At the same time that the German ocean-going fleet was battling the waves in the Norwegian Sea and sailing resolutely to the hunting seas, the situation on the European continent was also undergoing astonishing changes at an extremely rapid pace.

On the morning of 5 September, Halder, chief of the General Staff of the German Army, held a meeting with Commander-in-Chief Brauchitsch and Commander Bork of Army Group North. After summing up the situation in the five days since the German attack on Poland, all three agreed that "the enemy has in fact been defeated."

The dust is rolling and the fire is raging. On the vast and vast Bode Plain, the tanks of the division and division are rampage with the support of aircraft, and if they enter a no-man's land, they can advance 50~60 kilometers in one day. Motorized infantry poured in like a tide from the gaps opened by the tanks, and the progress was rapid; Even their guns were moved to self-propelled chassis, allowing them to advance like the wind at speeds of up to 15 kilometers per hour, even in rough fields. The Polish Air Force was completely destroyed within 48 hours, and 500 front-line aircraft were almost completely destroyed; And their "flower of the army" -- the cavalry, can only be reduced to cannon fodder today in the era of mechanization. Under the frenzied fire of German automatic weapons, the Polish cavalry was beaten to the ground, and the blood of men and horses stained the grass and fields red.

After five days of fighting, the total number of casualties of the Polish army exceeded 100,000, and the three divisions stationed in the Polish corridor were almost killed and wounded, becoming the most shining page in the German army's merit book. And the Germans' greatest success was not limited to that. Due to the breakthrough of tanks and the rapid outflanking of motorized infantry, almost the entire Polish army was encircled near the border line; The door to Warsaw, the capital of Poland, was completely opened, and the pattern of victory and defeat in the war had completely lost its suspense!

On the night of September 5, the Polish government, which a week before had been clamoring for "the suppression of the Soviet Union in Pinde," "the Tannenberg of the Teutonic Knights," and "the conquest of Berlin," had fled Warsaw like a lost dog and sought refuge in the small border city of Lublin, near Romania. Because he did not expect that the front-line army would be defeated so quickly. These politicians and business celebrities did not even have time to move their belongings out of the capital. Their only hope now was that France would be able to attack from the west bank of the Rhine, in the hope that Germany would not be able to withstand the tremendous pressure on the Western Front and transfer their main forces on the Eastern Front back to the west to defend against the enemy.

The French, however, have once again betrayed a country that has placed so much trust in Paris, as they had done a year earlier.

Under the Franco-Polish military agreement signed on May 19, 1939. France gave very clear guarantees to Poland's security: in the event of an armed attack by Germany on Poland, France would "launch a gradual offensive against limited targets within three days of the issuance of the general ******". Now that the French general ****** had been issued on 1 September, it stands to reason that the fighting on the German-French border would begin by 4 September at the latest. The treaty further provided that France would launch an offensive against Germany with its main forces from the 15th day after the general mobilization began. When asked by the Poles how many "main forces" France could send to participate in such a massive offensive, the French commander-in-chief, Gammelin, made it clear that France would be able to send about 35 to 38 divisions.

However, when it really came to the point where France had to come in and turn the tide. The French military, like an emasculated rooster, became hesitant to shirk and no longer put into practice its original oath to Poland. One of the important reasons for this is that Britain can provide far more support than it did in the last war.

Due to the continued economic downturn in Britain since the 30s, the army, which was already unpopular, was almost cut under the file of the British Parliament: they only had three divisions at full strength, and they were not even as powerful as Belgium. If so, that's fine. However, the British were ashamed to say that they would be at the end of October, nearly two months after the outbreak of the war. In order to put this tiny force on the European continent, this made the hearts of the French military top brass as if 10,000 alpacas were running wildly.

Obviously, if the French, fulfilling their agreement with the Poles, attacked from the Rhine region at the beginning of the war, they would for a long time be left alone to fight bloodied, without any substantial help from the British. This act of throwing all the obligations to France. The top brass of the French army had to wonder about the intentions of the British: did these sanctimonious London hypocrites sincerely stand side by side with France to defeat the enemy, or did they have the intention of driving France to be cannon fodder and take advantage of their interests in Europe?

In addition, there was another crucial factor that held the French army back. It is the heavy losses they suffered in the last battle, and the valuable lessons learned in the four years and three months of war.

