The German armored forces advanced rapidly towards the English Channel, which made Fang Yan, who was in the rear, happy and worried.

In Fang Yan's eyes, the breakthrough of Guderian and others in the middle is undoubtedly a decisive success. The whole of France was cut in half by this knife, the defenders of the Maginot Line and the coalition forces in Belgium could not take care of each other, and more importantly, a huge encirclement against the northern coalition forces was rapidly closing. In this encirclement, there are 2 French armies, 1 British army, and about 1.5 Belgian armies, even excluding the second-line auxiliary forces, there are a full 750,000 main combat personnel!

However, what also annoyed Fang Yan was that the armored forces he was responsible for supporting were advancing too quickly. Since crossing the Maas River, Rommel's 7th Panzer Division has been rushing through the French wilderness like a whirlwind, traveling an average of more than 60 kilometers a day, which has led to the naval pilots under Fang Yan's command often mistaking Rommel's headquarters for retreating French troops, and rushing down in confusion to bomb them indiscriminately. Even on May 16, the 7th Panzer Division suffered more casualties than combat losses when bombed by its own planes - they lost a total of 49 men that day, and the accidental bombing of the HNA pilots contributed 31 men!

The 5th Armored Division and the 4th Motorized Division, both under the command of Hult, advanced relatively slowly, but they also failed to escape the "poisonous hands" of their own naval aviation. From May 15, Fang Yan's two aviation regiments also began to provide air support for these two units, and the naval aviation fighters inevitably dropped bombs on their own heads while blowing a large number of French reinforcements to pieces and falling apart.

Faced with this situation, Fang Yan was distressed, but there was no good way. After all, even in the Gulf War 50 years later, it was not uncommon for the US military, which used a large amount of high-tech equipment, to accidentally bomb its own people, not to mention an era when the means of communication and identification were far inferior to the former. As far as Fang Yan knew, Guderian's troops had also been bombed indiscriminately by the Army's own men in the past few days, and the former, who had angrily returned fire, even knocked down several friendly planes. In desperation, Fang Yan had to ask the front-line troops to make as many large-size flags as possible and cover them on tanks and armored vehicles, so that the pilots could slightly reduce the risk of accidental hits.

However, despite some shortcomings in the German air-ground coordination, they were far more fortunate than the Allied forces, which had little air support. In the middle of the night on 16 May, after Churchill's humble pleas in a telegram, the British Cabinet agreed to send an additional 10 squadrons of fighters to France to assist in the war. These more than 200 fighters only made up for the loss of the British Expeditionary Force's air power in the past few days, and there was a world of difference between them and the full support that Gammelin imagined. In addition, the British fighters needed two days of preparation time to reach the French battlefield, which made the skies over the main theaters firmly controlled by the German army.

For Guderian and other front-line armored generals, the battle situation in front of them was like a dream. Hordes of German warplanes repeatedly attacked the French support units along the way, completely crushing their already shaky will to fight in the face of their own rout, and the Germans showed no interest in capturing the massive puppeteers who had lost their spirits, and only drove them off the road while they ran towards the English Channel. In the two days of 16 and 17 July, Rommel also captured nearly 10,000 prisoners, captured 300 trucks and more than 200 artillery pieces, and the total number of attrition was only 94, including those who were accidentally bombed by the HNA Airlines.

During this time, the baggage brigades carrying fuel became the most painful personnel in the armoured divisions. Every time they brought a consignment of oil to the front, they had to bring back a large number of prisoners like nannies to take them in, and the next transport would be greatly extended—the resupplied combat troops would never stop until they ran out of fuel. These heavy soldiers could only sleep four hours a day, and after a few days they were described as haggard, but they gritted their teeth with unprecedented strength, because they could already feel that the final victory was at hand!

It was the French refugees who really hindered the advance of the German armored forces. These civilians were pushing all kinds of vehicles and luggage, congesting the roads, and when they found that the Germans were not killing and setting fires as they had been rumored, they were emboldened to continue on the road, saying nothing and not getting out of the way. To do this, the German armored units had to go around the fields. Even so, the Germans were able to advance 60 kilometers a day, and their lightning-fast speed not only made the French top brass desperate, but also frightened the German dictator who commanded in the rear.

At the Bush Headquarters on the banks of the Rhine, Hitler stood in front of a combat map with his fists clenched, his eyes fixed on the huge bulge in the middle of the line that bulged out to the west, his expression full of tension and anxiety. Only a few days earlier, Hitler had been thinking about the appearance of the salient, but on May 17 it was an eyesore to Hitler, even to the point of restlessness.

