How Did Nazis Crush France? Good Leadership

In May 1940, the German Wehrmacht launched a lightning attack into France and within weeks destroyed the combined French and British armies. The rapid defeat is typically ascribed to a combination of the French High Command's attempts to refight the methodical battle of World War I against Germany's adoption of new mobile, all-arms warfare. Those philosophical factors certainly played a major role in the outcome, but something much more elemental and human may have been the deciding factor: fearless, intelligent and sometimes ruthless leadership at the point of contact.