German invasion sept. 1939

The question was what if there was a full scale attack. I say Germany would have had to rush out of Poland and head off the French. The westwall may have been manned but not much to defend it. As F.W. von Mellenthin had said, he was shocked at the state of the wall and was glad the French did not attack. Wasn't Hitler that said if the French had attacked the Germans would have to duck their tails between their legs????

 

Just wanting to add 2 details.

1- About the political troubles, one must not forget to blame the right wing extremists, including monarchists, but also many facist leagues, who were enemies of the Republic and of course of the Communists.

Many of them, either called into the Government or Parliement Members were directly involved in the crucial spring weeks of 1940, when the Republic committed suicide, and one of their main argument, along the war being already lost, was the German were the only solution to prevent Communists to emerge from the chaos and take over.

The French Communists, in the other hand, had been the main oponents of the French facists, and of nazi Germany, but when Hitler and Stalin agreed on the non agression pact, they opposed to the war against Germany.

2- It is true the troops involved into the Sarre offensive had almost no mine detectors. I have read a funny report about the use of a pig pack to check a field during the 1939 French incursion in Germany.

 

I have to agree with this one. Also, I would think that an Allied/French invasion of Germany in 1939 would have motivated the Germans even more to back Hitler instead of the other way around. Even if it's pretty hard to predict the eventual outcome such an event, it's possible that this might lead to a war between Germany and Russia on one side and France and England on the other side. I say this because there was a point that Britain had thought of intervening on the side of Finland against Russia when the USSR had invaded Finland earlier.

 

I suppose that my problem with such "what if" discussions is that there must be at least 2 things in them:

1- a high and realistic degree of probablility, and
2- In order for #1 to be successful, one must be able to overlook, perhap even ignore the "baggage" that would have otherwise prevented such a scenario.

My point being, is that sometimes certain "what if" scenario seem so very far-fetched and inplausible to me that when we are doing away with all the negative circumstances, large and small, it would border on pure fantasy. Thats not to say I'm opposed to such discussion, on the contrary. It's just that sometimes I can't bring myself to simply dismiss so much reality.

As for pushing the Germans further in supporting Hitler, it is interesting to wonder if that could have happened in 1939. I've always been more inclined to think this could have been a very likely possibility in 1936 over the Rhineland issue. Had this happened, I do think much of the world could have ended up being more sympathetic to Hitler, especially in his struggle against the USSR.


chocapic - Yes, there were some very well established far-right groups in France at the time, often supported by the wealthy, Catholics, and other bourgeois and industrialist factions. It is true as well that there were many within the officer corps of the French military that were sympathetic to such groups. One such group, such as Croix de Feu even had their own nighttime rallies complete with torches, a la mini-Nuremburg. What I do find funny, is how many of those leaders were sometimes former left-wing activists, having swung from one ideological extreme to the other. However, they were not nearly as large as the labor/communists groups. There was no doubt at the time, that the Politboro in the Kremlin and the communist aparatus in Moscow had a very long reach.

In Le Barillec's book which I mention in post #8, there is a brief footnote of one instance in which some French troops of the 48e R.I. took a few cows from a nearby farm in the Saarland, and encouraged them to walk through a suspected minefield. It didn't mention whether or not it was a practical solution.

 

2p coming from Norway.

The allied strategy was already worked out.

The Allies would fight defensively against the landforces of Germany. The bulk of the allied army would consist of the French, with a British expeditionary corps.

At the same time the Allies would put a blockade on Germany to help starve them of resources. This is where the main contribution of the British would be.

In the air the combined might of the Allies would bomb German factories and infrastructure.

This was how the plan was laid out. Germany would be stricken from multiple angles, and when brought on it's knees, the Armies would advance into Germany. This would leave the Land commanders plenty of time to retrain and draw up a proper invasion plan.

As it was they were in no condition to advance into Germany with close to a hundred divisions.

