Is France's poor WW2 reputation justified?

[Slap47]

The Battle of France of 1940 ended in a humiliating surrender of the French Republic and the formation of a Free French movement and a "French State" that existed as a Nazi puppet. It had only taken a month for France to fall.

The French plan was to advance into Belgium and set up a defensive ww1-eqsue trench line to support the mighty fortresses of the Maginot line to the south. The allies were to hold like they had in the first world war until Germany was starved of resources and the British/French empires were fully mobilized.

The plan fell apart.
Belgium was defeated sooner than expected preventing any kind of line to be formed and millions of French and British soldiers had been encircled due to a weak point in the French defenses at the heavily forested Ardennes. French movement was crippled as millions of civilians flooded the roads to evacuate with memories of the last war still fresh in their minds and communists actively sabotaged the French war effort under the belief that the USSR and Nazi Germany really were allied.

The plan was bad and worse, the commanders in charge failed to react properly to the plan failing.
Maurice Gamelin had served in the first war and had developed a defensive mindset. He refused to use radios due to security risks, preferring messages to be delivered in person by courier and was in his position due to him serving under the legendary generals of Foch and Petain. When the plan failed he attempted to organize an attack but it was slow because no planning had been previously made as such a break through was thought impossible. His replacement, Maxime Weygand also had a defensive minded and was placed in charge because of his reputation as the Hero of the Polish-Soviet War of 1922 despite the Poles completely ignoring his defensive strategy. He called off the attack and refused to ever attack to the horror of the British who had found great success in their attacks.


France had failed because of bad leaders and bad planning but it also had less manpower and was facing a larger nation that was doing the insane by spending 20% of its GDP on war during peacetime. France had more tanks and more heavily armored tanks but the tanks had inefficient 2-man crews and were evenly split among the army instead of put into dedicated armor divisions. Oddly enough, a young general by the name of Charles De Gaul had proposed reforms to the designs & tactics of tanks and was aware of the vulnerability of the Ardennes.


______

France had been caught by surprise by an ultra-aggressive opponent but it was not the only country to be assraped because of surprises. If anything, it was the only major country other than the USSR put in a live or die situation with its entire country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Singapore
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Crete
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gazala

Despite an overwhelming numbers advantages, Britain found itself raped on numerous occasions throughout 1940 and 1942.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kiev_(1941)

It goes without saying that the Soviets got raped pretty hard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippines_Campaign_(1941–42)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kasserine_Pass

And the Americans as well.


___

It goes without saying that the tables turned. All of the allied powers developed plans and organized themselves in a way that allowed them to win despite being outnumbered or win by properly using their numbers. They had not lost their countries but sheer distance had been a factor for all of them. The USSR had the Russian steppe and Britain and the USA had their water. French soldiers played a key role in nearly every allied campaign and the french army did pretty well in its own right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bir_Hakeim
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Normandy

Every country got a chance to reshuffle its leaders and reorganize. It was only the USA that was able to do so before the war and even then they still got caught by surprise and still found dud leaders in key positions.

 

[Bassomatic]

World War 2? Yes.
World War 1 No.
Also right after WW2 they got roflstompped by the veit's that didn't help wash the bad taste out of the mouths of most. Also what's almost always ignored, and you don't mention (not to fault you) Vichy France, lots of French were more for Hitler and or the Axis than they were UK etc.

 

[Cthulu]

The French were relying on WW1 tatics of seige lines to fight a mobile opponent who could just run around said lines. That lead to the Germans determining where and when to fight. It was a recipe for disaster.

 

[Bassomatic]

The French were relying on WW1 tatics of seige lines to fight a mobile opponent who could just run around said lines. That lead to the Germans determining where and when to fight. It was a recipe for disaster.

The funniest part, the end of WW1 the French were active, helped spearhead the idea of tanks suffered the horrors of combined arms and Storm Troopers creeping barrage the Germans invented and copied the tactic.

The French even made the best tank in the fucking war, as well as really pushed the concept of suppressing fire on a squad level.

Yet come up with this : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line

How fucking bad idea is that for if you are a mil buff? It's like after seeing the Model T Ford the Dodge brothers said, thats a great idea and try to build better saddles.

