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The Allies' worst fears are realized from Péronne to the sea, an avalanche of fire and steel came hurtling toward them.
At midnight Hitler records a proclamation to the German people ending in these words: I further order the ringing of bells for three days. May their ringing accompany the prayers which the German people will continue to offer for their sons, for this morning the German divisions and air units have been assigned new tasks in the fight for the freedom and future of our peoople. At 1am the Wehrmacht High Command issues the following communiqué: The second great offensive is being launched today. It will be carried out with new and very powerful forces, including many plane and tank units that have not yet been used in battle. Between the Channel and the Meuse the German High Command has massed 104 fully-manned standard divisions.
It is with the six panzer divisions of Army Group B (two to each of the bridgeheads that have been established on the left bank of the Somme) that the Germans are going to strive to smash the Allied lines.
To withstand the German onslaught and hold a line of 275 miles covering the heart and nerve-centers of France, Gen Weygand has only some forty divisions, plus the remains of 3 armored divisions.
To offset the weakness of this line the French High Command has striven to create 'resistance breakwaters' behind the front. These consist of 3 groupements de maneuvre shared by the 3rd and 4th Groups of Armies.
Two of the groupements de maneuvre, under Lt-Gens Robert Pétiet and Sylvestre Audet respectively, are to deal with enemy units emerging from Amiens and thrusting toward the Lower Seine. The third, under Buisson, is to counterattack westward, in Champagne, to protect the French fortress units stationed in the Maginot Line.
The British contribution is insignificant: 1 infantry division (the 51st, under Gen Fortune) incorporated in Altmayer's 10th Army fighting in front of Abbeville; the remains of an armored division, reduced to 3,000 men and 180 tanks, under Gen Evans; 3 RAF squadrons (35-40 planes) and a few AA batteries that have remained in Le Havre.
To all intents and purposes, France is going into this second phase of the battle alone. In addition, her position is rendered even more vulnerable by the fact that she has not had time to organize it properly.
Yet for all the gravity of the situation, Gen Weygand does not intend to lose heart. To boost the troops' morale, he issues the following Order of the Day: Officers, NCOs and soldiers of the French army! At 4am the German offensive opens with fierce artillery and aerial bombardments along the whole front between the sea and the junction of the Ailette and the Aisne. On the ground the German attack begins with an initial thrust in the sector south of Péronne. It is delivered by the following elements of Reichenau's 6th Army:
Immediately after the attack (about 3:30pm) Hoeppner's XVI Panzer Corps pours into the bridgehead. This Corps will now assume the main effort along the path Assevillers-Roye-Ressous-sur-Matz. It will consist of the 3rd Panzer Division (Gen Horst Stumpff) with 320 tanks; the 4th Panzer Division (Gen Johann Stever) with 324 tanks; and the SS-V Motorized Infantry Division.
The 640 or so tanks engaged in this sector are massed along a 6-km front: 100 tanks to the kilometer, exactly the density advocated by Eimannsberger and Guderian for an attack on a defended position. Behind the center of this army, an Army Corps of 3 infantry divisions is stationed in reserve.
Confronted by these impressive forces, the French lines are held by the following units: On the right, the 29th Infantry Division These two large units, which will bear the brunt of the attack, are flanked: On the right, by the 3rd Light Infantry Division, covered by the Somme and with its command post in Crisolles: The German plan is to smash the French position by means of a single rush along the axis Assevillers-Omiécourt-Route Nationale 17, the XVI Panzer Corps advancing in bulk to Route Nationale 337, then to Route National 334. This main thrust will be flanked and extended by the surrounding infantry divisions. The first wave moves forward both in line and in V formations, with the tanks either at fifty-yard intervals or in column of route. Each battalion of tanks is followed by a group of motorcyclists and truck-borne fusiliers, together with a detachment of sappers. A third wave is made up of tank units that have apparently been drawn from the columns on either wing.
Betwen 9:30am and 10am, after a renewed artillery barrage, the German infantry launch a mass attack along the whole bridgehead front, while the French began heavy firing in front of the main line of resistance. At noon the French position seems far more favorable that might have been expected. After 8 hours of determined effort, the German infantry has made no deep penetration into the French lines. It has merely managed to quell or encircle a few advanced posts. The 'defense in depth' advocated by Weygand is yielding excellent results.
Meanwhile what has become of the German armored columns?
'Making use of the terrain, slipping through the gaps,' writes Gen Perré, 'they had given a wide berth to the strongpoints of the front line, limiting themselves to occasionally detaching one or two sections to explore the outskirts of a village and neutralize it or lend a hand to the infantry, but never tarrying.'
