Victory in the west, and the French Army

[kellysartin]

Here's my theory on that. The miracle of '40 wasn't miraculous, or luck, and NO, the Wermacht was NOT that good. What really happened was ( whisper whisper ) the French army , the French people, DIDN'T REALLY FIGHT VERY HARD. Because they realised : WRONG WAR, WRONG CAUSE, WRONG ENEMY.

[Musashi]

French morale was gerally VERY low in 1940. I read in the book a French general with his garrison (I can check his name) waited for a German corporal to surrender. Polish soldiers have also seen the French soldiers who didn't want to fight against German ones who were passing them.

[Marcus]

the French army , the French people, DIDN'T REALLY FIGHT VERY HARD. Because they realised : WRONG WAR, WRONG CAUSE, WRONG ENEMY.

What would be the "right war, right cause, right enemy" for the French (in your view)?

/Marcus

[Tom Stahler]

France declared war to Germany but the french army was in a real bad estate. The "will of power" of France was dead cause of Napoleon Bonaparte and of 1914-1918. The "will of power" of Germany had survived after 1914-1918. Now the "will of power" exists only in Eastern Europe.

[Musashi]

France declared war to Germany but the french army was in a real bad estate. The "will of power" of France was dead cause of Napoleon Bonaparte and of 1914-1918. The "will of power" of Germany had survived after 1914-1918. Now the "will of power" exists only in Eastern Europe.

Thanks, you are very clever.

[Galahad]

Forgetting morale, the fact remains that the French Army of 1940 was misused by commanders who thought in terms of the war they won in 1918, and not the war that was being fought in 1940.

Instead of concentrating armor and motorized units as a mobile force, they mostly scattered them all over the place as support units. Their communications, overall, sucked--especially the commo to and from French General HQ. Commo/liason between the Army and the Air Force was minimal, so they generally fought separate wars. Reserves were minimal, and badly placed. Further, they fought a campaign whose pace was considerably slower than the tempo forced by the Germans.

The result was that whatever orders they wound up giving were invariably out of date by the time their execution began, and corresponded with an operational situation that no longer existed.

In short, the French Army was beaten in 1940 because it was outmaneuvered, on both the strategic level and on the operational level. And further, it was generally outfought because its tactics were inferior to those used by the Wehrmacht.

[Musashi]

@ Galahad
I agree. I can add the French had many kinds of equipment better than the Germans. Some tanks (Somua, Char-bis), ships (battleships and destroyers). The French fleet was much stronger generally (except submarines). However some types of French tanks had one-man turret and it was their disadvantage.
Generally French-British forces were bigger than the German in 1940.

[peter_suciu]

I also think that the French and British were some what ready to refight the trench war and that there were real thoughts that Germany could not endure a sustained conflict.

I would argue that the British were more motivated AFTER the fall of France. That was the real turning point, the public saw that they might actually lose rather than just seeing yet another bloodbath in the fields of France.

I also think the French lost because they were prepared to fight a 1920s war in 1940. Had it been a 1920s war they might have held their own.

[Gyles]

I agree.

While the phony war did not put Germanys ecnomic vulnerability to the test, it did allow them to perfect those elements of national strategy in which the Whermacht was so superior - that is, operational doctrine, combined arms, tactical air power, and decentralised offensive warfare. The Polish campaign in particular confirmed the efficacy of blitzkreig warfare, exposed a number of weaknesses (which could then be corrected), and strengthened confidence in being able to overrun foes by proper concentrations of armour and aerial firepower. The Allies hadn't
taken this new kind of warfare into account. Like others have pointed out, the French especially, had expected attritional trench warfare. Thanks largely to government propoganda they had put far too much faith into waiting behind the Maginot Line. Consequently, when reports of German units crossing the Meuse reached Paris widespread, uncontrollable panick ensued. This and Luftwaffe bombing in turn caused refugees to clog up the roads only worsening the military siuation.

To really understand the French position you need to look at the country's fall in the 30s.

During this period their economy dropped like a stone. Every country runs on it's economy, and France is a prime example. However this alone can't fully explain the military collapse of 1940. Aided by the relative prosperity in the late 20s and worried about clandestine German rearmament they sharply incrased defence expenditures (especially upon the army) in the budget years of 29-30, and 30-31. Alas, the false hopes placed in the Geneva talks, followed by the effects of the depression., both took their toll. By 1934 defence expenditures were still only the 4.3% , as in 1930-31, but the absolute sum was 4billion Francs less, since the economy was weakening so fast. Although the Popular Front Govt of Blumsought to reverse this decline in expenditure, it was not untill 1937 that the 1930 expenditures were exceeded - and most of that increase went into repairing the more obvious military deficiencies in the field army, as well as fortifications. In the critical years therefore, Germany bounded ahead both militarily and economically.

