As December rolled into January, the front lines cooled. The Western Front was reduced to patrol skirmishes, resupply, and training on both sides. The Eastern European and Asian fronts still saw some fighting, but noteworthy battles such as Baranovichi were harsh and far-between. Thus, the focus of the Western War turned to naval combat, as the Allies and Axis struggled for control of the North Sea.
In 1918, the Treaty of Potsdam declared an absolute surrender of Entente naval assets, off the coast of German-owned East Frisia. While most of the ships were scuttled in defiance, the fleets of Britain and France were gone regardless. This meant that Britain slowly had to rebuild their navy from the ground up. After over 12 years of democratic inaction, it took a Fascist military program in 1930 to get the Navy back together. This program was ambitiously scaled, and although it had amassed nearly a hundred craft by 1939, it was severely behind-schedule and slow, on pace to completion by 1950. In comparison, the German Navy had only grown since 1917: with nearly 800 surface craft and 250 submarines, this empire-scaled Navy was now primarily focused on the North and Baltic Seas.
U-Boats wrought havoc upon British ships in the North Sea, as well as Axis forces in the Strait of Dover and North Mediterranean; as a result, the Allies now had go-ahead to begin an ambitious, unprecedented assault.
American paratroopers, specialized infantry tasked with jumping from transport planes onto targets, shipped out for Ireland in early 1939, after months of hellish training. After friendly bombers laid waste to anti-aircraft guns and defenses in the way, the paratroopers, along with their German
Fallschirmjäger equivalents, made their first combat jump into the Isles of Scotland. Codenamed 'Operation Thunderbolt'
(Unternehmen Donnerkeil), the Americans dropped into the Hebrides, taking the local coastal defenders by surprise. Successfully securing the archipelago after weeks of fighting, the Germans took off from the Hebrides, landing into the Northern Isles during
Unternehmen Hellebarde (Operation Halberd). This two-pronged approach meant direct contact with American and German troops, which would boost morale in future missions involving the two nations.
With the Scottish Isles secure, the U.S. Army begun moving troops around Britain and into Germany. Taking the same transport boats that brought them across the Atlantic, a joint U.S.-German naval escort offered mobile support during the journey. But the British had one last ace up their sleeve: a last-ditch naval strike. At Scapa Flow, on March 4, the former Royal Navy home base in the Northern Isles, a handful of British destroyers struck at an opening in the American convoy. The destroyers were all inevitably sunk, but at the price of thousands of American lives. This incident fueled support for the war effort in the United States, and before the remaining Army elements even landed in Amsterdam, enlistment skyrocketed in all 48 states.
With the U.S. Army deployed in Europe, and the beginning of spring, Germany finally put their attack plan into action. Making an overnight move on the French front on March 12, the German
Panzer tanks made their offensive debut. With dive-bomber support, the
Panzers overran the entrenched French lines with relative ease, reaching the River Meuse by the 16th. With the French Army in full retreat, and the British Expeditionary Force fighting the Americans off further north, the Germans backed their tank lines up with motorized infantry. In the course of a week, the French abruptly found themselves on the run, scrambling to either fortify their Meuse lines or relieve pockets trapped behind enemy lines. This new method of fast-moving, hard-hitting German offense was called '
Blitzkrieg', or 'lightning war'- a play on the uneventful '
Sitzkrieg' of the past winter.
Meanwhile, the Americans pushed south, through the Netherlands. Crossing the Waal on the 14th, the U.S. Army and British Army clashed for the first time since the War of 1812 at Tilburg. Spearheading the American lines was the 82nd Airborne Division, who were the first to open fire on the British. After the U.S. linked up with a German flank from Aachen in Mechelen, Belgium, on the 26th, the British had been surrounded. With the Americans surrounding Antwerp and the Germans surrounding Belgium by the end of the month, Prime Minister Mosley had his British troops retreat further west, in an attempt to abandon Europe and escape to England. Belgium, now unprotected, surrendered to the Allies on April 9, less than a month after the initial counter-attack.
The Allied Blitz was successful, but not out of sheer luck. The British and French, who expected to grind the Allies into a defensive repeat of the First Great War, were overrun by a fast-moving, hard-hitting enemy. America and Germany gambled on one lightning offensive, and saw immense success. In raw numbers, forces were around the same. By April, America had 18 infantry divisions and 6 armored divisions. Germany had 90 infantry divisions and 7 Panzer divisions to spare, the remaining 10 and 3 deployed in the Intermarium and Austria. In contrast, the British Expeditionary Force peaked at 13 infantry divisions (with an initial 10), with just one Armoured Division. The French held 98 infantry divisions and 3 armored divisions, but were left with the equivalent of 60, all split and worn. This numerically even matchup was not balanced in practice, and that was thanks to philosophy. The Axis dug in pre-made forts and trenches, as well as sent their tanks in to support infantry, in a scattered formation. The Allies, employing Blitz theory, struck first with unified tank divisions, then mechanized infantry and special forces, then a support wave of infantry. This contrast in fighting styles only went to show how outdated the former Entente forces had become. If they were to somehow turn the tide, the Western Front Campaign would be a harsh lesson for them.
With American and German infantry marching through Belgium, and Panzer divisions slicing through the French lines, the British and French had little to do but run. Anti-Pétain insurgencies rippled throughout France, and some French troops even turned against their own brothers in a bid to topple the fascist government. British and loyal French forces attempted an evacuation at Dunkirk on April 16, with the remaining British/French navies pulling as many soldiers out as possible. Stiff Allied pressure led to mounting Axis casualties, yet there were strict orders to spare civilian and medical ships. In response, a wave of civilian craft from Dover crossed the Channel, saving strictly British forces- the French were 'left to deal with their own problem', as one American remarked. Despite the rescue of several men at Dunkirk, Britain still found its army in a much smaller piece than what it had shipped off with -- not to mention the complete loss of France as an Axis collaborator.
Meanwhile, Italy and Austria were locked in an Alpine stalemate. Inspired by the airborne capture of the Scottish Isles, Mussolini hurried together an ersatz division of paratroopers, and attempted an airborne capture of the crucial Brenner Pass, which ran through the Alpine border. The attempt, which fell on May 1st, was mostly a failure, due to the hurried training, poor equipment, and geography of the mountainous Alps. While Italian forces did advance as a result of the combat, they suffered strong losses in both the drops and advances. Without the strength (outnumbered nearly five-to-one) nor initiative to make a Blitzkrieg, the Allied troops were forced to hold a long mountain line and prepare for an onslaught of Italian forces. Careful not to fall into a rout like France had, the Austrians lined the Alps with forts and anti-tank measures, in a line they dubbed the
Alpenwand: 'Alpine Wall'.
