What if the French hadn't surrendered ?

Great Debates
1

Another “What if” thread about ww2.

Britain and France had a" no seperate peace agreement" treaty at the start of the war.

Britain was more a naval power then a European style military power but still sent her army and her reserve army to fight, pitifully small though it was.

The French commanded the British Expeditionary Force because compared in size to the French army they were so small, and they were fighting on French soil.

After the near collapse of the French forces in the face of the Wermacht advances, plus the total congestion caused by panicking civilians fleeing the conflict a major part of the British army was surrounded at Dunkirk, but successfully evacuated .

Though their rearguards at Calais and other locations were asked to fight to the last round against incredible odds.
(The Royal Green Jackets, a Territorial Batallion of ,held on for two days before being overwhelmed)
As the French were surrendering,or retreating, The British were landing troops further down the coast DURING and AFTER Dunkirk, to try and get some fighting spirit into the French’’

After dunkirk the 51st Highland division fought alongside and fell back alongside the French army .

Unfortunately the French surrendered at St. Valery.

The 51st Highland division at the same location were taken aback but surrenedered also.
Inspite of the treaty the French surrenderd without actually informing the Brits.

So what if the French didn’t seek an armistice ?

I don’t think that we’d have had trench warfare

2

They didn’t have a choice. Their army was completely out of position, cut off, demoralized, and the Germans were in their rear areas. I don’t think they COULD have fought on at that point, and if they had the only thing it would have done is caused higher causalities and damage, more civilian deaths and probably a more brutal German initial occupation. The ends would have been the same…Germany had won that round and there wasn’t a thing France could do about it.

-XT

3

French military strategy was predicated on the Maginot Line working. Once the Germans went round the side, there was literally nothing left. The French High command was leading an excellent basketball team, but the Germans turned up playing hockey. And France was pretty much an ice rink.

4

The thing about so-called “civilized” war is that behind the whole elaborate dance of declarations of war, rules of conduct, and formal surrenders is an unspoken threat: “We will behave decently provided that if you surrender, you really surrender: - no partisans, no guerrillas, no assassinating our officers. If you pull any of that, we will use any level of force necessary up to and including genocide to suppress resistance.”

If your conventional forces have been smashed, then either you surrender or else it becomes an insurgency war, and the invaders have already proven they can destroy any of your forces that they can pin down. Insurgencies only work if an invader either can’t or won’t make good the implicit threat to exterminate whole populations if they won’t submit. When Paraguay fought the War of the Triple Alliance, refusing to quit only got their population all but extinguished.

5

Actually, there was some talk of retreating to the peninsula of Brittany, and setting up a fortified position. This would have meant abandoning Paris and France’s industrial heartland.
Not a very good strategy-probably would have caused tens of thousands of deaths.
Oddly enough, General Gamelin (French CinC) understood that the german offensive could be halted by defense in depth-bt his moving the army into Belgium defeated this .

6

The only way for the French “not to have surrendered” is for some kind of legitimate French government relocating to a colony of its empire and keeping on fighting from there. Hoping some ally would lend them equipment, weapons, tanks and planes. Was there such an ally at that point? Not really.
Besides, in real history, all of this is close to what the Free French did (substitute Algeria for Britain, and legitimate French government for De Gaulle).
The only difference I would see in terms of military advantage would be the use of the French fleet, which played little to no role in WW2.

7

But the Maginot line did work. It was always assumed that any German invasion would come through Belgium and/or Luxembourg. The line was meant to make sure that France would be free to mobilize and then march the bulk of their army into Belgium without fear of a secondary German thrust into Alsace and Lorraine.

Where France screwed up was in assuming that motorized units couldn’t move through the Ardennes, and that they wouldn’t be able to force the Meuse river.

8

I thought parachute regiments tied them up just on the other side of the line.

9

This is always a fun “what if.” The French could’ve fought on from North Africa. It was entirely do-able from a military standpoint. But not from a political standpoint.

First of all the French has already experienced a loss to Germany in the Franco-Prussian War. The French were demoralized by WWI and the loss of that generation. They figured that it’d be better to quit and the occupation and terms would be similar to the Franco-Prussian War.

Hitler was a bad guy, but Europe was full of bad guys. Stalin, Mussolini, Franco and a whole host of mini-tyrants.

The French also begin to believe the British would fight to the last drop of French blood. This didn’t sit well and the British retreat at Dunkirk also seemed to confirm this. To be fair, the British at that point were more concerned with protecting their own nation.

