Fighting the Hedgehogs

After the defeat in the Belgian plains and the reduction of the pocket of Dunkirk, the German Army launched Fall Rot. the second stage of the 1940 Western Campaign. On the 360 km long front of the Somme and Aisne …

1940-06-05

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After the defeat in the Belgian plains and the reduction of the pocket of Dunkirk, the German Army launched Fall Rot. the second stage of the 1940 Western Campaign. On the 360 km long front of the Somme and Aisne Rivers. the so-called Weygand Line. the French Army were only able to deploy 40 divisions and the remnants of three or four armored divisions to try to stop Heeresgruppe A and B, which were comprised of 104 divisions. including 10 Panzer Divisions. With General Weygand having replaced General Gamelin as the head of the French Army, the obsession of reconstituting a continuous front had been abandoned. According to their new tactics. the French organized their forces into strong points. in the towns and forests, called the hedgehogs. Their goal was to cut the advancing German tanks from their supporting infantry.

Peronne, France

Fall Rot (Case Red) was the plan for a German military operation after the success of Fall Gelb (Case Yellow), the Battle of France, an invasion of the Benelux countries and northern France. The Allied armies had been defeated and pushed back in the north to the Channel coast, which culminated in the Dunkirk evacuation. The operation to complete the conquest of France by the German Army began on 5 June 1940.[1] Fall Rot began with a preliminary attack over the river Somme on the Channel Coast to the Seine, beginning on 5 June and the main offensive by Army Group A on 9 June further east over the river Aisne.

Wikipedia: Fall Rot

France

Germany