Throughout the morning the quadrilateral Omiécourt-Marchélepot-Licourt-Curchy is overrun in every direction by detachments of panzers. By noon the bulk of the German armor is 6 miles ahead of its infantry. It is out of range of its artillery and cut off from its supplies.
'Our tanks were greeted with truly hellish gunfire,' writes Capt von Jungenfeld of the 1st Battalion of the 4th Panzer Division. 'In a trice the first of them, caught in the cross-fire, were in flames. The position was far from heartening... Now it was up to our artillery to deal with the French; their defense was really very strong, and we had very little ammunition for the guns on our tanks. It was exactly noon - 11am, French time. A long day still lay ahead of us, and there was no telling how much longer the enemy's blocking fire would keep us from our supply lines...'
Despite the delicacy of their situation, however, the panzers have achieved considerable results. Communications are completely disorganized behind the French lines. Command posts are isolated. The greater part of the French artillery has been neutralized or restricted to defending itself against the tanks. Replenishment of ammunition has become impossible. The French position looks sound at first glance, but it is deeply undermined by the ant-like activities of the panzers. a dangerous situation, and one that will exact an ever-increasing toll in the course of the afternoon.
Hoth's Panzer Corps, comprising the 5th and 7th Panzer Divs under Gens Hartlieb and Rommel, has likewise switched to attack at Flixecourt and within the Abbeville bridgehead. About 4:15pm Rommel drives to an observation post and watches the start of the attack. 'The preliminary barrage,' he writes, ' began on the dot and was an incredible sight. The flashes of bursting shells streaked the sky from one end of the horizon to the other.' An hour later the whole Somme front is ablaze.
At 9:35am French GHQ is notified that the British are beginning to withdraw some of the anti-aircraft defenses from Le Havre. Weygand immeadiately telephones Paul Reynaud and asks him to 'beg the British Command to abandon this project and, broadly speaking, to maintain in Le Havre the anti-aircraft batteries as well as the barrage balloons that have installed there'.
At 9:45am Gen Weygand voices his dissatisfaction in the following note the the French Prime Minister: The Commander-in-Chief is obliged to point out that appeals to the British government have continued to no avail. Rommel then drives over to the point at which the 2nd Battalion of the 6th Regiment of Fusiliers is to cross the river. There he learns that the railway bridge and road bridge have fallen into his pioneers' hands intact. Part of the engineering battalion is already at work removing the rails and sleepers on the railway bridge to enable the division to use it for all its vehicles.
All this time Altmayer's 10th Army and Frère's 7th Army are bearing the full weight of the battle. The early attack south of Péronne, Amiens, and Abbeville has spread all the way to the sea in the afternoon.
At noon the 5th and 7th Panzer Div, now beyond Hangest, are ordered to continue their advance without interruption. Rommel immediately makes plans to this end. 'I was able to give all my orders by word of mouth,' he writes, 'without disturbance from the artillery fire still intermittently spraying our position. At 4pm precisely the tanks move out. The various sections act in perfct co-ordination, almost as though it were a peaceitme maneuver.'
The French colonial troops, entrenched in the small woods covering the southern slopes of Hills 116 and 104, fight desperately; but the German tanks blast the woods so savagely as they pass that there is no stopping them. Rommel continues:
By nightfall the whole front between the Somme and the Oise is in a state of flux. West of Amiens, the Germans have infiltrated along the entire front. Coucy forest is full of Germans.
In the 10th Army sector the 9th and 10th Panzer Divisions of von Kleist's Panzer Group are making for Poix. In the 7th Army sector another German panzer thrust has passed Chaulnes and is continuing toward Roye. Near Péronne, the Germans are trying to seize Harbonnières and Proyart.
Along the Ailette the Germans have attacked with a considerable volume of infantry, though without tanks. They have crossed the canal at several points.
By evening the French are losing control of this stretch of the Somme. Col de Bardies remarks: Clearly, this was not the swift collapse that we had witnessed on the Meuse. Our troops were holding their ground... But we were hemmed about; the [German] tanks got as far as out armies' second position; before long the French line was just a series of small strongholds, each fighting on its own account. The figures given by Gen Perré are slightly higher; 67 light tanks, 6 B-type tanks. Either way, this is a very slender force to set against the 1,700 odd panzers that the Germans have lined up along the Somme front. The odds are hopelessly uneven.
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These were the new German positions:
This is how the French forces were disposed:
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