World at War 06-2012

Купить бумажную книгу и читать

Название: World at War

Издательство: Decision Games

Номер: 24

Год: 06-2012

Формат: PDF

Страниц: 60

Язык: English

Размер: 56.7 MB

Sedan 1940

In the spring of 1940 the German Army achieved one of the most spectacular victories in the history of warfare: the defeat of the combined Armies of France, Great Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands in a six week campaign that was considered near-miraculous even by the German commanders who planned and executed it. The seeming ease of the German victory and the embarrassment it caused the Allies has led to a number of myths and half truths being adopted by both sides to explain what had happened and who should be given credit and blame.

Since Hitler had dismissed the idea Great Britain and France would declare war on Germany in 1939 over the fate of Poland, it gave him and his high command a huge problem when they did just that. No one on either side had planned what to do next.

At that time Hitler was thinking of a campaign in the west that, at least initially, had only limited objectives that would gain the ports and airfields necessary for a longer attritional struggle with France and Great Britain. This was conventional strategic thinking, with its emphasis on the grabbing of important longer points as the prelude to a war and was rooted in Hitler’s experience of World War I.