Interesting read for all those who think French are cowards:
http://exile.ru/175/175052003.html
new tactic?
Isn’t that why Hannibal snuck over the mountains with his elephants? Or what Alexander the Great used to defeat the vast Persian armies? Or why Pharoe’s chariots could be caught and drowned in the Red Sea?
Sorry, but I’d say gathering your strength into a tightly concentrated area has been a common military tactic since the beginning or recorded history. The WWII French high command was just pretty incompetant in general.
Wow. I didn’t know Hannibal had tanks.
I see your point and it’s valid: put the best offensive weapon you have in a group and the group is almost unstoppable. That’s why calvary was so important in battles before the invention of the gun; it’s apparently hard to knock the rider off of a moving horse when he’s swinging an ax at you.
But remember, concentrating your assets has its drawbacks. Look at what happened at Pearl Harbor where ships and planes were docked/parked close to each other to conserve room (I do, however, remember reading somewhere that one officer moved the planes close together for asthetic reasons, but that’s a very fuzzy recollection): they were much easier targets for a large bombing. All it would have taken for France to stop the tanks, then, is a large air-raid.
Also, tanks were still relatively new at the start of World War 2. They had only made appearances in one previous war, and even then I dont’ believe they were tightly compacted into a single force. As was said, I’m pretty sure they were regarded as very nifty and easily movable artillery.
–greenphan
I second this suggestion, it’s a great book. The best account of the fall of France that I’ve ever read.
Horne also wrote good accounts of the Battles of Sedan (Franco-Prussian War) and Verdun (WWI). Together these three books are a fantastic account of three of France’s most importnant battles.
Eve and S Gelding touched on a very important (and often overlooked) point.
The French political context was pretty charged at the time. The country was deeply divided along class lines, urban versus rural, ethnic divide etc. Many amongst the ruling classes of Europe were sympathetic to Hitler’s politics, and very afraid of communism. Not exactly a “fight to the last man” climate.
I’d also have to agree with those who say that France’s shame (such as it is) stems from the nation’s conduct during the occupation rather than the initial surrender. French casualties during the fighting were substantial (greater than US for the whole war I believe) - so military honor was ‘saved’. However, during the occupation many groups collaborated with the Nazis to further their own agendas (or self interest) - anti-communist, anti-semite etc. For many Hitler seemed the lesser of two evils, stemming the spread of communism.
The European resistance movement largely coalesced around communist (and socialist) groups who also felt they had been betrayed by the traditional ruling castes of their own countries.
The decision to not fortify the French-Belgian border did make some sense. The diea was that the Maginot Line would force the Germans to invade via Belgium (true) and the French would advance inot Belgium to fight the Germans (also true). It made no sense to spend billions building a defensive formation you didn’t plan on using.
The mistake the French (along with the Belgians and the British) made was to assume the Germans would be unable to support an attack through the Ardennes forest. So the French left the defense of this area to relatively weak forces. The Germans attacked this weak spot successfully and cut behind French lines, surrounding the advancing French army.
The French did have the means to continue fighting. It probably was too late to save Paris, but there were enough troops to form a defensive line in southern France.
One problem was that the French military command was extremely conservative and hated the French government which at the time was extremely liberal. The French Generals apparently decided it wasn’t worth fighting for a political regime they didn’t like.
Others have mentioned France’s record during the occupation. It was shameful. Since the German defeat, France has promoted the idea that all of France was behind deGaulle and the Resistance. But during the war, there was substantial support for the Vichy government, which in turn supported Germany. This included substantial numbers of French soldiers who voluntarily fought for Germany on the Eastern front.
In May 1940, Germany fielded around 140 divisions, 10 of them armoured, the rest infantry.
The allies had around the same number: around 95 French, 10 British, 22 Belgian, 8 Dutch. The French had 3 proper armoured divisions (DCRs) and 8 others that were mixed cavalry/armour (DLMs and DLCs).
More info here: France 1940.
So the forces were evenly matched in numbers, but as other posters above have made clear, the Germans achieved a decisive result because of better planning, leadership, concentration of force, communications, etc.
Also, on the cowardice issue: 110,000 French soldiers were among those evacuated from Dunkirk. Almost all of them immediately caught boats back to ports in western France to continue the fight. Hardly the action of cowards.
