‘When the crocus blossoms,’ hiss the women in Berlin,
‘He will press the button, and the battle will begin.
When the crocus blossoms, up the German knights will go,
And flame and fume and filthiness will terminate the foe…
When the crocus blossoms, not a neutral will remain.’
(A P Herbert, Spring Song, quoted in To Lose a Battle, by Alistair Horne)
On May 10, 1940, German forces launched an attack against Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Few people among the Allies imagined that France would collapse in only six weeks: Churchill, for example, had a high opinion of the fighting qualities of the French army. But collapse is what happened, of course, and we are still all living with the consequences. General Andre Beaufre, who in 1940 was a young Captain on the French staff, wrote in 1967:
The collapse of the French Army is the most important event of the twentieth century.
If it’s an exaggeration, it’s not much of one. If France had held up to the German assault as effectively as it was expected to do, World War II would probably have never reached the nightmare levels that it in fact did reach. The Hitler regime might well have fallen. The Holocaust would never have happened. Most likely, there would have been no Communist takeover of Eastern Europe.
This campaign has never received much attention in America; it tends to be regarded as something that happened before the “real” war started. Indeed, many denizens of the Anglosphere seem to believe that the French basically gave up without a fight–which is a considerable exaggeration given the French casualties of around 90,000 killed and 200,000 wounded. But I think the fall of France deserves serious study, and that some of the root causes of the defeat are scarily relevant to today’s world.
First, I will very briefly summarize the campaign from a military standpoint, and will then shift focus to the social and political factors involved in the defeat.
France’s border can be thought of in terms of three sectors. In the north, the border with with Belgium. Early French military planning had been based on the idea of a strong cooperative relationship with Belgium: however, in the years immediately prior to 1940, that country had adopted a position of neutrality and had refused to do any joint military planning with France. In the south, the border was protected by the forts of the Maginot Line (the southern flank of which was anchored by mountainous territory bordering on Switzerland and Italy.) In between these regions was the country of the Ardennes. It was heavily wooded and with few roads, and the French high command did not believe it was a feasible attack route for strong forces–hence, the Maginot Line had not been extended to cover it, and the border here was protected only with field fortifications.
The French plans was based on the assumption that the main German attack would come through Belgium. Following the expected request from the Belgian government for assistance, strong French forces were to advance into that country and counterattack the Germans. In the Maginot and Ardennes sectors, holding actions only were envisaged. While the troops manning the Maginot were of high quality, the Ardennes forces included a large proportion of middle-aged reservists, and had been designated as lower-class units.
The opening moves seemed to fit expectations. The Germans launched a powerful attack through Belgium, and the Belgian government made the expected requests for help. Andre Beaufre:
Doumenc sent me at once to Vincennes to report to General Gamelin (the French supreme commander). I arrived at 6.30 AM at the moment when the order had just been given for the huge machine to go into operation: the advance into Belgium. Gamelin was striding up and down the corridor in his fort, humming, with a pleased and martial air which I had never seen before. It has been said since that he expected defeat, but I could see no evidence of it at the time.
There was heavy fighting in Belgium…but the German attack on this country had served to mask their real point of maximum effort. Early in the morning of the 13th, it became clear that massive German forces were moving through the Ardennes, which had turned out to not be so impassable after all. A massive German air attack paved the way for a crossing of the Meuse river and the capture of the town of Sedan. French officers were stunned by the speed of the German advance–they had expected delays while the Germans brought up heavy artillery, not understanding that dive bombers could play a role similar to that traditionally played by artillery. And the bombing was psychologically-shattering, especially for inexperienced troops. The famous historian Marc Bloch had been exposed to many artillery barrages while fighting in the First World War: in reflecting on his service in 1940, he observed that he found aerial bombing much more frightening even though it was, objectively, probably less dangerous. (Bloch later joined the Resistance and was captured by the Germans and shot.)
