De Gaulle and French betrayal of Poland in Semptember 1939

[Sid Guttridge]

H ljadw,

It is deeply untrue that "Breaching international agreements is something trivial".

In every instance you raise, people died as a result of international agreements being breached, sometimes by the tens of millions.

Death, I would suggest, is just about the least trivial possible of consequences!

Cheers,

Sid.

[gebhk]

De Gaulle was a colonel in September 1939 and it is unlikely that he was thinking about and giving his opinion on the strategy France should follow and that his superiors would care about what he would say .
Besides : no one can say what a full and effective military aid was .

With respect, every Tom, Dick and Harry seems to have had (and has had since the war) an opinion on this matter - as this thread amply demonstrates(and therefore one has to assume has given it some thought, however brief). Why do you assume that a colonel in the French Army, a lecturer on military history at France's highest military college, a ghostwriter for Marshall Petain and subsequently the head of State would not have had one or even several? And I would venture to say it was a better-informed one than yours or mine.

Since the question is not about whether De Gaulle's superiors cared about what he had to say, I don't see the relevance of their opinion to this.

Given his military credentials, I think De Gaulle was very capable of defining what, in his opinion, a 'full and effective ' military aid was.

[ljadw]

In September 1939 De Gaulle commanded,with the rank of mere colonel, the tanks of the new mobilized 5th Army .And,he had other things to do than to give his opinion about a question which was not the responsibility of an officer who had a bad reputation in the military hierarchy : his book ''Vers L' Armée de Metier '' made him a lot of enemies .
There is no proof that De Gaulle gave his opinion about the French strategy in September 1939, only claims from De Gaulle 5,6 years later . Colonels remain silent till generals ask their opinion, something which mostly never happens .
About a ''full and effective '' military aid :
to know this ,one had to know the offensive power of the French Army, the defensive power of the Polish Army, the offensive and defensive power of the German army, all things De Gaulle had no information about .
Full and effective military aid was,from the French POV,what Gamelin said it was .If Gamelin said that it was 10 divisions, it was 10 divisions.
From the Polish POW it was what the Poles needed to stop the WM .
A full and effective military aid is something totally meaningless . As meaningless as the promise from Gamelin to attack with the majority ( relative or absolute ) of his available forces .
And, as there was on the Western Front a German superiority, there was nothing the French could do to help Poland .
Thus : no full and effective military aid .
3 September : NE front (Dunkirk-Saar ) : 26-31 divisions,Alps : 25 divisions, not operational : 16 divisions .
How would France give a full and effective aid to Poland with some 26/31 divisions who were / could be available ?

[gebhk]

Clearly you, like many other people, have an opinion which you feel free to share but you deny the right to CdG of having one at all. With respect, I would suggest he had both the right to have an opinion and plenty of opportunity to express it.

Alas, the question here is not what your opinion is, or anyone else's except Charles de Gaull's.

[Loïc]

That de Gaulle thought it is not different that already written in this thread about strategical military diplomatical misconceptions leading to the allied defeat who had nothing to do with a "betrayal" of Poland

The 11th november 1939 Colonel de Gaulle addressed a note to GQG General Headquaters on the lessons of the campaign of Poland and the future role of tanks.

Then the 21st january 1940 again he drew up a memorandum "The advent of mechanical force" addressed to 80 political and military personalities to alert them to the urgency of the decisions to be taken, in which he wrote, in particular referring directly to Poland below
https://www.charles-de-gaulle.org/blog/ ... vril-1940/

the Germans approached a rational conception of war. Thus they began the current conflict with a fairly large attack air force and several large armored units, whose combined action enabled them to strike down in two weeks Poland, a large military state with 35 million inhabitants. An action of the same order may, tomorrow, put them in a position to seize, in Romania, in Sweden, in Russia, in Asia Minor, the territories which suit them. But the planes, in insufficient number, the too light tanks, which the Reich is currently able to put in line, would not be enough to break the French resistance supported by the works and obstacles of the Maginot line. Moreover, there is every reason to believe that Hitler's government today bitterly regrets not having undergone a much more profound transformation in its army. No one can reasonably doubt that if Germany had, on 1st September, only twice as many planes, a thousand tanks of 100 tons, three thousand of 50 or 30 and six thousand of 20 or 10, it would have crushed France.

As for us, still more firmly attached to the ancient conceptions, we started the war with 5 million soldiers, but an air force which was just embryonic and tanks very insufficient in number and in power. Again, this modern force was it built, organized, oriented, not at all to strike far, quickly and hard, but on the contrary to act only in function of and within the system of the masses. Thus, from the aerial point of view, only our so-called fighters aircrafts, that is to say of protection, counted, and that in fact of armored vehicles we practically had only light tanks, of which the principle imperative of employment consisted in dispersing them by small fractions in the ranks of the infantry.

