Moltke was just as disappointed as Rommel and his crew, who were unexpectedly ordered to return home from Paris by train transporting the wounded after the Battle of Paris. At first, the crowd thought it was a vacation, but the direction of the train shattered the illusion that it was not heading for a big city like Berlin, but towards the remote mountains of the south.

The military representatives who participated in the test of the No. 4 tank included Rommel and others, and although disappointed, they still scrupulously obeyed the orders of their superiors. After entering the test site, the crowd used their rich combat experience to drive the No. 4 tank for half a month of testing, and put forward some suggestions for improvement based on their own experience. At the end of the test, they also used the No. 4 tank and the No. 3 tank, the Renault tank, and the Vickers tank for actual combat exercises, and the result was that the No. 4 tank actually destroyed the opponent in a one-on-three way, and the longer range, more scientific body structure, thicker armor and more powerful engine made the No. 4 tank look very perfect. Rommel and the others were eager to return to the battlefield to experience the new tank, and they returned to France using the old No. 3 tank.

They had to return to France because the Germans were about to launch the second phase of the offensive, and after driving the French out of Paris, the Germans captured Deleux, Alençon, and Caen in a short time, and took most of the east, north, and west of Paris into their arms, and basically controlled the northern part of France. During this time, the German army rested and repaired the railways in France and Belgium, providing sufficient supplies for more than a million soldiers and more than 400 tanks on the front line.

The 1st and 2nd Panzer Corps lost about a third of their tanks in the previous battles, and the lack of armor in Moltke's hands caused by breakdowns, wrecked, and unable to repair. But within twenty days, 350 brand-new No. 3 tanks and sufficient fuel were sent to the country, which gave the Germans the strength to continue the assault.

The Germans, who had dispersed their fatigue and received adequate supplies, planned a new offensive aimed at the main French forces gathered on the line from Tours to Orleans. It is funny to say that the French have placed a heavy force in the German-French border area, and will not withdraw even if Paris is directly threatened, hoping to invade German territory and force it to surrender. Unexpectedly, the development of the war situation changed too quickly, and in the blink of an eye, the French lost more than 700,000 troops in the north, lost the capital Paris, and lost a large area of land in the north. The fortifications on the border line became an ornament, and the large number of heavy artillery placed there could not be moved, and the huge amount of supplies and ammunition could not be moved, so the French had to blow them up and return to the plains out of the turtle-like fortifications.

In desperation, the French had no choice but to redeploy heavy troops from the border area and place them south of Paris, trying to hold back the German advance and defend Porto, the seat of the provisional government, and the southern territories. There were more than 500,000 troops in the French Sixth Army, the Seventh Army, the Third Reserve Army, and the Fifth Reserve Army, but they lacked strong fortifications and no natural hazards to stop the German chariots. After the loss of the North Industrial Zone and the Paris Industrial Zone, the French army even lacked barbed wire and other defensive tools, the British transport ships were blocked by German naval warships, and the Americans were able to provide enough food, trucks, fuel, and barbed wire, but there was no large amount of guns and ammunition for the French army to squander.

The brutal bloody battle began again, and the weakness of Paris did not mean that all French were weak, even the French reservists fought bravely. They held on under the heavy fire of the German army, and the number of casualties increased geometrically, and the French generals only glanced at the statistics and threw them aside, because they knew that only the sacrifice of the soldiers could stop the advance of the German army, they had no way to retreat, and everyone had to be conscious of sacrifice in the process of defending their homeland, even these generals were no exception.

In the battle for Troyes on the banks of the Seine, the French 25th Infantry Division used the cover of the river and fortifications to resist stubbornly and repelled three German attacks. Later, taking advantage of the carelessness of the German army, a cavalry regiment was sent to attack the German army's logistical supply lines, forcing the German army to retreat fifteen kilometers and temporarily relieving the crisis in Troyes. If this place is occupied by the Germans, there will be a huge gap in the French defensive line, and the danger of being surrounded by German troops may be repeated again.

The cost of repulsing the Germans was that more than a third of the soldiers of the 25th Division were killed and wounded, more than two-thirds of the ammunition was depleted, and they had no backup, and the French army, which was under-strengthened, had to hold a thousand-kilometer defensive line, even if the millions of troops were very weak in front of this line.

On the other hand, the Germans had fairly good logistical supplies, they could continue to shell the French defensive line, they could use aircraft for aerial reconnaissance, they could concentrate their forces to break through the French army a little, and they could continuously invest troops to a certain point after resting.

