>>507178854>If only you were in charge back in 1939Sure as fuck wouldn’t have tried to March most of my army through Belgium
I would have invaded Belgium beforehand, just put the french Dutch and British troops on the German border nothing else, not even toppled their governement
Extended the maginot up to the Dutch if there was time
Deployed all the heavy armor in the path between Luxembourg and Paris (back then Germany only had small weak light tanks, fast but loses in tank vs tank battles, they had a lot though, panzer 1/panzer 2/panzer 3/panzer38 (czech) spam out the wazoo)
Deploy light tanks in the Netherlands, so they have some chance at getting out if they rush for Rotterdam, make sure the communication and military resilience is top notch, fast and reactive (wasn’t the case at all IRL, main reason France lost, it took tens of hours for info about a breakthrough to even reach generals)
Put the rest of the light tanks behind the line
Massive conscription as reservists to get a secondary line (France didn’t have enough manpower to do defense in depth, once the frontline was pierced there was no french soldier behind).
Conscription is terrible but I justify it here because conscripting everyone early helps you reduce casualties a lot and gives the enemy a much harder time. Yes millions would be conscripted but they would all be in rear trench lines(that they are digging), they wouldn’t be in actual danger unless a breakthrough happened, and if it did only a tiny % of them would be in danger
France fell due to rommel turning off his radio and going insane, he rolled around behind french lines with 13 cars, no plans not even shooting
But it caused french leadership to incorrectly interpret there was an entire panzer division behind their lines, ordering frontline troops to pull out to avoid encirclement
Creating a gap in the french lines and since there was no back line and the Germans had a doctrine of maneuver with tons of tanks and trucks,too fast