 

[Judge Holden]

France's fundamental problem in WW2 is that aside from operating with a WW1-WW1 aftermath mindset in terms of tactics (especially with tanks and logistics and such), it was both right on Germany's border (thus making it piss easy to just vomit everything it had directly into the heart of france once breakthroughs were achieved) and it had none of the natural defences that made the major allied powers untouchable without war losing losses of man and material (i.e. the channel, the atlantic, and the sheer size of russia)

Also unlike the US/UK/USSR it didnt bring any crucial logistical/material advantage to the war. The US mass produced everything needed in an utterly untouchable location that could be shipped to both its own forces and those of its allies, the USSR spammed soldiers and machines at extreme pace on every front they were needed once it got its shit together and once the UK and US started funneling in resources and logistical equipment, and the UK cut Germany off from foreign oil and almost all materials using the navy and wound up obliterating like 30-50% of its war industry over the years via the airforce thus making the loss in foreign resources that much more dire and forcing Germany to make a mad dash to invade russia in order to get its oil and resources before it dried up completely.

Basically they started off in the worst possible position and worst possible mindset, and didnt possess any of the natural defences or war deciding advantages its allies had, which while pretty nasty in WW1 was utterly catastrophic in WW2 where war was waged far faster and left far less time for adaptation

 

[Tetra]

No, @Apoth42 your country performance during ww2 was shameful.

Not as bad as Denmarks but still.

 

[Slap47]

The funniest part, the end of WW1 the French were active, helped spearhead the idea of tanks suffered the horrors of combined arms and Storm Troopers creeping barrage the Germans invented and copied the tactic.

The French even made the best tank in the fucking war, as well as really pushed the concept of suppressing fire on a squad level.

Yet come up with this : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line

How fucking bad idea is that for if you are a mil buff? It's like after seeing the Model T Ford the Dodge brothers said, thats a great idea and try to build better saddles.

The Maginot line was a good idea. The French did not have the numbers to match the Germans and investing in fortresses was a good idea because they would not have become outdated quickly like 1933 tanks. The line was never punched through and France used alot of conscripts in the bunkers so that they could use their best troops and equipment to defend Paris. They could not extend the line through Belgium because that'd be both expensive and illegal.

Fortified lines were not a bad idea and the allies would learn (well they already knew) that in 1944-1945

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Normandy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_Line
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Line
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Seelow_Heights
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Iwo_Jima

France was in an odd situation where the depression hit them later and so they had to recover from it later. Their economy was still in shambles. Germany on the other hand had looted Czech tanks and had a larger industry overall that was an unsustainable military production high. France could have raised more divisions instead of spend money on forts but they didn't have manpower or time as the mobilization started when the war was declared rather than before it (as they were a democracy).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wizna
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_Brest_Fortress

Even crappily made and undermanned Polish concrete and shit built in the 17th century could cause trouble. Who knows, if France had spent a bit more on concrete to block off the ardennes this whole war could have been different. No middle to break through and a wall to the south and the best troops in the north.

 

[LofaSofa]

france is funny

 

[Dr. Kaufman]

France are in the same sort of tier as Poland in that they have a decent military record, but recent history hasn't been kind to them.

Poland may have single-handily saved the west from being overrun by the Ottomans during the Battle of Vienna. They also fucked the Russians post-WW1 from gaining any further territory after Lenin's uprising.

 

[Judge Holden]

Honestly its kinda off topic but I think folks in general need to start looking at WW2 (and indeed wars in general) as wars driven by resources and logistics on a grand scale. The only countries which could really compete were those capable of mass producing/transporting/deploying more men and material and resources than their enemy and/or those who could cripple their enemies logistics and production of these things in a way that could not be countered.

This is why the big three allied powers were the only nations on earth capable of consistently and rapidly mass producing (US/USSR), mass transporting (US/UK), and mass deploying (US/UK/USSR) their own men and armaments and resources and mass fucking up enemies resources/logistics/production (US/UK) in a way that the axis were unable to sabotage/counter in any significant way.

All in all it came down to numbers and values. The number of troops/planes/guns/tanks/ships/trucks/etc you had, and the number the enemy had. The level of skill and training of a soldier, the level of advancement of a tank or gun or plane or ship, the fuel efficiency of a truck and such would all make the numbers figures be valued accordingly, and the war winning trick was getting the maximum average level of value with the maximum numbers possible while actively reducing both numbers and value of your enemy. Even major surprise advantages the allies gained like breaking enigma or the nuclear programme did little more than save lives and resources and time in the long run rather than win the war on their own.

This is why all those kewl german tank designs and the fucking wunderwaffe were complete wastes of time and resources, and why anyone who says that germany could have won if they simply mass produced the maus or the jet fighter should be summarily flogged. Wasting all that time and irreplaceable resources developing 20 different varieties of tank or plane that on average were only occasionally better than their allied counterpart (and were a fucktunne harder to make and were so complex that maintenance and repair was a nightmare) instead of just mass producing and deploying a far greater number of cheaper and more reliable machines in only a handful of varieties (thus making interchangable repairs infinitely easier) was one of the dumbest mistakes of the war germany made.