The world war that broke out 25 years ago was undoubtedly a complete disaster for France. France, with a total population of less than 40 million before the war, had as many as 1.7 million soldiers and civilians killed and 4.26 million disabled in the war. The vast majority of these people are young men who play a pivotal role in the national economy, and their losses have almost wiped out the entire country. And most of these casualties were incurred in various offensive operations. The French soldiers launched a heroic assault on the German trench positions with their flesh and blood, but they were bloodily slaughtered by machine guns and rapid-fire guns, and the losses of a single battle were easily in the hundreds of thousands!

Under these circumstances, the tactical concept of the French army quickly shifted from the "desperate offensive" before the First World War to the "absolute defense" at the other extreme. France knew that it was inferior to Germany in terms of population and birth rate, so it was undoubtedly the golden rule that its army followed after the war to consume the enemy's strength and preserve its own strength through defensive warfare.

From 1929, the French government began to build the Maginot Line, which stretched nearly 400 kilometers on the German-French border between Alsace and Lorraine. This huge investment of 5 billion francs in the construction of fortifications has completely declared the bankruptcy of the French offensive spirit, and they are willing to stay behind the defensive line and continue to survive. The French military decided that if it could be avoided, it must avoid the same kind of killings as it had done in the past.

Therefore, whether from the political, military, or national rise and fall perspective, France was extremely reluctant to risk the lives of its youth to shed blood in front of Germany's Siegfried Line. Moreover, Poland was defeated far faster than the French had expected: General Gammelin found that by 15 September, when he had attacked the German West Wall with the main force of nearly 40 divisions, Poland would be unable to save it. The offensive launched by oneself will not have any meaningful effect other than the sacrifice of soldiers' lives in vain. If you can't save the fate of the Poles, why not stay behind the lines? This line of defense can definitely be said to be impregnable, and if the Germans want to attack, they will definitely let them have no return!

"This war was actually lost years ago." Afterwards, French Prime Minister Daladier wrote sadly in his diary. The war was lost in Munich in 1938, in 1936 when Germany reoccupied the Rhineland, and in 1935 when Hitler defied the Treaty of Versailles and declared conscription. As a result of several sadly cowering patrols on the part of the allies, they now have to pay the price. Paris, however, seemed to think that by sitting still, it would be possible to hide the debt.

The dormant immobility of the French army made the big stone hanging in the heart of the German high command fall to the ground. Because at this time, almost all the elite of the German Army was thrown on the Eastern Front to deal with the Poles. They left only 23 divisions on the Western Front, 12 of which were newly drafted reserve divisions. The 3rd Air Fleet, which supported these forces, was the weakest of the three German Army air fleets, with only 500 aircraft of all types. There was not a single tank in the German army on the Western Front, and even assault guns were completely extinct; The Siegfried Line was not completely completed, and its defensive strength was even more different from that of the Maginot Line on the other side.

Faced with this almost fantastic situation, General Loeb, who was in charge of the defense of the Western Front, was ecstatic. He immediately ordered all units to strictly prohibit provocations against the French troops on the opposite side, and even reconnaissance planes were not allowed to fly into French airspace. The German-French border soon took on a quiet, absurd scene. At first, the soldiers on both sides were a little uncomfortable with this strange situation, but soon they began to enjoy this bloodless "peace".

For a time, there was a strange state of declaration without war between France and Germany, allowing Hitler to trample on Poland, France's last ally in Eastern Europe. The French soldiers went to bed early and got up late every day, and the days were full of laughter, and they suddenly discovered that the sky of war could be so blue, which was completely different from what they had predicted when they went on the expedition. Letters of safety were soon sent across France, and the hearts of the women fell to the ground, hoping that the killings of the past would never happen again.

France, which directly bordered Germany, did not listen to artillery fire, while Britain, a country separated from the enemy by an entire North Sea, was attacked one after another by the enemy after the declaration of war.

Following the surprise attack of the German aircraft carrier on Scapa Bay, on the night of 3 September, the German submarine U-30 torpedoed and sank the British mail ship "Athena" without any warning. Although this was a major diplomatic incident that caused the deaths of 112 civilians, including 28 Americans, it was also the beginning of a full-scale German naval attack. Before the German aircraft carrier fleet entered the Atlantic, the vigorous Atlantic battle began in full swing on 4 September. (To be continued.) )