Blitzkrieg held

Tyr

What if the German invasion of France at the start of WW2 was held off and how would we get to this?
I'm go with better trained French leaders and doctrines to use their tanks better.

There is a lot of AH about the latter stages of WW2 but comparitivly little about the start.
 

Brilliantlight

Banned
Leej said:
What if the German invasion of France at the start of WW2 was held off and how would we get to this?
I'm go with better trained French leaders and doctrines to use their tanks better.

There is a lot of AH about the latter stages of WW2 but comparitivly little about the start.
Click to expand...


Better officers and better tank doctrine in France. More fighter planes would help as well. Maybe the US sells fighters to France a little earlier then OTL and it actually arrives before France is defeated.
 

Tyr

The tanks are the main thing I'm thinking of since the French had better tanks at the start.
Anyway the main question here is what if it was held off, could the French and Brittish have attacked Germany at any time? What would the peace and aftermath be like?
 

Matthew Craw

The biggest French problem wasn't so much poor doctrine as incredibly weak command and control, few, if any radios and other modern communications systems. The high command rarely knew what was going on until it was too late and if they'd tried to fight a blitzkrieg with this kind of system they'd have had their heads handed to them, no matter how good their tanks were.

Perhaps if the Germans had attacked in November 1939, as Hitler apparently wanted, the french would have had a lesson in their deficiences and a chance to remedy at least some of them before teh Summer offensive.

I'm assuming the German winter attack would have filed, it was an unimaginative replay of teh Schlieffen plan and was exactly what teh Allies were expecting, running the Germans directly against teh best Allied troops in good defensive terrain.

With 5 or 6 moths to work with teh French coul have partially reorganised their tank forces, bought some radios, replaced Gamelin, dig in along better lines than in OTL's May and better connected the High Command with its troops.
 

carlton_bach

If the French and British had held off a German advance, either in 1939 or in 1940, the equation of the war would change quite a bit. I don't think Germanm aircraft would have the range to attack Britain from the Reich, so the industries of Great Britain could continue to turn out war materiel for a force in being rather than simultaneously having to re-arm its military and churn out fighters and bombers to feed the battle over its own skies. Ditto, the submarine war becomes much harder without the bases in France - ASW patrols in the Channel and the Iceland Gap are much easier than trying to close off the Atlantic - especially if the French Navy does not get plonked at Oran but continues to operate. That again means more industrial productivity as more raw materials get through, and more value-for-money on the American-purchased arms.

An Anglo-French counterattack into Germany would not very likely have had the kind of tremendous success Hitler had in the other direction, but I could easily seethe Wehrmacht pushed back. Blitzkrieg is based on the combination of taking territory by a mighty push, then recovering strength from the resources the captured territory affords. The army poised on the borders of France, for all its might, was not equipped for the long haul, and if ther Germans are not in Paris by autumn they may well never make it. IN a war of attrition, all the advantages pass to the Allies. French and British bombers can range into Germany under fighter cover from French bases, the sea lanes remain far easier to secure, the colonies continue to supply vital raw materials without becoming a major theater of war, let alone being torn between Vichy and Gaullist parties, and I don't think a country fighting the exponents of the western world and not winning, all the while accepting the continued support of the Soviet Union, does not make a credible defender of Europe against the Red Hordes.

I'm really not sure how this would play out, though. France and Britain might be able to keep up a hard fight, but would they have the men and materiel to successfully invade Germany? I don't think Hitler would give up for anything less, and France and Britain could not well walk away from a fight they joined over Poland without getting concessions on that issue. (This gets really interesting: what about Polish territorial integrity? Note that neither ally declared war on the Soviet Union in spite of having undertaken guarantees for Polish land. Not that I blame them, but without the world-spanning conflict to follow, that question will need addressing.)

Hmmm. With Stalin's well-known attitude towards treaties, could we see a long drawn-out slogging match along the French frontier through 1940 and 41, followed by Barbarossa in reverse? Ouch.
 

aktarian

French also need to shake down their doctrine and add some maneuver to their fire. They could stop Blitzkrieg but in oder to stop it you have to channel it and provide heavy fire, both arty and AT (Kursk, Stlaingrad to a degree). Both need fixed positions to provide cover and all-round protection. Which French can have if Germans stick to original plan but don't if they adopt Manstein's plan.

OTOH even if they adopt combined arms aproach and blitzkrieg-like doctrine lack of coordination will have terrible effects. Tanks getting separated from infantry, arty and air not available at cruicial moment, failure to exploit oportunities, failure to coordinate larger formations.

Maybe have Hart's ideas accepted in UK which influences French as well. Also it would help if some French would draw correct lessons from Spain re tanks (not that large formations are useless but that they need to be protected). This could lead to combined arms doctrine but would require significant overhaul of thinking. As I said adding maneuver to fire, better communications and encouraging initiative among junior officers. It would also mean droping aproach that won Great war which could doom this projkect from the start.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top