page_title: Battle of Arras (1940)
section_title: Analysis
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Arras (1940) / Aftermath / Analysis
caption_attribution_description: IWM caption&#160;: THE BRITISH ARMY IN FRANCE 1940; Close-up of the driver of a 4th Royal Tank Regiment Matilda tank, named 'Deoch'.
context_page_description: The Battle of Arras took place on 21 May 1940, during the Battle of France in the Second World War. Following the German invasion of the Low Countries on 10 May, French and British forces advanced into Belgium. The German campaign plan Fall Gelb had evolved into a decoy operation in the Netherlands and Belgium, with the main effort through the Ardennes. German units crossed the Meuse without waiting for reinforcements at the Battle of Sedan. Instead of consolidating bridgeheads on the west bank of the Meuse, the Germans began an advance down the Somme river valley towards the English Channel.
  The Allies were thrown into confusion and their attempts to cut off the panzer spearheads degenerated into sporadic, un-coordinated counter-attacks which never achieved sufficient concentration to succeed as the main Allied armies were in Belgium. The offensive at Arras was planned by the British and French to relieve the pressure on the British garrison in the town of Arras and was not coordinated with an attack by the French from the south of the German panzer corridor.
context_section_description: In 1953, Lionel Ellis, the British official historian wrote that the attack at Arras succeeded in easing German pressure round Arras and delaying the encirclement of the BEF. The ground between Arras and the Cojeul was re-occupied and there was no serious German attack on the town, Rommel making the alarmist claim that the attack was made by five divisions. Beyond the delay imposed on German moves and the many casualties inflicted on the Germans, the attack was bound to fail without a force sufficiently powerful to follow up and consolidate the captured ground. Rundstedt, the commander of Army Group A, had intended that the panzer divisions should rest after the exertions on 20 May. In 1978, Cooper wrote that the attack at Arras led to the German higher commanders to continue to attack northwards, to capture the channel ports.
  Attacking to the south-west was rejected and OKH ordered Panzergruppe von Kleist to capture Boulogne and Calais, about 50 mi (80 km) away. Apprehension of another Allied attack caused Rundstedt to order Panzergruppe Hoth to remain in position, the XLI Corps (Reinhardt) sent a division eastwards as a precaution and Kleist diverted the 10th Panzer Division and parts of the 1st Panzer Division and the 2nd Panzer Division from the XIX Corps (Guderian) to hold the bridgehead over the Somme, which slowed the advance to Dunkirk from the beginning. The XIX Corps attacked again at 8:00 a.m. on 22 May but was still hampered by a "near paralysis" in the German command, Rundstedt ordering that the instructions from OKH were to be ignored and the advance on Boulogne and Calais would have to wait. At 12:40 p.m. Rundstedt countermanded his own order but for five hours, the panzers had waited on the Amache river.
  In 2005, Frieser wrote that Allied planning was notable for its failure to cut the panzer corridor when there were insufficient German motorised divisions to consolidate behind the panzer divisions and the non-motorised divisions were several days' march away. The corridor was only 25 mi (40 km) wide at Arras and vulnerable to a pincer movement; The Allies could have achieved a Clausewitzian counter-encirclement and cut off the panzers on the channel coast. Halder had been willing to run the risk, because of the incapacity of the Allies to achieve a fast tempo of operations. The Allied attack was contained because Rommel improvised a gun line of anti-tank guns and anti-aircraft guns, that managed to stop some of the lighter British tanks; the infantry tanks, particularly the Matilda IIs, proved very difficult to knock out with the standard 37 mm anti tank gun.
  Rommel also used wireless to order another gun line quickly to be set up with artillery and several 88 mm FlaK 36 anti-aircraft guns much further back, which knocked out 24 tanks in a few minutes on the flat ground between Mercatel and Tilloy. Just after 6:00 p.m., Junkers Ju 87 Stukas of Fliegerkorps I and VIII arrived and made 300 attacks on the retiring tanks by 8:30 p.m. Rommel ordered Panzer-Regiment 25 to return and cut off the British tanks but south of Duisans it met French tanks covering the British right flank and only pushed through after a long and costly engagement. When the German tanks had broken through a British anti-tank gun line, between Duisans and Warlus, the British tanks had already returned; the British attack had turned into a disaster and only 28 of the 88 tanks committed returned to their start line. The 6th Panzer Division signalled that "a strong enemy force was making a breakthrough" which caused alarm Panzergruppe Kleist. Kleist ordered the 6th Panzer Division and 8th Panzer Division eastwards to counter the Allied breakthrough. In the aftermath the Germans treated the Battle of Arras as a minor defeat for the Allies.
caption: Matilda I in France, showing the cramped driver's compartment and the hatch obstructing the turret
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