, isn't it? He loves all that.
17:33 Dominic Sandbrook? Right. A wheeze. Yeah. So he's very keen on the idea of landing in Norway, and he also wanted to attack Soviet oilfields in Baku in Azerbaijan.
17:43 Tom Holland? I mean, that seems mad.
17:44 Dominic Sandbrook? Indeed. Anyway, after a lot of dithering about this, the French and the British finally agree they will intervene in Norway. They will mine the waters around Narvik. That's the crucial port the Germans get their iron ore from. Now, they know that if they mine these waters, there will be a German reaction. So they say, we'll also have to send troops and occupy Norway's western port. So that's Narvik, Stavanger, Bergen, places like that.
18:10 Tom Holland? And how do the Norwegians feel about this?
18:12 Dominic Sandbrook? Gutted, I think.
18:13 Tom Holland? Are they told? Or are they just going to turn up and occupy them?
18:15 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, as we shall see, the Norwegians, when the war breaks out, they don't know who started it, the Allies or the Germans. So that tells its own story, really.
18:22 Tom Holland? Right.
18:22 Dominic Sandbrook? So the beginning of April, Churchill, who is really responsible for all this, and basically ought to carry the can when it goes horribly wrong.
18:30 Tom Holland? I mean, it's so Gallipoli, isn't it?
18:31 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. I mean, he never learns, really, does he? He decides he'll kick it off. He sends four destroyers to lay these mines.
18:39 Tom Holland? But I mean, I guess the reason that he doesn't end up carrying the can is because Chamberlain, on the 3rd of April, he addresses the Conservative National Union, and he makes a kind of fateful boast, doesn't he? Whatever reason Hitler had for not making an immediate endeavour to overwhelm us, one thing is certain, he has missed the bus. And that phrase, Hitler has missed the bus, will return to haunt Chamberlain.
19:00 Dominic Sandbrook? Indeed. Because actually, while the Allies have been messing around and dithering with their mad ideas. Hitler has made up his own mind and he has already sent the German fleet to begin the operation against Norway. Now, the British, this speaks volumes about the quality of Britain's decision-making at this point. The British have intelligence to say the Germans are put to sea, but they say, yeah, they're probably not going to Norway. I imagine they're going to try and break through into the Atlantic. So, you know, let's not over-stress about that. Early on the 8th of April, the British start to lay their mines outside Narvik, but the Germans are approaching all the time. My brother's brilliant on this and he writes, "It was incredible that after so much Allied vacillation over Norway, both sides should have been beginning their offensives at the
19:43 Dominic Sandbrook? same moment and both be ignorant of the other's plans." I mean, that is kind of mad, isn't it? It's crazy. So midnight on the 8th, the Norwegians realise something is up. And the Norwegian side of the story is great, actually, and I shall, I shall be referring listeners to some excellent films on this made in Norway. So about 1.30 in the morning, an aide comes in to wake the king, who is called Horken VII. And he is a very sort of tall gaunt man, if you Google him. He's actually a Dane. So they had had to pick a new king when they broke away from Sweden at the beginning of the 20th century and they'd picked this Danish bloke. He's got an absolutely first-class moustache.
20:25 Dominic Sandbrook? He's sent his son to Balliol College, Oxford, which I think reflects very well on him. Anyway, there he is in bed and his aide says, "Majesty, we're at war." And the king says, "With whom?" You know, because they don't know whether it's going to be the Germans or the Allies. Exactly the same thing happens in Iceland, doesn't it? Yeah. The British do go and occupy Iceland. Yeah. And they say, "Who is it?" And they say, "The British." And they go, "Phew, because I know the British and the Germans, I guess." It's nice that people think that way about us. I'm sure everybody in the world thinks that way about when the British turn up, don't they? That's the impression I get from the history books I read.
20:58 Dominic Sandbrook? Anyway, so there's a very comic side to the Norwegian resistance. So this is my favourite bit. Norway's commander in chief was an elderly general called General Larka. I don't think Norwegians had ever really, not since Harald Hardrada really, had they extended themselves militarily. So General Larka is told, the Germans are coming up the Oslo fjord. Ships are, you know, coming through the fog or whatever. And he says, right, call out the reserves, like, send out the letters. And someone said, what, the letters? I mean, they're not going to get here for days. We could do it all by post.
21:31 Tom Holland? Yeah, you know what the post is like in Norway.
21:34 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. Anyway, a staff officer's remonstrated with him and he said, it's fine, there's no hurry. Don't overthink this, just write them letters, they'll turn up. And then he said, I need to go back to my farm, this is my favourite detail, to get my toilet dress. He basically has to get his wash bag from his farm outside Oslo. He goes out to his farm and collects his, like, change of clothes, some underwear, you know, toothbrush, whatever. And then he calls a taxi. But because the invasion has begun, the taxi is very, very severely delayed. It takes ages for this taxi to arrive. The taxi picks him up and takes him back to Oslo to Norwegian Army Headquarters. By the time he gets there with his wash bag, the general staff have evacuated
22:19 Dominic Sandbrook? and they haven't left any information to tell him where they've gone.
22:22 Tom Holland? This isn't the spirit of Harald Hardrada, is it?
22:25 Dominic Sandbrook? So he then, he works out where they've gone. He gets a tram, a suburban tram, carrying his stuff as far as he can to the end of the line. And then he walked to the Norwegian Map Institute to see if they had a car that he could borrow to take him to meet his men. They don't have a car. So then he had to walk all the way back to the railway station. To get a train and it's hours and hours until he finally rejoins his staff.
22:54 Tom Holland? So blitzkrieg it is not.
22:55 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, do you know what? That sounds like I'm dissing the Norwegians and I'm not because they put up some pretty stout resistance. The Germans have come up the Oslo fjord in this cruiser, the Bluka, with thousands of troops. There's a whole film about this called Bluka, a Norwegian film that came out in September. You can see clips from it on YouTube. The Norwegians have this fortress called the Oscarsborg and it has two 19th century antique cannons. And basically this Bluka comes closer and closer. These guys wait at this fortress until it's really close. Then they fire with these antique cannons. They hit the Bluka's fuel store. The Bluka explodes, bursts into flames and explodes and 800 of the Germans were drowned. So it was a big win that for the Norwegians.
