Trains loaded with tanks, armoured vehicles, and artillery of all kinds drove from Linz, Salzburg, and Innsbruck in Austria to Germany, and as the German-Austrian army continued to move to the western front, everyone knew that the attack on France was about to begin. However, the Anglo-French high command was troubled by the inability to predict where the Germans would choose to break through.

It is strange that the main forces of the Anglo-French army entered the territory of Belgium, and they were on the opposite side of the German-Austrian alliance in both wars. Perhaps it was because they had managed to gain independence from Habsburg rule and had been afraid of being annexed by the German-speaking countries again, or perhaps because they were angry that Austria-Hungary had annexed the Kingdom of Belgium's African colonies after World War I.

In fact, Belgium was not annexed by the Second Reich after the war because of the constraints of Vienna, the Habsburgs and the Hohenzollerns, which allowed Belgium to maintain its independent status today.

According to the "Manstein Plan", the German General Staff chose the weak point of the breakthrough in the extension of the Maginot Line between Montmedy and Sedan. On the other hand, the French army, fearing that Austria-Hungary would make another large-scale landing, as it had done during World War I, had reserved a part of its forces in the south to guard against a surprise attack by Austria-Hungary.

In order to create the illusion that the German-Austrian forces wanted to break through from the Dutch and Belgian lines, the Austro-Hungarian Second Army was transported to Cologne, Düsseldorf and Duisburg by rail to Cologne, Düsseldorf and Duisburg for assembly, leaving only the 2nd Panzer Corps for assault missions to get off at Koblenz.

The commander of the Austro-Hungarian 2nd Army was the commander of the Imperial Panzer Corps, Colonel-General Ludwig von Emmannschberg, the founder of a remarkable theory of armoured forces. In another time and space, Admiral Emman Schieberg was the founder of the German Army's theory of large-scale use of tanks and armored troops for assault operations, and his book "Tank Warfare" has always been regarded by the Wehrmacht as a top-secret textbook for the armored forces academy, and under the influence of his inspiration, General Guderian gradually formed the theory of "blitzkrieg" focusing on the use of tanks for assault.

In fact, General Emman Schieberg's understanding and use of tanks was much deeper and more comprehensive than Guderian's.

Emman Schieberg was the first to propose the theory of using a large "armored group" of 2-3 tank armies to break through the enemy's defenses in battle, and he also attached great importance to the role of tanks in supporting infantry. Emman Schieberg believed that tanks could be used for two purposes on the battlefield: for a large-scale breakthrough offensive using armored groups and to support the offensive and defensive attacks of infantry groups. Infantry units should also be equipped with a comparable number of tank units, which should act as an assault force in the event of an offensive and in the case of defense, which should be used to focus on the destruction of the enemy's assault forces and to quickly reinforce and plug the gaps in the breached defensive line.

Emman Schieberg also believed that the Panzer Division should consist of two tank brigades and one mechanized infantry brigade, a self-propelled artillery regiment and some auxiliary units, with two or three tank regiments under one tank regiment, each armed with heavy, medium and light tanks for different tasks, and an aviation regiment in the panzer division as air support. However, his idea was a bit too advanced, and the fact that the formation of such an armored division was not completed by the deep-pocketed Americans until 20 years later also proved the correctness of his theory.

Due to financial and industrial technical limitations, both Germany and Austria-Hungary could not complete the establishment of Emmansieburg's Panzer Divisions, but because of his long tenure as the Austro-Hungarian Commander-in-Chief, General Emmanschborg worked hard to realize a simplified version of the Panzer Divisions he envisioned: each Panzer Division consisted of two tank regiments and one mechanized infantry regiment, which could only be replaced by a mechanized artillery regiment because the production of self-propelled guns could not meet the equipment.

Aviation certainly cannot be equipped to the division level, and all divisions of the Austro-Hungarian Army Aviation are temporarily assigned to the first level of the group army command, but the various units can easily call in air support, and of course, the aviation command of the group army command will send fighters to the battlefield where they are most needed according to the orders of the commander.

The heavy tanks that General Emman Hiborg's expectations were not present, for the simple reason that the only requirement for the emperor to have a tank equipped with was a minimum speed of 45 kilometers per hour. This is a hard and fast rule, the Imperial War Department will indicate this in the tank bidding task book, which means that the thrust-to-weight ratio of the tank must reach at least 13 or more, which means that the design and manufacture of a 50-ton heavy tank needs to be equipped with at least 650 horsepower engines, but the current maximum power of the engine equipped on the Imperial tank is only 500 horsepower, which cannot meet the requirements of manufacturing a new heavy tank.

General Emman Schieberg also arrived in Koblenz, where he met with the commander of the A Cluster in the center, Colonel-General Rundstet, and the commander of the tank group, Lieutenant General Kleist, who was on the assault mission, and began to discuss some tactical details after the start of the campaign. General Kleist had three armies, the 19th Panzer Corps under Major General Guderian, the 15th Panzer Corps under Major General Hort, and the 41st Panzer Corps under Major General Reinhardt. The Austro-Hungarian 2nd Panzer Corps, commanded by Major General Rudolf Schaffatz, will be placed under the unified command of General Kleist, and will operate alongside the German 41st Panzer Corps under the command of General Reinhardt. In addition, after the start of the campaign, the Austro-Hungarian 2nd Army was to operate with Group B, which was part of the German Northern Front.

On 8 May, the order to begin Operation Scythe had been issued, and General Emman Schieberg hurried back to Cologne, where the headquarters of the 2nd Army was located.

On May 10, 1940, just after dawn, hordes of German Stuka bombers suddenly bombarded airports, railway junctions, heavily concentrated areas and cities in France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. At 5:30, on a 300-kilometer front between the North Sea and the Maginot Line, German ground forces launched a large-scale offensive against the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, opening the prelude to the invasion of France.

The battle began on the Dutch-Belgian border, and German Army Group B, which assisted and attracted the main force of the British and French forces, first attacked important bridges and fortified facilities in the Netherlands and Belgium with airborne troops. This sudden blow immediately caused panic among the Dutch and Belgian troops, and immediately afterwards, the armored units of Army Group B took advantage of the chaos to launch a fierce attack. Since the paratroopers had already occupied the main roads, Army Group B was progressing quite smoothly.

The breakthrough of German Army Group B on the Dutch-Belgian border caused the main Anglo-French forces assembled in northern France to immediately cross the Franco-Belgian border and quickly reinforce them. When Bock's Army Group B attracted the main British and French forces, Loeb's Army Group C also put on a stance. Their ongoing feint on the Maginot Line was so successful that it made the French hesitate to withdraw their forces from the south.

The real scythe began to be wielded.

In the early morning of 10 May, Army Group A, which was the main attack of the German army in the center, carried out the main assault on Luxembourg and the Ardennes Mountains in Belgium. Luxembourg, a small country with a population of only 300,000, surrendered without a fight that day. In the vanguard was a tank group under the command of General Kleist, and Guderian's 19th Panzer Corps broke through the loose resistance of the Belgian army and penetrated the 110-kilometer-long gorge of the Ardennes into France in just two days. On the afternoon of May 12, Guderian's three armored divisions had reached the north bank of the Maas River and captured the famous French fortress city of Sedan.

The French line was quickly broken through. R1152