Challenge: France and Germany switch doctrine

With a POD of 1920, France must have a more inovative military doctrine then Germany, with the Germans sticking to WWI style tactics while France looks into Air Power, concentrated Armor, Mobile Warfare and the like.

And in this POD, France and Germany have to be very similar to OTL politically(EI, German Nazi's, Democratic France, spineless French political figures, war over Poland or Czeckoslovakia).
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Difficult to do. History shows that winners usually want to re-fight the last war, whereas fundamental reforms are easier to do in countries that have recently experienced defeats.

For France, one can probably find ways to get De Gaulle and other proponents of mobile warfare in higher policy-making positions. But since their grand strategy would always be one of defense, the concept of infantry and massed firepower would always appear more appealing. There would be a lot of inertia to overcome.

Getting the Germans to favor WWI tactics would be even harder. The blitzkrieg concept had its beginnings late in WWI, with the use of the indirect approach to capture Riga in 1917, and the use of Hutier tactics in the 1918 Spring Offensive. Having seen these lessons themselves, the Germans would have to be idiots not to see their potential. And when it came to warfare, the Germans were not idiots.

Perhaps some major war would be fought elsewhere in the world in which, for whatever reason, one side attempts to incorporate blitzkrieg-like elements and comes to grief, thus discrediting the ideas.
 
Its worse than that the Blitz is an outgrowth of German military tradition with its roots going back to Frederick the Great. In otherwords you need more of lever than WW1; especially if you want a flip flop as you describe.

Michael
 
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