The lightning victory in France thus emerged not as the logical endpoint of a carefully devised strategic synthesis, but as an inspired, high-risk improvisation, a ‘quick, military fix’ to the strategic dilemmas, which Hitler and the German military leadership had failed to resolve up to February 1940.10 In retrospect, it suited neither the Allies nor the Germans to expose the amazingly haphazard course through which the Wehrmacht had arrived at its most brilliant military success. The myth of the Blitzkrieg suited the British and French because it provided an explanation other than military
...more
