The Fall of France- New French Perspectives

"The fall of France 75 years ago is conventionally seen as a moment of abject national disgrace. But today some insist the French military has been wronged - and that the hundreds of thousands of French troops who fought in the Battle of France deserve to be honoured, rather than forgotten.
It all took less than a month. Faced by the onslaught of Hitler's tank divisions - the notorious Panzers - the French army collapsed and Prime Minister Philippe Petain capitulated.
"After the war, as we all know, de Gaulle wanted to wipe out the memory of the debacle," says historian Dominique Lormier, author of several books on the period.
"So the focus was on the Resistance and on the Army of Africa, which fought the Germans from 1944. The sacrifice of the soldiers who fought in 1940 was forgotten."
Lormier is one of a number of historians who are reinterpreting the events of May-June 1940, using French and German military archives. And the picture they paint is not the Nazi walkover that has commonly been represented.
Five million men were mobilised in France at the start of World War Two. The army was reputed to be one of the strongest in the world, certainly every bit a match for the Germans.
And if the Germans decided to invade from the north - as they did in World War One - then there were plans for a counter-thrust to block them inside Belgium. The British Expeditionary Force was there to help.
The problem was that Hitler defied the military theorists by sending his Panzers through the wooded Ardennes hills, at the corner of France's northern and eastern fronts. No-one expected this because everyone assumed the roads there were impassable. But it worked.
Until recently, most historians have focused on the evident shortcomings of the French armed forces.
Unarguably, French commanders made terrible strategic errors. They put their best forces into Belgium against the German feint, and were dangerously exposed along the vital river Meuse at Sedan (which the German tanks had to cross after penetrating the Ardennes).
The French air force was large in size, but most of its planes were out of date. And on the ground the concept of modern tank warfare - the concentrated armoured thrusts made by Rommel and Guderian - had yet to be accepted by a French command that was still obsessed with infantry.
In his classic To Lose a Battle: France 1940, British historian Alistair Horne also makes much of the collapse of morale among the French.
Like many writers, he says the memory of 1914-18 still haunted the French leadership which meant there was little appetite for a fight; while the bitter ideological divisions of the 1930s - with far-left and far-right at times battling on the streets of Paris - had sapped the patriotic spirit.
But for Dominique Lormier and others of the revisionist school the truth is more nuanced.
"Morale was not nearly as low as Horne says. People have forgotten that in many places the French fought hard and bravely and put the Germans in real difficulty," he says.
"The figures speak for themselves. Of the 3,000 tanks the Germans deployed, 1,800 were put out of action. Of 3,500 planes they lost 1,600. In a month of fighting they lost 50,000 dead and more than 160,000 wounded. It was a genuine combat."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32956736

 

From the little knowledge i possess, if the French had made their turrets bigger, allowing another man, and if they had used their tanks en masse in attack, rather than static singular pillboxes, they might have stopped the Germans.

 

By the time of the surrender the French situation was hopeless, we must not judge 1940 decision with the "unconditional surrender" mentality of a few years later, by the time of the armistice Belgium and the Netherlands had already surrendered, the French had lost half of their territory, including Paris, and a significant portion of the army with a lot of units were barely combat ready after having been evacuated by sea from out of the northern pocket. Despite what "revisionist" modern French writers say IMO resistance in metropolitan France would not have lasted more than a couple of months. And it may turn in to a complete disaster when the Germans, instead of battling the RAF under unfavourable conditions over southern England, pursue the French to Corsica and French North Africa where logistics are on a much more equal footing..

Overall many French units fought bravely, but they were usually outfought by the Germans, (and despite British propaganda the BEF usually didn't do any better than the French). What's significant to me is not so much the defeat at Sedan, where a third rate division found itself facing the panzers and most of the Luftwaffe, but the failure of the Allied armour at Gembloux, Stonne, Arras and Abbeville. Lack of combined arms training and doctrine prevented the Allies from achieving anything above minor tactical successes despite having a significant superiority in tank numbers and quality. At Abbeville and at Stonne after the first two days the allied armour was facing German infantry units, but they still failed to make a breakthrough, time and again the tanks broke through the infantry, not too difficult a feat when your armour is impervious to anything the Germans have short of an 88, and then had to retreat when supporting elements failed to materialize, either because on lack of coordination or because the plan simply hadn't allocated any, so they basically achieved nothing.

It's also significant that the first German infantry formation to force a Meuse crossing did so a handful of days behind the motorized units, and the delay looks more due to the time it took to get there on foot than to lesser offensive capability of the infantry compared to the armour. German infantry tactics based on low level initiative and infiltration by squads manoeuvring around the enemy strongpoints, and capable of delivering massive firepower thanks to the GPMG usually proved greatly superior to the more rigid tactics of their opponents.

 

I think the whole Allied side was convinced they could stop the German offensive by sending the troops to North as planned. Not only the French. As we have seen the obvious solution often is the one that
makes you lose the battle....

 

When you see the Battle of the Loire zones (15-19 June) , one can't imagine the intensity of the battles and sacrifices made both by attackers and defenders , the cities destroyed and yet soldiers kept fighting and were killed for nothing (See Gien, Saumur ) . I have visited many graveyards and honored those who made the ultimate sacrifice. some of them were murdered by the Germans after being captured..... Also one hardly mentions the civilians murdered behind German lines in June1940 because they were thought to be Franc tireurs.