The French command never really recovered from the unexpected thrust through the Ardennes and the fall of Sedan. Beginning on May 27, the British evacuated their troops at Dunkirk. On June 14, Prime Minister Paul Reynaud resigned. He was succeeded by Philippe Petain, a hero of the First World War, who immediately sought terms with the Germans. The “armistice”–basically a surrender–was signed on June 20. By Hitler’s order, it was signed in the same railway car where the armistice of 1918 had been signed. Hitler was present in person for the ceremony: William Shirer was fifty yards away, and was studying his expression through binoculars: It is afire with scorn, anger, hate, revenge, triumph.
Many military factors were involved in the defeat–obsolete doctrine on armored forces, inadequate use of radio communications, a strange and cumbersome military organization structure. But the roots of the 1940 debacle are not to be found only–or perhaps even primarily–in strictly military matters. A major role was played by certain characteristics of French society and politics of the time–and some of these factors are spookily similar to some of the things that are going on in America today.
In her autobiography, Simone de Beauvoir reflects on the attitude of the French Left (of which she was a part) toward the rise of Nazi Germany…”there was no threat to peace; the only danger was the panic that the Right was attempting to spread in France with the aim of dragging us into war.” (Horne) A constant thread that runs through France in the 1930s is the extreme factionalism, often resulting in more fear and distrust of other Frenchmen than of the rising external enemy.
This was not only a phenomenon of the Left. Among conservative elites, for example, the phrase Better Hitler than Blum was popular. Leon Blum (Premier 1936-37) was a fairly mild Socialist, best known for his advocacy of the 5-day week. Something about him inspired crazed hatred on the part of French Conservatives and Rightists. “A man to shoot in the back,” wrote Charles Maurras, and he was by no means alone in such sentiments. As Julian Jackson puts it in his book The Fall of France: “Politics in France in the 1930s had reached a pitch of violence that had something of the atmosphere of civil war.”
Leon Blum and George W Bush are, of course, two very different men, believing in very different kinds of things. But it is hard not to hear an echo of the insane Blum-hatred of the late 1930s in the insane Bush-hatred of today.
Nor did the factionalism stop on May 10, 1940. Georges Mandel, the courageous Minister of the Interior, observed a Deputy (legislator) whose district had been bombed by the enemy…he went about the lobbies (of the Chamber of Deputies), screaming “I will interpellate the government on this outrage as soon as the Chamber meets!”Mandel remarked to his friend, the English General Edward Spears, about the disconnect of this behavior from reality. “Paris is bombed by the Germans? Let’s shake our fists at our own Government.”
It is virtually impossible to win a war when politics is being conducted in such a manner…when the “enemy” across the aisle is hated more than the enemy in the bombers overhead. And, again, it is hard not to hear the echo of that Deputy of 1940 in the way that every reverse in Iraq or Afghanistan is used as a platform for vicious attacks on President Bush.
The tendency to view everything through the lens of domestic politics certainly had a malign influence on French military preparedness. Consider, for example, the matter of aircraft production. When the aggressive Guy La Chambre took over as Air Minister (in January 1938), he reputedly “found nothing but a disheartened industry of small workshops of which only one factory alone was equipped for mass production. As war approached and the production gap with the Luftwaffe appeared hopelessly wide, he tried to fill it by means of large-scale purchases from the United States; but even this measure of desperation met with intense opposition from the French aircraft manufacturers lobby.” (Horne) At roughly the same time, the Left was objecting to the restoration of a longer work week in order to increase armaments production. (In the event, some aircraft orders were placed in the US, but not nearly on the scale needed, and the work week was lengthened, but not without an epidemic of disruptive strikes.)
The 1930s were a time of frequent financial/political scandals. The most famous of these was the Stavisky affair: Serge Alexander Stavisky was able to sell bonds worth 200 million francs based on the assets of Bayonne’s municipal pawnshop. His political connections assisted him both in pulling off the scam and in getting his trial postponed 19 times. The result was a considerable weakening of confidence in France’s governing institutions.
