What the German Panzer Divisions did in May 1940 was not in their training and operational manuals. What they did had never been practised. It was all made up as they went. Improvised.

Karl-Heinz Frieser in his book Blitzkrieg Legend says:

As earlier emphasized, the operations plan of the army high command was only a half-hearted and inconsistent implementation of Manstein's bold Sickle Cut idea. The decisive breach point was at Sedan. Manstein and Guderian had assumed that after crossing the Meuse River the Panzer formations would immediately have to push to the Channel coast, disregarding their exposed flanks, or otherwise lose the race against the Allies. All of the higher-ranking generals from the army high command and all the way down to Army Group A and von Kleist had discarded precisely this requirement as being too risky.

So now the panzers were across the Meuse – what next?

Tag words: Blitzkrieg; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Blitzkrieg Legend; Erich von Manstein; Heinz Guderian; Sickle Cut; Fritz Halder; General Georg von Sodenstern; Meuse River; Great War; 1st Panzer Division; 2nd Panzer Division; un pépin assez sérieux; a rather serious pin prick; General Georges; größte Feldherr aller Zeiten; greatest military genius of all times; Führer; Adolf Hitler; Walther Wenck; Klotzen, nicht kleckern!; Hit with the fist, don't feel with the fingers!; 10th Panzer Division; Infanterieregiment Großdeutschland; Infantry Regiment Großdeutschland; Winston Churchill; Pierre Le Goyet; Le mystère Gamelin; The Mystery of Gamelin; Oberleutnant Günther Korthals; major Philip Gribble; Oberst i.G. Kurt Zeitzler; Graf von Kielmansegg; Dunkirk;