23:40 Dominic Sandbrook? And because of scenes like this, this gave the king, King Holken and his ministers time to get out of Oslo.
23:46 Tom Holland? They managed to smuggle out the gold reserves as well, don't they? Kind of pretty much under the noses of the Germans.
23:51 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, it's a great story. I mean, as we'll see, it makes a great film because they head to this village called Elverum, which is about 40 miles north of Oslo. And they're being pursued the whole time by German paratroopers who've been basically told, get the Norwegian government and get the king, like we'll need them. The local rifle club, the Elverum Rifle Club, put up a roadblock and basically drove back these German paratroopers. I mean, that's incredible. These blokes were like hunting rifles or whatever. These ordinary Norwegians managed to drive them back and that gave the king and his entourage time to get away. And they had a meeting and basically the king is told, the Germans want Quisling to run a puppet government and you have to approve it. And the king says, it's a very sort of stirring scene. He says to his ministers,
24:36 Dominic Sandbrook? look, there's no way I'm going to accept this. No way whatsoever. He says, if you want to accept it, fine, but I will abdicate. I will never, ever preside over a Quisling government. And then he burst into tears. And it's a very stirring scene. There's a Norwegian film of this called The King's Choice. I fell down a massive rabbit hole and ended up watching huge chunks of this film. It's really moving, actually. It's a really moving story. Now meanwhile, further south, the Germans have also invaded Denmark, which is the country that King Haugen had been born into, because he's from the Danish royal family originally. And there, the story is a bit different. And I mean that as no disrespect to the Danes, but the geography is just not in the Danes' favour.
25:18 Tom Holland? Yeah, well, also, they've got a land border with Germany, so the panzers presumably can just roll through Schleswig-Holstein.
25:25 Dominic Sandbrook? Which is exactly what they do. So they kick off at 4:15 in the morning, the panzers roll over, naval landings, paratroopers, and the Danes are completely and utterly helpless. There's a bit of fighting around the royal palace in Copenhagen, but the King of Denmark, Christian X, who is actually the Norwegian king's older brother, he can see that this is totally pointless. There's no geographical barriers. The Germans are just sort of rolling into Denmark. And by breakfast, he has ordered a ceasefire, and they signed the capitulation at 10 o'clock in the morning. That was the shortest campaign of the entire war.
26:00 Tom Holland? So that's five and three quarters hours?
26:02 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, from start to finish. Like, it's perfectly plausible that if you had a lie-in that day, you could wake up and not know that an invasion had happened and was finished.
26:10 Tom Holland? So my brother goes so far as to say, surely the fastest conquest of a country in history?
26:14 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, quite possibly. And actually, I definitely don't want to disrespect the King of Denmark, because King Christian, he didn't go into exile, as many monarchs did, because his son's wife, Crown Princess Ingrid, who is, I think, Swedish, she was nine months pregnant and she couldn't travel. So he has to stay in Copenhagen.
26:32 Tom Holland? But he behaves tremendously well, doesn't he?
26:34 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
26:35 Tom Holland? Very moving and powerful symbol of resistance.
26:38 Dominic Sandbrook? Very moving. He rides every day through Copenhagen on his horse, and the people gather and they cheer him and stuff. Everyone knows he is not keen on the Nazis and all of this. And most famously, he said to the Germans, if you make the Danish Jews wear yellow stars, then I will wear one too. And basically, all my people will wear them. I think it reflects tremendously well on him. You can see, again, you can see footage online of him riding through Copenhagen. Good for him. Brilliant. But the Norwegians can hold out much longer because of the mountains and stuff. So by contrast, that campaign lasted for two months, longer than any other German invasion campaign, except for the invasion of the Soviet Union. So fair play to the Norwegians.
27:21 Dominic Sandbrook? And they, you know, they were not a martial people, but about 40,000 of them immediately volunteered. They fought very bravely. They didn't have decent equipment, but they really acquitted themselves well. Now, we are a patriotic podcast, but unfortunately, this is not something that can be said of the British or our gallant allies, the French.
27:42 Tom Holland? Did they let themselves down?
27:43 Dominic Sandbrook? We absolutely disgraced ourselves. To quote Max Hastings in his book on the Second World War, "Our campaign was characterized by utter moral ignobility and military incompetence." So that's a shame.
27:55 Tom Holland? Oh dear.
27:55 Dominic Sandbrook? So basically, part of this is because a lot of the best troops are stationed in France. So the British government sent some territorial reserve battalions and they were absolutely useless. They didn't have maps, a lot of them, they didn't have radios, they didn't have heavy weapons. They had the wrong shoes, ironically.
28:13 Tom Holland? Oh, did they?
28:13 Dominic Sandbrook? They did.
28:14 Tom Holland? Oh, well, we like that.
28:16 Dominic Sandbrook? They get into fights with local fishermen. My favorite moment, Admiral Lord Cork, who was a very short man, wants to inspire his men to get off their ships and advance on Narvik, and they're very reluctant to do so. And he says, "I'll lead you ashore." And he gets off the ship and because he's a very short man, he falls into a snowdrift and has to be dug out by the rest of the men.
28:35 Tom Holland? So not the most glorious moment in British military history.
28:38 Dominic Sandbrook? No. So we did land in central Norway, we did capture Narvik and then recapture it. But basically Churchill is constantly coming up with schemes of various kinds, which end up being ditched. To quote Max Hastings again, "Churchill shouted loudest, but his extravagant schemes were frustrated by the lack of means to fulfill them."
28:57 Tom Holland? Do you know what's even worse about that? In his office in the Admiralty, opposite his desk, who do you think Churchill has a portrait of?
29:05 Dominic Sandbrook? Lord Nelson.
29:06 Tom Holland? It is Admiral Lord Nelson, whose record in Scandinavian conflict was a whole lot better.
29:12 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, but also Nelson was rubbish on land, to be fair. So landings in Norway were precisely the kind of thing that Nelson would have made a terrible hash of. Do you not think?
29:21 Tom Holland? Yeah, but not as big a hash as Churchill did.
