Rage and Fury of the "Battle of the Bulge"

The term "Battle of the Bulge" was not new in December 1944.  The phrase was used in May 1940 to describe the opening phase of the German breakout through in to France.  This article was published in The war Illustrated on 31 May 1940 and describes the opening of the Battle of France, with only a slight indication that it wasn't going to end in the favour of France.

Opening on May 14, what came to be described as the "Battle of the Bulge" soon developed into a conflict of earth shaking importance.  Here we tell of its initial phase, up to the end of the first week's fighting.

"The fate of our country and that of our Allies, the destinies of the world, depend on the battle now in progress."  So began an Order of the Day issued by General Gamelin on Friday, 17 May.  "Any soldier who cannot advance" continued the Allied Generalissimo, "should allow himself to be killed rather than abandon that part of our national soil which has been entrusted to him.  As always in grave hours of our history, the order today is 'Conquer or die.' We must conquer."  Grave words, but not too grave for the crisis which in the course of a few short days had developed in the Western battle zone.

At the beginning of the week the German thrust seemed to be centred in Belgium, whose army, in touch with the Dutch remnant to the north, strongly supported by the British Expeditionary Force in the centre and closely linked with the French on the right, was slowly retreating on the line Antwerp-Brussels-Namur.  Suddenly on Tuesday, May 14, a new and far greater battle developed to the south in the Ardennes.  "On the Meuse south of Namur," ran the French war communique issued at 10.30 on the night of that fateful day, "the Germans have attempted to cross the river at several points.  We have launched counter-attacks and the fighting continues, more especially in the region of Sedan, where the enemy is making a momentous effort with furious obstinacy and at the expense of heavy casualties."

Onslaught on an Unprecedented Scale

Soon it was apparent that the French line from Montmedy, where the deep underground works of the Maginot Line terminate, to Maubeuge was cracking; indeed at several points the line was actually pierced and through the gap poured German armoured columns consisting of vast numbers of tanks, their way blasted open by a veritable armada of warplanes.  For an onslaught on such unprecedented scale the French defenders were unprepared; their ranks, apparently, had been depleted by the dispatch of their reserves to aid the threatened front in Belgium to the norht.  Despite the most desperate efforts to hold up the attack and to establish a fresh front, the German onrush continued with unabated fury.  In a comparatively few hours General Corap's Ninth Army had met disaster, a 90 mile front had been overrun, and like a three pronged fork the Germans plunged towards the very heart of France.

A French War Office spokesman described the onslaught as "a great hurricane."  The French infantry, he declared, had resisted admirably, but, faced at certain points by overwhelming mass of tank units, they have been obliged to give way.  Once through the gap, the tanks spread out fanwise in all directions until the battle took on what one of the French war communiques described s "the aspect of a terrible melee."  Here and there there was fierce hand to hand fighting, and for the first time in history there were battles on a grand scale between the tanks of the rival armies.

By now, however, it was too late to effect real consolidation, and for several days more the French were compelled to fall back, abandoning town after town to the hated enemy.  The real war had come at last to the Western Front - the real war, not of fixed positions, but of a struggle in the open.

There was no line; nothing, indeed, in the nature of an established front.  Over the French countryside roamed at large 2,500, or it may be 3,000, German tanks - estimated to constitute at least half of the enemy's tank divisions - in individual units, in small detachments, or in great masses.  Furthermore, as the battle developed, tens of thousands of Nazi motor-cyclists, armed to the teeth, were dispatched to harry and ravage far in front of the main fight.

By the end of the week a great bulge had been formed in the Allied line between Maubeuge and Sedan, reaching out into north-east France as far as Rethel on the Aisne.  And the bulge was getting bigger day by day, almost hour by hour.  Drastic measures were called for if disaster were to be averted.  Mr Churchill went to Paris, where in conference with the French chiefs means were devised for the common defense.  The French armies were regrouped; and Britain's magnificent air force, which had already established its mastery over the Nazis, was flung into the fight against the ravaging tanks.  In the north the Allied line was falling back in order to conform with the new situation, and Germany was jubilant over the capture of Brussels and Antwerp.

But though the situation was grave, as M. Reynaud admitted in his broadcast to the nation on the evening of Saturday, May 18, it was by no means desperate.  "It is in such circumstances as these," he declared, "that the French people show what is in them."  He announced that he had called to his side Marshall Petain, the victor of Verdun; and on the following evening the world was electrified by the news that another of the triumphant figures of the Great War, General Weygand, had been appointed to the Supreme Command in place of General Gamelin.  His appointment was widely hailed as an augury of victory, for Weygand was Foch's closest collaborator in 1918 when the German hordes thundering on the way to Paris were halted, and at length chased across the frontier.

But at that moment it needed faith and vision to talk or think of victory.  When M. Reynaud faced the Senate on May 21 his first words were "the country is in danger," and he went on to tell how by a series of "incredible mistakes" the bridges over the Meuse had not been destroyed, and when across these bridges there passed the German "Panzer" (iron-clad) divisions they encountered nothing but French units who were "scattered ill-cadred, and badly trained."  With the total disorganisation of General Corap's Ninth Army the hinge of the French army had been broken.  The Premier went on to tell how a huge breach had been opened in the front, and that already the Germans had penetrated as far as Arras and Amiens.  "The truth is," he went on, "that our classic conception of the conduct of war has come up against a new conception" - one which combines the massive use of heavy armoured divisions in cooperation with aeroplanes and the creation of disorder in the rear by means of parachute raids.

As that black day dragged on there came news of still more disasters.  General Giraud, newly appointed commander of the French Ninth Army, was said to be taken prisoner by the Germans with the whole of his staff, and to the towns which had been reached by their advanced mechanised    forces was added Abbeville, only 15 miles from the English Channel.  Arras, where only a few days before had been Lord Gort's headquarters, was the scene of fierce street fighting, and Amiens was largely in flames.  (Arras, indeed was stated on 22nd to have been recaptured, and so fluid was the situation that important fighting developed in the Cambrai-Vallencennes area, 25 miles behind Arras itself.)  In a huge area of Northern France not a building of any description remained undamaged, as the invader systematically destroyed all that came within his path.  The Channel ports on which the British Army was now withdrawing - in unbroken order and in good heart - were being heavily bombed.

It was worse than 1914, worse even than 1918.  It was the hour of supreme crisis, the hour in which the tick of every second would have its echo through untold centuries.