Andrew, what I meant was that the pre-war French expectation was that Poland would be able to remain an active combatant for several months and France could do so for several years. As was noted, in the actual operations, both fell in a matter of weeks. The fact that the Polish campaign ended so quickly gave the Germans over half a year to rest and refit the bulk of their army before striking west. They surely would have been weaker if they had had to spend that time actively fighting in Poland.
And the mobility of the German army was unexpected - by the French army prior to the campaign. As you noted in your post, the German doctrine of using armor in concentrated units with close air support was a more effective use of equipment than that of the French or British. The Germans did not have an overall superiority, but they placed their forces so they had a superioritiy where the fighting was.
Don’t underestimate the speed of boot leather: rates of advance of the German Army in 1914 were entirely comparable to the advances in 1940 and sometimes even greater.
‘Case Yellow’, the plan to attack France in December/January 1940, was much more limited in scope than the Schlieffen plan(s).
Case Yellow aimed to take Belgium, providing Germany with ports, airfields and room for a later attack into France.
Schlieffen aspired to something more ambitious. While the French Army was preoccupied with reconquering Alsace and Lorraine, the German army would sweep through Belgium and fight a decisive battle somewhere in the vicinity of Paris in the rear of the French armies.
I’d put a slightly different twist on the WWI/WWII reasons why: portable radios. The Germans lost in 1914 because they didn’t have them and won in 1940 because they did.
That sentence was supposed to mean that while the WW2 advance was fast, it was just as fast as the WW1 advance- the addition of tanks did not make things more ‘mobile’, but they were already pretty darned mobile.
I see that the sentence actually implies that both armies (that is, both WW1 and WW2) were slow. That is, in fact, the opposite of what I was trying to say.
Do they hold “English as a Second Langauge” classes for those whom English is the first language? Apparently, I need a refresher.