AHC Anglo French 'Blitzkrieg doctrine'

With a POD after 11/11/1918 have UK and French forces being committed to use of offence and mobility in a war?

I assume that a reasonably organized Franco British force could have taken enough German territory in the autumn of 1939 to force Hitler to pull back forces from Poland#

I suspect that if that were happening Stalin would not risk attacking Poland.
 
I'm not sure how you could convince the French to do this, after all the massive loss of manpower and the generation gap that was created by the war meant that they had to rely on older, less fit and slower-to-mobilise soldiers, which made the government more keen on defence as opposed to offence (the Maginot line being the obvious symptom of this). Maybe some kind of baby boom could help negate the generation gap and create the young and mobile military force needed for the French to embrace 'blitzkrieg'. But as far as I'm aware baby booms only happen in cases of good economic growth and while I'm no expert on postwar France, to my knowledge 'good economic growth' was not the case. Unless, say, they annexed the Rhineland and used that to fuel their post-war boom, but that's a whole new kettle of fish...
 

sharlin

Banned
We brits had the right idea with the Experimental Mechanised Force but that died off in the interwar years, perhaps if this was encouraged, developed and grew and the French could somehow be shaken out of their ALL THE DEFENSES!!! _o/ idea, perhaps with urgings from the lower ranks perhaps it could get the ball rolling.
 
Re the OP- we're talking about the "Phoney War" correct?
Basically, instead of leafletting the german Army, if the British and French were "ready" and willing to take it to the Germans from the git-go- you'd need a lot more military spending, forethought, and practice that the
Brits and French didn't do OTL.

I think you're on target with with French demographics and war fatigue considering something like 20% of their men 18-35 got killed or wounded in WWI contributing to their defensive mindset.
Keep in mind the bitterly divided French politics between the Popular Front and conservative blocs that made everything a $%^& rugby scrum.
Once the Maginot Line was completed, they felt safe to keep bickering.
If history repeated itself, the French'd mobilize, the British would show up, and stop the Boche from being within Bertha range of bombarding Paris.
Could De Gaulle and other French officers developed a more dynamic approach to mobile warfare?
Yes, but the French military wanted to refight WWI with modern weaponry.
Losing their own campaign against internal resistance to changing doctrine b/c you had dinosaurs like Marshals Foch and Petain still calling the shots was what doomed the French military to defeat.
The French got a clue pretty quick when the attack came and cost the Germans dearly but it was too late.

Could the French have gotten it funded and from 1933-1938 w/o ASB's forcing the Third Republic to shut up and focus? I say, really unlikely.

Still, an unambiguous French bitch-slap of the Germans in 1936 over the Rhineland would have convinced them to fold, no blitzkrieg tactics necessary.

The Brits had other problems. For one thing, the British Army always got short shrift as far as R&D and funding priority and had its hands full with colonial ops that had little to do with conventional warfare.

Second, as many have commented on how the RN, FAA, and RAF were bitterly at odds in 1930's over doctrine, funding priorities, and hardly in the mood to develop effective combined-arms operations.
BH Liddell-Hart had some ideas on how to do that. Rommel and Guderian tweaked his concepts into their doctrine, but he was just a British Army officer so what did he know, as far as the MoD was concerned?

The Germans focused on nothing else but kicking France's ass and they knew they had to do it quick before they could fully mobilize. From 1920 on, they made it their mission to develop their skills at maneuver warfare and combined-arms ops so they could create and exploit weakness in the enemy's defenses.
They had free rein in the USSR from 1920-1933 to learn how to manuever in open and wooded terrain, then got a chance to demonstrate it in the Spanish Civil War.
The Soviets took notes and developed their own flavor- Deep Battle from Timoshenko, among others.
 
Wasn't the British Army at the outbreak of the war a fully motorized force, with France not too far behind?

They still got outmanuvered by a largely foot-mobile force.

From the standpoint of protection and firepower, French tanks were vastly superior to their German counterparts.

These seem like great elements for mobile warfare, what you really need is the doctrine and the will to make bold maneuvers.
 

sharlin

Banned
Firepower wise the french tanks were not that good, the short 37mm gun was rubbish whilst the 47mm gun was adequate.
 
