Yeah yeah, we know that the French are all cheese eating surrender monkeys (blah blah blah), but at the start of WW2, when Hitler just ran them down, could they have realistically done anything? I also know that hindsight is 20/20, but giving the information, material, and tactics that they had at the time, could the French have really done anything to stop the Nazi tanks and not surrender?
Well, maybe if they did not build the maginot line they would have modernized their military. Even then, they would have had to have a moble armor core of at least equal in power to that of Germany’s, and at the time, no one had.
There has been recently a thread on this very issue in GD, that you probably missed :
-From my understanding, it was a combination of lack of funds and political sensitivities towards Belgium that prevented the completion of the Maginot line. While I am no huge proponent of static defense, a completed Maginot line would have been a tough-as-hell nut for the 1940 Wehrmacht to crack.
-Reorganization of the French armored component would have been nice. Take the tanks out of the WW1-style infantry support role and organize them into proper tank divisions. Of course, this would mean quite a bit more than a simple reorg, since French tanks and support structure weren’t quite up to snuff: One man turrets, lack of radios, lack of enough supply trucks to push enough supplies forward, et cetera. Still, it would have helped, IMO.
-Actually use the French navy. They had a very large and pretty well equipped navy; Hell, get 'em in there and bombard Wilhelmshaven or Kiel or something. Sure, you will lose a lot of ships, but anything to take pressure off of the homeland…
-Reorganization of the French airforce would have been nice as well. It isn’t so much that the aircraft in use were inferior; They were organized in an inferior way. Fighter groups often lacked clear channels of communication, and there was no central air directorate to control things in those first days of fighting. One result was that fighter squadrons that relocated to the rear after forward airfields were threatened sort of sat out the action for a while, since there were no orders coming in. Command simply didn’t know where some of them were.
In the end, though, I don’t think anything would have saved France, realistically. Towards the end, they did sort of start using a mobile defense doctrine that was used by NATO some 40 years later, but it was too little, too late. The army was wrecked. Heck, the only thing that saved the Russians from the same fate was that they had soooo much land to trade for time, and learn from their mistakes.
Yes I did, thank you.
There is one way.
But it is apalling and inhuman.
They could have used their bombers to attack German civilians with gas.
Hitler was terrified of chem weapons, due to his exposure during WW1. A major attack on civilians, coupled with a promise of lots more if he didn’t back off, might have panicked him into retreat.
It might not have worked, but then again, Hitler depended on the Cult of Personality to retain control over Germany. If he didn’t back off, he might have lost control, & been overthrown by other Nazi party members.
Are you serious? Gassing Germans wasn’t a good idea, Nazis had the impolite custom to “do unto a hundred others what they have done to you”. I wouldn’t have been an smart idea. Never forget that the german were the leaders in gas weapons, that was a war the allies couldn’t win.-
The best thing France could have done was invade germany during the “phony war”, specially while the german army was fighting poland. I believe they could have marched right into Berlin without running with much opposition.
The moment the German attacked was the moment France lost the war, in the erly years of WWII there wasn’t any defense against the blitzkrieg.
I really don’t know for sure perhaps if they hadn’t fallen in Manstein’s trap, (engaging with their full force the german armies attacking through Belgium and Holland while leaving a weak center), they could have fought to an stalemate… we’ll never know.-
The French could have prevented WW II, if they’d moved against Hitler when he first started his territorial aggressions. German forces were totally inadequate for any kind of battle at that point and were under orders to retreat if anyone so much as fired a shot at them. Odds are this would have caused Hitler to lose enough face that he either would have been tossed from power or would have been kept in check and been prevented from trying to expand Nazi Germany.
IIRC, the French surrender was merely a cowardly ploy by the members of the French government to secure a measure of safety for themselves. France, as a whole, was unwilling to surrender, and militarily was not in such bad shape that surrender wsa their only option.
My source for this is The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer.
I have strong doubts about this, but since I could back it up with a poll form 1940…
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and militarily was not in such bad shape that surrender wsa their only option.
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It was. Most of the country was already occupied, the Germans were advancing esssentially unnoposed, there essentially wasn’t any military asset left to stop them, and it was only a matter of days before they would have occupied the rest of the country.
The choice wasn’t between surrendering and fighting, but between surrendering and forming a government in exile (which would have kept the french colonies and the french navy). Churchill also proposed a common franco-british government.
If the French and British had immediately opened hostilities when Germany attacked Poland, they could have flattened the Germans. In addition, there was a large anti-Nazi movement among senior officers of the German Army. In fact, British intelligence (through the Dutch) had secret contacts with Gen. Ludwig Beck. COS of the German Army. Had the Allies supported this group, the senior officers would ahve overthrown Hitler and ended the Nazi regime.
Hell, Wilhelm Canaris was an Allied mole, or so it is generally believed.
It’s quite obvious France could have done SOMETHING, at some point. The French armed forces was of roughly equal size and technological prowess. Perhaps they should have listened to the proponents of armored maneuvre marfare - such as, you know, Charles de Gaulle - and fought accordingly. OR they could have held back an armored reserve. Or any one of a hundred things. It should have been an even fight; that it wasn’t is indicative of astounding incompetence on the part of the French and British general staffs.