Hitler had not expected the total collapse of France so fast. The whole world was sort of shocked that they could be defeated so fast and so thoroughly.

The problem is getting the French to North Africa. With the British help this could’ve been done. The French fleet was big enough to probably do this alone. The Italians at this point were HORRIBLY overestimated. Plus you had Franco to think of.

In reality the Italians were so weak they caused more problems than help and Franco’s Spain was such a mess do to the civil war, neither threat was in reality much, but it seemed VERY different at the time.

To add to this, the British were insisting that the French give them a guarantee they would fight on. The British were not gonna move their ships to help the French get to North Africa, if once safe in North Africa, the French just quit anyway.

The French were thinking “If we were defeated, the British don’t stand a chance.”

So the political situation at the time did not come close to reflecting the reality of the military solutions.

Once you get the French to North Africa, and still in the war you have a bit of a change.

First of all this virtually guarantees all of France will be occupied. This isn’t going to make Mussolini happy. He likes Hitler but at a distance. Will Italy act against the Allies if the French government is in North Africa fighting?

That brings up the whole African campaign, which was largely a waste of Germany’s efforts. There was no real interest in North Africa. Germany’s first goal was oil in Baku, then oil in Mosul, Iraq.

So would this have shifted the campaign out East earlier? It might have. If Italy doesn’t act up in North Africa and Albania, Germany doesn’t have to rescue it.

Oddly enough French surrender brought about a tricky situation. Vichy France still controlled the colonies. And Vichy France, weak as it was, was still better than Italy or Spain. Hitler was eager to get Vichy France to be on his side.

So Hitler wanted this, but both Spain and Italy wanted French colonies. And Hitler couldn’t very well expect Vichy France on his side, if he gave away their colonies to Spain (Morocco) and Italy (Tunisia)

The French effectiveness of fighting is also gonna be in question. If France doesn’t surrender how much effort are they gonna put into fighting if all their population is held hostage by Hitler. Probably little effort, so that puts us back to, “Why go to North Africa, why not just surrender and get to keep a third of the country (nominally) from Vichy”

This is why it’s a fun “What if” 'cause there’s so many thing to explore and so many outcomes that were based on the “idea” of what was, instead of the reality of “what is”

10

I disagree. There’s no denying that the 1940 campaign had been a huge defeat for France. But even at the end of the campaign most of France was still in French hands and there were a lot of French units that could still fight. The Germans (and Italians) meanwhile had pretty much reached the end of their logistic chain and weren’t ready to launch another major offensive.

So the French could have pulled their surviving forces together and formed a defensive line to hold Southern France. The Soviet Union and China both continued to fight after disastrous opening campaigns.

But the big difference was that France was a much smaller country than Russia or China. France could have kept fighting into 1941 but most likely they were doomed to an eventual defeat once they lost the opening campaign. But fighting on was an option and a second year of fighting in France would have had a major effect on the war.

11

The battle for France began on May 10th. Here is a map of where the Germans were on May 16th. Check out this picture of where the German advance was on May the 21st. Then consider where the main French army was during that picture (they were way up in the North still…to stop the German attack that didn’t come where they expected). There is no way that the French army, as it was in 1940, could have fought their way through the German spearheads and re-established their lines of communications and logistics. They were simply not trained for that. They had the wrong configuration, they had the wrong tactics, and they had the wrong training. Hell, I’m not sure that a veteran army could have gotten sucker punched that way and been able to wheel 180 degrees, reform and reorganize (without logistics or secure lines of communication) and attack the Germans or break back through. The Germans had effectively cut France in half. Here is a map of where they were in June.

-XT

12

I’m not sure what you mean here. I’m curious.

13

In theory. I can’t see how that could have ever actually happened, though. The bulk of their army was cut off in the north, German troops were (it seemed) appearing all over the place, and the British were making it very clear through their actions that they planned to hedge their bets on France surviving.

I don’t think that anyone on either side seriously believed that France could keep fighting for another six months. One might as well argue that the Germans could have fought on in the previous war until (say) early 1920. Sure, it’s a theoretical possibility, but hardly realistic given the circumstances.

14

However, it did discourage the French Army that had already invaded Germany to defend the territory that they had gained just when WWII started, Germany was busy with Poland and France actually invaded Germany first with little resistance, and if they had not invested all that material and manpower on the line, it would had been much harder for Germany. As it was, the French did retreat to use the line as they had more confidence on their defensive plans and then… well, you know about how the best plans of men and mice go.

