When last we left our heroes.....
The Netherlands fell on the 19th of October, when the war was only 9 days old. Belgium admitted war was inevitable, and declared hostilities on the same day.
By the early morning hours of the 20th, General von Hubicki's 6th Panzers were coursing through the coastal province of Brugge, Belgium, on their way to the French border, and Gen. Geyr von Schweppenburg's 2nd Panzers were pounding away at the forts before Antwerp.
That same evening, Gen. Höpner's 10th Panzers had just arrived in Turnhout, to the east, where he joined an attack upon Hasselt, and Hubicki had reached Kortrijk, attempting to drive a wedge between the hapless Belgians and the French, who would have preferred to fight the Germans on foreign soil, rather than upon their own.
The Belgians stubbornly held out in Ghent, and even marched north into Dutch territory to take Roosendaal. German panzers streamed by them to east and west, headed south, but it was decided it would be easier to surround Ghent and starve out the garrison than to take it outright when there were more powerful enemies to fight further south.
Antwerp fell on the afternoon of the 21st, and von Schweppenburg pushed south toward Aalst.
Gens. von Manstein and von Arnim (5th and 3rd Panzers, respectively) were intent upon mounting an attack across the French border at Dunquerque when the French instead counterassaulted, and stymied the advance.
This would become a standard technique of modern warfare, when armies opposed the rapidity of the German war machine -- one cannot move forward if one is already struggling against harassing forces and cannot organize for the advance. But German generals first felt this opposition at Brugge, and it showed that the French were more masters of war than certainly either the Belgians or Dutch had proved.
The counterattack was almost laughable -- cavalry regiments against tanks. But it did disrupt planning and regrouping efforts, and nothing could be done until the pressure could be let up -- which would happen inevitably, when the French flagged. But that could take valuable time which Germany's plans could ill afford.
The intensely trained German paratroop fallschirmjäger divisions, the second of which was nearing readiness to make a drop. Where to employ them most effectively??? Would they have to be used to free up Manstein? The German High Command would consider that a waste of its high card, if forced to do so.
Further east, forces primarily on foot battled Belgian positions and moved forward gradually. Panzers were necessary against the fortifications at Liege, but nothing to the east moved decisively -- it was a slog, and slogging was not the style chosen by the new, vibrant German army.
Unfortunately, the new, vibrant, mobile German army was reliant upon massive supply trains of food, ammunition and fuel.
The drawback of Belgium, complicated by the riverlands of southern Holland and eastern Flanders, was that logistics already moved slowly because of the terrain. And the narrow passages along the coast in the west, and from Antwerp to Tournai in the center, made it as if the furthest advanced (and hungriest!) German panzer armies had to suck their supplies through a straw.
For the first time, some units started to feel shortages, which caused their advances to slow down. The passages would need to be widened somehow, whether by reducing the garrison at Ghent, or eliminating the Belgian capital at Bruxelles, which caused another side to the bottleneck.
Decisions had been made that Ghent would be reduced once Roosendaal was recaptured, by the same forces that would recapture Roosendaal, which would keep other forces free to push south. The problem with that was that the defenders at Roosendaal were proving especially stubborn, having remained resolute for 3 whole days, seemingly on the verge of being overrun each of those hours.
The first assault against Bruxelles had been led by infantry, both from Aalst along the western outskirts, and also across the Rupel River to the north. The effort had ground to a halt, with exhausted and unsuccessful troops withdrawing to regroup. Gen. Dietl was tasked with renewing the assault from Aalst with his Waffen-SS Standarte division of motorized infantry. Though relatively lightly defended, the garrison of the Belgian capital was dogged as well. The urban fighting was slow going, and little progress was made.
Between the stubborn garrisons on either side of Aalst, and the frustrating but ultimately hopeless delaying action at Dunkerque, the French and Belgians had temporarily stalled the German advance.
True, by day 4 of the campaign against Belgium, significant progress had been made. But such progress was balanced by setbacks, including a concerted counteroffensive mounted by four French divisions against von Hubicki at Kortrijk, Belgium. His troops were worn out after two weeks of continual combat, and it was feared he would be forced to withdraw, allowing reinforcements to Ghent and dividing German forces.
Gen. Nehring's 1st Kavallerie (a formerly Austrian division), was helping to grind down the defenders entrenched at Liege. The fortress was strong, but the two Belgian divisions hadn't had time to fully mobilize before becoming engaged, and successive attacks and continued pressure had, by the 25th, worn them down.
Every effort, in the east, was essentially part of the campaign to surround and wrap up the entirety of the Belgian Army without having to defeat them outright. Such was modern German strategy.
Gen. Manstein eventually turned the tide on the exhausted skirmishers at Dunkerque, and rolled forward with organized intent. Late on the morning of the 25th of October the French defenders broke, and by afternoon Manstein's tanks were rolling through the storied city on their way toward undefended Calais.
Meanwhile, Gen. Schweppenburg's 2nd Panzers were attempting to exploit an apparent gap in the French lines at Cambrai which had the potential to place them at the doorstep of Paris within a few days.
Could such a remarkable breakthrough be possible?
In other news, South Africa had chosen not to join her Commonwealth brothers in war against Germany. Yugoslavia continued to play coy when invited to join the war on the side of the Axis, nevermind her fear of the Soviet Union. It was trusted that she would come into the fold in good time.
French and German two- and four-engined bombers continued to nit-pick at German factories, though the overall impact was primarily against morale rather than industrial output. Early problems with the Panzer III model were worked out, and new versions began to roll off the assembly lines.
Despite all the good news of the past few days, enthusiasm was dampened by news that Gen. von Hubicki had been forced back from Kortrijk and the French might actually be able to advance strong forces into Belgium to further delay and counteract the German offensive.
This lost battle had the result of shifting the initiative to the French, as the Germans really had no choice but to respond to the French move. Such fortunes threatened to put all of the German spearheads -- Dunkerque, Cambrai -- and sieges -- Bruxelles, especially -- in question.
Indeed, this setback had the potential to mark the high-water mark of the German invasion of France, before it had really even begun.
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