Did France manage it's defense well in 30 or so post-WWII years?

Hi.

I am asking this question because I read the few threads on how to improve the British economy/ have a less steep British defense decline in the post-WW2 years up to the 70s.

One aspect that comes back and forth often is that the UK kept a too massive defense force (or actually the RN) in the early postwar period and as such had to pay a lot for increasingly obsolete equipment.
It was suggested that slashing the RN heavily early on and focusing on higher efficiency (such as withdrawing the oldest ships and finishing a few new modern ones) would lead to a somewhat better British economy and defense force.


So I was wondering, how differently did France manage her own defense in that time period, did she do some of the same mistakes the British did?
 
Being engaged in costly but utterly useless colonial conflicts can probably be safely called an unwise expense.
 
Well, for starters France "enjoyed" the opportunity to build it's forces virtually from scratch after WWII, meaning there was much less residual equipment. AFAIK, France also enjoyed much MDAP from the US for metropolitan forces. After debacles of Vietnam and Algeria the strategic priorities for the rest of the Cold War seem to have been fairly constant.
 
I have always been struck by how France was still using a semi-auto rifle with a 10 round magazine in the era of the M-16A1 and AK-74.
 
Hi.

I am asking this question because I read the few threads on how to improve the British economy/ have a less steep British defense decline in the post-WW2 years up to the 70s.

One aspect that comes back and forth often is that the UK kept a too massive defense force (or actually the RN) in the early postwar period and as such had to pay a lot for increasingly obsolete equipment.
It was suggested that slashing the RN heavily early on and focusing on higher efficiency (such as withdrawing the oldest ships and finishing a few new modern ones) would lead to a somewhat better British economy and defense force.


So I was wondering, how differently did France manage her own defense in that time period, did she do some of the same mistakes the British did?
These figures are the personnel strengths of the British and French armed forces. They are taken from the Encyclopaedia Britannica Books of the Year. I.e. the first two columns are Events of 1954 and 1955. The next eleven columns are the Events of 1965 to 1975.

There are gaps because the volumes before Events of 1965 didn't have an Armed Forces of the World Table or an article about NATO that had a NATO Armed Forces table in them.

France & UK Personnel 1954-55 & 1965-75.png


The numbers are in thousands.

I think the French Navy personnel of 79,000 in 1972 is a typo for 69,000.
 
How did withdrawing from NATO impact their overall defense?
AFAIK it was similar to the British 1957 Defence Review. That is cut back the conventional armed forces considerably and rely on nuclear deterrence.

However, the decision to change the policy wasn't a consequence of leaving NATO in 1966. It was made in about 1960 or even the aftermath of the Suez War.

Before about 1960 the wars in Vietnam and Algeria forced France to maintain a larger army than would otherwise have been the case and that absorbed money that might otherwise have been spent on new equipment for the French Air Force and Navy.

From about 1960 the resources France was putting into the development of its Strategic Nuclear Force were limiting the amount of new equipment that could be purchased for the country's conventional forces.

The first phase of the French SNF programme was the creation of the Mirage IV bomber force. AFAIK/IIRC France left NATO when it did because that was when the Mirage IV force became operational.
 
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