 

For one of the reasons take a look at the French mobilization schedule, the over all system, and the actual mobilization. Like the Wehrmacht the entire pool of reservists was not called up in a single order. Unlike in WWI both sides had their mobilization streatched out over 3-4 months. The third group of B divsions did not begain assembling until very late in the Autum. This was little different from the German reservist assembly.

The two differences between the French & German mobilization were; A. The Wehrmacht startedmobilization of the reserves a few weeks earlier & so was half a Step ahead. B. The French had no standing field force. The Wehrmacht had a group of partial strength units that could imeadiatly march off without mobilizing any reservists. The French active service units were either training groups, or static fortress units guarding the borders. Neither of these were capable of taking offensive action or marching anywhere.

The reasons for this system seem to have been political with some military theory added on. I've not delved too deeply into why. The result was that a week after mobilization begain there were only two corps available for limted offensive operations and another two ready for much more limited support actions. Altering thsi mobilization would have required changes reaching back several years. That is the French would have had to change their fundamental thinking about mobilization and the offence in 1937 or mid 1938 at the latest. Perhaps if the decsion had been made as late as Febuary 1939 a tank heavy mechanized corps could have been ready in the inital mobilization wave, perhaps one of the DLM and one of the DCR and more artillery, bu thats about it. To provide real offensive capability withing a week or two of intial mobilization would have required fundamental structural changes in the French Army and reserve system.

I have been told the French had a plan for attacking Germany, to be executed if the circumstances were right. Not yet looked for colaborating evidence, but here is what I was told:

Phase I. Clear the German border and secure the Saarland for a assembly area for the next phase. This is susposedly what the Sarr Offensive was all about.

Phase II. Late September - Oct. Close up to the main zone of the Siegfried line. Clear the German outer defenses, secure the Rhine river flank, reconoiter & probe the main defense zone.

Phase III. Late October - November. Make deliberate assualts on the main defense zone using overwhelming artillery firepower to annilihate defending units. The infantry would be heavily reinforced with engineer and assualt tank groups formed around the colossal B1 tanks. Airforce fighters would be concentrated over the battlefield.

The object would be to threaten the Ruhr, particularly the industry on the west bank of the Rhine, and close more of the Rhine river & its valley to industrial traffic. The river is critical to German industry for barge transportation and the paralle railroads were important as well. This attack was susposed to have forced the Germans to fight a attritional battle that the French thought themselves capable of.

This series of methodical deliberate assualts were exactly the sort of warfare the French army had trained for, so this plan is not implausable. It also matches the mobilization schedule. I'd have to learn more about it before judging its practicality, or actual intent to execute it.

 

A few more notes:

No one, even the Germans expected Poland to colapse in three weeks. The Wehrmacht leaders hoped it would be fast, theyed be screwed if it dragged out, but everyone was dumfounded by how fast it went. The French leaders had thought four to six months of steady pressure would be required.

The French intelegence had been active gathering information on the German military, and the defenses in the west. There were many details missing but they had a fair idea of what was there. One problem was the nature of French intel analysis. The miltary intellegence department was a data gathering conduit for the commander. Independant analysis was not the primary goal. Rather the intel service porvied the data the comander wanted to support his goals and analysis. Unlike some other Armys the intel. chiefs job was not to come to the commander with one or more independant lines of thought and conclusions to advise him. This led to a situation where the senior commander reviewed data that supported his preexisting opnions and blinded him to other possiblitites. That is contradicitng data was not placed before him, and dismissed if it did appear by accident. In the case of Gamelin the French overall military leader, and Vuellimin the air forces commander this system failed badly as both became over focused on 'Potiential' German strengths and possible intents. The data indcating alternatives was in the hands of the French, but it was not placed before the commanders in any coherent fashion. This led directly to the complete suprise of the German "Sickle Cut" plan in May 1940.