There was rising xenophobia and anti-Semitism. With onset of the Depression (which came later in France than in the US and Britain), immigrants were viewed as competitors for jobs (even though France was in a demographic crisis, with both a low birth rate and the effects of the horrendous casualties of 1914-1918), and became targets of violence. France was faced with half a million refugees from Spain following Franco’s defeat of Republican forces in that country, and there were also refugees from other Nazi and Fascist countries. (Despite the xenophobia, “it must be said that France was more generous in providing asylum than any other European country or than the United States.” (Piers Brendon, The Dark Valley))
In the period just before Munich, fears of war were very strong, and many people chose to blame the Czechs…and the Jews. In Paris, Strasbourg, Dijon and elsewhere mobs attacked Jews and looted their shops, shouting: “Down with the Jewish war.” (Brendon)
By 1939, many Frenchmen had had enough of Hitler’s threats, and support for resistance against further aggression was growing…but there were still strong voices for appeasement. And these was a pervasive sense that something was deeply wrong with French society. Jean Renoir’s film La Regle du Jeu, opened in July 1939 but banned as “too demoralizing” by September, portrayed, in Brendon’s words, “a corrupt and disintegrating society held together only by deception. ‘We live at a time when everyone lies,’ says one of the characters, ‘drug ads, governments, radio, movies, newspaper.’”
The most splendid Parisian ball of the 1939 season took place on a warm July night at the Polish embassy. Brendon describes the scene:
Ministers and diplomats sipped champagne while an orchestra played and beautiful women in frothy gowns waltzed with military officers. “In the gardens white marble sphinxes gleamed beneath the stars…and pots of red fire threw on the scene the glow of a conflagration.’ The polish Ambassador, Julius Lukasziewicz, believed that Bonnet was “definitely seeking some legally valid escape” from French obligations, news of which accounted for increased “blustering” in Berlin. The shadows quivered. All thought war imminent and some were reminded of the ball “given by Wellington on the eve of Waterloo.” Watching a mazurka, Reynaud (who became Prime Minister just before the attack of 1940-ed) remarked: “it is scarcely enough to say that they are dancing on a volcano. For what is an eruption of Vesuvius compared to the cataclysm which is forming under our feet?”
And if Serbia, in 1914, had accepted Austria’s list of demands. And if Russia, had not mobilized. And if Britain had not sent troops to the Continent. And if Roosevelt had not tried to form a third party in 1912. And, if Wilson had his stroke before Versailles. And if the Versailles negotiators had listened to Keynes. And, if the Germans had not allowed Lenin to return to Russia in 1917. And if, and if, and if …
I agree about the present atmosphere in US politics. I read this book a few years ago. I also read Collapse of the Third Republic , which is not as widely read as “Rise and Fall…” Both support your point about the French psychology in 1939-40.
I posted this last year about the current state of psychology in this country.
We are now in an era when our adversaries are not rational actors, just as we faced in 1938. The Soviet leaders may have been corrupt but they were rational.
Apropos of atomic weapons, there is another terrible thought. If Hitler had not been anti-semitic, he would have won the Second World War. Instead of dismissing atomic/nuclear physics as “Jewish science”, suppose he had persuaded enough Jewish scientists to work for him?
The political left in this country is best exemplified by Huffington Post, which shows how serious they are. Not very.
MK…re Nazi nuclear program…Boris Chertok, whose memoir I reviewed a while back, asserted that Graphite was a key material for both the V-2 rocket program and the nuclear program, and that the German decision to build the V-2 in quantity foreclosed a serious nuclear program.
The fact that the Ardennes were passable to armour was something the French could have established easily.
Maybe they were impassable to armour in the same sense as those huge US carriers are impregnable.
“as those huge US carriers are impregnable.”
We may find out how impregnable. In WWII, it was fire control that separated the US from the Japanese carriers. There is an interesting book called “Shattered Sword” on the Battle of Midway from the Japanese POV. The Japanese neglected fire control measures such as flushing gas lines with CO2. Overconfident. The Germans were similarly overconfident about their codes. Both were heavily infiltrated and they were not secure.
