| The disaster that befell the British and French armies in May 1940 is at least partly Belgiums fault. The insistance on trying to remain neutral after it was clear that the Germans would strike in the west through Belgium was ostrich like. Only allowing the allies to enter Belgium after the Germans invaded was certain to bring about a chaotic situation with masses of refugees on the move towards the advancing allied forces. It seems that the reasons for the speed of the German advance in Poland was something the British, French and Belgian commanders had not bothered to look at.
Field Marshall Allan Brooke (as he was later) in charge of the British 11 Corps wrote in his diary that by May 10 he had "few illusions as to the fighting efficiency of the French" and "the Belgians still remained to be seen, but what I had heard about them was not promising" he had worse things to say about them later. He also complained that the British force was under equipped. For the allies to have left a defensive line they had spent all winter preparing to move forward with forces one of the highest placed British commanders lacked total faith in to support an army they knew little about on a defensive line they knew very little about invited disaster. Unless of course you expected things to move at a 1918 pace with forts like Eben Emael holding the Germans up and did not understand the role air power would now play, another lesson of the Polish campaign ignored.
The allies should have occupied the channel coast and apart from a token gesture to hold the Germans up and inflict some casualties on them stayed out of Belgium. |