29:22 Dominic Sandbrook? As Churchill made of Norway, no, I know, absolutely. And the worst thing is when the British and French decide to pull the plug and they're going to have to evacuate, they didn't have the decency to tell the Norwegians. So they were dishonest with them until the final moment.
29:33 Tom Holland? So what's it Max Hastings said? Moral ignobility.
29:37 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, moral ignobility and military incompetence. And actually, when the British finally did pull the plug and the Norwegian commander in chief, a man called Otto Ruge, when he found out, he said very bitterly, "So Norway is to share the fate of Czechoslovakia and Poland." And that's a crucial point.
29:54 Tom Holland? Yeah.
29:55 Dominic Sandbrook? You keep promising to people that you will defend them and uphold their independence. And basically, the lesson of history is that Britain and France will let you down.
30:04 Tom Holland? Yeah, they'll cut and run.
30:05 Dominic Sandbrook? They'll cut and run.
30:06 Tom Holland? So you might be better off surrendering to the Germans.
30:10 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. Now, the Germans haven't completely had it their own way, and this is important. In the Norwegian campaign, they lost more than 20 cruisers and destroyers, lost or they were badly damaged.
30:22 Tom Holland? Including the Blugha.
30:23 Dominic Sandbrook? Including the Blugha. And the Luftwaffe have lost almost 250 planes. And that will really matter later on in the Battle of Britain, when every ship and every plane counts. So that will matter. But the big picture, once again, Hitler has rolled the dice. Once again, he's won. He's got his iron ore. He's got Norway's naval bases. And he's shown his men that the British and French are basically useless and can be beaten. So, you know, it's a series of wins for him. The big consequence, of course, is political. Because... There is a general sense, I think, that has been gathering all through the phony war, first France and then in Britain, that the governments of peacetime are just not
31:07 Dominic Sandbrook? up to the challenge. So as Paul Reyno said to one of his own colleagues, Britain's government is full of old men who do not know how to take a risk.
31:15 Tom Holland? But isn't the paradox that the one guy who does love a risk is Churchill and he's just completely goofed? So actually, they would have been better not invading Norway at all.
31:25 Dominic Sandbrook? I suppose so. Either make up their minds and doing it early and doing it properly, or yeah, probably not doing it at all, I guess. And really, he more than anyone, Churchill more than anyone, deserves the blame for what went wrong in Norway. But the irony is that at the time, most people say, well, this is typical of Chamberlain. Chamberlain is cautious, he's pettifogging.
31:43 Tom Holland? And also his whole Hitler-missing-the-bus stuff.
31:45 Dominic Sandbrook? Hitler-missing-the-bus, messing around with his umbrella when he should be invading Scandinavian countries. Useless. And so, on the 7th of May, there was this famous debate in the House of Commons, the Norway debate, probably the most famous, most celebrated debate in British parliamentary history.
32:01 Tom Holland? Yeah, I'd have thought so.
32:02 Dominic Sandbrook? Got to be up there. And that evening, the 7th of May, is when Leo Amory, a Conservative MP, famously points at Chamberlain and quotes Oliver Cromwell, "In the name of God, go." And the next evening, the 8th of May, more than 100 Conservative MPs desert the government, and it's obvious that something has to change. So on the 9th, just to really simplify matters, cut a long story short, Chamberlain decides to resign. There's a question about whether the new Prime Minister will be Lord Halifax.
32:32 Tom Holland? And a very tall Foreign Secretary, isn't he?
32:35 Dominic Sandbrook? Not so warlike.
32:36 Tom Holland? Not so warlike, I think would be a good way of describing him.
32:39 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. Or Churchill, who has made a terrible haulix of Norway.
32:42 Tom Holland? But does love a war.
32:44 Dominic Sandbrook? He loves a war.
32:45 Tom Holland? And had forecast that Hitler had to be resisted.
32:48 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. And that evening, Neville Chamberlain goes to Buckingham Palace to resign, and he says to George VI, "It's Churchill. Send for Churchill."
32:59 Dominic Sandbrook? Now meanwhile, that very evening, while that is happening, on the outskirts of Berlin, a train which is called the America pulls out of a small, isolated station on the edge of the capital, and it's heading west. And this is Hitler's special armoured train.
33:16 Tom Holland? And do you know what Göring's train was called? Asia.
33:19 Dominic Sandbrook? Was it really called Asia?
33:20 Tom Holland? Yeah.
33:21 Dominic Sandbrook? Azia, I guess. Yeah, it's sort of decorated with hunting trophies.
33:24 Tom Holland? Yeah, apparently it was massively better decorated than Hitler's.
33:28 Dominic Sandbrook? You astound me, with looted art and a gigantic buffet car.
33:32 Tom Holland? Yeah, and a very luxurious toilet, I imagine.
33:37 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, and a whole wardrobe full of white suits.
33:40 Tom Holland? Exactly. Because actually Göring had a model train, he loved model trains.
33:44 Dominic Sandbrook? Like Walt Disney?
33:45 Tom Holland? Yeah.
33:46 Dominic Sandbrook? Wow!
33:47 Tom Holland? Well, I mean, not in every aspect, but on the model train enthusiasm front.
33:50 Dominic Sandbrook? Right, Craigy.
33:51 Tom Holland? Disney didn't command an air force.
33:54 Dominic Sandbrook? A beaten air force, no. Anyway, so there he is on the America, and his secretaries think they're all going to Denmark to visit the troops. And Hitler seems in tremendous form, he's very excited, clearly, and they think this is because he's going to be visiting the army in Denmark. But just after midnight, around Hannover, the train switches from the northbound to the westbound tracks, kind of quietly, it switches, and they carry on rolling through the night. And the train grinds to a halt, and dawn is breaking and they get out. There are no station signs, but actually, they have arrived near the town of Oiskirchen, which is about 30 miles from the Belgian border.
34:34 Dominic Sandbrook? And here, there are cars waiting to take them through the woods to the bunkers of the new Führer headquarters, the Feliz Nest, the rock eerie.
34:45 Tom Holland? God, he did have ludicrously named headquarters, didn't he? I mean, he couldn't be more bon villain if he tried.
34:51 Dominic Sandbrook? Very bon villain. And they gather in front of Hitler's newly-built bunker, which he's going to be sharing with his adjutant and with the head of the armed forces, Wilhelm Keitel. And far away through the woods, they can hear the telltale thump of shellfire. And Hitler looks around, and he says to them, "Gentlemen, the offensive against the Western powers has begun."