 

France did attempt an invasion into the Saarland in (I think it was) October 1939 using three colonial divisions of troops supported by a demi-brigade of H 39 tanks. They provided ample artillery support and operated under the strict doctrine of methodical battle.
As the French units advanced into German territory they found themselves first in the middle of minefields with both teller mines and S-mines. The later, came as a complete and very nasty surprise. The French colonial troops were completely unprepared and untrained to deal with minefields and casualties were accordingly heavy.
At the same time the Germans using machineguns enmasse along with very effective mortar and artillery fire pinned down those troops now trapped in the minefields and began to methodically slaughter them.
The attached tanks proved useless as many were lost to mines and then antitank and artillery fire.
The attack turned into a shambles and the French withdrew to their initial positions. France's attempt to go on the offensive ended then and there not to be repeated.

 

Reading your post, TA Gardner, one could belive the Sarr offensive met a strong German resistance that halted it after heavy combats and casualties.

But this offensive was a slow and cautious walk in the park, the French army was virtualy unopposed, the German forces encountered were neglectible compared to what the French army fielded and the overall low casualties were a consequence of the scarse combats.

 

The Germans had spent billions of Reichsmarks on the Siegfried line and although there were relatively few defenders, they were extremely well protected. The French found it difficult to cope with the minefields and with casualties mounting for little discernable gain, they withdrew. There was also a determination to wait for the British so that they could pay their part of the butchers bill. The French didn't want to be the only country that suffered on Poland's behalf, in effect.

 

Mounting casualties ?

I wonder how many casualties.

 

About 1000 I think. Theres the usual stuff on Wiki about this, and the inumerable Google hit, one or two of which are usefull. In short a French corps, with two others covering the flanks, advanced a few miles into Germany. The advance started roughly week after mobilization begain. A few days after Warsaw fell the corps was withdrawn to the frontier.

Siegfried Knappe (autobiography 'Soldat') was a Wehrmacht artillery officer in a just mobilized reserve divsion. (84th?) They were sent to the Schnee Eifel a few weeks after the war begain. He describes the Siegfried Line in that area as non existant. They were given maps showing where minefields, obstacles, artillery positions, bunkers, and trenches were susposed to be. But, he saw absolutely none of that. Some engineer unit had set survey stakes out and that was it. His battery gun crews spent the next couple months helping the infantry build trenches, bunkers, and lay out wire.

 

I generally agree with your statement here, though about the initial mobilization, I've heard differently. From what I understand, the organization and planning for a general mobolization was a model of efficiency, which in turn became bad news anyway. The 2 main factors were 1- Too many men were called up that home-front industries were severely affected by the loss of so many crucial workers. 2- So many men showed up at their assigned reception centers only to find mass chaos as the army soon realized they had more than they could handle all at once. The end result was that many thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, would be sent back home and called up at a later date.

An interesting exerpt from the "Fall of France - The Nazi Invasion of 1940" by Julian Jackson, page 13:

"France's first rearnament plan was adopted in 1934, only to be followed by a cutback in expenditure in the next year."

My note: This more or less coincides with our statement that changes in france had to have occured in the early to mid 1930s to have any positive effect in 1939-40.

"Althought the decision to rearm dated back to 1934, the results were slow to emerge. production was initially hampered by a whole series of obstacles. After a year of retrenchment and under-investment the French arnaments industry was unable to meet the new demands made of it. In 1934 machine tools in French factories were on average 13 years older than those in Germany (20 years as opposed to 7). In the Hotchkiss factory, pieces were hand-finished with files as thewy might have been in the 1890s. To make matters worse, the army had little understanding of the economics of arms production. It demanded the submission of numerous prototypes before approving mass production of a selected design."

"Production was also disrupted by labour disturbances and strikes under the Popular Front (1936-7). In 1936 the Popular Front government nationalized a number of arnaments producers (mainly in the aircrafy industry), and if in the long runthis contributed to the modernization of the plant, in the short term it caused further disruption. Despite increased spending, the number of tanks produced actually fell between 1936 and 1938.

