Some personal-opinion take-aways so far:
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- Huntziger is an idiot. He only knew fort. He couldn’t comprehend that thing behind fort was more important than fort (hence why fort was made). He only thought of fort.
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- The Germans really did have the better army in the battle of France, but it was better because they managed to integrate traditional Prussian maneuver warfare with modern combined-arms, and not because of a discrepancy in troop quality.
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- The Germans were able to pull off combining maneuver and combined-arms warfare because they had the prerequisite communication infrastructure, coordination, and institutional will to pull it off. The allies lagged behind the Germans or outright lacked all of those things.
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- Despite being a lot better with C3 than the early-war Allies, the German high command had its fair share of disfunction, and it only gets a pass because it worked out for them. Their success was attributable more to the Allies’ operational and command-level short comings, than any strategic brilliance, or individual heroics on their (the Germans) part. When the Germans tried the same thing again in the Battle of the Bulge, it didn’t work because the capability-gap had not only closed but basically reversed.
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- The French soldiers fought hard, and the spear-head panzer units were badly mauled. Military Aviation History did some videos on Sedan recently as well, and he pointed out the Luftwaffe was also very badly mauled in the battle for France.