 

It seems to me that a certain lethargy layed over France after WW I. France won the Great War and in a new war, it could only loose something.

A majority of a hole generation of young men was lost, all the fighting with the Germans took part in France causing a lot of damage, even with the reparations, France was financially in a bad situation.

So they created the Maginot Line and believed, that it would prevent France from any future attack from the East. Yes, they had good tanks, but not many and all had their flaws. The same with anti-tank guns, fighters, bombers, the majority of the army was even still equipped with the Lebel, they just were sure, that the Maginot Line will be enough to stop a german attack.
And it worked!...For 8 months.

When german troops passed the Ardennes and reached the canal, there seemed to be no Plan B.

 

The French army in North Africa fought against the Allies in the Torch landings and for the first few days thereafter, inflicted over 1000 casualties, while not offering any significant resistance to the Germans landing in Tunisia. They offered no resistance at all to the initial German landings, which were simply troops and staff officers flying in on transport planes and landing at the Tunis airport. So I wouldn't say that the Army of Africa covered itself in glory.

 

The position of the French forces in NA was very difficult, in 1942 De Gaulle was basically a rebel general, and anyway the Allies didn't allow him much visibility as until his assassination Darlan was probably more representative than he was. The soldiers families, were in territories controlled by the Germans so a reluctance to get themselves classified as "traitors" is pretty easy to understand. A significant part if the early "French" units that fought alongside of the allies were made up of former Legion Etrangere or North African colonial troops that didn't have that sort of issues. And after Mers El Kebir the French had a lot of reasons to shoot at any British that came into range, it's well known that many British planes involved in Torch carried US markings to "mitigate" that effect.

What doomed the French army in 1940 was inadequate tactical doctrine and rigid thinking, this prevented a full use of the rather abundant available resources, Germany had started rearmament in 1933 while the French could count on huge stocks of still useful WW1 weapons, a good example of this is the widespread German use of the hard to conceal 88mm AA guns to as AT weapons to stop the Allied heavy tanks and the French failure to make use of the large quantities of much more suitable against 1940 era tanks 75mm Modèle 1897 guns available to make up for the lack on AT guns on the French side (they were used as such for static defence in the "Weigand line" but by then it was too late).

 

More French were killed than British were taken POW .

The French defeat was not caused by obsolete strategy,but by the fact that the Germans were strong enough to launch 2 big attacks, while the French were only strong enough to face one attack .And they lost in both German attacks .The French army was weaker than in 1914,the Germans were stronger than in 1914 :the result(French defeat,was ineluctable.

 

It would have been "interesting" if the Eben Emael had not been knocked out and the Meuse supply bridges had been blown to pieces to see what the Germans could do...Maybe, maybe not...


"The German generals, in particular Guderian, were relieved that the Luftwaffe had prevented the Allied bombers from knocking out their supply bridges. By nightfall, at least 600 tanks, including those of the 2nd Panzer Division—which had to use the 1st Panzer Division's bridge at Gaulier, owing to theirs not having yet been constructed—were across the Meuse. The German victory in the air battle had been decisive"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sedan_(1940)

 

I think we should not forget that the Dutch, Belgians, and British were defeated along with the French in May and June 1940.

Regards,
Marc

 

Only because of the sacrifice of men like those from the French Lille garrison which held until the last moment and made Dunkirk possible. Had they given up, then there would have been many more pows and dead I'm afraid.

 

Not only Mers-el-Kebir. The RAF refused to send more fighters to France and i guess german air superiority was the main problem of the Allies. Difficult to understand back then, why not use fighters against the enemy? Why waiting until he can use his bombers against british targets?

And the attack on Dakar wasn't forgotten too. Even the Germans didn't claim the french Fleet or the african Harbours.

 

The roads would have been impassable if they had been defended. For that purpose the Belgian army had deployed two divisions into the Ardennes but once the Germans attacked the defenders suddenly got orders to withdraw north ASAP.

That was something the French did not and could not forsee. If the Belgians had fought, Panzergruppe Kleist would have gotten stuck for good.

 

This is not true : the 2 Belgian divisions had not as mission to stop the German attack but to delay the Germans .PZG Kleist got through at the Meuse after 4 days because the French were unable to stop them ..

 

Would not have made a difference. Several French divisions would have come to their support and could have taken over the defences but the Belgians pulled out before the French arrived, allowing the Germans to march through the Ardennes practically unopposed.

 

No : there was strong Belgian resistance in Martelange, Bastogne and other cities .
And,it is not so that French divisions would have advanced in the Ardennes and would have helped the Belgians .There were no préwar defences in the Ardennes : The Belgian army was concentrated north of the Meuse . The French and Belgian strategy was to give up the Ardennes ,the French would stop the Germans at the Meuse,and there things went wrong .

 

AFAIK strong resistance was only in Martlange and there a single infantry company stopped an entire division for eight hours. The Germans beat the French reserves to Sedan by less than 24 hours, 12 I think.

So a few more villages defended like that and that would have been the end of the Sichelschnitt.

 

Sichelschnitt was more than Sedan,there was also Hannut and a German advance from the Meuse to south of Sedan . Besides,even if Sichelschnitt failed, the Germans still would win .