 

I agree 100%. The notion that the French, in spite of all their faults, could have simply fought their way through this protective region is, in my opinion, a complete fallacy. The Seigfreid Line, while in no way comparable with the Maginot Line, was not as cheap and undermanned as some believe. I offer this exerpt:

"Work was given a high priority, and by October 1938, five hundred blockhouses had been built. By the time war broke out, between thirteen and twenty-two seperate structures had been built in the west, defended by more than two hundred kilometers of anti-tank obstacles - this last being a new addition, and one presumable copied from the incomplete but still substantial Czech fortification that had been constructed between Nachod and Opava in northern Bohemia"

Followed by,

"By July 1939 the Germans had put in place a considerable fortification system - at least eleven thousand blockhouses, protected by tank obstacles, and, in addition, protected by a new and terrifying weapon the Allies had not yet experienced. The French had opted to protect the approaches to their fortifications by relying on their turret-mounted field guns. As we shall see, these overlapping and interlocking fields of fire, coupled with high rate of fire, made tank assaults impracticable. The opposing German defenses relied on a new and disturbing principle, the buried mine"

"The buried landmine is a nasty weapon whose deployment came as a rude shock to the first French troops to cross the frontier in September 1939."

John Mosier's, "The Blitzkrieg Myth" (The Maginot Line and Hitler's response) page 39.

 

I have a nice little book detailing the French order of battle for the Saar Offensive and I can't seem to find it. Off the top of my head, I recall that element of 9th Corp, along with the 11th and 21st I.D. participated as well as units of Algerian and Senegalese troops.

Most of my sources indicate similar numbers of casualties for the Saar Offensive, around 1,100 -1,500.

 

Somewhere I have a detailed listing of the units involved and a snyopsis of their performance, but it was really French doctrine that caused its failure. The second the French units ran into any resistance and the unexpected mines....how could they not expect mines?!!! These were known to exist (except the S-mine) and even the French had their own designs!...they basically went to ground, the advance stopped, and the units waited for the top decision makers to send orders on what to do next.
Of course, these officers were nowhere near the battlefield and went solely on what they got off dispatches and telephone calls (radio communications was very limited at most major headquarters in the French army in 1940). So, their picture of things was of course distorted.
French doctrine called for their units on meeting "unexpected" resistance to go over to the defense and then a new operational plan would be made. So, meeting resistance caused the first problem. The second came from an unwillingness to take any real casualties or press forward in the face of any opposition. The third was that the French looked at their "offensive" more as a reconnissance in force or a show of force than a true organized and determined offensive.
In this situation no wonder it was a failure.

Oh, and the last place I'd go for a reference is Moiser's horrible book The Blitzkrieg Myth.

 

"When we come to a minefield, our infantry attacks as if it were not there."-Zhukov
If one wants to know what bravery is, look at the Red Army.

 

Mosier is a idiot. The more I read his text the lower my opinion of his work. Buried antipersonel mines were hardly unknown, or "new" in 1939.

 

Here's a review I wrote several years ago:

