The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

by William L. Shirer

On May 16 Prime Minister Churchill flew to Paris to find out. By the afternoon, when he drove to the Quai d’Orsay to see Premier Reynaud and General Gamelin, German spearheads were sixty miles west of Sedan, rolling along the undefended open country. Nothing very much stood between them and Paris, or between them and the Channel, but Churchill did not know this. “Where is the strategic reserve?” he asked Gamelin and, breaking into French, “Où est la masse de manœuvre?” The Commander in Chief of the Allied armies turned to him with a shake of the head and a shrug and answered, “Aucune—there is none.”* “I was dumfounded,” Churchill later related. It was unheard of that a great army, when attacked, held no troops in reserve. “I admit,” says Churchill, “that this was one of the greatest surprises I have had in my life.”