The “armee de l’air”-it was commanded by General Joseph Vuillemin (who had been a combat ace in WWI). He went to Germany in 1936, at the invitation of Goering…and returned , thoroughly frightened. Apparently, Goering’s Luftwaffe put on a good show for him, and convince the general that the Luftwaffe was invincible. Yet, the fact remains, the French planes were not grossly inferior to the German…and, the fact remains, at the time of the surrender, France had plenty of aircraft in reserve-why these were not deployed is a mystery.
My belief is that the Communist party had much to do with the collapse of French morale…and the French high command certainly was not immune to it.
A discussion about airpower is needed here.
In addition to being technologically obsolete, France’s Air Force had no strategic concept for defense.
They understood air tactics–what to do with individual aircraft to win dogfights, how to uses groups of aircraft to defeat other groups, yes.
But the idea of controling your airspace, and creating a central organization to coordinate this effort, was completelt lacking in France.
In contrast, Great Britain had a central Fighter Command, with a large map room displaying all of Southern England. When radar detected intruder aircraft, markers were placed on the board, & moved around to track enemy planes based on recieved updates. Nearby squadrons were vectored to intercept, & others were held in reserve. Resources were allocated to meet the demand.
No such central control existed in France. Each unit was essentially on it’s own, and expected to defend it’s area. Some fighter units never even saw combat, as they spent their time on the ground, & weren’t sent outside their area. Until the surrender, that is.
Definitely not, as I already pointed out. You should check a map of the military situation when France surrendered. I think this misconception comes from a wrong belief that france surrendered when (or even before) Paris was occupied.
As I already mentionned, an attempt was made to organize a defensive line along the Loire river, roughly 150 kilometers south of Paris, but totally failed. The german armies had already crossed it in several places while the commanders were still trying to arganize said defense line. They didn’t even had the time to blow off all the bridges.
At the moment France surrendered, all of northern France was already occupied, except for the eastern part (where was situated the Maginot line) and Britanny. The german army was running unnoposed in south western france towards Bordeaux where the government had fled, and similarily along the Rhone river in south-eastern france towards the mediterranean sea.
The french troops in north-eastern france I was refering to were encircled and doomed. The bulk of the french army had been destroyed/routed/taken prisonner in Belgium, northern France and in the Dunkirk pocket. Whatever had managed to escape/be evacuated was totally disorganized, had lost all heavy (and often even light) armament and wasn’t in any way in fighting order.
There was essentially nothing left from the french army, except for some reserves units garrisoned in southern towns, the foreign legion which had just been rapatriated from Norway where it was fighting, the part of the mountain troops which had not been hastily sent in the north when the campaign turned ugly (and anyway were already engaged by the Italian army), and some colonial units which were on their way when the campaign of France began.
The only possibility which was briefly envisionned was to try to defend Britanny (the peninsula at the extreme west of France), with british support as a possible bridgehead for a future counter-attack (which would have had to be done essentially by the british). This plan was dismissed out of hand by the Commander in Chief Weygand as totally unrealistic from a military point of view.
Once again, the only french military asset at this point was the navy, in which of course the british government had a high interest (a significant part of it would be sunk at anchor by the british navy in the north african port it had taken refuge in some days after the surrendering of France, upon the refusal of the admiral commanding it to either join the british navy or sunk his own ships)
Actually, these volunteers constitued a division-sized unit (“Division Charlemagne”).
Most french people fighting on the eastern front where from the Alsace-Lorraine region which had been annexed by the reich, hence were considered as German citizens and drafted. The most unlucky amongst them actually fought the germans under french uniform, then the russians under german uniforms, and having been made prisonners and handed to the british, switched uniform once again to fight again the germans towards the end of the war.
[About French not realizing that concentrating their tanks was the way to go]
Except that the lesson of WWI was that this is exactly the wrong thing to do at the level of individual soldiers. Concentrating your riflemen into a Napoleonic-style line just allowed them all to be wiped out at once by a couple of machine guns or artillery shells. And at the same level, the (not absolute, but general) trend as WWII went along in all armies was to distribute machine guns and spread them among all units, rather than concentrating them. So maybe the French army in WWII was fighting the last war, but it’s not that there was a clear, universally applicable tactic they missed.