35:14 Tom Holland? And so, it begins. And it will be beginning after a break.
35:24 Dominic Sandbrook? This episode is brought to you by TikTok. We obviously love history here. It's always a treat to make a new discovery, especially in unexpected ways.
35:33 Tom Holland? Which is exactly what happens on TikTok. Like, you know coffee? You make it, add milk, drink it. Nothing more, except...
35:44 Dominic Sandbrook? Except when you hop on TikTok, you don't just learn how to make an authentic cappuccino. You can also discover videos about how in the 1700s, people would pour their coffee into saucers to let it cool before drinking it.
36:00 Tom Holland? And suddenly, you're imagining how people lived, drank, socialised. Makes you wonder what will baffle historians about us. And that's the joy of TikTok. You look for one thing and find yourself somewhere completely different.
36:14 Dominic Sandbrook? Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok.
36:18 Tom Holland? Visit tiktok.com/discovermore.
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37:06 Tom Holland? This episode is supported by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Now, history's biggest leaps started as hard questions that people didn't want asked.
37:18 Dominic Sandbrook? There's a classic example of that at the end of the 15th century. And the hard question in particular was, what is out there beyond the Atlantic Ocean to the west? And as you will know, the man who found the answer to that question was the explorer Christopher Columbus. And he realizes, or rather, everybody else realizes, that there is a vast continent out there. And it is, of course, the Americas. So you know, Anthropic knows the importance of questions. And it's why Anthropic is founded on one hard question above all. How can we ensure that the AI revolution really goes well for ordinary people? So they asked over a hundred thousand people. And what came back wasn't just fear, there was hope as well. People wanted to know, will cancer ever be cured? Can kids have a better future? It turns out that there is hope in hard questions.
38:03 Dominic Sandbrook? Ask yours at claude.ai slash rest is history and keep thinking.
38:13 Tom Holland? Hello and welcome back to the rest is history. Dominic, we ended that first half with literal bombshells. Hitler has finally launched his attack on the West. And how have we got here? Because the last time the Nazis were invading places, it was in Scandinavia.
38:28 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, as we saw last time in the last episode, Hitler's always had this very clear idea that he wants to attack the West. He wants to launch a preemptive strike. He's obsessed with a sense of urgency. He knows that his enemies have never been weaker because the Soviet Union is bogged down in Finland. The United States has got presidential elections and is very unlikely to intervene. So this is his chance. His priority is Britain. He never wanted war with Britain in 1939. The whole point of this is to get them to negotiate. So he's been thinking about this for weeks and months. Even during the Norway campaign, he had been discussing this with Goebbels. So they'd had a long talk about this on the 21st of April, 1940.
39:13 Dominic Sandbrook? And Hitler said, you know, it's a shame in many ways we're fighting the British because they are our kind of racial cousins. But, you know, we knew that we'd have to do it at some point, probably in the next five years, so maybe it's better to do it now before the British are rearmed. Goebbels wrote in his diary afterwards, "The Fuhrer would make peace today. He doesn't want at all to annihilate England nor destroy its empire. The condition: England out of Europe and our colonies back to us. But that is only possible if it's already received a knockout blow."
39:43 Tom Holland? So it there is England.
39:45 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, and the knockout blow is to beat France, what Goebbels calls an act of historical justice against the French that will leave Britain friendless on the continent. So how are they going to do it? So if you look at the two sets of forces on paper, they're actually pretty well matched. The French have more tanks, they have 3,000 tanks, the Germans 2,000, the French have much more artillery. The Germans have about 90 divisions, a division very roughly about 15,000 men. The French have got the same, and the British have got another 10 divisions, always much smaller on land, the British. But the Germans have got a couple of advantages. They've got slightly more fighters and bombers than the Allies do in the West, and they
40:30 Dominic Sandbrook? have learned in Poland how they can use them, they can use them in cooperation with their ground troops to full effect, which the British and French have not learned how to do.
40:41 Tom Holland? That is true, that they do have some battle-hardened troops. However, because everyone knows what is going to come, and because Nazi propaganda has been harping on the ruthless, invincible, mechanized nature of the German war machine. And so the success of the Nazi troops in the invasion of France will kind of retrospectively burnish that propaganda. I said how in my brother's book, The War in the West, he talks about this Potemkin quality of Nazi militarism. So actually, overall, the Allies do have more planes between them than the Luftwaffe, overall. And actually, the German troops, only half of all of them have had more than a few weeks
41:26 Tom Holland? training, more than a quartet, over 40. The artillery, the German artillery, is designed to be drawn by horses. And of the 135 divisions that have been earmarked for the invasion of France, of those only 10 are panzer and only six are fully mechanized. So the idea that the whole German army is kind of the cutting edge of modern fighting forces simply isn't true. I really hadn't properly appreciated that.
41:55 Dominic Sandbrook? Hmm.
41:55 Tom Holland? And I think it does kind of put the looming calamity for French and British arms into an even more sharper perspective, I think. They are not beaten by an overwhelmingly mechanized force.
42:08 Dominic Sandbrook? No, no, no, they're not at all. What I would say is the Germans do still win, though. So, I mean, we shouldn't go to the other extreme and suggest that they're completely useless.
42:15 Tom Holland? No, they're not. I mean, as we'll see, they have good tactics, but I think it also reflects on the grotesque incompetence of the Allies in the test that is to come.
42:24 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, I mean, we've talked about how incompetent the Allies were in Norway. Their planning and their intelligence in the Western campaign, in this campaign, are unbelievably useless. They seem to have no sense of how quickly armored divisions can move. The French are always fighting the last war. It's mad that in the First World War, they were fighting the Franco-Prussian or the Napoleonic Wars, and now they think they're fighting the First World War. So they're all geared up for kind of trenches and all of that kind of thing. And it's as though tanks have not yet been invented.
42:52 Tom Holland? And actually, General Bégon, who takes command of the French armies on the 25th of May, by which point it's obvious that France is completely defeated. He said, "We've gone to war with a 1918 army against a German army of 1939," which in terms of equipment isn't true, but in terms of attitude is clearly the case.
