AHC: Prevent the Fall of France in 1940

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to prevent France from falling to the Nazis in 1940. The POD must be on or after January 30, 1933. You can either have France fall at a later date (say 1941 or 1942), or have France remain under the control of the Allies for the duration of the war.
 
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Viola

Banned
I mean, with a PoD that far it should be pretty easy to make Hitler never get into politics and avoid WW2 as we know it, or maybe WW2 at all, from happening.
 
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to prevent France from falling to the Nazis in 1940. The POD must be on or after November 11, 1918. You can either have France fall at a later date (say 1941 or 1942), or have France remain under the control of the Allies for the duration of the war.
Extend the Maginot Line to the Channel
 
I mean, with a PoD that far it should be pretty easy to make Hitler never get into politics and avoid WW2 as we know it, or maybe WW2 at all, from happening.

Hmm, that's true. I'll correct the POD to make it January 30, 1933 - the day Hitler came to power.
 
Hmm, that's true. I'll correct the POD to make it January 30, 1933 - the day Hitler came to power.
Chamberlain backs the French at the Rheinland crisis or backs the Czechs at Munich. Early ww2 when the Germans weren't as ready sees the Fall of France prevented
 
Browbeat the Belgians into accepting mutual defense, instead of the bullshit they played with pretending both sides were bad. If they still refuse, drop them from any defense plans, and plan for defense in-depth at th border.

Churn out loads of anti-tank weapons for the regular infantry divisions. There are a hell of a lot of old 75s laying around.

Have a minimum retirement age for general rank officers.

EDIT: I was thinking this from the perspective of "if you were in charge of France," which now that I reread the OP, isn't the condition.
 
Browbeat the Belgians into accepting mutual defense, instead of the bullshit they played with pretending both sides were bad. If they still refuse, drop them from any defense plans, and plan for defense in-depth at th border.

Churn out loads of anti-tank weapons for the regular infantry divisions. There are a hell of a lot of old 75s laying around.

Have a minimum retirement age for general rank officers.

EDIT: I was thinking this from the perspective of "if you were in charge of France," which now that I reread the OP, isn't the condition.

As the OP I think that perspective is fine. It's a creative take on the topic.
 

Driftless

Donor
Have the Germans build a navy large enough to seriously attempt the USM

*ducks for cover*
The extreme Schlieffen Plan...... The German right swings through Norfolk, around London, then down through Hampshire; before crossing back into France.

(really ducks for cover) :biggrin:
 
Seeing as people are throwing in their own, very different, ideas, I shall add my own unusual one; avoid the Spanish Civil War and have the Spanish join the Allies or, at the very least, have them sign a mutual defence pact with the French based on their cooperation in Morocco.

This means that:

1) The Germans get no experience in Spain they can draw upon.
2) The Germans know that if they attack France they have to push all the way to Gibraltar.
3) The Spanish, who aren't screwed from fighting a civil war, can send their army north to reinforce the French-German border.

Northstar
 
Get the United States to back the Anglo-French alliance. It's possible, with a January 1933 PoD. If appeasement was avoidable, so was isolationism. That probably averts the entire war, though, and the OP seems to stipulate that Nazi Germany has to exist and has to attack France in Spring 1940.

The one about Spain is original and interesting.
 
Have the French Military accept the fact that the French Air Force spotted a German Army traffic jam in the Ardennes Forest and send more planes to harass them while the French Army redeploys to meet them.
 
Playing hardball at Rhineland re-militarization likely puts a lot of doubts in the minds of Moustache and his clique. On 1st sign that Germans will try to grab territory at the east send a few squadrons of aircraft to Czechoslovakia, that have orders to attack Germans that cross the border there.
Ask Brussels a simple question by mid-1930s: are you with us? If yes, they are required to extend Maginot line to the North Sea. If not, French will extend Maginot line towards North Sea themselves, leaving Belgium out in the cold.

Military procurement and tactics probably warrant threads of their own.
 

John Farson

Banned
Keep the Allied armies from moving north, into Belgium, when the Germans attack the Low Countries. It's cold, but it'll keep them from overextending themselves and risking being cut off, as happened OTL.

Apart from that, pretty much anytime before Munich is doable; before the German takeover of Czechoslovakia they were considerably weaker and more vulnerable than they were in 1940. Germany was in no shape to fight a war against France over the Rhineland in '36, and they knew this.
 
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