THE CAUSES OF THE BEF WITHDRAWAL IN 1940

There are many causes of the failure of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in the battle for Northern France in May 1940. As we all know, the BEF was forced to withdraw or be surrounded and wiped out. The evacuation at Dunkirk (in this country at least) is fairly well known if the myths often prevail over the fact. The battle for France up until that time is considerably less well known about. This may be because the Dunkirk miracle was seen as a glorious event in a tragic time, however the rearguard actions were equally glorious and successful. In this essay I will explore the cause of this withdrawal, perhaps another time I will look at the rearguard actions and the actions at Dunkirk.

The first main problem that was exposed to the British commanders when deployed in France was the poor quality of many of the troops. The Guards and Greenjackets were at their usual standard of excellence but even they had not taken part in a combat exercise for some time. The real problem was with the other regular units: they were practically untrained. Their training was probably the worst that it had been in the British army ever since the first regular units had been established centuries before. After inspecting one machine gun battalion, a certain Major General Montgomery stated:

“It would be sheer massacre to commit it to action in its present state.”

His attitude towards the army as a whole was equally critical, saying that it was:

“Totally unfit to fight a first-class war on the continent… In the years preceding… not large-scale exercise for troops had been held in England for some time. Indeed the regular army was unfit to take part in a realistic exercise.”

Despite such critical comments, the British army had some time to prepare for the upcoming conflict in the “Phoney war” period. Between the declaration of war and the first combat between the allied armies in France there was a period of seven months. During this time, the BEF commanders worked flat out to get the BEF into shape. Highest on the agenda for training were rearguard actions and retreating manoeuvres, the explanation from one company commander was:

“We always start a war with retreat. What makes you think this one will be different.”

This shows that the British commanders were expecting a repeat of the actions in 1914. Back to my point, the BEF was trained to a reasonable standard by the time of the outbreak of fighting. The Officers had inspired the men, who fought with great bravery and courage. It may well have been a cause of the withdrawal, however I still think that had the army been better trained, the withdrawal would still have taken place.

On a similar topic, the BEF was certainly not as well equipped as the German army. The Matilda II, for example, was a modern and highly effective tank. It was our only modern and effective tank. We had 23 of them in France at the outbreak of fighting. This figure does not compare favourably with the 9 Panzer divisions that the Germans committed to the battle. Our anti-tank gun, the 2-pounder, was the best in the world outside Russia. We lacked enough quantities of quality AT guns, artillery, armour and aircraft. The German tanks were often allowed to pass rather than engage them due to the lack of heavy guns. Our artillery was normally engaged by at least twice as many German guns each and every time it opened fire. Our hurricanes and the new Spitfire were great aircraft. However, German dive-bombers were virtually unopposed in the skies and many of our aircraft were forced to stay in England to protect it against the Luftwaffe.

Our rifles were effective and so were our light machine guns. When the BEF faced unsupported German troops they were invariably successful, even when heavily outnumbered. However, great problems arose when faced with German armour, aircraft and artillery.

Had the BEF been better equipped, they may well have slowed down or stopped the German Panzer offensive and not been surrounded. The attack on the main line in the north could certainly been better resisted and probably stopped. However, the BEF would still have been in grave danger due to one very important fact: the incompetence of the French leadership.

Probably the most important cause was the poor leadership of the French. Whilst the appointment of some British commanders was questionable, they were mostly in the category of mediocre to excellent. Many of the French commanders were extremely poor. To start with, the French defence minister, a certain Monsieur Maginot had poured eighty-seven million Francs into the “Maginot Line” border with Germany. This was the line against which that the Germans were expected to hurl themselves. The line probably managed its objective of being impenetrable, however the defences naively relied on the sanctity of Belgian neutrality. The Maginot line was the least likely point of attack for the Germans.

The next main problem caused by the French commanders was that they were in overall command of the allied army. The BEF was around one sixth of the size of the French army, so all strategic planning was handed over to the French. Lord Gort, the commander of the BEF, was only to intervene if a French order was to “Imperil the survival of the entire British Expeditionary force.” It seems that he was not decisive enough to override the deployment of Gamelin, the French Commander-in-Chief.

The first enormous error that Gamelin made was to let political pressures override military reality. He ordered the British units to leave the extensive defences that they had spent months preparing and advance into Belgium once the Germans attacked the country. The British would certainly have stood a better chance in their well dug trenches with hundreds of miles of barbed wire and tank traps than they did in the open in Belgium. However, this was not his most tragic error, as the British still gave a good account of themselves, the Germans mostly only made a slow advance. The more important danger was the nine Panzer divisions that had punched through the allied lines.

The most fateful miscalculation of Gamelin was that the Ardennes region was impassable. The French troops guarding the region were therefore reserves, mostly veterans of the previous war. Five Panzer divisions swept through the region and were almost unopposed. The British commanders, and even some of Gamelin’s subordinates, strongly advised him to keep some British units in reserve should the Germans attack here but Gamelin ignored them. He deployed too many troops on the flanks in Belgium and near to Switzerland, a fateful mistake. Four German Panzer divisions also punched through the British lines where the British had left their prepared defences further North, south of where Gamelin had deployed the majority of the BEF.

The Britsh planned a counter-attack at Arras, where the British and French armies were planned to link up and cut off the Panzer divisions. Stukas wreaked havoc amoungst the French force and it was forced to withdraw. The BEF counter-attacked alone and failed. This gave the Germans a nasty scare and probably played a role in Hitler’s extordinary “Halt Order” which saved the BEF. The counter-attack was, however, a failiure.

The British had been trying to halt the german panzers with bombers. The Panzer divisions had excellent AA firepower and the Germans had air superiority. The bombers were decimated and the Panzers were not halted.

The final blow caused by the French command was the refusal of the French seventh army to commit troops to Waygand’s (Gamelin’s more competent sucessor) second similar plan to link up the French and British armies at Arras. The French Commander sent to order the French armies to do this crashed into the back of a refugee cart and was killed. The one man with the drive and leadership to inspire the troops into the attack was dead. The French refused to attack. The last British reserves earmarked for the offensive were sent to bolster the failing British lines. There was only one course of action left, the withdrawal of the BEF.

There we are, I have managed to blame the failiure of the BEF squarely on the French commanders. Despite many other large problems in the allied battle plan, the poor strategic judgement of the French “leadership” was totally incompetent and the main cause of the withdrawal. It is hard to blame any one fact for the cause of a historical event, however, had the BEF been larger, better equipped and better trained, it would still have been in grave danger due to the French, and Gamelin and Maginot in particualar.

David Blatcher, 22/6/2000

The book ‘Dunkirk: From Disaster to Deliverance’ by Patrick Wilson was a great help in the reasearch for this essay, I would highly recommend it to anyone. Its only flaw is the low opinion of the last stand of the Royal Greenjackets at Calais. I will probably do a review of this book in the near future…