43:09 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, it is, absolutely. So let's get into a little bit of military strategy, because an absolutely key French failure and British failure. They completely fail to predict the Germans' line of attack. So, as we saw last time, Hitler wanted to attack straight away in the autumn of 1939, but because there was a lot of dithering, and mainly because of the weather, that was postponed. And that has given the Germans time to refine their plans. So, people who listen to our First World War series will have heard a lot about things like the Schlieffen Plan and all the difficulties that the Germans faced in 1914. Their plan in 1939, 1940 was initially very similar. They would go through Belgium and Holland, because they want to get around the Maginot Line, which are these
43:52 Dominic Sandbrook? forts the French have built to defend Alsace and the Rhine further south. The original German plan was to go through Belgium and Holland. Very First World War, we push the French back to the Somme, and then we kind of grind them down there. And when that plan was presented to Hitler, he didn't like it. He said, I just think this feels very 1914.
44:11 Tom Holland? Very unoriginal.
44:12 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, I want something, I want a decisive, exciting, original, you know, stroke, speed and surprise. That's what I'm all about. Now, meanwhile, two other generals, Eric von Manstein and a Panzer commander Heinz Guderian, had been working on a rival plan. This plan, they said, look, why don't we just pretend effectively to go through Belgium and Holland, the Low Countries? Why don't we concentrate our tanks a little bit further south and go through the Ardennes Forest? Because it's the forest, everybody assumes it's kind of off limits and the French will leave it only lightly defended. And the High Command of the army, the Wehrmacht, thought this plan was deranged and
44:54 Dominic Sandbrook? they basically sent Manstein to East Prussia to shut him up, to get rid of him.
44:58 Tom Holland? But one person who doesn't is Guderian. He, two years before, had written the most, the most German army titled book of all time, because its title was Aktung Panzer, exclamation mark.
45:13 Dominic Sandbrook? That's sort of a British comic from the 1970s, isn't it?
45:16 Tom Holland? I know. It's such a great title. And he's Hitler's kind of man.
45:20 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
45:20 Tom Holland? Because he's all about speed. He's about the idea that you, you separate the panzers off from the, the much more cumbersome, slower moving infantry divisions and the artillery with their horses and things. And you just go for broke, speed.
45:32 Dominic Sandbrook? So here's now a mad thing that happens, right? The High Command wants to go with their original plan, despite Hitler's misgivings. And then on the 10th of January, a Luftwaffe plane got lost in fog. It accidentally flies into Belgium and it crashes in a field in Belgium. And the passenger on the plane is called Major Reinberger, and he is carrying the plan.
45:56 Dominic Sandbrook? And after the crash, the pilot and this boat, Major Reinberger, were picked up by Belgian border guards who took them to a sort of hut. Don't forget, Belgium is neutral at this stage. Major Reinberger tried to destroy their plans by stuffing them into a stove when the Belgian border guards' backs were turned. I think he badly burnt his hands in the process, trying to get the lid off the stove. Anyway, the border guards managed to get the plans back out of the stove. Major Reinberger, at this point, burst into tears and tried to shoot himself. Anyway, the upshot was, the Allies say, oh brilliant, we've got the German plans. So we know for sure they're going to come through Belgium and Holland, just as we thought. Brilliant. We're laughing.
46:35 Tom Holland? So actually, it's like all those Allied plans to deceive the Germans about where D-Day landing is going to happen.
46:40 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, it is.
46:41 Tom Holland? Only they haven't actually fabricated it in this case.
46:43 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. Now, in the meantime, the problem for the Allies, the Germans have changed their entire plan. Hitler never liked that blueprint. Anyway, he liked the idea of a surprise attack through the Ardennes as well. And on the 17th of February, so a month after this crash, his adjutant invited Manstein to the Reich Chancellery. He actually said to him, come on, come and tell the Fuhrer about this mad idea of yours, he'll love it. And Hitler doesn't like Manstein. Manstein's a very kind of cold, arrogant, Prussian aristocrat, the kind of person he's always distrustful of. But he listens to the plan. He says, I've been gagging to hear a plan like this. Through the Ardennes, surprise attack, reckless, I love it. I love the sound of it.
47:25 Tom Holland? Let's go for it. Brilliant.
47:26 Dominic Sandbrook? So this becomes the blueprint for Fall Gelb, Case Yellow, the German operation in the West. Basically, there are two army groups. Army Group B is under Fettel von Bock.
47:37 Tom Holland? How large is the other two army groups?
47:39 Dominic Sandbrook? So Army Group B is 29 divisions, Tom.
47:43 Tom Holland? So how many men is that?
47:44 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, it's 15,000 men. You can do the maths yourself.
47:47 Tom Holland? Could you?
47:48 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, but I just don't want to. I'd like to give you a bit of a workout.
47:53 Dominic Sandbrook? So anyway, they've got 29 divisions, 15,000 men each. Listeners can do the math. They will go through Belgium and Holland. But this is a massive distraction exercise because the real action is going to come further south with Goethe von Rundstedt's Army Group A. An Army Group A has 44 divisions with loads of panzers and mechanized infantry. And they are going to sneak through the woods of the Ardennes. And then this is the plan. When they're across, they'll get to the river Merz and they'll cross the Merz. But at that point, they won't carry on towards Paris as the Allies will expect. They will turn sharply to their right. In other words, turning north and they will head up towards the coast of the English Channel
48:36 Dominic Sandbrook? in a kind of what's called a sickle cut maneuver. And what that means is that all the Allied French and British forces in Belgium will be trapped between the two German armies and they'll be pinned against the sea.
48:51 Tom Holland? And so this is the Battle of Canay.
48:53 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
48:54 Tom Holland? You know, the great victory that Hannibal won over the Romans and which have haunted, haunted the German military planning. And so in a sense, although this seems tactically radical, strategically, it is what the Germans, you know, it's what they always come up with. And so that being so, you would think the French would have realized it. I mean, it's just so mind-blowingly incompetent that they haven't sussed this out.
49:17 Dominic Sandbrook? I'll make two observations. Number one is I don't think there's ever been a battle on the Restless History that you haven't likened to the Battle of Canay. So that's the first point.