But frankly no matter what germany or japan or italy did, no matter how much they streamlined their production and focused on logistics, there was in the long term no way they could make their numbers bigger than those of the allies. They lacked the resources themselves, their enemies would always be able to cut them off from foreign resources, and their enemies would be able to pound the shit out of their centres of production while the axis would be unable to retaliate in kind. The numbers game just was never going to g in their favour

 

[ICametoLurk]

World War 2? Yes.
World War 1 No.
Also right after WW2 they got roflstompped by the veit's that didn't help wash the bad taste out of the mouths of most. Also what's almost always ignored, and you don't mention (not to fault you) Vichy France, lots of French were more for Hitler and or the Axis than they were UK etc.

Better Hitler than Blum.

 

[Pablo Birmingham]

So, you're saying things would have been different if the French didn't fuck up; had built a complete wall; had started taking Hitler seriously by 1934 when he tore up the Treaty of Versailles which made his plans pretty clear; had gotten ready for war instead of hatching some convoluted economic scheme; hadn't fallen into a death spiral of appeasement; and hadn't used the tactics of the war they fought 30 years before?

The Maginot line failed because nobody was ever actually going to attack it. The French surrendered years before the 1940 invasion happened.

 

[Slap47]

So, you're saying things would have been different if the French didn't fuck up; had built a complete wall; had started taking Hitler seriously by 1934 when he tore up the Treaty of Versailles which made his plans pretty clear; had gotten ready for war instead of hatching some convoluted economic scheme; hadn't fallen into a death spiral of appeasement; and hadn't used the tactics of the war they fought 30 years before?

The Maginot line failed because nobody was ever actually going to attack it. The French surrendered years before the 1940 invasion happened.

France had politicians that wanted to do just that but Britain would not have supported them in such a campaign.

France was late to the great depression and was hit by it in 1933.

 

[Pablo Birmingham]

France had politicians that wanted to do just that but Britain would not have supported them in such a campaign.

France was late to the great depression and was hit by it in 1933.

Every country had politicians that wanted to do it but had some reason that they didn't. France could have gotten ready for war. Instead they built a wall.

Germany got clown stomped and suffered terribly from their lack of economy. Hitler had a vision and got Germany's shit together. France, on the other hand, was still a functioning country with a functioning economy that got bumped by a downturn.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Germans were lucky as shit when they beat France in WWII. Hitler's estimate that it would take a million dead Germans before they beat France was how it easily could've gone. And then the retards in France surrendered instead of doing the logical thing and evacuating their government and as much of their troops and supplies as they could to Algeria.

 

[Wärring Ornac]

Yes

 

[millais]

The Maginot Line did its job in forcing the Germans to attack through Belgium, where the British Expeditionary Force and the combined Franco-Belgian armies were prepared to defend in depth. The failure is purely attributable to the totally unplanned yet decisive Ardennes factor. Even the top guys in the Wehrmacht's general staff were horrified of Hitler's idea for an attack through the Ardennes and considered it a suicidal fantasy concocted by a talented amateur. It was such a stupid gamble that no one on the other side had prepared a contingency for its success.

Consider that even after the fall of Poland and with the massing of the entirety of German field forces on the Western Front, it wasn't until the Ardennes penetration that the Germans were able to turn the flank of the Maginot Line and wrest the initiative entirely away from the Allies on the Continent. The Phoney War/Sitzkrieg period wasn't due to a lack of momentum or martial spirit on the German side. Until the opening presented by the Ardennes penetration, it was suicidal for them to even consider tackling the French border defenses any which way one looked at it.

But for sure the France that went to war in 1939 was a mere shadow of the France that had gone to war in 1914. Hitler himself declared that the German forces of 1940 could not have beaten the French poilus of 1914-1917, so tenaciously had they contested every inch of French soil, no matter the cost in blood. For sure the French Army mutinies of 1917 thereafter shook the government and military's willingness to trade blood for soil.

Between the wars, the defense policy was ever after strongly decided by the government's unwillingness to shed conscript blood. Even though De Gaulle and his fellow junior officers were studying and perfecting a French approach to mobile mechanized warfare, the government chose the defensive fortress method embodied by the Maginot Line because it would save more in money and lives in their estimation.

And the political situation by 1940 was no help either. The country was divided against itself, communists against Action Francaise, locals against foreigners, and so forth. It just took one determined push to topple the whole thing.

If you don't like to read books, watch the first 30-40 minutes of Marcel Ophuls's "Le Chagrin et la Pitie"; it presents interviews with a number of people directly involved in the Fall of France in the governments of both the Allied and German side.