There was therefore no possibility for us to lend our Eastern allies any direct or indirect assistance whatsoever. The same military institutions which, on March 7, 1936, forced us to stand still, which, during the annexation of Austria by Germany, struck us with total inertia, which, in September 1938, then in March 1939, forced us to abandon the Czechs, were inevitably to force us, last September, to witness from afar the German rush on Poland without being able to do anything other than follow on the map the victorious stages of the enemy.

Maybe there are others several references to Poland in 1939 in the numerous memoirs, books and articles concerning General de Gaulle, former captain sent in Poland after the Great War

[ljadw]

Clearly you, like many other people, have an opinion which you feel free to share but you deny the right to CdG of having one at all. With respect, I would suggest he had both the right to have an opinion and plenty of opportunity to express it.

Alas, the question here is not what your opinion is, or anyone else's except Charles de Gaull's.

There is no proof that before WWII colonel De Gaulle advocated a different French strategy .And there is no proof that such a strategy could be possible .

[ljadw]

That de Gaulle thought it is not different that already written in this thread about strategical military diplomatical misconceptions leading to the allied defeat who had nothing to do with a "betrayal" of Poland

The 11th november 1939 Colonel de Gaulle addressed a note to GQG General Headquaters on the lessons of the campaign of Poland and the future role of tanks.

Then the 21st january 1940 again he drew up a memorandum "The advent of mechanical force" addressed to 80 political and military personalities to alert them to the urgency of the decisions to be taken, in which he wrote, in particular referring directly to Poland below
https://www.charles-de-gaulle.org/blog/ ... vril-1940/

the Germans approached a rational conception of war. Thus they began the current conflict with a fairly large attack air force and several large armored units, whose combined action enabled them to strike down in two weeks Poland, a large military state with 35 million inhabitants. An action of the same order may, tomorrow, put them in a position to seize, in Romania, in Sweden, in Russia, in Asia Minor, the territories which suit them. But the planes, in insufficient number, the too light tanks, which the Reich is currently able to put in line, would not be enough to break the French resistance supported by the works and obstacles of the Maginot line. Moreover, there is every reason to believe that Hitler's government today bitterly regrets not having undergone a much more profound transformation in its army. No one can reasonably doubt that if Germany had, on 1st September, only twice as many planes, a thousand tanks of 100 tons, three thousand of 50 or 30 and six thousand of 20 or 10, it would have crushed France.

As for us, still more firmly attached to the ancient conceptions, we started the war with 5 million soldiers, but an air force which was just embryonic and tanks very insufficient in number and in power. Again, this modern force was it built, organized, oriented, not at all to strike far, quickly and hard, but on the contrary to act only in function of and within the system of the masses. Thus, from the aerial point of view, only our so-called fighters aircrafts, that is to say of protection, counted, and that in fact of armored vehicles we practically had only light tanks, of which the principle imperative of employment consisted in dispersing them by small fractions in the ranks of the infantry.

There was therefore no possibility for us to lend our Eastern allies any direct or indirect assistance whatsoever. The same military institutions which, on March 7, 1936, forced us to stand still, which, during the annexation of Austria by Germany, struck us with total inertia, which, in September 1938, then in March 1939, forced us to abandon the Czechs, were inevitably to force us, last September, to witness from afar the German rush on Poland without being able to do anything other than follow on the map the victorious stages of the enemy.

Maybe there are others several references to Poland in 1939 in the numerous memoirs, books and articles concerning General de Gaulle, former captain sent in Poland after the Great War

A lot of this is very questionable and some points are even nonsense ,things as tanks of 100 tons, 10000 German tanks, blaming the military institutions,the French only having light tanks ,an embryonic air force,the betrayal of the Czechs .
I don't think that this memorandum had any influence whatever .

[gebhk]

Loic, thanks. Finally something on topic
Would you agree that the underlying view is that France should have rendered effective military aid to Poland (and Czechoslovakia for that matter) but was unable to do so because she did not have enough tanks and attack airplanes and the military had a defensive doctrine which led to an armed forces incapable of swift offensive action (modern force was it built, organized, oriented, not at all to strike far, quickly and hard, but on the contrary to act only in function of and within the system of the masses).? I also feel that he regrets that all France was able to do was

witness from afar the German rush on Poland without being able to do anything other than follow on the map the victorious stages of the enemy

.

I would agree however that this stops far short of any suggestion that there was a 'betrayal'.

Did CdG return to the subject after the war?

[ljadw]

The defensive doctrine was imposed by the politicians and the electors : France could not afford a second slaughter as in WWI.
France had also not the means for a ''modern '' army such as De Gaulle advocated .And, France did not need such an army as the safety of France would not be threatened if Poland and CZ were ''lost ''.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Loic,

As gebhk says, nice work.