49:24 Tom Holland? Listen, it's not me who's doing it. It's the German High Command. They are always doing it. They always want to fight the Battle of Canay.
49:30 Dominic Sandbrook? And secondly, the reason I think the French have not anticipated this, and nobody has anticipated this, is because this is not an operation that would have been possible in the First World War when you moved so much more slowly. It's only really possible because your panzers are game changers. They can move so quickly. They can punch through enemy line and get around you before you even know it.
49:51 Tom Holland? But Guderian, who they know is in command, has written up this in Actungpanzer. So why haven't they read it? It's hopeless.
49:59 Dominic Sandbrook? They haven't done your level of research or your brother's level of research, I should say.
50:05 Dominic Sandbrook? I mean, Tom, you look actually personally aggrieved that the French haven't been doing the reading.
50:10 Tom Holland? Well, reading The War in the West, my brother's book, and listening to episodes on this in We Have Ways, his podcast, I am left...
50:19 Tom Holland? I mean, they're kind of stupefied by how hopeless the French are on this. And, you know, and the British complicit in as well because they're not pointing it out either.
50:25 Dominic Sandbrook? No, it's poor from the British. All right, so the date of the invasion was set for the early hours of Friday, the 10th of May, as we've seen. When the news broke in Berlin, the mood in Germany was very glum. So in his diary, the American journalist William L. Scherer notes, there's no crowds on the streets and the people that he meets seem sunk in depression because they think they're going to lose, you see. Now Hitler, at his rock-eary, the fellas are in nests. He is very calm and confident. And he says to his entourage, I think we'll beat France in six weeks. And then we'll find the British coming to talk to us because they want to save their empire.
51:01 Tom Holland? So he's right about one of those prophecies and wrong about the second.
51:04 Dominic Sandbrook? Right. And actually, as the first reports kind of come into the rock-eary, his optimism seems very well founded. So to begin with, the Low Countries. At half four that morning, the German paratroopers and special forces had begun their operation. They'd been dropped by gliders and things. They'd seized the key bridges and forts on the German and Dutch borders. By mid morning, so within hours, the Dutch are falling back to the north and the German tanks are rolling through the fields of Holland.
51:32 Tom Holland? And the Dutch have no tanks, but they do have people on bicycles.
51:35 Dominic Sandbrook? They do, but they're not very useful, as we will find out. Now, the Allies have responded to this very sluggishly. The French had heard rumours of a murmuring in the German lines a couple of days before, but their commander said, and there's always murmuring from the Germans, probably false alarm. The Allied commander in chief is a Frenchman, of course, because the French have by far the biggest troop contingent. He is General Maurice Gamalat. And he's a very, I think he's a very likeable man in many ways, Gamalat. He's kind of jaunty and jolly. He loves art, he loves philosophy. He had been the protege of our old friend, General Joffre, from 1914.
52:15 Tom Holland? Oh, yes. Loves a long lunch.
52:17 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, yeah, long lunching.
52:19 Tom Holland? And imperturbable, isn't he?
52:21 Dominic Sandbrook? And imperturbable, right? And Gamalat has completely cut from the same cloth. He says, listen, what I've learnt from Joffre is you never lose your cool. Things will probably be fine. Don't, don't overthink anything, you know. It'll be a long war. Let's not stress about it. The Germans attack, we shall advance calmly into Belgium to meet them. Of course, he doesn't know they're not going to come really through Belgium. So right from the start. The Allies are walking into the Germans' trap, just as Manstein and Hitler dreamed. Within four and a half days, the Germans have wiped the floor with the Dutch. The climax coming on the 14th, when the Luftwaffe bombed Rotterdam and they destroyed the old city of Rotterdam, a massive story at the time.
53:02 Tom Holland? Yeah, apparently this was a mistake.
53:04 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
53:04 Tom Holland? Because the Dutch had already begun negotiating their surrender.
53:08 Dominic Sandbrook? That's right.
53:08 Tom Holland? And so the orders went out to the bombers, you know, don't do it. But it was too late, the bombers had already left and so they, you know, as you say, they obliterate it. And actually, I mean, it works incredibly well for the Nazis, doesn't it? Because it, again, it compounds this sense that there can be no opposition, that they are lethal. And they have the Stukas, they kind of have a siren, don't they? So that when they drop this terrifying kind of scream. And the whole thing is just, you know, this sense that there is no resisting the Nazi war machine.
53:38 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly.
53:39 Tom Holland? Even though, you know, it is quite an element of smoke and mirrors about it. Well, in the case of Rotterdam, a lot of smoke.
53:44 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, if you think, the invasion starts on the 10th of May and what it must have been like to live through the next couple of weeks, even if you're just following events in the newspapers, the sense of growing inevitability, of relentlessness, speed about the German advance. So the Dutch surrender, four and a half days. The Queen, Wilhelmina, and her ministers escape to London to become a government in exile. The Belgians held out for 18 days, but they too were overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers and firepower. Interestingly, the Belgian king did not flee his country. He had taken personal command of the army and he said, I don't want to desert them, I should stay. So he stays in Brussels, he becomes a prisoner of the Germans. And he was painted by the Allied press as a traitor.
54:29 Dominic Sandbrook? The Mirror, Daily Mirror, ran the headline about him, I think a headline that no man wishes to read about himself, "The Face That Every Woman Now Despises."
54:38 Tom Holland? What's the basis for that contempt? I mean, it seems courageous that a commander in chief should, should stand.
54:45 Dominic Sandbrook? He was seen as a collaborator and actually the Belgians got rid of him after the war. They saw him as tainted because he had not made the gestures of moral defiance, I guess, that King Christian had done in Denmark.
54:55 Tom Holland? Right, I see, okay.
54:56 Dominic Sandbrook? You know, I think King Leopold had taken a very different approach.
54:59 Tom Holland? Right.
54:59 Dominic Sandbrook? So within three weeks, both Holland and Belgium are under German military occupation, where they will remain for the next five years. But of course, this isn't where the main action is happening. This really is smoke and mirrors because the real action for the Germans is happening further south in the Ardennes forest. And here, you wanted numbers, Tom. Now secretly, while I was talking, I was doing the maths. So here, General von Kleist, because I'm multitasking, he's leading 134,000 soldiers, 1,200 tanks and 500 armoured vehicles through the kind of narrow roads that lead through the Ardennes forest.
