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And so when 30 divisions smashed into the Low Countries at dawn on May 10, 1940, an even larger force of 45 divisions more or less vanished into the depths of the Ardennes Forest. The Dutch fought bravely, but they were no match for Hitler's blitzkrieg with its tanks, dive bombers, paratroops and mobile infantry. When the Dutch defenders managed to hold the bridgeheads leading to Rotterdam, the second city of the Netherlands, Hitler ordered that "this resistance be broken speedily." A wave of bombers swept over the city and showered it with 2,200-lb. bombs, killing more than 800 people and destroying some 25,000 houses in less than 15 minutes.
The French and British had no intention of defending doomed Holland, but as they poured into neighboring Belgium, Hitler was delighted. The Manstein plan was working perfectly. "When the news came through that the enemy was moving forward along the whole front, I could have wept for joy," he said later. "They had fallen into the trap. It was vital that they believe we were sticking to the . . . old plan, and they had believed it."
The day of the German invasion was also the day the British government decided on a new leader. Chamberlain had been too cautious, and he was already afflicted by the cancer that would kill him in six months. Conservative backbencher Leopold Amery threw down a challenge. Invoking the terrible words that Oliver Cromwell had used in dissolving Parliament in 1653, he declared, "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!" So many Conservatives then joined in an Opposition vote of censure that Chamberlain felt he could not go on, and the Conservatives turned to Churchill. He began with a stirring pledge: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war . . . with all the strength that God can give us. That is our policy."
In the Ardennes Forest the main German force encountered only token opposition until it reached the French defenses just west of Sedan on the swift-flowing Meuse River. Dive bombers soon pounded those defenses into silence, and General Heinz Guderian's forces quickly crossed the river. As they pushed westward, there was little to stop them. General Erwin Rommel, commander of the 7th Panzer Division, saw anarchy all around: "Civilians and French troops, their faces distorted with terror, lay huddled in the ditches, alongside hedges and in every hollow beside the road . . . Always the same picture, troops and civilians in wild flight down both sides of the road . . . a chaos of guns, tanks and military vehicles of all kinds inextricably entangled with horse-drawn refugee carts."
By May 16, in the first week of combat, Guderian's spearhead of seven panzer divisions had knocked a hole 60 miles wide in the French defenses; by May 20 the Germans had reached the cathedral city of Amiens, farther forward than they had gone in all World War I; that same day they reached the English Channel near Abbeville. The main Anglo-French army in Belgium had been cut off. Even before that final encirclement, the new French Premier, Paul Reynaud, who was supposed to represent a more warlike spirit than the ousted Edouard Daladier, telephoned Churchill and said, "We have been defeated. We are beaten. We have lost the battle."