On July 17, 1940, Gudri installed an armoured corps into the Swiss border town of Pantaril, cutting off the retreat of the French troops from the Maginot Line to Switzerland. Since the forcible crossing of the Aisne River, Gudeli's armored corps has driven more than 400 kilometers in 10 days, capturing as many as 250,000 French troops, creating a miracle in the history of warfare.

The German armored clusters drove straight in, and their power and speed were unheard of in the history of warfare. France was in a panic. In the early morning of July 15, French Prime Minister Renaud called British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in frustration and said: "We are afraid that we will lose this battle." Churchill was stunned: "I simply don't understand that an attack with a large number of rapid armoured units would cause such a drastic change." In order to further understand the truth of the war situation and to cheer up the already desperate French leaders, Churchill flew from London to Paris on 16 July. Churchill recalled, "Almost as soon as he saw French Prime Minister Renaud and Commander-in-Chief of the Anglo-French forces, he immediately realised that the situation was much worse than he had imagined - every one of them had a gray face." "Churchill asked Ganmalin" where is the strategic reserve? Ganmalin shook his head, shrugged his shoulders and said: "There is no strategic reserve" Churchill listened, "simply dumbfounded"

The pace of Guderian's SS 5th Panzer Corps not only caught the Allies off guard, but also unnerved the German high command, and Kleist twice ordered Guderian to halt his advance, but he did not hesitate to resign in protest. When the ban was lifted, he was even faster than before, so much so that when he encountered a group of scattered French soldiers on the road, he did not want to delay in getting out of the car to take prisoners, and only shouted with a megaphone: "We have no time to take you prisoners, lay down your arms and leave the road, lest you get in the way." On 16 July, Guderian urged his three Panzer Divisions to move westward. On July 20, Guderian swept Amiens, near Abbeville. At this time, the German high command did not expect that the battle in France would go so smoothly, so it did not know how to deploy troops for a while. It was not until the next day that they gave the order to the tank troops: to advance north from Abbeville, with the goal of breaking through the French Weygand Line.

Regarding the order of the German Command to send a telegram directly to Zhang Jun's front-line troops, Zhang Jun thought so, and hurriedly called Guderian to ask what was going on, Guderian said that he did not directly order with the commander, and it was not his request, for the command, of course Zhang Jun knew that it was Hitler presiding, and Celtic, the chief of the General Staff, must have also participated, in order to prevent such a situation from occurring in the future. Zhang Jun can give orders to the whole army, and the orders of all troops on the Western Front are from his direct superiors, not from the Ministry of Defense and the High Command, without the orders issued by Zhang Jun from the Ministry of Defense and the High Command, the front commander must not carry it out, otherwise the military law will be engaged, and Guderian is the first person to be cut by Zhang Jun, and Guderian was criticized by the whole army.

Of course, Zhang Jun still understands Guderian, after all, Guderian is a member of the Wehrmacht, and there is no way to follow the orders of the general command across the front line here, and it is not too outrageous to say that these orders are not too outrageous, and when Guderian received the notification notice, he was already carrying out the orders of the high command.

As soon as Guderian received the order, he immediately decided: the 1st Tank Division would advance to Calais; The 2nd Tank Division advanced towards Boulogne. Guderian was well aware that the offensive line formed by Army Group A, which he was part of, from Sedan to the west coast of France, had cut off the retreat of the French army from the north to the south. Army Group B in North Bamp had captured the Netherlands and eastern Belgium, and the left flank of the main force of more than 700,000 British and French troops was actually under deep encirclement by the Germans.

From the morning of 23 to 24 July, Gudry's armoured troops occupied Boulogne and Calais. On the afternoon of the 24th, Guderian's 5th Panzer Corps had reached Graflin, and Reinhardt's 41st Panzer Corps, on its right flank, had also reached the line of the Eyre-St. Omer-Graflin Canal. The two armored brigades only needed to work hard to directly capture the Weigang defensive line, and dozens of infantry divisions were also following in a steady stream. Guderian and others were full of ambition and determined to lead their armored forces to fight another encirclement and annihilation battle, completely annihilating hundreds of thousands of British and French troops in the coastal area.

In the first phase of the operation, from the breakthrough to the retreat from Dunkirk, the Allies lost 61 divisions, almost half of their total strength three weeks earlier. The French lost their most elite troops, almost all of their motorized transports and armored vehicles, as well as half of their modern artillery, and 3 lightly armoured, 1 heavily armoured, 2 cavalry and 24 infantry divisions were wiped out. Now several of the French armies on the Northern Front have been wiped out, and although most of France, including 90 percent of the territory south of the Somme, Eyre and Maginot lines, is still in its own hands, the French commander-in-chief, General Weygand, has only 60 divisions left, and most of these troops are poorly combat, poorly equipped, and do not have sufficient means of transport.

