I Think I Now Understand the Defeat of France in 1940

Politics & Elections
1

I am wading through Defeat and Division: France at War, 1939–1942. It is very good and I recommend it to you. It discusses all the well-known details of the military side of the French defeat. More importantly, it also explains the rise of Vichy.

I call this the post-Dreyfus epoch if only because I know nothing about France before 1894.

The basic cause of the French defeat and the establishment of Vichy was that French generals and admirals were no darn good. But how so? Very simply, the senior French officers felt themselves better than the Republic as well as the public.

You see from their point of view, the French people included Jews, Freemasons, Communists, intellectuals, politicians, free-thinkers and others who did not hold loyalty to France first. Even the vast levee en masse could not be trusted. Only the senior officers could be trusted to put France first.

Or to say it another way, the senior leadership thought only they could be trusted to save France from the French. All those sub-groups were loyal only to themselves, not to the nation. Therefore, the brass hats had to hang together. (So they were doing just what they accused the others of.)

So how did that lead to defeat?

The French general officers wanted to win. They did not throw the game. But when it came right down to it, it was more important to defeat the real enemies of France than to beat the Germans. It was better that France surrender and become a puppet state than it fall under the control of groups outside the senior military leadership.

In fact, the fire of defeat would burn out the sins of the decedent French and so save France. Or something.

Looking back on it we can see how circular and illogical it all was. But in the moment, they were caught up in their own internal logic.

Now, take the next step. How about the increasingly fractured American people? Some of us would make defeating the Liberals (or Conservatives) our main priority even if faced with a external enemy. Some would kiss up to the Russians or the Chinese to protect America from those other Americans.

What think you?

2

I don’t see the fracture increasing. As a matter of fact I see it reaching it’s limit.

What on earth does that mean? The people who kiss up to our enemies do so for their own personal benefit, not in any way for the protection of the country and our citizenry.

3

But they’ll think they’re “saving America” when they do it. That they equate “America” with “themselves” is a point they never quite get.

If they live through the experience, maybe, maybe, they’ll have a moment of “Nice job breaking it, hero!”

4

I haven’t read the book cited in the OP. But it’s risky to make sweeping conclusions based on a single analysis that appeals to you.

Numerous sources cite major factors in the French defeat as being things of which we’re well aware: over-reliance on the Maginot Line, poor intelligence and anticipation of German strategy, ineffective coordination with the British etc.

Once they were defeated there was sufficient sentiment in high military and political circles that collaboration with the Nazis was inevitable and for some, even desirable. It’s bizarre to hear about the extent to which Vichy France supplied men and arms to back Germany, to resist Allied advances and even to attack the British on occasion. Some of this behavior was due to sympathy with the Nazi cause; some was apparently due to resentment of Great Britain.

It sound way over-simplistic to me to argue that top French military leaders were content to surrender in order to let the Germans hold down “the real enemies of France”.

5

I thought the deal was that the Germans avoided the Maginot line, invaded through Belgium and out maneuvered the French. I also thought that like it or not, a defeated army was forfeit. I l don’t know the legalities of a soldier continuing to serve in the army if his/her country changes sides.

6

One side fueled by a Burgundy-Pinard and the other by methamphetamines. The result is kind of a no-brainer.

7

I’m pretty sure that it was primarily doctrinal differences, i.e. antiquated doctrine on the part of the French vs. modern mobile warfare (Blitzkrieg) on the part of the Germans, amplified by rather poor generalship on the French side.

I’m not sure the French could have won with the way their army was set up, against a blitzkrieg-style army. They had no mobile reserves, no dedicated armored formations, etc… it was all infantry vs. the Germans, with their tanks farmed out piecemeal to the infantry formations.

Now if the whole contention is that the French high command deliberately sabotaged themselves by relying on fixed fortifications and basically having an outdated doctrine for the reasons you mention, I don’t know. But it does seem obvious that they definitely got out-generaled both before and during the war.

8

The subject is complex and any explanation must be a simplification. There were lots of things going on at the same time.

But of course Vichy enthusiastically sent French Jews to their deaths. The Germans did not seem to demand it of them. In the same way other groups were persecuted. The Vichy leadership seem to have undertaken a purification ritual to rid the nation of the shame that was brought on by … the Vichy leadership.

9

Wow this makes me feel old, I couldn’t remember what book exactly I read this in, so I searched under my username and Maginot Line. I posted this almost 20 years ago about how France actually under-relied on the Maginot Line.

I’ve heard this as well, Trevor Dupuy wrote something about it in Understanding War:

Yeah, I’m not understanding the logic - if there is any, even faulty logic - alleged to be at work here. The French high command didn’t throw the fight, but actually they did because when it came right down to it, they were more concerned with getting rid of “Jews, Freemasons, Communists, intellectuals, politicians, free-thinkers and others who did not hold loyalty to France first” who were the “real enemies of France”, not the Germans? Huh? Sorry, I need some sort of concrete example of this as allegedly explained in the book.

10

Certainly. But first off, I direct you to the book which is wonderful, dense and well worth your time.

The first thing of course is the very existence of a Vichy state. How strange that a parliament that responded to defeat by voting to (basically) disband itself. Most countries established a government in exile to continue the fight. Not France. In France the legislators who had not fled voted the Third Republic out of existence.

The “Republic” was replaced by a “State.” The French people, it seems could not be trusted by the super-patriotic Vichy leadership to vote even for a local mayor.

Further, not all Frenchmen were really French enough under the Révolution nationale. They had a concept of an “Antifrance,” a sinister shadow of the real France made up of Jews, Freemasons, homosexuals, Communists, and (oddly) people from overseas French territories (nonwhites). Check out the Wikipedia article on Charles Maurras.