55:35 Tom Holland? And this means surely that they are now sitting ducks if the French air force attacks them?
55:42 Dominic Sandbrook? Totally.
55:43 Tom Holland? Because there are only very few roads, they're quite narrow, long tail backs.
55:47 Dominic Sandbrook? You know where they are.
55:48 Tom Holland? Send the French planes in, but the French don't.
55:50 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, it's very like when, you know, when Putin attacked Ukraine, that huge traffic jam, as they were outside Kiev of kind of Russian tanks or whatever. It's the same story. The Germans said at the time, it's the longest traffic jam in history, there's four columns, hundreds of miles long, there's tanks, yes, and there's armoured cars, but there are wagons and there are horses and there are, you know, lines of troops.
56:12 Tom Holland? Because if the French air force had gone in, the war would have been over.
56:14 Dominic Sandbrook? But they didn't. And the Germans know it, right? So the Germans are in a great hurry. They're told you can't stop for three days and they're issued with amphetamines to keep them going. You just have to keep going for three days, can't stop. But after three days, on the afternoon of the 12th of May, they have reached the river Merz, their objective, without having been destroyed from above by the French. Now, when they get to the river, this is a crucial moment. If the French can hold them back at the river, then the sickle cut scheme will have failed. But we said before, the Germans are much better at using air power in tandem with ground troops, because the Germans have learned how to do it in Poland. The next day, General von Kleist calls up a thousand planes and they pound the French
56:59 Dominic Sandbrook? positions. For the French, who of course have not been through the experience of the war in Poland, this is a colossal shock. It's the first time they've come under air attack. And there are all these stories about their troops sort of cowering in their trenches, sobbing, traumatised, you know, their morale ripped to pieces.
57:19 Dominic Sandbrook? And so by the evening of the 13th, so remember, we're just three or four days into the invasion, the Germans are already crossing the river on rubber dinghies, they're putting together pontoon bridges, the Panzers are getting across, they're still quite vulnerable, you know, they're still vulnerable to a counter-attack, but the amazing thing, the French are still so complacent, the commander of their second army was General Charles Untiguer, and General Untiguer is told, the Germans are getting across the river Merz, and he says, brilliant, all the more prisoners for us.
57:50 Tom Holland? And presumably, General Gamalat is emulating General Joffre and just sitting around having huge lunches and munching on chickens and things.
57:58 Dominic Sandbrook? I think there is an element of that, we'll have some amusing French military action of this kind, a bit with an omelette, which is good fun. So the next couple of days, things go from bad to worse for the French, they finally decide to launch a counter-attack on the Merz, but it's half-hearted, they don't dislodge the Germans, they take very heavy losses, and unlike in 1914, their nerve begins to break quite early on. So that night, the 14th, there were reports of French troops streaming westwards in a panic, shouting, we've lost, we've been betrayed, and so on. And at their headquarters, their commanders are just completely stunned, they didn't expect the Germans to come through the Ardennes, they didn't expect them to come in such speed
58:40 Dominic Sandbrook? or in such numbers, they didn't expect them to get across the river Merz, and now they make another catastrophic mistake, they think, now the Germans have got across the Merz, they will head towards Paris, but they won't, they're going to turn sharp right at this point, turn north and race for the Channel, this is the sickle-cut element of the plan, which will leave the Allied armies trapped. And what is worse, as the French and the British are trying to react, eastern France has descended into complete chaos, because remembering what happened in the First World War, and having read the reports of what happened in Poland, millions, literally millions of civilians say, God, I've got to get out of here, and they take to the streets.
59:24 Dominic Sandbrook? So by this point, we're feeling on to kind of mid-May 1940, there were probably about eight million people.
59:32 Dominic Sandbrook? On the roads of France with their possessions, with wagons, with bicycles, with livestock, you know, crying babies, all of that. And that makes it impossible for the French to move their armies around. You know, their communications networks are kind of breaking down, all of this.
59:49 Tom Holland? And then the Stukas start dive bombing the crowds of refugees. So more terror.
59:54 Dominic Sandbrook? Total carnage.
59:55 Tom Holland? You know, a sense that these are just implacable opponents who can't be defeated.
59:59 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. Now, remember how quickly this has happened. Invasion began in the early hours of the 10th of May. On the 15th of May, so five days later, at 7:30 in the morning, Winston Churchill, who's only been Prime Minister for five days, is woken up at home by a phone call from Paul Reyno. And Reyno speaks to him in English. And Reyno says, "We have been defeated." And Churchill doesn't say anything. And Reyno says again, "We are beaten. We have lost the battle." Churchill, surely it can't have happened so soon, but he replied, "The front is broken near Sedan." Sedan is exactly where they'd lost the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. So the next afternoon, the 16th, Churchill flies to Paris and he is shocked when he gets there.
1:00:43 Dominic Sandbrook? They are burning their archives already, they are preparing to evacuate the city. "Utter dejection" was written on every face. And General Gamalat is there. Gamalat says, "Not only have we taken this defeat at Sedan, but we have actually fallen back a further 60 kilometres. The Germans have come 60 kilometres since we last spoke." Churchill says this very famous exchange, "Where is your strategic reserve?" And Gamalat says, "Egun." "There isn't any." Churchill, "Why don't you counter-attack?" And then Gamalat gives a hopeless shrug of the shoulders and says to him, "Inferiority of numbers, inferiority of equipment, inferiority of method." Gamalat's clearly got to go.
1:01:25 Tom Holland? I mean, the third of those is definitely right.
1:01:27 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
1:01:27 Tom Holland? But the first two, at the beginning of the war.
1:01:30 Dominic Sandbrook? Were not right, yeah. So three days later, on the 19th, Reyno sacked Gamalat and he replaced him with General Wagon, Maxime Wagon, who is a veteran of the First World War, who was 73 and who has been retired for the last five years.
1:01:44 Tom Holland? Does he by any chance have emphysema?
1:01:48 Dominic Sandbrook? It's not the First World War anymore, so maybe not. I don't know.
