I never understood the Maginot line. It completely ignored the proven effectiveness of German super guns in WWI and it was also open to leap frogging by aircraft. If the Germans wanted to, they could lob shells all day long and the French would never hear them coming.
The French fell to an inferior force because of the effectiveness of the air supported fast attack and to some degree, a lack of combat training. They were not trained for such a quick moving attack.
In the early years, the Germans built their army as they conquered. They had no real tanks at the beginning of the war except for a pea-shooter they developed in secret with the Russians (they were banned from making heavy tanks). It was the manufacturing facilities of the Czechs that fueled their tank building regime.
Oh, and tha fact that General Gamelin was 68 years old and tired…and they replaced him with a 73-year old! (General Weygand). Somehow, a 73 year old general seems to be no match for an agressibe 48-year old (like Mantueffel or Dietrich).
[QUOTE]
Mannerheim was no spring chicken himself. Did that deter him from being a good general in the Winter War?
Waiting for Belgium to be actually invaded was part in the plan in the sense that Belgium wanted to stay neutral if at all possible for obvious reasons hence the allies couldn’t deploy in Belgium barring invading it themselves.
Actually, France didn’t surrender immediatly after the armies were encircled and essentially destroyed in the pocket of Dunkirk. When it did surrender, whether or not there was more to come was essentially irrelevant, since the germans already occupied more than half of the country, were rolling towards the rest unopposed, and France hadn’t have anymore an army to speak about. So no more was needed to assume that France was toast.
De Gaulle indeed advocated for the use of german-style large armored units, and even wrote a book on this topic, but he wasn’t a leader at these times. He was a mere colonel, commanding one of the few tank regiments. He was granted generalship (brigadier) on a temporary basis and appointed as a junior member of the cabinet (undersecretary at war) after the french defeat in the north. He became the leader of the free french by lack of other contendant, and it’s not like Churchill didn’t try to find someone else, like an actual leader or senior politician/minister.
Quite true. He could have been considered as “evil” by some at these times, but certainly not in the way we perceive it now. Probably not worst that many dictators/ fascists in Europe.
However, had he been actually considered evil by most, it doesn’t prove that France and french people would have acted in a different way. Though it’s some kind of hijack, even in modern times, we didn’t rushed in to prevent actual and blatant evil from occuring, even when it was very possible to do so, like in the case of the Rwandan genocide. So, I’m not sure it would have made a great difference in 1940, either.
[QUOTE=Magiver]
I never understood the Maginot line. It completely ignored the proven effectiveness of German super guns in WWI and it was also open to leap frogging by aircraft. If the Germans wanted to, they could lob shells all day long and the French would never hear them coming. [/quote
I don’t believe so. It precisely had been proven during WWI that such fortified positions were extremely efficient and very difficult to take. It wasn’t merely bunkers, but huge works extenting on large areas and in depth, deeply buried and heavily armed, with huge reserves, the last state of the art equipment, kilometers of subterranean galleries, etc…They did prove to be difficult to take even when attacked from behind by an unopposed german army towards the end of the campaign of France.
You’re also forgetting that though the Germans could have shelled them night and day, the Frenchs could have done the same from the line itself and from behind. And concerning air attacks, France also had an airforce.
In my opinion, the concept was perfectly sound and proved to be efficient. It just was made irrelevant by the total failure of the french army on the other parts of the front.
So, we have the idea afloat that the French government and military leaders envisioned a WWI type static war with a blockade, another WWI holdover.
I find it jaw-dropping that Britain and France would actually intentionally go to war with Germany with a strategy that envisioned a repeat fo 1914-18.
Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
Well, yes, but as mentioned before, a lot of the early succesful German strategies/tactics/actual moves were themselves a gamble on their part on theories that were there mostly in books, using forces that were not really all quite as mighty as they projected in terms of matériel and logistics but were highly motivated. AH even moved the schedule for action ahead of what he had assured the generals, IIRC he had led them to expect war past 1940. And the idea that a war between more or less evenly matched rivals would at some point slow down to a slugfest, until there’s a breakthrough or a collapse, was not entirely daft. That does happen… if no decisive blows, tactical OR political, are struck early on.
The reliance on Poland performing a delaying mission probably did not count either on Stalin deciding to ALSO move in on Poland simultaneously with Germany.
Sure, I understand that Hitler was lucky early on. And maybe he was also a shrewd judge of his opposition.
The original question was whether or not the fall of France was inevitable or could the German attack be stopped.
There have been a couple of scenarios described. One being that the French army was concentrated along the Belgian border north of the place where the actual attack came. Another was that the French plan was to give the Germans an easy “breakthrough” but have a deep defense that could stop them and then cut them off. Both scenarios envision no offensive moves against Germany by Britain and France.
OK. The French political and military stance seems to have been entirely defensive. Britain had only a small army and really wasn’t a factor in the beginning. I believe that the 300,000 or so that were evacuated from Dunkerque was the major part of the whole British Army at the time.
So my question immediately arises. What was the long range strategy of the British and French vis a vis Germany? How did they expect to end the war which they entered to come to the support of Poland and to finally stop Hitler’s expansionism?
The French seemingly wouldn’t attack and the British couldn’t. Where do we go from there? I thought I understood the British and French declaration of war but now I realize that I don’t.
Its perhaps worth pointing out that essentially expecting a repeat of 1914-1918 wasnt as obviously foolish at the time as it is in retrospect. There were good contemporary arguments for assuming a repeat. The Spanish Civil War for instance had only ended six months prior to the outbreak of WW2 and this largely had been static positional warfare. There were no good counter-examples that challenged this pattern. Possibly the comprehensive thrashing handed out to the Japanese by the Red Army at Nomohan should have raised some alarm bells but I dont think what had occured there was sufficiently well understood by western powers for any conclusions to be drawn.
Between them the British and the French had sustained about three million very good reasons in the first war that explain their reluctance for land offensives against Germany. Second time around they had to fight without the involvement of Russia which had drawn off so many German forces in the first war. This time they were going to have to fight outnumbered. Better they thought to sit tight for a while and build up their strength. And their combined economic strength and manpower reserves drawing upon their empires was very much greater then that of Germany, a nation with critical fuel shortages and one barely capable of feeding itself. Exaggerated notions of the success of the first war blockade led them to think economic collapse of Germany was possible. Time was on their side, or so they thought.
I am sorry but this is stupid, after all the German Commander General Gerd Von Runstead was 65 years old in 1945. (he survided the war as the senior german general).-