3 - Case Yellow

Summary

The debate over the Fall of France has pivoted on whether its causes were rooted in a structural dysfunction of the French Republic and a defeatism that infected its citizens and soldiers, or were merely contingent – that is, a combination of the surprise and speed of the German advance, and Gamelin’s Dyle–Breda plan miscalculation, that allowed the Germans to concentrate their best troops on the French hinge at Sedan, which gave way when French soldiers panicked at Bulson.Using the documents on the secret post-war “Committee for the Investigation of Suspicious Withdrawals,” this chapter sequences the French collapse at Sedan and Bulson. Because soldier panics are not an exceptional event in warfare, Bulson does not by itself offer evidence of a lack of French will to fight. What made Bulson critical was its strategic consequences. The chapter also examines the three armored counterattacks conducted by de Gaulle. Although they became part of his legend as a man of tactical and operation prescience, in fact, they were improvized and totally ineffective.