As I said in a later post, you probably need the left in power, as the French right of the time was hell bend to fiscal conservatism.They left the gold standard in 1936 in response to realizing their military impotence due to finance reasons that was exposed by the Rheinland crisis.
Have them do so over the Austria crisis in 1934:
July Putsch - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
French Military Sanity Options
- Thread starter Triune Kingdom
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Deleted member 1487
Weren't they also strongly against a strong Germany that would be a threat to them?
In theory yes, in reality, it's far more complicated. OTL, during the time frame (34-36 elections), they reduced the amount of money for the defense.
Ideologically, the traditional right saw communism as the main enemy, not the Nazi (like most rights in Europe). It wasn't true for all, but the thought was strong.
Then, there was pacifism in reaction of WW1 horrors.
The fact that small business owners were the heart of their electorate and asked for fiscal conservatism.
Adding that France still had agreements and alliances with half a dozen country in Europe.
All this led to a big part of the right grossly underestimated Hitler and the German menace. It's only after Rhineland crisis and even the Munich one, that the French right woke up.
marathag
Banned
That did its job, the German went around it.
Beats Germans steamrolling out of Metz, that gets you into France proper much sooner
Spending that money in the late '20s early '30s, that money is wasted by 1940, rearmed with Biplanes and Tankettes, like Italy did
Well, France had no excuse.
It had Foch decrying Versailles as an "armistice for twenty years". And look how long it lasted until the next war.
Twenty years.
Certainly not de Gaulle, he is an active officer with no power what so ever
Paul Reynaud was the closest (and de Gaulle was sort of it's protégé during late 30's), but he didn't have the charisma or even the prestige of Churchill.
That's debatable in an established democracy.
Yeah, and Reynaud had a defeatist maîtresse, who had connections that were suspected of working for Germany...
So that's a bit of a problem for him.
And he was in charge of France during the Fall of France, and yet he still passed the baton to Pétain...
Maybe if he was in charge earlier - like a couple of years earlier
I know they had more leadership changes than modern Australia at the time but something has to change.....
A French blogger working on alternate history timelines proposed an interesting POD to have France start properly and energically reorganizing the aircraft industry: France gets absolutely mad at the defeat during the Istres-Damas-Paris air race which the Italians won in September 1937.
Prepare for imported US design and manufacturing methods, better aircraft procurement, better aviation oil production (with France having some high octane fuels like the Brits) and better armament with HMGs
Prepare for imported US design and manufacturing methods, better aircraft procurement, better aviation oil production (with France having some high octane fuels like the Brits) and better armament with HMGs
marathag
Banned
Far Rightist Regimes mostly turned into Democracies without a counter revolution, after Strongman dies, or get tired of it (Pinochet),occasionally overthrown (Baby Doc)
Communist Countries, real elections go away once Communists are running things, takes a revolution to change.
Communists in France taking over, there would have been no more elections where anyone else could be in power, Democracy just goes away.
marathag
Banned
Organization plays a part, French sortie rate was abysmal in 1940Prepare for imported US design and manufacturing methods, better aircraft procurement, better aviation oil production (with France having some high octane fuels like the Brits) and better armament with HMGs
I assume this was partially due to limited aircraft availability and a desire to not instantly lose the "few" aircrafts they had. Wouldn't be as much of an issue ITTL.
marathag
Banned
The French fighter force had available to it during the battle more than 2900 modern aircraft. At no time did it have more than one-fifth of these deployed against the Germans. The operational rate of the fighter force was 0.9 sorties per aircraft per day at the height of the battle. (German fighter units flew up to four sorties per aircraft per day.)
...
By 15 June, the French and German air forces were at approximate parity with about 2400 aircraft each, but the French were operating from their own turf, and they had the support of the RAF. Mastery of the air was there for the seizing, but on 17 June the French air staff began to order its units to fly to North Africa. The justification put forth by the air staff was that the army was destroyed and could not protect the airfields.
The behavior of the leaders of the French Air Force before and during the Battle of France suggests that their primary purposes were to protect the regular air force against its domestic adversaries and to ensure its survival after the battle and the expected defeat. This was a preposterous misordering of priorities in a nation at war but made psychological and institutional sense when one reflects on both the frustration the aviators had suffered in their struggle to achieve operational independence from the army and the cavalier and callous way in which parliamentary officials had played with their lives, careers, and values.
During the Battle of France in May-June 1940, French Army commanders complained that German aircraft attacked their troops without interference by the French Air Force. French generals and statesmen begged the British to send more Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter squadrons to France. Reporters on the scene confirmed the German domination of the skies, and the overwhelming numerical superiority of the Luftwaffe came to be accepted as one of the principal causes of the French collapse.
The air force was a convenient scapegoat for the French Army generals who dominated the Vichy regime that ruled France under the Germans. By attributing the defeat of French forces to weakness in the air, the army officers diverted attention from their own failures. Moreover, the Vichy leaders were able to strengthen their claim to legitimacy by blaming the parliamentary regime they had supplanted for failing to provide a sufficient number of aircraft. The Vichy leaders also reproached the British for holding the bulk of their air force in the British Isles. Concurrently, the Vichy army officers used the defeat of the air force to justify abolishing the air ministry and the air force general staff, incorporating their functions into the war ministry and army general staff and returning the air force to its former status as a branch of the army. With the army controlling the postwar sources of information, for many years there was no voice to challenge the official position that France had lost the war because the prewar politicians had not equipped the air force adequately
French Air Force - Armee de l'Air
Armée de l'Air and Army had a IJA/IJN type relationship.
I feel like transitioning to radios is reasonably plausible because it'd mostly just require a couple of higher-ups to change their mind about one specific thing, as opposed to anything involving substantial increases to the military budget which would require resolutions to the political clusterfuck of interwar France.
Yeah, no Breda variant would be a decent call too. Really anything that leaves reserves for France to use would be a decent call, since there's a very real possibility if a French counterattack had worked and cut off the German push through the Ardennes it's instantly over for Germany.
Falk
Banned
Yes, I remember listening to that vid. One of the main points was that there were fears that De Gaulle's armored corps would become a sort of Praetorian Guard which would coup the French government at will.
BigBlueBox
Banned
By building the Maginot Line the French let the whole world know that they expected Germany to re-militarize the Rhineland and wouldn’t prevent it and let the Belgians know that they would use them as a meatshield. The results were completely predictable: Germany re-militarized the Rhineland and Belgium tried futilely tried to stay neutral and not co-operate with the French.