On the afternoon of the second day of the attack, the French could not hold out, and the Germans threw in a tank regiment, seventy-five large-caliber guns and more than 5,000 infantry to break through the French line at Troyes in one fell swoop. In addition, Semes, Saint-Gallais and other places were also broken through by the Germans one after another, and the entire defense line was in danger. At the critical moment, the French seemed to wake up and concentrated more than 400 tanks to launch a counter-assault, and the unprepared Germans suffered heavy losses, and more than 50 No. 3 tanks were destroyed by Renault tanks. The French infantry took the opportunity to consolidate the line and drive the Germans back to the starting point.

Schlieffen was surprised by the intensity of the battle, and he could not imagine that the French could be so resilient in the face of the loss of the capital, and in this phase of the attack, the Germans suffered more than 30,000 casualties, almost more than the previous offensive. The brutality of positional offensive and defensive warfare made the Germans very uncomfortable, they were accustomed to encircling and dividing under the penetration of armored forces, and then harvesting a large number of prisoners of war, but they were not psychologically prepared to spend blood in positional warfare.

The German soldiers were undeniably elite and tenacious, they could fight the French in positional battles, charge against enemy heavy machine guns, and climb barbed wire full of spikes for their comrades to pass through. But it is a pity that these elite soldiers are consumed in positional warfare, and their superb qualities have little room to play in positional warfare and trench warfare. Even a heavy machine gun operated by a reserve could slaughter a charging German soldier, and it was not worth it.

It was also not worth wasting precious tanks in positional warfare, and Moltke was adamantly opposed to allowing his armoured troops to storm the French fortified positions, which were littered with anti-tank mines, barricades, and barbed wire, and despite the lack of anti-tank guns, the French infantry could use explosive packs and cluster grenades to cover countless craters to blow up German tanks. After losing hundreds of tanks, Schlieffen ordered the tactics to be discontinued, and agreed to Moltke Jr.'s advice, and the First Army moved away from the never-ending trench warfare and turned westward, aiming at Nantes in the Bay of Biscay.

It was another long march, but it was much easier than crossing the Ardennes Forest. Taking advantage of the well-developed railway transport system in France, the main force of the First Army set out from Paris and arrived in Rennes, which had already been occupied by the Germans, and after assembling here, it suddenly wanted to attack Nantes.

The French were caught off guard, and their overstretched forces allowed them to relax their defenses on the coast, and in front of the First Panzer Army, which was in the vanguard of the First Army, there was only one reserve division of the French army to defend it. Even if the troops were transferred from the east, it would take the French five days, and the German armored forces would not have given the French so much time to prepare.

The core of the German army's battle plan is speed, which is the speed that Moltke attaches the most importance to, and the time for the emergence of armored forces is too short, except for the founding country of China and Germany, which has learned from China in depth, there is no other country so proficient in tank combat, and there is no general who is proficient in tank combat like Moltke and He Guangsha. The same was true of the French, even if they were interspersed with German tanks and lost Paris, their generals did not realize how to deal with the German tanks, or did not have time to study the corresponding tactics. Perhaps in the frontal position, they knew about the use of anti-tank mines, anti-tank guns, etc., to destroy German tanks, but they did not realize the essence of tank tactics.

Tanks were the cavalry of ancient times, the most important mobile force in an army, and in ancient wars, heavy cavalry rarely had brilliant results, but light cavalry galloped across the country, and the Mongol cavalry even almost conquered the world - they did not use cavalry to storm enemy fortresses and infantry pikes.

So when Moltke Jr.'s First Army captured Nantes and appeared behind the French lines, the French Eighth Army and the Seventeenth Reserve Army, which had come to support, had just arrived at Saumur, east of Nantes. Sadly, the French army did not receive the news of the loss of Nantes, continued to march forward, and then crashed headlong into the iron wall of the 1st Panzer Army.

At this moment, Rommel saw a large group of sluggish French soldiers, who looked at Rommel's No. 205 tank like a monster, and some soldiers did not even stop moving forward, let alone making defensive moves. On a road more than 800 meters away, Rommel spotted through his telescope that it was about a regiment of French soldiers, carrying more than two dozen infantry guns, as well as a large number of heavy machine guns, but no anti-tank guns were found. And most importantly, when their own tanks crossed a small breakthrough and appeared on the flank of that unit, they were not prepared in the slightest.

"Mark, step on the gas, let's go up and meet those French GIs!" Rommel felt his temples jump, and in a matter of seconds he was ready to attack, and his men were clearly bold enough to discourage the disparity in strength. In fact, it was not that they were bold, but that a few dozen meters behind were followed by three other tanks in a platoon of tanks, and more than two hundred meters later, there was a whole tank battalion plus a regiment of grenadiers.

PS: Two chapters today, too busy at work, sorry! Three chapters will be restored tomorrow. (To be continued.) )