F 40 Gold: Expiring Objectives

[jonnymacbrown]

Hey Johnny,

These are really great questions.

The French plan was not simply to refight the WW1, but to fight WW1 better. Plan D (with the appended hypothèse Breda) called for an advance deep into Belgium and up i to the Netherlands. The idea was to fight the decisive battle outside of the French territory in the Low Countries, thereby sparing the strategically important manufacturing and mining centers (Lille, Roubaix, Maubeuge, etc) from destruction and occupation and facilitating a future French offensive into Germany - with the Low Countries in Allied hands, the Germans would be forced to defend more ground and could not rely on the strong portions of the Westwall (the defenses on the Dutch border were rudimentary at this point and non-existent north of the Rhine.) Failure to hold at least a portion of the Low Countries would represent the total failure of Plan D.

Fall Gelb, for its part, was not envisioned by OKH & OKW to be the decisive "Sickle Cut" maneuver that it became. Though Von Manstein had advocated such a plan, and his thinking surely influenced Guderian, the German command had not planned anything beyond the partial occupation of the Low Countries and the seizure of bridgeheads over the Meuse between Dinant and Sedan. Halder, Von Brauchitsch, and the other cautious/conservative infantry commanders in the high command could not (or would not) imagine that the Allied armies could be dealt a death blow in one swift, decisive maneuver. To them, Fall Gelb was a limited operation - the first move in what was surely to be a long and arduous campaign. The seizure of the Meuse bridgeheads would facilitate further operations in France while the capture of the Netherlands and much of Belgium would enable the Luftwaffe to strike Britain. The push to the sea and encirclement of the Allied armies was not part of OKH's conception of Fall Gelb but rather unfolded solely due to the improvised (and, to an extent, unsanctioned) action of Guderian, Rommel, and other Panzer commanders. I would really recommend picking up a copy of Karlheinz Frieser's The Blitzkrieg Legend for more on this.

So, if the Germans occupy the Low Countries (plus maybe picking up a bridgehead over Sedan), this would  mean that Plan D has utterly failed while Fall Gelb has achieved about what the German high command envisioned (probably a little more actually). Hence a German victory. Of course, Fall Gelb vastly exceeded the expectations of the German command, so to win a major victory the German player must make a decisive move into France similar to what the Germans historically accomplished.

Again, if we didn't weight the objectives in the Low Countries so heavily then the Allied player would have zero reason to push French and British troops into Belgium & the Netherlands. We'd effectively be ignoring the Allied operational and strategic objectives and probably making things harder for the German player than it should be.

-Mike Prucha

All right! Good explanation. That's in important point: France didn't want to fight another war in northern France. Nice job replicating that in a wargame.  jonny