Minden amit a II. világháborúról és a Harmadik Birodalomról tudni lehet
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robgros #8400 In fact, it was not until 20 July that General Alan Brooke took
over General Ironside's command as Commander-in-Chief Home
Forces. He immediately moved the few tanks he had closer to the
coast. An attack in late May, however, would have found much of
the British armour defending a makeshift defence line far further
back inland, effectively conceding the bridgeheads on the south
coast. The Germans themselves - for all their generals' postwar
protestations that Sealion was, as von Runstedt told his captors in
1945, 'a sort of game because it was obvious that no invasion was
possible' - were hoping to reach Ashford in Kent at an early stage
in the engagement. Although they were expecting fierce resistance
at the beachheads by mid-September, the Germans might
have been pleasantly surprised had they attacked in May. As the
officiai historian of Britain's defences, Basil Collier, points out:
'The vital sector from Sheppey to Rye was manned by 1 st London
Division with 23 field guns, no anti-tank guns, no armoured cars,
no armoured fighting vehicles and about one-sixth of the antitank
rifles to which it was entitled.'45 Those places which were
well defended, such as the six-inch gun emplacements at Shoeburyness,
could have been bypassed as easily as was the Maginot
line.
Röviden: ha a németek május végén támadnak, a brit páncélos erő java hevenyészett vonalat alkotna, melyet távolabb helyeznek el, így lényegében átengedik a déli partvidéket. A német osztagok abban reménykedtek, a támadás korai szakában a kenti Ashford-ot elérik. Az olyan helyeket, melyek jól védettek, a Maginot-vonalhoz hasonlóan könnyedén kikerülhetik.