I must say that probably nobody asked their opinion about whether or not they were willing to go on fighting.
Anyway, as as just mentionned above, these evacuated units weren’t in fighting order, since they didn’t have any heavy armaments, ammunitions, vehicles, etc…left, were totally disorganized (it generally wasn’t whole units in good order which were evacuated but usually whatever french soldiers happening to be on the shore when the british ships still had room for them once the brits had been evacuated…be it a whole company, a squad, individual soldiers, etc…), hence not at all in fighting order.
I don’t know whether the individual planes were inferior or not, but the french airforce as a whole definitely was. I understand that in airfights, french units were totally outclassed by the German airforce. Also, a large part of the airforce had been essentially sacrificed to help trying to stop the unexpected german attack in the Ardennes during the early days of the campaign, and even then proved to be quite unefficient for ground support and attack.
It also seems to me that the german army didn’t lack AA weapons, contrarily to french units. But I’m not sure.
The communist party definitely opposed the war following the Hitler-Stalin pact, and actually was forbidden. Though it was a relatively influential party at this time, I’m not convinced its stance played such a significant part. But it’s a matter of opinion.
Its also worth pointing out that in addition to all the factors mentioned above that for about half of the campaign the French were heavily outnumbered by the Germans. The total allied coalition at the start of the campaign was roughly equivalent in size to the German force but this illusory situation didn’t last. Holland surrended in 4 days, Belgium surrended in 18 days, the British evacuated themselves from Dunkirk at the end of May/beginning of June. And many of the best French formations were also destroyed in the early days. So for the last three weeks of the campaign the French fought alone against very heavy odds and with a sky controlled by the Luftwaffe. This “cowardly” army that according to the myth barely put up a fight, in reality lost over 100,000 men killed before it surrendered.
I have a question about the Ardennes…according to what I read, the French General Staff considered the possibility of a German advance (through the Ardennes)…and rejected it as impossible! WHAT were these guys smoking? I’ve been in the Ardennes…and they are NOT mountains! True, they are some steep hills and ravines, broken by rivers and streams…but there are roads. I cannot believe that the French didn’t station a division or two in the Ardennes (equipped with 75 mm, artillery)-that would have stopped the German advance in its tracks!
What are you all graduates of West fricking Point? Remind me not to go to war with the Straight Dope. This is great information and I thank you for it. Would someone mind going into some more details about the post-surrender occupation, i.e., who “sold out” and in what capacity?
I believe, at the time, the Ardennes was a thick forest with no roads that would move a military size force. The French generals thought no one would want to hack their way through the “impassable” forest.
With reference to the Ardennes, the French recognized that it was passible to troops, but considered that the terrain was difficult enough that it could easily be defended with a small force, such as an infantry division or two. They then apparently assumed that the Germans would also recognize this fact and would therefore not consider an attack through the Ardennes, as the actual defence assigned was IIRC a single mechanized cavalry regiment, which was totally inadequate to prevent the German attack. It was not so much a belief that the Ardennes was impassible as a failure to properly defend the area.
With reference to Dunkirk, the British did not “evacuate whatever french soldiers happening to be on the shore when the british ships still had room for them once the brits had been evacuated”. Aproximately 200,000 British, 20,000 Belgian and 115,000 French soldiers were evacuated, with a number of French naval vessels included in the evacuation fleet. IIRC, most of the 115,000 French, however, chose to return to France rather than stay and join the Free French forces being organized under de Gaulle.
It wasn’t just that the Ardennes presented formidable difficulties for the movement of armored forces, it was that the French seemed to think that they could prevent German infantry from crossing the Meuse at and around Sedan. The French certainly expected German infantry to show up around Sedan. What they almost certainly didn’t expect was three panzer divisions with attached engineering battalions and closely coordinated air support to show up and force crossings there.
Even then the German high command nearly dropped the ball. They ordered the Panzer divisions around Sedan to halt until supporting infantry could be moved up. Guderian managed to gain approval for a “reconnaissance in force” which he very broadly interpreted, and used that advance to keep the French entirely off-balance.
A fairly thorough analysis of the German documents on the Sitzkrieg and the fall of France can be foun in Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. The German high command was astonished at the torpor of the Allies and likewise astonished at the speed of their defeat in France.