Chris Madel

Then how come they won in France?

Well, they won in France because they were able to do it really, really quickly.

They effectively won in five days.

I mean, I know that it took six weeks, but the battle was all but won by the 15th of May, having started on the 10th of May, 1940.

And they were able to do this by destroying the French in penny packets.

And the way they were able to do that was by using these spearheads, which were very well equipped with motor vehicles, with trucks and half-tracks and armored cars and panzers, of course, tanks and mobile artillery, et cetera, et cetera, and motor bikes with sidecars.

They were able to do that because they were able to communicate with one another in a way that the French couldn't and nor could the British or Belgians or Dutch.

So that was how they won.

You know, one has to accept that the victory in France was 50% German operational brilliance and training and all the rest of it and the spearheads and 50%

ineptitude on the part of the French.

Attacking the Soviet Union is something out of a completely different order altogether because of the geographical scale of it.

That's the issue.

This is a lesson that the Germans themselves have not learned.

They're just thinking, because the infrastructure of Russia is so backward, it's going to be a cakewalk.

Rather than going, because the infrastructure is so bad, that's not going to support

are very limited resources in motorised vehicles.

And that's going to be a problem.

They're not looking at it that way.

So that's why they're successful in 1940.

And that's why that is masking, that victory is masking the unbelievable shortfall in mechanisation that the Wehrmacht has at this time.