An interesting bit of history is that the line did work a little for the Germans to stop the American and British advance in 1944

15

I agree. The cut-off troops in the north were lost. (Although the fact they still existed would have limited the ability of the Germans to push south.) I’m talking about the troops that were still on the right side of the front. They may not have been France’s best mobile troops but there were still a lot of good defensive units.

And France was hardly cut in half. The French army had raced to the northern frontier. When the Germans came behind them and cut them off (Plan Yellow) they only had about five percent of the country. They then turned towards Paris and took about another five percent (Plan Red). But even at that point, ninety percent of France was still untouched.

The problem was that once the Germans reached Paris, the French panicked and started running south as fast and as far as they could (which proves they didn’t lack mobility anyway). All the Germans had to do after Paris fell was follow the French as they retreated.

But if the French hadn’t gone into a rout - if they had formed a line along the Loire for example - I don’t think the Germans could have broken through it at that time.

Again, I won’t claim they could have held that line indefinitely. The Germans would have eventually been able to launch a full offensive against it. But my point was that the French could have kept fighting.

16

I can’t blame them either. People often get demoralized when there are Germans in their rear areas.

17

I recall that parachutists attacked just the other side of the line as a diversion. Perhaps I’m recalling someone else’s defensive line.
:slight_smile:

18

Well yeah, if the remaining French troops weren’t largely routed and demoralized they could have fought on for a while longer (though from my understanding getting to 1941 is a total pipe-dream, unless maybe we assume that they *never *rout), but that wasn’t the military situation at the time. If, politically, the French had decided to continue fighting, they still would’ve been in shambles militarily, even aside from the bulk of their forces having been annihilated (including all the best units). They were through on the continent.

But anyway, had they continued fighting, I suppose the effects would have been to deny French North Africa to Germany (probably for good), to give the British the use of the (not insignificant) French navy, and possibly there could have been implications for the Battle of Britain if they had managed to stave off defeat in France for another month or two. Probably the first two of those would have the effect of speeding up the end game for the Allies from '43 on.

19

Well, no. The allied command *expected the Germans to go around the Maginot line, obviously. In fact, they expected it too much, hence most of the allied forces were waiting besides the Belgian border and rushed in when the German attack began. Rushed in so eagerly that they ended up being trapped when the main German thrust didn’t happen in Belgium as expected, but rather in the Ardennes.
As for the OP’s question about France not surrendering. You’re wrong about the war becoming a trench war. When the armistice took place, the German were already holding half of France and were advancing unopposed by about 50 km/day. France didn’t have any army to speak of left. Its main corps either had been lost (or evacuated without weapons to Britain) in the fight in Belgium and Northern France or (for the other half) were surrounded without hope in Eastern France.

Even though the government toyed with the idea of defending only Britanny, in order to keep a foothold on the continent, the generals knew it was totally unrealistic.

So, the choice wasn’t between fighting in mainland France or not, but between signing an armistice or staying in the war, as a government in exile, thus keeping in the war the French colonial empire, probably part of what had survived of the decimated French airforce and the French troops evacuated from Dunkirk to the UK, and, much more importantly than all the rest, the French fleet.
Note that the older I get, the more I think requesting an armistice was the logical thing to do, and refusing to do so, as De Gaulle, or less commonly known, as the french prime minister at the time, Reynaud (replaced by Petain for this reason), was bordering insanity (without the benefit of insight, of course). I don’t have the time now to elaborate.

20

I think you are grossly underestimating French losses. In May the French were fielding 117 divisions plus 46 various allied divisions. Against this the Germans pitted 135 divisions.

By June 5th the French had only 64 divisions plus one British division to defend the Weygand line along the Seine. Arrayed against this were 142 German divisions. They did defend and hold the Seine for a short while. In fact the French defense was close to brilliant, but they had no reserves. So the Germans were able to finally break the line. By the 10th the French were evacuating Paris.

At this point the French army was now outnumbered by nearly four to one, had no remaining air force, had lost all of its best units, almost all of its armor, the vast majority of its heavy equipment including artillery. How do you propose that they set up a defense along the Loire? They did try to set up lines of resistance… but never got another one set before the Germans smashed them. Lightly armed troops with no air or armor support simply couldn’t hold. The French didn’t “panic” nor did they “go into a rout” they were simply defeated by a strongly superior force.