France had fallen behind Britain and Germany in automobile production; it had slumped into fourth place in aircraft manufacturing, from first to fourth in less than a decade; it's steel production had increased by a miserly 30% from 1932-37, compared to the rapidly rearming Germans who achieved 300%; it's coal production
showed a significant decline over the same five year period, a development which is largely explained by the return of the Saar coal fields in early 1935, and the consequant increase in German production.

With the economy swiftly weakening and with debt charges and outlay of the 1914-18 war pensions composing half the total public expenditure, it was impossible for France to re-equip it's three armed forces satisfactorily even when, as in 1937 and 1938, it spent over 30% of it's budget on defence. Ironically, the ungrateful French Navy was probabbly the best catered for , and possesed a well balanced and modern fleet by 1939 - which was of little help in stemming a German blow on land. Of all the services, the worst affected was the air-force, which was continually starved of funds, and for which a small scale, scattered aeronautics industry eked out a living by producing a mere 50-70 planes a month between 1933-37, about a tenth of Germany's total. In 1937 for example, Germany built 5,606 planes, wheras Fr produced only 370 (sometimes 743, depending upon the source you use). Only in '38 did the govt begin pouring money into the aircraft industry, thus producing all the bottlnecks which come with too sudden an expansion, not to mention the design-and flying difficulties caused by a move to newer high performance aircraft. The first 80 of the new Dewoitine 520 fighters were accepted by the AF only in January-April 1940, for example, and the pilots were just beginning to practice flying the plane, when the Blitzkreig struck.Of course behind their economic and production difficulties, most historians concede, lay deeper seeded, social and political problems. Shocked by the losses of the Great War, depressed by repeated economic blows and disappointments, divided by class and ideoligical concerns which intensified as politicions struggled unsuccesfully
with the problems of devaluation, deflation, and the 42hr week, higher taxes and rearmament, French society witnessed a severe collapse in public morale and cohesion as the 1930s advanced. Far from producing a union sacree, the rise of fascism in Europe had caused - at least by the time of the Spanish Civil War - further divisions of French opinion, with the far right scum prefering (as the street chant went) Hitler to Blum, and with many far left scum crying over vital increases in defence and the supposed abrogation of the 42hr week. Such ideoligical clashes
interacted with the volatility of the parties and the chronic instability of French interwar governments. (24 changes between 1930-40) to give an impression of a society sometimes on the brink of civil war. It could never lead to League of Nations or posses the will/strength (economically or militarily) to represent the Democratic nations. As time progressed it came to rely on the UK more and more for both diplomatic and financial help. At the very least it was hardly capable of standing up to Hitlers bold moves and to Mussolinis distractions.

Apart from the general atmosphere of doom and gloom in whhich Frances leaders had to operate, there existed a whole array of specific weaknesses. No effective body existed, like Committee of Imperial Defence, or the Chiefs of Staff subcommittee in Britain, to bring together teh military and non-military branches of government for strategic planning in a systematic way, or even to coordinate the views of the rival services. The leading figures Gamelin, Weygand, Petain and cowere in their 60s, 70s, defensive minded, cautious, and uninterested in tactical innovations. While flatly rejecting DeGauls proposals for a smaller, modern tank army, they did not devise alternative ways of using the newer battlefield weapons.

Combined arms was not practiced. Problems of battleComm and radio were ignored. Thr ole of aircraft was downgraded. Although French intll provided lots of juicy info on what the Germans were thinking, it was also ignored; there was open disbelief in the benefits of large-scale armoured formations, and every translated copy of Guderians Achtung Panzer sent to every garrison library in France remained unread. What this meant was that even when French industry was galvanised into producing large numbers of tanks - (many like the SOM-35 were of very good quality) their was no proper doctrine for their use. Given such faliures in command and training it was always going to be extraordinarily hard for the French army to compensate for the country's sociopolitical malaise and economic decline if it ever came to Germany. Despite all it's shortcomings, the French army was probabbly the second strongest in Europe in 1940.

They just had the bad luck of going up against the best.