 

[millais]

Honestly its kinda off topic but I think folks in general need to start looking at WW2 (and indeed wars in general) as wars driven by resources and logistics on a grand scale. The only countries which could really compete were those capable of mass producing/transporting/deploying more men and material and resources than their enemy and/or those who could cripple their enemies logistics and production of these things in a way that could not be countered.

This is why the big three allied powers were the only nations on earth capable of consistently and rapidly mass producing (US/USSR), mass transporting (US/UK), and mass deploying (US/UK/USSR) their own men and armaments and resources and mass fucking up enemies resources/logistics/production (US/UK) in a way that the axis were unable to sabotage/counter in any significant way.

All in all it came down to numbers and values. The number of troops/planes/guns/tanks/ships/trucks/etc you had, and the number the enemy had. The level of skill and training of a soldier, the level of advancement of a tank or gun or plane or ship, the fuel efficiency of a truck and such would all make the numbers figures be valued accordingly, and the war winning trick was getting the maximum average level of value with the maximum numbers possible while actively reducing both numbers and value of your enemy. Even major surprise advantages the allies gained like breaking enigma or the nuclear programme did little more than save lives and resources and time in the long run rather than win the war on their own.

This is why all those kewl german tank designs and the fucking wunderwaffe were complete wastes of time and resources, and why anyone who says that germany could have won if they simply mass produced the maus or the jet fighter should be summarily flogged. Wasting all that time and irreplaceable resources developing 20 different varieties of tank or plane that on average were only occasionally better than their allied counterpart (and were a fucktunne harder to make and were so complex that maintenance and repair was a nightmare) instead of just mass producing and deploying a far greater number of cheaper and more reliable machines in only a handful of varieties (thus making interchangable repairs infinitely easier) was one of the dumbest mistakes of the war germany made.

But frankly no matter what germany or japan or italy did, no matter how much they streamlined their production and focused on logistics, there was in the long term no way they could make their numbers bigger than those of the allies. They lacked the resources themselves, their enemies would always be able to cut them off from foreign resources, and their enemies would be able to pound the shit out of their centres of production while the axis would be unable to retaliate in kind. The numbers game just was never going to g in their favour

Under the Nazi government, Germany was so backwards and incompetent in logistics and industrial efficiency that average Nazi industrial output per capita in WW2 actually lagged behind average Imperial German industrial output per capita in WW1. Interservice rivalry, bureaucratic vendettas, and plain old corruption were some of the big culprits for poor Nazi industrial efficiency, but for sure the biggest handicap was Hitler's refusal to shift the German economy and industrial infrastructure entirely to a wartime footing until 1943. So for the first 4 years of the war, German factories were still producing consumer commodities and appliances in peacetime quantities, and rationing of critical foodstuffs, fuels, and strategically important raw materials was barely in evidence compared to Allied countries. Hitler remembered that the morale on the German homefront had collapsed in 1918 almost entirely due to the famine and economic collapse resulting from the British naval blockade in spite of an impressive string of Imperial German military successes on the battlefield, so in WW2 he tried to keep the people fat and contented as much as possible, banking on the chance that the war would be a short one that would not require a shift to a total war economy. By the time he put Albert Speer in charge of reorganizing the German economy and industry to a total war footing, he had already lost 4 years of a head start compared to the Allied powers.

 

[Rei is shit]

A French motorized observation balloon spotted the German buildup near Sedan the night before the attack, but the higher ups dismissed it. They found the numbers reported way too high to be real and thought it was a "fake" army, ie a bunch of lights and speakers to make it appear like a buildup.

When it comes to the French Airforce they really werent behind where the Germans or British were at on a technical level. The problem was Frence had decided to nationalize its aircraft industry in the mid-30s, and the ongoing problems of that really curtailed their ability to deliver modern aircraft in the numbers they needed. I've read one account where a air force depot officer had more than a hundred Bloch 152s waiting for guns (generally aircraft would be delivered without military equipment to a depot, who would then add guns, radio, ect and after a test flight send it off to squadrons.) Anyway this officer kept asking his superiors when the delivery of guns would come and they couldn't give him a date. In frustration he called an armory about 30 miles away, and the officer there told him that they had several thousand crated brand new guns and hadnt received any orders about what to do with them. He and some others at the base drove to the armory and collected the guns. A few days later the war was over.

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

The plan fell apart.

Of course it did, that plan costed them nearly a hundred thousand soldiers during WWI and barely came out of it the winner. Now repeat the same plan, only give the invading forces superior tech. Suddenly this image changes from a French soldier to a 40K Guardsman.