I'm actually not here to bash it. I'm here to defend it.
Has anyone here ever read "Stange Victory" by Ernest May? It provides an excellent diagnostic of Hitler's victory over France, suggesting that France's moves were actually completely logical and that while the French command did make some devastating errors no branch of it or the military was performing absolutely horribly as so many of us like to think. This has also been connected with my knowledge from William Lawrence Shirer's "The Collapse of the Third Republic : An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940" and Piers Brendon's "The Dark Valley : A Panorama of the 1930s". With these three major sources, plus what I have picked up, the French military in WWII would have done very well had it been correct in its expectations of the German attack.
The French spill of blood in WWI had maintained a large psychological effect on the political figures of France in the 1930s. The administrations of Leon Blum, which chose for it's non-involvement in the Spanish Civil War, and Edouard Daladier for it's acceptance of the "appeasement" blueprint as provided by Neville Chamberlain. However, a great deal of the French population came to resent more and more the policy of appeasement, starting with the Rhineland remilitarization in 1936. ""It is your last chance. If you do not stop Germany now, all is over," words spoken by the Foreign Minister Pierre-Etienne Flandin represented for a larger part the feelings of France.
Despite this, the praised celebration of Munich, Daladier was reported to step off his plane to a crowd of largely mid-40s gentlemen while muttering under his breath "the dicks."
Ernest May takes a great deal of notice to the valiantry, despite the overwhelming circumstances, of the French fighting forces. Beginning in mid-May the soldiers were forced to fight by day while still retreating by night, but were still sooner to give there lives than surrender; a nearly equal number of French soldiers were killed May-June 1940 than to the whole of U.S. casualties in the Korean War.
General Gamelin, whom had worked with General Joffre and had mentored in his ways, had estimated that French conscription and training would not be fully complete until as late as 1942. Whether this is a correct assessment or not we can't say today, but as the chief of staff of national defense he controlled the French armies along the German-Belgian frontier. He also assessed that the Germans would not attack out of fear of the French armed forces. The German operation, codenamed Plan Yellow to May's sources, was actually drawn out by him on a napkin at a state dinner--Gamelin, however, scrapped the idea for his block in Belgium after the Polish invasion.
As the "phony war" ended and the real war broke out on May 10, 1940, Gamelin appeared to be correct as German forces sped across the borders of Belgium and France under the pretense of protecting them from allied agression. Gamelin then, accordingly, ordered the advance of the mass, and best of, French and British forces into Belgium.
The Maginot Line was here used not, in fact, to keep the Germans out but to shorten the border in which the fighting could take place. The French knew that the Maginot line would not alone keep back the Germans and simply planned to fight in Belgium; a total of 72 divisions stood on the Franco-Belgian border in 1940 while 15 remained in the Maginot line.
The strategy, which has often been termed as a "gate," required that there be a hinge for the gate, that being the Ardennes forest. The Ardennes, overgrown with plant life and with few, thin bridges was thought to be impassable by modern tanks and infantry-carrying armoured vehicles. The French, however, never actually tested it.
On the 17th, German forces sped through the Ardennes. Caught completely offguard, with Panzer columns heading to the rear, the bulk of the French and British armies are trapped in Flandres and are evacuated at Dunkirk--a loss of 300,000 troops, minus the two-fifths of the French army that has been destroyed. French military capacity has been estimated to be at 40% at the end of may; 10% after the fall of Paris.
Now you know a little more about why the French did what they did and how the war went about. Were they really that useless, or did they make a logical decision to an illogical answer?
Has anyone here ever read "Stange Victory" by Ernest May? It provides an excellent diagnostic of Hitler's victory over France, suggesting that France's moves were actually completely logical and that while the French command did make some devastating errors no branch of it or the military was performing absolutely horribly as so many of us like to think. This has also been connected with my knowledge from William Lawrence Shirer's "The Collapse of the Third Republic : An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940" and Piers Brendon's "The Dark Valley : A Panorama of the 1930s". With these three major sources, plus what I have picked up, the French military in WWII would have done very well had it been correct in its expectations of the German attack.
The French spill of blood in WWI had maintained a large psychological effect on the political figures of France in the 1930s. The administrations of Leon Blum, which chose for it's non-involvement in the Spanish Civil War, and Edouard Daladier for it's acceptance of the "appeasement" blueprint as provided by Neville Chamberlain. However, a great deal of the French population came to resent more and more the policy of appeasement, starting with the Rhineland remilitarization in 1936. ""It is your last chance. If you do not stop Germany now, all is over," words spoken by the Foreign Minister Pierre-Etienne Flandin represented for a larger part the feelings of France.
Despite this, the praised celebration of Munich, Daladier was reported to step off his plane to a crowd of largely mid-40s gentlemen while muttering under his breath "the dicks."
Ernest May takes a great deal of notice to the valiantry, despite the overwhelming circumstances, of the French fighting forces. Beginning in mid-May the soldiers were forced to fight by day while still retreating by night, but were still sooner to give there lives than surrender; a nearly equal number of French soldiers were killed May-June 1940 than to the whole of U.S. casualties in the Korean War.
General Gamelin, whom had worked with General Joffre and had mentored in his ways, had estimated that French conscription and training would not be fully complete until as late as 1942. Whether this is a correct assessment or not we can't say today, but as the chief of staff of national defense he controlled the French armies along the German-Belgian frontier. He also assessed that the Germans would not attack out of fear of the French armed forces. The German operation, codenamed Plan Yellow to May's sources, was actually drawn out by him on a napkin at a state dinner--Gamelin, however, scrapped the idea for his block in Belgium after the Polish invasion.
As the "phony war" ended and the real war broke out on May 10, 1940, Gamelin appeared to be correct as German forces sped across the borders of Belgium and France under the pretense of protecting them from allied agression. Gamelin then, accordingly, ordered the advance of the mass, and best of, French and British forces into Belgium.
The Maginot Line was here used not, in fact, to keep the Germans out but to shorten the border in which the fighting could take place. The French knew that the Maginot line would not alone keep back the Germans and simply planned to fight in Belgium; a total of 72 divisions stood on the Franco-Belgian border in 1940 while 15 remained in the Maginot line.
The strategy, which has often been termed as a "gate," required that there be a hinge for the gate, that being the Ardennes forest. The Ardennes, overgrown with plant life and with few, thin bridges was thought to be impassable by modern tanks and infantry-carrying armoured vehicles. The French, however, never actually tested it.
On the 17th, German forces sped through the Ardennes. Caught completely offguard, with Panzer columns heading to the rear, the bulk of the French and British armies are trapped in Flandres and are evacuated at Dunkirk--a loss of 300,000 troops, minus the two-fifths of the French army that has been destroyed. French military capacity has been estimated to be at 40% at the end of may; 10% after the fall of Paris.
Now you know a little more about why the French did what they did and how the war went about. Were they really that useless, or did they make a logical decision to an illogical answer?
Long time no see.
). I guess fighting hard is just not enough to get by.
. We'll never know.
