Tanks Break Through!: A German Soldier’s Account of War in the Low Countries and France, 1940

There are many eye-witness accounts of the military disaster that led to the fall of France, 1940, from the Allied point of view. For a look at the experiences of the common German soldier, there is no better source than Tanks Break Through! written by Alfred-Ingemar Berndt, a journalist and close associate of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. When the 1940 attack was in the offing, Berndt joined the Wehrmacht and afterward published his recollections. Berndt’s memoir is a tale of German military prowess, valor and violent death, a Teutonic Iliad. His prose is often thrilling and brings to mind Woody Allen’s remark, “I just can't listen to any more Wagner. I'm starting to get the urge to conquer Poland.” Hitler sensed French weakness and unwillingness to fight. Berndt writes of the formidable foe the French faced.