All the reasons for Hitler's change of mood were that the German armored forces were advancing too fast. Since breaking through the defense line of the Maas River on the night of May 14, Guderian has led his troops to rush westward for more than 150 kilometers, which is far faster than the "Schlieffen Plan" on the right flank of the German army during the World War. Such a rapid march not only left the infantry far behind, but sometimes even broke away from the support of the logistics troops. At this time, a gap of almost 100 kilometers has been opened between the armored forces and the infantry in the rear, and no matter from which point of view, this is an extremely crazy situation of a lone army going deep!

From 15 May, Hitler wanted to give the same order as Kleist, the commander of the panzer group, that is, to suspend the advance of the panzer divisions and stabilize the advance until the follow-up infantry caught up before attacking. After all, not everyone can have the courage to demolish the tower with a single person's residual blood when the map is completely black, so the safest way is to stop and replenish the blue and blood on the spot, and wait until all the teammates arrive before taking action.

It stands to reason that Hitler, who had shown great courage before the war and agreed to Manstein's plan, should not have flinched halfway through the operation, as the conservative Kleist did. However, Hitler was the commander-in-chief of the entire German army, and he shouldered a burden of responsibility that no one could have imagined.

At present, as long as there are 2~3 divisions of elite French troops to launch a surprise attack on the flank of the German armored forces, then the French army can easily cut off the connection between the German tanks and the rear infantry along the gap in the battle line, and swallow the German armored forces that are alone in the depths.

For Hitler, who had already opened a breakthrough in the middle of the Maas River and was in a good form of warfare, the most crucial armor spearhead was broken and destroyed, which was tantamount to giving away all the gains that the German army had already gained. Hitler would rather slow down and give the French army some respite, rather than be too greedy and bury the good situation in front of him!

In addition to his duty to seek stability as a commander-in-chief, the limitations of Hitler's background also made his interpretation of the war situation limited to the inherent form level, far from reaching the realm of freewheeling when commanding operations like Halder and other army veterans. In the eyes of the latter, there are no concepts such as "lone army going deep" and "flank exposure", and some are just insights into the in-depth nature of military command; In the face of the ever-changing battlefield, they can make an eclectic response, and they are indeed more than a star and a half stronger than Hitler, who never went to military school.

Thus, the faster Guderian advanced, the more restless Hitler's heart became, filled with the danger of a tightrope jump. On the 15th and 16th, Hitler presented Brauchitsch and Halder, the two army chiefs, with the threat of the presence of the panzer flanks and asked them to restrain the advance of the front-line troops. However, on May 17, Hitler called and asked Rundstedt, commander of Army Group A, that he realized that his orders had not been conveyed at all, and Guderian and others had already galloped madly and could not stop!

"I'm so angry!" Enraged, Hitler slammed the microphone on the stand and roared angrily. Things turned out to be as Hitler had guessed: although Brauchitsch and his wife agreed to do well in person, they swallowed these words back into their stomachs as soon as they returned to the headquarters, and ridiculed the "former corporal" for having a mental problem. Faced with a dangerous situation that would allow the Germans to repeat the defeat on the Marne (which Hitler thought), Hitler could no longer care about maintaining the image of a confident commander-in-chief, and in any case, he had to stop the front-line troops immediately.

Out of distrust of the two army leaders, Brauchitsch and Halder, Hitler bypassed the army command and personally called Kleist, the commander of the panzer group. This time, Hitler finally found his soulmate.

Kleist, who had long wanted Guderian to stop, took the opportunity to talk about the so-called flank threat on the phone, and mentioned: "At least half of the tank units of Army Group A are now paralyzed on the road due to battle losses and mechanical failures, and there are very few who are really fighting on the front line." At the same time, Kleist also reported to Hitler the latest aerial reconnaissance that the French army, which was massing about 40,000 men south of Sedan, was very likely to cut off the rear of the armored forces, leaving the latter in a desperate situation of being cut off from support.

Hearing Kleist's exaggeration, Hitler was extremely nervous, and immediately ordered to stop the attack and strengthen the flank protection. In order to prevent Brauchitsch and others from disobeying his orders again, Hitler gave orders directly in the name of the Army Command. By the time Brauchitsch reacted, the German advance seemed to be about to be halted by Hitler's micro-maneuver.

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