It was to face the reorganized German 150 elite divisions, which was clearly a hopeless battle, and on July 25, Army Group B, Poke, in the coastal area, launched the second phase of the attack, and the French fought valiantly and tenaciously in some places, the French 7th Army Corps between Amiens and Perron, On 27 July, between Abville and Amiens, the 7th Flemish Panzer Division broke south into the French defensive positions, splitting the French 10th Army in two with lightning penetration, forcing the British 51st, 31st and 40th French Infantry Divisions, and the 2nd and 5th Cavalry Divisions into the sea and the vast estuary of the Seine. These Anglo-French units were in disarray surrounded by the German 5th and 7th Panzer Divisions at Saint-Valéry between Duep and Le Havre. Inside the small fishing port of Angko. On 12 July, these troops, numbering more than 40,000, surrendered to Flender with no hope of rescue.

From 16 to 19 July, the Flemish 7th Panzer Division galloped 220 miles, the fastest march in the history of warfare, and quickly captured the fortress of Cherbourg in a long run. During this world-shocking pursuit, Flender bypassed fortified roads and villages, often appearing in surprise behind the French army. When he thrust southward, he did not disturb the British and French garrisons, and drove in front of them with great arrogance, causing the officers and men of these rear units to watch the excitement among the residents, or to be surprised or overwhelmed. In case of resistance, they were dispersed and no prisoners were taken. In this way, the surprise attack of the German armored forces finally collapsed the French defense line on the Somme. On 9 June, five days after the advance of Army Group B on the Somme, Lendest's Army Group A also launched an offensive on the Aisne at the eastern end of the front. This is a typical right-to-left pinch attack. The German High Command moved 4 Panzer Divisions from the Somme to the Aisne in two days at lightning speed, much to the surprise of the French, accustomed to a slow pace. French Army

After two days of tenacious struggle, I finally gave up. After breaking through the Aisne, eight German panzer divisions drove straight into the heart of France, as if they were in no man's land. The newly formed Gudeli Armored Corps tore through the French line near Chatau-Pols and made a large-scale roundabout attack on the rear of the Maginot Line with the autumn wind sweeping away the leaves. After crushing the resistance of the remnants of the French armoured forces, on the morning of June 17, Gudery's armored troops had arrived at the city of Pantali on the Duan-Turkish border, completely sealing off the rear of the Maginot Line. Guderian replied: 'There is no mistake at all, I myself am now in the city of Pantali on the border with Turkey.' Only then did Hitler believe that the French forces on the Maginot Line were indeed surrounded.

The French army was defeated, and the 'Weigand Line' was shattered and drowned in the German offensive. On July 10, the French capital Paris was abandoned, and millions of refugees poured southward like a flood of bursting embankments. The Italians took advantage of the fire and plundered and declared war on France on this day, only to be annihilated by the remnants of the French army, laughing off the big teeth of the world. As President Roosevelt described it: 'On the day of July 10, 1940, the man with the dagger plunged it into the back of his neighbor. On July 14, the Germans marched into Paris. At 6 p.m. on July 16, Reynaud announced his resignation, and French President Le Brun authorized Marshal Petain to form a new cabinet. On 17 July, Petain demanded a truce from Germany through Spain. This 'savior of France' during the last war became the gravedigger of France. On 14 July, the 1st Army Corps under the command of Witzleben and the 7th Corps under the command of Dormann of Lieb's C Army Group broke through the Maginot Line from the front, and together with the Gudri Armor Corps, which had already detoured behind the line, surrounded and annihilated the French army in the area, taking 700,000 prisoners.

On July 10, 1940, the French government withdrew from Paris and moved to Tours. On the same day, Italy took advantage of the fire and declared war on France. On the 13th, Paris was declared an undefended city. On the 14th, when the French government moved to Bordeaux, the Germans occupied Paris without firing a single shot. On the very day that the Germans occupied Paris, the left flank of the German Army Group A had advanced to the flank of the Maginot Line, "because of this useless line, after all, there were still hundreds of thousands of French troops who had not surrendered or been destroyed." Hitler demanded that Rundstedt cooperate with Army Group C to completely eliminate the French units there. According to Hitler's Operational Order No. 15, Army Group C, which had been carrying out the task of attracting the attention of the French army in front of the Maginot Line, immediately chose the weak point of the defenders of the Maginot Line, that is, the junction of the two fortified areas of Alsace and Lorraine, to attack. The A and C armies were flanked in front and rear, and the Maginot Line was quickly broken through. On July 17, 1940, Army Group C advanced to the Marne-Rhine Canal, Army Group A occupied Verdun, and the French army of 500,000 was surrounded in Alsace and southern Lorraine, and all but a few fled to Switzerland. On the 18th, the French government announced the cessation of resistance.

The once-famous Maginot Line finally proved to be a useless ornament. On 22 July, representatives of Germany and France signed a truce in a train car in the Compiègne Forest, where the armistice had been signed in the last war.

…… (To be continued.) )