The Germans chose to deploy an encirclement on the Eastern Front, so on the Western Front they could only respond to the Anglo-French-Australasian offensive by being forced into a strategic retreat.
A strategic retreat meant giving up vast stretches of northern France, and even handing Paris over to the French.
There was no helping it. The French were extremely fixated on Paris. If Germany wanted to fight the French to the death there, it would need to tie down at least two million German troops.
That was fundamentally impossible for Germany at present. Never mind two million soldiers—even one million was completely beyond its means.
Thus, French cities such as Orléans, Paris, Amiens, and Reims all appeared on the list of places Germany intended to abandon.
Although the Germans planned to give up these cities, they had no intention of simply gifting them to France. Rather than return the cities directly to the French, Germany preferred to use various means to let Britain or Australasia occupy them, and even look for opportunities to sow discord among the three Great Powers of the Central Powers—Britain, France, and Australasia.
To achieve this goal, the German Army decided to hold the defensive line from Tours to Orléans for the time being, gradually yielding ground to the Anglo-French-Australasian forces in the Normandy region.
One crucial reason was that France's main forces were all positioned south of the Tours–Orléans defensive line, while most of the forces that had landed in Normandy belonged to Britain and Australasia.
If the troops that had landed in Normandy occupied Paris, Amiens, and the surrounding regions, it was anyone's guess whether the British would hand those cities back intact.
Besides drawing up plans for a further strategic retreat, the German forces on the Western Front also gradually transferred their main