1:01:52 Dominic Sandbrook? Wagon, you know, he's got all these schemes for a great counter-attack, a French counter-attack. But by now, I think the Allies are in such chaos that any counter-attack is going to be very, very difficult. The Germans meanwhile are rolling on. They cannot believe how well this is going. I mean, even in their wildest dreams, Manstein and Guderian could not have imagined the Allies would fall apart so quickly.
1:02:15 Tom Holland? And a famous name in command of one of the Panzer divisions, Erwin Rommel.
1:02:19 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, Erwin Rommel, who will be featuring in due course later on in the story. Yes. So on the night of the 19th, you began, Tom, this episode with Churchill broadcasting for the first time to the British people after nine days as Prime Minister. That night, the first Panzers reached the mouth of the River Somme on the Channel. And by the following night, they'd established themselves on the Channel coast properly. So at this point, the sickle cut has been carried off. The entire Allied force in Belgium, that's three French armies, it's the shattered remains of the Belgian army and the entire British Expeditionary Force. They are all encircled and surrounded, trapped against the sea in this shrinking pocket.
1:03:01 Dominic Sandbrook? And now, you know, if the French and British commanders were in a bit of a state before, they were in an absolute world-class funk.
1:03:09 Tom Holland? That's the word.
1:03:10 Dominic Sandbrook? That is the word. The French commander in Belgium is General Gaston Henri Bilot. And when he was told, you need to coordinate the Allied response to all this, he burst into tears, which I don't think is ever a good sign in your command, officer.
1:03:21 Tom Holland? That's not what you want.
1:03:22 Dominic Sandbrook? On the 20th of May, so that's the day the Allies are definitively cut off, the British sent the Chief of their Imperial General Staffs Edmund Ironside to Lens.
1:03:32 Tom Holland? That is a great name.
1:03:33 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, you've got to be called that. Good firm. So General Ironside is sent to Lens to see Bilot and to find out what's going on. And Ironside said later, "I found him in a state of complete depression. No plan, no thought of a plan, ready to be slaughtered. I lost my temper and shook Bilot by the button of his tunic. The man is completely beaten."
1:03:55 Dominic Sandbrook? So the next day, I promised you an omelette. The next day is the 21st of May. General Wagon, the new French Supreme Commander, decided to visit Bilot personally to steady his nerve. And he flew to a place called Betune on the Franco-Belgian border. Wagon got there. He finds the airfield completely deserted. There's just a single soldier. And Wagon has to persuade this soldier to give him a lift to the local post office. And there, he finally managed to ring Bilot and said, send a car. Like, I'm General Wagon. I'm the Supreme Commander. Send a car and get me. A car arrived. Wagon got in the car and he said, I need lunch. Like, let's go and have omelettes. He went for an omelette. Then he went and met Bilot at Epte Town Hall. I mean, talk about a place with a lot of history.
1:04:39 Dominic Sandbrook? And Wagon said, come on, we've got to counter-attack. Like, we've got to break out, counter-attack, whatever. Bilot said, fine. Bilot drove off. His car immediately got involved in a massive car crash. Bilot was badly injured, fell into a coma. Two days later, he died. And that was the end of him. And do you know what? The British Expeditionary Forces Chief of Staff, Sir Henry Pownall, he mourned General Bilot.
1:05:02 Tom Holland? What did he say?
1:05:03 Dominic Sandbrook? Said, frankly, he's no loss.
1:05:04 Tom Holland? I mean, it's harsh, but it's not inaccurate.
1:05:06 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. So Hitler's attack has been unfolding now, less than two weeks. Insane.
1:05:13 Tom Holland? So actually, it's going better than Hitler had said.
1:05:16 Dominic Sandbrook? Than even Hitler had said.
1:05:17 Tom Holland? Because he'd prophesied it would take six weeks, right? And already by two weeks, it's clear he's won.
1:05:21 Dominic Sandbrook? He's been going on for like 11 days or something. And it's pretty clear that the Allies have collapsed.
1:05:25 Tom Holland? Exactly.
1:05:27 Dominic Sandbrook? The amazing thing, I mean, he's this man who has gambled, gambled again and again, each one bigger and more ambitious and more reckless than the last. And this one is going to work out better than any of them. The Allies have completely fallen apart. Their commanders aren't speaking to each other. Renault and his ministers are preparing to flee Paris. Surely, France is beaten. The entire British Expeditionary Force, 400,000 men are trapped in this pocket against the Channel. The Panzers are closing in on the Channel ports of Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk. Surely, within days, Hitler's tanks will finish the job and then Britain will be forced to sue for peace.
1:06:10 Tom Holland? Or Dominic.
1:06:12 Tom Holland? Will Britain be forced to sue for peace? We will find out in our next two episodes to come on this series. The Miracle of Dunkirk, The Fall of France, The Battle of Britain, and in the long run Hitler's decision to turn on the Soviet Union. And members of The Rest Is History Club can hear the next two episodes right now. And if you want to join them, go to therestishistory.com. But for now, thank you for listening. Thank you, Dominic, and au revoir.
1:06:43 Dominic Sandbrook? Au revoir.
1:06:56 Speaker 03 There we are getting a statement from Melma Ten on that flight with 350 passengers on board.
1:07:05 Speaker 04 The Great Game: Strategic Struggle Between Britain and Russia.
1:07:13 Speaker 05 We assess, Prime Minister, with high confidence it was Russian. Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.
1:07:21 Speaker 04 They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people. Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, do you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing!
1:07:37 Speaker 04 We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today, disseminated into an operation order, or FRAGO. A FRAGO that says to kill the President of Russia? Yes.
1:07:55 Dominic Sandbrook? New from Goalhanger.
1:07:56 Speaker 04 Who is going to be able to pull this off?
1:08:00 Speaker 06 You're my soldier, are you? Sergeant Tom MacDuff, Duffy!
1:08:04 Dominic Sandbrook? An audio drama journey like no other.
1:08:06 Speaker 06 Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons.
1:08:10 Dominic Sandbrook? Devized as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller.
1:08:13 Speaker 06 We have two tight friendly KIIs.
1:08:15 Dominic Sandbrook? Where Britain plays its strongest arm. He's the best. Against its strongest foe. Don't do it, Duffy! Bear Hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.
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