As I meander about beautiful Paris, I wonder what would have happened to her if the French had not surrendered?
I have not any answer, perhaps someone can offer one?
Mike K,
I think you mean “damage control.” “Fire control” is how you aim your weapons.
We had the edge there, as well, at least as far as ship gunnery was concerned. But it turned out to be less crucial since ship gunnery was less crucial.
I think you mean “damage control.” “Fire control” is how you aim your weapons.
Well, damage control means multiple things. Their fire fighting techniques were deficient and that is why they lost their carriers. They were also careless with their reloading and rearming their planes but that was not a systemic fault. The fire fighting was doctrine that was defiant.
I always thought of aiming weapons as “gunnery.”
“I wonder what would have happened to her if the French had not surrendered?
I have not any answer, perhaps someone can offer one?”
You might read, “Is Paris Burning ?” and thank General von Choltitz.
I have believed for a few years that the world was very similar to the intense rivalries that permeated the 1930’s. If there is another major economic crisis, which appears very possible, the reactions of the various major players could be volatile.
Domestically, I’m afraid the country is very close to the political and cultural divisions that characterized the 1850’s. If those problems brought about a major political re-alignment, which is historically overdue, it might almost be worth it, but only if a party truly committed to limiting state power rose to the fore.
Yes, “Fire Control” was part of the gunnery. Fire Control was a rating that was aligned with Gunner’s Mate’s. I reported aboard my first ship with a Fire Control Senior Chief. Nothing to do with fire-fighting. His job was in CIC. Fire-fighting was something everyone was involved in during that drill/non-drill, often coordinated by the Damage-Controlmen, another rating. Each crew member has a designated station during these rotations, general quarters, fire/collision, ASW, man-overboard etc. A cook might be on a gun crew, a yeoman on a boat crew…
I have no clue as to what a modern, naval engagement would entail. I assume the submarine and unmanned drone would figure heavily, followed by, or in concert with fighter jets. Everything over the horizon, as it were.
The point was that the Japanese carriers did not have good doctrine for preventing fires on the hanger decks. There was no collision except with bombs from dive-bombers. The US torpedoes did not work and no hits were made at Midway.
US fire control (or fighting if you prefer) was superior and the Yorktown, which was hit badly by dive bombers, was making 30 knots again an hour later. The Japanese carriers burned and were actually sunk by their own escorts. The US carriers “inerted” the fuel lines on the hanger deck and the Japanese did not.
Writing of Leon Blum, “Something about him inspired crazed hatred…”
That something is that he was Jewish and France was still relitigating the Dreyfus Affair.
As in some ways they STILL are…
Japanese damage control was a problem throughout the war, not just at Midway. During the Mariannas battle a carrier was lost after being torpedoed by a US sub because fumes from a fuel leak caused by the torpedo were (deliberately) vented through the entire ship resulting in a huge explosion when the fumes reached an ignition source.
However, I think blaming Midway on poor damage control is incorrect. What cost the Japanese at Midway was that the critical US strike hit the Japanese carriers with their aircraft fully fueled and loaded. Once US bombs started fires in that environment no damange control was going to salvage the sitaution. The Yorkdown would not have been able to survive the bomb hits she took had the hanger deck been full of readied bombers – CO2 or no CO2.
On the subject of the Fall of France, I have always felt that the decisive edge the Germans had in operational doctrine would have resulted in a decisive German victory even without the breakthrough in the Ardennes. The German “feint” into Belgium was actually pushing back the French forces even before the Ardennes attach made its weight felt. Even if the French had recognized and blocked the Ardennes attack I think the French Army would still have collapsed before the end of the summer. Because, in the end, the Germans were prepared to fight WW 2.0, while the French were at best ready for WW 1.1.
The politics made the defeat at the borders decisive, as the French still had enough of an army left to hole up in Paris and other cities and at least create a reprise of the Paris Commune. As the war would prove later, tanks and bombers were much less effective in urban fighting.