<P> By 17 May, Rommel claimed to have taken 10,000 prisoners and suffered only 36 losses . Guderian was delighted with the fast advance, and encouraged XIX Korps to head for the channel, continuing until fuel was exhausted . Hitler worried that the German advance was moving too fast . Halder recorded in his diary on 17 May that "Führer is terribly nervous . Frightened by his own success, he is afraid to take any chance and so would pull the reins on us...(he) keeps worrying about the south flank . He rages and screams that we are on the way to ruin the whole campaign ." Through deception and different interpretations of orders to stop from Hitler and Kleist, the front line commanders ignored Hitler's attempts to stop the westward advance to Abbeville . </P> <P> The French High Command, already comparatively ponderous and sluggish from its firm espousal of the broad strategy of "methodological warfare", however, was reeling from the shock of the sudden offensive and was now stung by a sense of defeatism . On the morning of 15 May, French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud telephoned the new British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill and said "We have been defeated . We are beaten; we have lost the battle ." Churchill, attempting to offer some comfort to Reynaud, reminded the Prime Minister of all the times the Germans had broken through the Allied lines in the First World War only to be stopped . Reynaud was, however, inconsolable . </P> <P> Churchill flew to Paris on 16 May . He immediately recognised the gravity of the situation when he observed that the French government was already burning its archives and was preparing for an evacuation of the capital . In a sombre meeting with the French commanders, Churchill asked General Gamelin, "Où est la masse de manoeuvre?" ("Where is the strategic reserve?") that had saved Paris in the First World War . "Aucune" ("There is none") Gamelin replied . After the war, Gamelin claimed his response was "There is no longer any ." Churchill later described hearing this as the single most shocking moment in his life . Churchill asked Gamelin where and when the general proposed to launch a counterattack against the flanks of the German bulge . Gamelin simply replied "inferiority of numbers, inferiority of equipment, inferiority of methods". </P> <P> Some of the best Allied units in the north had seen little fighting . Had they been kept in reserve they might have been used in a decisive counter-strike . Pre-war General Staff Studies had asserted the main reserves were to be kept on French soil to resist an invasion of the Low Countries and deliver a counterattack or "re-establish the integrity of the original front". Despite having a numerically superior armoured force, the French failed to use it properly, or to deliver an attack on the vulnerable German bulge . The Germans combined their fighting vehicles in divisions and used them at the point of main effort . The bulk of French armour was scattered along the front in tiny formations . Most of the French reserve divisions had by now been committed . The 1st DCr had been wiped out when it had run out of fuel and the 3rd DCr had failed to take its opportunity to destroy the German bridgeheads at Sedan . The only armoured division still in reserve, 2nd DCr, was to attack on 16 May west of Saint - Quentin, Aisne . The division commander could locate only seven of its 12 companies, which were scattered along a 49 mi × 37 mi (79 km × 60 km) front . The formation was overrun by the 8th Panzer Division while still forming up and was destroyed as a fighting unit . </P>

Who was left to fight germany after the fall of france