Frustrating Tactics

Feb.22nd, 1940
Sea War, North Sea:
Dutch destroyers "Lebrecht Maass" and "Max Schultz"(I know nu-sink!), while trying to avoid an attack by German aircraft, run onto mines laid by a British submarine.

I imagine this created quite the headlines. Not only by the German attack, but the unfortunate accidental damage by their own allies tactics.

Feb.24th, 1940
Politics, Germany:
Plans for the invasion of Western Europe are revised. The main focus of the offensive is changed to the Aredennes region after a suggestion by General Erich von Manstein. The bulk of the German Army's armored units are allocated to this radical plan.

At first, the General Staff argued against the plan, stating that the failure in the Ardennes during The Great War caused the invasion of France to be bogged down, the same could happen again. Proponents of the tactics of Blitzkreig, using armor and air-power in a sudden lightning strike, pointed at the success in Poland for support of the plan. It would allow them to completely bypass the defenses in the Maginot Line, a miles long system of bunkers that could keep the Germans from ever entering France. The bulk of the German Army's armored units are allocated to this radical plan.

In the years before Hitler came to full power, Manstein at first resisted indoctrination into the Nazi party, even issuing a memo against using pro-Aryan racial profiling for indoctrination into the army. In the early war-years to come he frequently butted heads against Hitler's ideas, especially those of a tactical nature, but he soon came around a full 180, kowtowing to pretty much all of Hitler's ideas. He then maintained that the military advisers should refrain from interceding in political matters and even in matters of higher strategy, claiming that these matters were Hitler's responsibility. The General Staff's task, he argued, was to produce the operational planning necessary to realize Hitler's goals and no more.

In the late-war years, this would setup the eventual lack of power that Generals in the field were able (or not able in most cases) to employ any kind of effective tactics.