Moiser's The Blitzkrieg Myth can probably best be summed up by the heading of one of his own chapters; The Persistence of Failed Ideas. This in a nutshell, is this book.
Moiser starts off by discussing the underlying theories and development of military thinking up to the beginning of the war. He chooses just two primary theorists to base his case on; Fuller and Douhet. The problem here is that Moiser draws the conclusion that these two authors are archetypical of all strategic thought of the period as applied to land and air warfare. This can best be summed up "So far as ground warfare went, Fuller's ideas reigned supreme. All French and German theorists studied his writings carefully....But Fuller's Plan 1919 became the controlling paradigm for effective ground warfare" [pg 18]
Nothing could be further from the truth. Fuller was essentially ignored in Britain where both he and Liddell Hart were turned into pariahs by the Royal Army for their vitriolic views of the future of war.
In France, the Ecole Superieure de Guerre developed the doctrine of "methodical battle" totally independent of anything Fuller suggested. If anything, methodical battle advocated precisely the opposite of what Fuller wrote about. General Gamelin went so far as to order that all articles, lectures, books, etc. that French officers might write had to be approved by the high command before publication. DeGaulle remained a colonel for breaking this edict.
With the Germans, their doctrine was a logical progression from the stroßtruppen tactics of late WW I. They developed the deep infiltration battle as their view of what would win in future wars. This, in 1939 became popularized as the Blitzkrieg. It was hardly a reality of what Fuller envisioned.
Moiser then turns to technical topics: Fortifications and tanks. On the Maginot Line he waxes eloquent at length about its strengths. Yet, even during the 1940 campaign the Germans found it possible to defeat the line, in part in practice and, in part in theory, using direct fire from 88 and 105 mm AA guns. A later offensive operation during the French campaign against the Rhine defenses proved the viability of this technique, something the French had not thought of and did not design the Maginot Line to be proof against.
Moiser does get right that Hitler spent too much capital on fortifications of his own at the expense of other equipment. But, in tying German tank production to this he stretches at best.
On the subject of tanks, Moiser sticks to basics when comparing vehicles: Armor, firepower, mobility. He brushes off such things as radios or lack thereof, crew efficiency or, visibility from the vehicle. The Tiger and Panther are characterized as failures. But, the Sherman is too for being unable to stand up to these vehicles. The T-34 is claimed to be the only really successful tank of the war, while the diminutive and cramped Hetzer is claimed to be the best tank destroyer.
On air warfare, Moiser derides the Allies for being overly focused on the strategic bombing of Germany to the detriment of tactical air support. He conveniently overlooks the contributions of the Allied Tactical Air Forces that rivaled the strategic bombing forces in size. With the Germans he claims exactly the opposite is true: That they ignored strategic bombing for tactical support. Neither is really the case but, this is never discussed. Moiser also overlooks the really minor role tactical close support played for the Germans both in Poland and France.
On the various campaigns Moiser's overall argument is that each (Poland, France, and the later Allied advances across France) were all broad front operations successful more by hard infantry fighting all along the front than anything due to narrow breakthroughs and fast armored columns advancing across the enemy rear. This ignores the effects of the breakthrough at Sedan, Saint Lo and, dozens of other such operations both in the West and East in the Second World War.
In between, Moiser hurls literary grenades at various generals, doctrines and, battles deriding all as failures to recognize the reality of warfare as he describes it in his book. The overall effect is amateurish. His bibliography, likewise, reflects a selection of generally popular sources that give no depth to his arguments

 

I think you're reiterating what I've said all along. Applying outdated doctrine, or any doctrine shown to be almost the polar opposite of your opponent's, is bound to bring results that are almost always negative. Yes, the French had by then developed their own design for land mines, but their teachings of their use reflected that doctrine, in that it was unimaginative. To the French, it was almostly exclusively an anti-vehicle purpose weapon, whereas the Germans saw it's value by having the land strewn with them, come what may.

I find this to be patently false. Besides, did you not just state, as I have been stating, that it was above all things outdated doctrine, in all of it's teachings and practice, that prevented any success on the part of the French? The reluctance of the French to give the Saar offensive any real momentum is almost solely out of two reasons: First, the main goal was to relieve pressure from Poland. It has been well established that most senior commanders and planners knew this to be highly unlikely even just before the offensive began. Yet, they went ahead with it anyway. Secondly, if it were truely their intentions to avoid casualties at all cost, then as I stated before, they could have not declared war on Germany over the invasion of Poland, or they could have declared war, then simply stayed behind the Maginot Line and conduct a 9 to 5 war with periodic artillery duals. As it was, French commanders learned very quickly during the Saar adventure how futile the offensive was, and how defficient their strategy was given the recieved wisdom they were all taught. A so-called "unwillingness" has nothing to do with it, and a "reconnaissance in force/show of force" could have easily been done using a few minor units, probably expendable colonials, to penetrate and skirmish in the area in queation.

That is your opinion, and you're entitled to it.