The Vichy government imposed its first antisemitic laws less than a month after the armistice. Consider for a moment the well-known Velodrome deportation. About 13,000 Jews were sent to their deaths in 1942. Not a single German was involved. The Vichy leadership directed its willing henchmen in furtherance of Vichy, not Nazi policy.

Please allow me a direct crib from Wikipedia;

The Vichy government voluntarily adopted, without coercion from the German forces, laws that excluded Jews and their children from certain roles in society. According to Marshal Philippe Petain’s chief of staff, “Germany was not at the origin of the anti-Jewish legislation of Vichy. That legislation was spontaneous and autonomous.” These laws were declared null and void by the Ordinance of 9 August 1944 after liberation and on the restoration of republican legality.

With the Riom Trial in 1942, the Vichy showed their true colors. They attempted to prove France’s defeat was not the fault of the military leadership, but rather the civilians. I recall from the book that the trade unions were implicated with sabotaging the war effort by their forty-hour work week. (The trial collapsed. Vichy suspended it and eventually shipped off those in the dock to Germany.)

It is also remarkable, by the way how many people who served Vichy went on to postwar political careers. I am looing at you Mitterrand. It seems the tendency toward fascism runs (perhaps ran) deep in France in a way it is hard for me to grasp.

11

The Vichy French fought well in Syria and Lebanon. A British officer commented “If they’d fought this hard in 1940 they wouldn’t have lost.”

12

Vichy allowed the Germans to use airbases in the Levant to support a revolt (against the British) in Iraq. They also transferred their own ammunition and arms stockpiles to the rebels.

Vichy was a Fascist nation because a surprisingly large portion of the French elites were Fascists.

13
The most expensive thing in the world is a second-best military establishment, good but not good enough to win. ~~~~Robert A. Heinlein

This is the real crux.
France looked backwards in military preparation.
Germany forward.

14

The origin of the Maginot Line and likely the over-strength reserves deployed behind it in 1940 was the French determination to prevent a repeat of 1914, when the Germans advanced into the NE industrial heartland of France and held it for pretty much the whole war. As far as this went, the Maginot Line did what it was designed to do.

15

True enough, regarding tactics. But unfortunately the French tended to rely on old fossils from WWI (and earlier) like Petain, who by 1940 was a doddering old fool (born in 1856, for god’s sake). But he was a war hero, the Vichy loved him and hated de Gaulle. He was the main obstacle that Allied forces had to overcome in North Africa, as the French refused to surrender unless Petain told them to.

As for this country, I don’t see us in that sort of situation. There aren’t any military leaders I can think of that aren’t irreplaceable, and certainly no idols like Ike and Patton around.

16

Let’s not pretend that Anglo-French relations got off to a good start following the French capitulation. Less than two weeks after France signed the armistice with the Germans and Italians the British killed 1,297 French sailors and servicemen at Mers-el -Kabir.

The Vichy government was fairly fascist, there’s nothing new or surprising there. I’m still not seeing how this was responsible for the fall of France in 1940.

.

17

Seems the French military leadership saw the French Republic and the French people to be an enemy, maybe even the primary enemy. The Germans were also an enemy.

18

Repetition doesn’t make something true without any evidence. See “the 2020 elections were stolen.” You cut off the second sentence, the meaningful one, in your reply:

19

Oh. Please forgive me. We seem to be misunderstanding each other. I thought all of your sentences were meaningful.

France was beaten on the battlefield for a number of technical reasons related to the Dyle Plane and so on. These are well-known and not the gist of what I am getting at.

Lots of countries were beaten on the battlefield in 1939-1940. the Low Countries, Norway, Poland. None of the were defeated so that they ceased resisting. The government of France did. That was unique, or close to unique. (Denmark during the war is another thing I know nothing about.) So why did senior French leader allow themselves and their nation to be defeated? Why did they give up the fight?

The Vichy people will tell you that this happened because the Popular Front government and the French people soft, decedent, and gutless. This is does not seem to be the case. The French government and the French nation were given over to their great enemies by senior military leaders who preferred to fight Communists, Jews, intellectuals, Freemasons and whatnot at home than the external enemy.

That is how France was defeated. Compare to Poland, or most any other country, which were whipped in a military sense but never gave up resistance.

Please forgive me if I was unclear.

20

They were all defeated ‘so that they ceased resisting’, their militaries were defeated in the field and they lost control of their country. They all also continued to resist in exile, France included. You have heard of Charles de Gaulle and Free France, yes? He made a rather famous speech on 18 June, to whit:

The destiny of the world is here. I, General de Gaulle, currently in London, invite the officers and the French soldiers who are located in British territory or who would come there, with their weapons or without their weapons, I invite the engineers and the special workers of armament industries who are located in British territory or who would come there, to put themselves in contact with me.

Whatever happens, the flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished.

As to why did senior French leaders ‘allow’ themselves and their nation to be defeated and why did they give up the fight, that isn’t a difficult question to answer, they didn’t ‘allow’ it to happen, the Germans encircled and destroyed the Anglo-French forces in the low countries and northern France, causing the loss of 61 divisions, including their best ones. Now outnumbered over two to one in terms of divisions, the French were unable to hold the Weygand Line despite fierce resistance, Paris fell, Normandy was overrun (leading to a second evacuation of the BEF less famous than the one from Dunkirk), the French armies in the Maginot Line were encircled. In short, France was overrun.

Nonsense. France wasn’t ‘given over to its enemies’ by ‘senior military leaders who preferred to fight Communists, Jews, intellectuals, Freemasons and whatnot at home than the external enemy’, it was as completely overrun and defeated in the field militarily by the Germans as Poland or the Low Countries were.

And again, you’ve done nothing to provide actual evidence of your thesis other than repeating it.

Oh, and Denmark surrendered in less than two hours.