"Hitler got it right for Normandy 1944"

[Richard Anderson]

You start from the unproved claim that there were 40000 German vehicles in the Ardennes = that the PzG leist was following the Ardennes .

FYI :

6 + 8 PzD started at the German-Belgian border and one can assume that they were crossing the Ardennes (mostly ? )

but,Guderian ? his 3 PzD (2, 1 , 10 ) started at the border of Germany and the Duchy Luxembourg ,and the duchy of Luxembourg is mostly outside the Ardennes .And,from what I have read, he advanced on the axis Arlon-Sedan .Arlon is not the Ardennes . If that is true, Guderian was avoiding the Ardennes as mostly as he could .

Two other questionable points :

4 roads for 8 divisions ?

40000 wheeled vehicles for 8 divisions ?

Sigh.

Panzerkorps Hoth and Kluge's 4. Armee marched St Vith-Marche-Dinant-Florennes-Beaumont...until crossing the Meuse in the "Ardennes". 11 divisions (2 Panzer)

Panzergruppe Kleist and List's 12. Armee marched Bastogne-Libramont-Montherme...in the "Ardennes". 18 divisions (5 Panzer and 3 Mot)

Weich's 2. and Busch's 16. Armee followed in trail Kleist and List...in the "Ardennes". 21 divisions.

Some 50 divisions and ancillary supporting Heerestruppen marched through the "Ardennes".

Each of the 7 Panzer divisions had 500-600 PKW, 1,400-1,500 LKW, 1,200 or so motorcycles, and 300-400 armored vehicles. Each of the 3 motorized divisions had about 600-800 PKW, 1,200-1,300 LKW, and 1,200 or so motorcycles. Each of the 40 infantry divisions had about 400 PKW, 500 LKW, 500 motorcycles, and 800-1,200 horse drawn vehicles.

So around 90,000 motorized and 40,000 horse drawn vehicles in the divisional units alone.

[ljadw]

Dinant-Florennes, Beaumont are NOT in the Ardennes.

It has been claimed by Sandeep and by Frieser (The Blitzkrieg Legend P 110 ) that the PzG Kleist (= 8 divisions,5 PzD and 3 Mot. D) had 40000 wheeled vehicles.Frieser mentions : 39373 wheeled vehicles,1222 battle tanks and 545 other tracked vehicles .

If Frieser makes such mistakes, why should one believe one worth of what he is saying ?

Besides, it is very questionable to count motorcycles as wheeled vehicles .

Even if one is doing this, the result is that the 8 divisions of the PzG had 24000 wheeled vehicles, not 40000 .


And, it is not so that the whole PzG was advancing on the axis Bastogne-Libramont, Montherme.The rightwing of the PzG was doing this, but the leftwing was marching more to the south :Arlon-Sedan .


It is also not correct to include the infantery units, as they advanced BEHIND the PzG .It wa impossible for 50 divisions to advance simultaneously through the Ardennes .

[Gorque]

And, the shortening of the front would have made available additional divisions to defend the Sedan sector .

Wouldn't that also result in the release of German divisions to attack other sectors as well? So what is to be gained by this?

[Nickdfresh]

As a lot of people you have a wrong idea of the Ardennes : they are a small geographical region south of the Meus, much south. They include the southern part of the province of Liège,the major part (not all ) of the province of Luxembourg and a part of the Duchy of Luxembourg.

While the width at the German border was some 100 km, it was at the French border less than 25 km ;this means that there was no road space enough to deploy at the French border 9 PzD . There is also the fact that there were no railroads going from Germany to France through the Ardennes and good roads were almost inexistant ;when I visited in 1961 the Mardasson at Bastogne ,we were driving at 20 km per hour through roads who had not changed since the 19th century .

That's why the forces of AGA and a part of AGB were advancing to a line between Charleroi and the city of Luxembourg( 210 km );big armies need a lot of road space and adequate railroads which were not available in the Ardennes .

You should have been on the French general staff with this idiocy. The Heer had nearly 40,000 vehicles in the Ardennes on four roads They did it,albiet shouldn't have and if the French were at all competent they would have made them pay for it. But the Germans had the largest traffic jam in European history in the Aredennes...

You start from the unproved claim that there were 40000 German vehicles in the Ardennes = that the PzG leist was following the Ardennes .

FYI :

6 + 8 PzD started at the German-Belgian border and one can assume that they were crossing the Ardennes (mostly ? )

but,Guderian ? his 3 PzD (2, 1 , 10 ) started at the border of Germany and the Duchy Luxembourg ,and the duchy of Luxembourg is mostly outside the Ardennes .And,from what I have read, he advanced on the axis Arlon-Sedan .Arlon is not the Ardennes . If that is true, Guderian was avoiding the Ardennes as mostly as he could .

Two other questionable points :

4 roads for 8 divisions ?

40000 wheeled vehicles for 8 divisions ?

I started with a claim made in nearly every work on the subject including Horne's To Lose A Battle. That it was Europe's largest traffic jam until recently!

Um, more like 45 divisions (roughly). That might have had something to do with the French being completely unprepared for the Sedan schwerpunkt! Or the numerous French reconnaissance pilots that returned to their bases panic stricken...

It must be fun to rewrite history and make things up? You shown nothing but "unproven" and virtually unsourced, hack claims...

Here's Wikipedia:

Central front[edit]
Ardennes[edit]

The German advance until noon, 16 May 1940
In the centre, the progress of German Army Group A was to be delayed by Belgian motorised infantry and French mechanised cavalry divisions (DLC, Divisions Légères de Cavalerie) advancing into the Ardennes. The main resistance came from the Belgian 1st Chasseurs Ardennais along with the 5e Division Légère de Cavalerie (5th DLC).[103] These forces had insufficient anti-tank capacity to block the surprisingly large number of German tanks they encountered and quickly gave way, withdrawing behind the Meuse. The German advance was greatly hampered by the sheer number of troops trying to force their way along the poor road network. Kleist's Panzergruppe had more than 41,000 vehicles. This huge armada had been allocated only four march routes through the Ardennes. The time-tables proved to be wildly optimistic and there was soon heavy congestion, beginning well over the Rhine to the east, which would last for almost two weeks. This made Army Group A very vulnerable to French air attacks, but these did not materialise.[104] Although Gamelin was well aware of the situation, the French bomber force was far too weak to challenge German air superiority so close to the German border. The French had tried in vain to stem the flow of the German armour during the Battle of Maastricht and had failed with heavy losses. In two days, the bomber force had been reduced from 135 to 72.[105]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of ... tral_front

[David Thompson]

Several posts from Richard Anderson, and one from another poster quoting him were removed for violations of AHF's civility rules This thread is temporarily closed to allow the posters to cool off.- DT.