Angst

Something I've often wondered about is what effect the easy conquest of France in 1940 had on Hitler's strategy.

This campaign must rank as one of the most brilliant and successful in military history. Its secret was in the abandonment of fixed position battles and instead relying on the use of what then was modern technology to accomplish a rapid tank and motorised advance, leaving more traditional follow-up forces to mop up.

Blitzkrieg was more than this, though. It involved a total re-organisation of warfare by creating fully-motorised divisions and concentrating them in all-arms panzer armies of tanks, infantry, artillery, engineers, etc. acting as the spearhead, with the traditional foot troops and their horse-born support following after. The spearhead was accompanied by close-support precision dive-bombing from the air. Its main aim was to bypass local strongpoints and surround whole armies before the enemy could react. It also used radio-communications to co-ordinate and adapt rapidly to circumstances.

The German army must be given full credit for developing and practically implementing this organisation and its accompanying military strategy, especially Manstein and Guderian, even though the core of the idea was first developed in Britain by Fuller and others.

The execution was also brilliant, a concentrated and suprise attack through the lightly-held Ardennes to cut off the French and British armies in the Dunkirk pocket. Over 2 million French soldiers were captured, the British only escaping across the Channel with their expeditionary force thanks to their Naval and maritime resources.

My question is "Did this stunning success make Hitler believe that British morale would be as low as that of the French and that a quick conquest of Britain would also be possible?" At the very least, perhaps Hitler hoped that Britain would sue for terms and accept a negotiated peace.

My suggestion is that the attack on Britain was to see if a quick victory would be possible there, too. That would also explain why it was abandoned fairly soon and the German redeployment from the west to the east undertaken already during the first winter (1940/41). Hitler could not have attacked the USSSR earlier than 1941 in any event as the declaration of war by Britain and France forced him to turn west first.

Blitzkrieg was, of course, deployed on a far vaster scale in the invasion of the USSR. There were many "pockets" created, some of them involving the capture of staggering numbers of Red Army soldiers.