I would add that France followed two courses in 1940. Ge Gaulle headed the faction that in practice kept to the terms of the agreements with Poland and did not advocate an armistice, let alone a separate peace with Germany. To have done so would have been to accept Poland's complete extinction by Nazi Germany.

Cheers,

Sid.

[gebhk]

The problem, Sid, is that from May 1940, this all became, from Poland's point of view, academic. After that the only opinion that mattered was that of Comrade Stalin and the only people who had any significant levers on him were the US. Since the US had little strategic interest in what happened to Poland, what Comrade Stailn wanted he got. To assume that France or de Gaulle had any influence on this is unrealistic - and the Stalin-De Gaulle discussion of the matter is verbatim on record.

Thus the only time France was in a position to render Poland significant military aid, such as it was, was in 1939 and the months leading up to it. Hence, I presume, the interest in views of French then and future leaders had on the matter, remain of interest.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi gebhk,

If Poland had lasted longer then that might be a reasonable point, but it didn't. Poland's collapse was so fast that there was virtually no chance of France saving it in 1939. Whether France was prepared to make the attempt had Poland lasted longer and not been attacked from the rear by the USSR was never tested. Long before 17 September it was probably futile. After 17 September it was definitely futile.

Comrade Stalin got pretty much what the Curzon Commission had recommended as Poland's eastern border twenty years before.

For good reasons or bad, Poland had acquired a lot of enemies since its reestablishment some two decades earlier and had not been shy in bullying the smaller of them in 1938-39. It does not make the most sympathetic of victims.

Given that France went to its own destruction in a war it had declared on behalf of Poland, it is a bit rich to cry betrayal. Betrayal would have been for France to ignore its obligations towards Poland entirely and not declare war on Germany.

France was not a massive state. In fact its population was not much bigger than Poland's - 41 million versus 35 million. For it to go to war with a Germany with a population of some 80 million was a big risk.

France and Poland had both made their big mistakes regarding Germany in the mid-1930s, when they might still have had the resources between them to defeat it.

Cheers,

Sid.

[gebhk]

Sorry - I'm not following you down that utterly irrelevant rabbit hole. It doesn't change reality. And what does any of that have to do with the topic in hand?

[ljadw]

The topic is :
1 Was there a French betrayal of Poland in September 1939 ?
2 What was the opinion of De Gaulle about this ?
The topic is not the French policy regarding Germany in the mid thirties .
The answer on the first question is : NO . Why ? Because betrayal implies a promise that was not kept . And there was no such French promise .
The second question is dishonest, because it suggest that there was a public/not public opinion of De Gaulle in September 1939 about this . And there are no proofs that he did give his opinion about the French policy in September 1939 . What he said about this question in 1945 is irrelevant .
FDR praised in 1938 the agreement of Munich, later he attacked and condemned it ,and hided his positive opinion .
It is perfectly possible that in 1939 De Gaulle did not care about the whole question, but that he condemned the French policy later for political reasons . In 1939 he was a mere colonel, in 1945 he was head of the French state .

[ljadw]

Hi gebhk,

If Poland had lasted longer then that might be a reasonable point, but it didn't. Poland's collapse was so fast that there was virtually no chance of France saving it in 1939. Whether France was prepared to make the attempt had Poland lasted longer and not been attacked from the rear by the USSR was never tested. Long before 17 September it was probably futile. After 17 September it was definitely futile.

Comrade Stalin got pretty much what the Curzon Commission had recommended as Poland's eastern border twenty years before.

For good reasons or bad, Poland had acquired a lot of enemies since its reestablishment some two decades earlier and had not been shy in bullying the smaller of them in 1938-39. It does not make the most sympathetic of victims.

Given that France went to its own destruction in a war it had declared on behalf of Poland, it is a bit rich to cry betrayal. Betrayal would have been for France to ignore its obligations towards Poland entirely and not declare war on Germany.

France was not a massive state. In fact its population was not much bigger than Poland's - 41 million versus 35 million. For it to go to war with a Germany with a population of some 80 million was a big risk.

France and Poland had both made their big mistakes regarding Germany in the mid-1930s, when they might still have had the resources between them to defeat it.

Cheers,

Sid.

France and Poland did not make big mistakes :
Poland was less in danger since Hitler became head of Germany . Poland also needed a strong Germany to protect it against the Soviets .
France did not need Poland :Poland had become a burden and a risk .Besides : there was no reason why Poland should help France if it was attacked by Germany .
A new war would destroy the status quo of Versailles and would mean the end of Poland as an independent state and the end of France as a big power .
Thus, the best thing for Poland and France was to do nothing while Hitler increased Germany's power in Central Europe and to hope that this would happen without war .