Firepower wise the french tanks were not that good, the short 37mm gun was rubbish whilst the 47mm gun was adequate.

The Panzer II's were the mainstay of the German armored force, and they were even worse in that regard.

Although the French tanks relative lack of radios hampered command and control.
 

sharlin

Banned
That and their preference for 1 man turrets and of course the HUGE doctrinal flaw of spreading tanks out instead of using them massed.
 
Wasn't the British Army at the outbreak of the war a fully motorized force, with France not too far behind?

Yes - in fact, IIRC, the British army was the only fully motorised force. Even the Germans were still relying on horse-drawn transport for parts of their troop movements and supply lines.
 
the problem with implementing a blitzkrieg doctrine before the war was that there was no such thing as a blitzkrieg doctrine :D

also, cant have large offensive forces and the maginot line at the same time - budget issues.
 
the problem with implementing a blitzkrieg doctrine before the war was that there was no such thing as a blitzkrieg doctrine :D
Ugh, for the x-th time; yes, there was. Developed at the Armoured Warfare School in Kazan, in the late '20s. The T-28 was the direct result of the lessons drawn from it (with a little help from military-industrial espionage).
 

sharlin

Banned
Aye the Soviets had their Deep Operations concept and the UK had its Experimental Mechanised Force idea in the early 20s. Both ideas were what the Germans based the Blitzkrieg idea on.
 
Try and keep J.F.C. Fuller's faith in British democracy instead of letting him go Fascist, he wrote the original theory that inspired Blitzkrieg and wrote the Nine Principles of War.
 

Orry

Donor
Monthly Donor
Need to keep plan 1919 as the foundation of inter war training and development
 
Try and keep J.F.C. Fuller's faith in British democracy instead of letting him go Fascist, he wrote the original theory that inspired Blitzkrieg and wrote the Nine Principles of War.

If Fuller had not turned down command of the Experimental Mechanized Force in 1927 he would have been in the ideal position to impart onto the British Military a Tank Doctrine that followed his theories. He refused command because he did not think he had enough staff to do the job adequetly.
 
The whole 'go for it' war, does this inclued the navies? If so could a joint Anglo French force lob shells in the the ports on the German north coast? Or could there be too many German ships there?
 

sharlin

Banned
And minefields and aircraft, far too risky to put capital ships in such a small sea against a hostile foe.
 
the problem with implementing a blitzkrieg doctrine before the war was that there was no such thing as a blitzkrieg doctrine :D

also, cant have large offensive forces and the maginot line at the same time - budget issues.

except the maginot line was complete by 1935 which was when Germany had just started rearming :rolleyes:

france spent enormous sums on national defense; they had more and better tanks than Germany, they had more and better artillery pieces than Germany, they had better anti tank guns than Germany, and until 1939 they had a much larger standing army than Germany

so yes you can have large offensive forces and the maginot line considering France had 3000 modernish tanks and 10k artillery pieces and the ability to mobilize 70-100 divisions
 
If Fuller had not turned down command of the Experimental Mechanized Force in 1927 he would have been in the ideal position to impart onto the British Military a Tank Doctrine that followed his theories. He refused command because he did not think he had enough staff to do the job adequetly.

you make it sound like British tank doctrine wasn't fairly advanced for it's day

at regiment and below it wouldn't be unfair to claim the Germans directly copied them

the problem was organization above regiment AND that the Army wasn't able to procure any fucking tanks :rolleyes: in 9.39 there were 2... yes 2 matildas
 
you make it sound like British tank doctrine wasn't fairly advanced for it's day

at regiment and below it wouldn't be unfair to claim the Germans directly copied them

the problem was organization above regiment AND that the Army wasn't able to procure any fucking tanks :rolleyes: in 9.39 there were 2... yes 2 matildas

I dont think I do "make it sound like British tank doctrine wasn't fairly advanced for it's day". All I stated was that if Fuller had accepted that command then he could have developed a doctrine for British tanks that followed his theories, and that he refused the job because he didnt think there was enough staff available to him to do it properly. I said nothing about his theories being more advanced than anyone elses, nor, indeed, did I mention any British theories created by other men or how advanced the British theories of mechanized warfare were.
 
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