Achtung Panzer, Marsch!: With the 1st German Panzer Division: Formation to the Fall of France, 1935-40 by Gary Schreckengost

Author:Gary Schreckengost [Schreckengost, Gary]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2016-04-04T16:00:00+00:00

The K.M.S. Admiral Graf Spee is scuttled by its own crew off the coast of South America on Dec. 17, 1939 after suffering severe damage at the hands of the Royal Navy.

Chapter 7

Sitzkrieg

As we battled to free West Prussia and Posen from

the rump government, the Germany and the

Western Allies fought several engagements. On Sept.

3, the day that France and Britain declared war on us

for example, Unterseeboot-30 (Submarine), operating

off the west coast of Ireland, torpedoed the

S.S. Athenia, a British cruise ship that was en route

from Glasgow, Scotland to Montreal, British

Dominion of Canada. All told, 112 passengers and

crew were lost.

The next day, on Sept. 4, the British Royal Air

Force unsuccessfully struck back when it launched a

failed raid on the Imperial battleship Admiral Scheer, which was anchored off Wilhelmshaven at the

western end of the Kiel Canal. Several British aircraft

were lost in the attack and although the Scheer was hit

three times, all of the British bombs failed to

explode.

On Sept. 7, France began its war expedition

against the Empire when its army crossed the border

near Saarbrücken, which is in the Rhineland, with a

few scattered motorized infantry units. This began

what was called the Saar Offensive of 1939.

The French had an entire army group (some

thirty divisions) massed in the area and the Saar was

defended only by the German 1st Army and some

ten divisions. In the Warndt Forest on Sept. 16, however, the French were stopped cold and thrown

back!

Our West Wall defenses were just too strong

for them!

On Sept. 17, the British aircraft carrier H.M.S.

Courageous is torpedoed and sunk by U-29 on patrol

off the coast of Ireland.

On Sept. 19, units from the German and

Soviet armies linked up near Brest-Litovsk in the

rump state and the Russians began their operations

against the Baltic States by initiating a naval blockade

of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. On Sept. 27, artillery from the German 1st

Army shelled French villages along the border in

retribution for their attack into the Fatherland.

On Oct. 3, reminiscent of 1914, the British

Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.) moves to the Belgian

border with Germany in preparation for an expected

attack into the Empire in conjunction with the

French. The bulk of the German Army is still tied up

in Posen or West Prussia.

On Oct. 6, Polish resistance officially comes

to an end in West Prussia and Posen and the Leader

speaks before the Reichstag (the Imperial Congress),

declaring a desire for a conference with Britain and

France to restore peace.

The French and British refuse. They want us out of their rump state.

Good luck with that.

Most of us never really understood why the

British and French were mobilizing their armies and

navies to attack us from the west. They both had

vast colonial holdings across the globe and had

expanded their empires over the past one hundred

years. If they could, why couldn’t we live in a

country where all Germans were safe and secure?

The Leader hoped for a negotiated settlement based

on reason, fairness, and pragmatism, assuring France

and Britain that our territorial desires had been met.

In essence, that we had already won the war

as we had achieved our national objectives. What we

needed to do now was to secure the peace and that could only be found through England.

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