France builds forts along its border with Belgium in the pre-WWI era

Saphroneth

Banned
Fair enough, my mistake. So the French plan was to make Belgium uninhabitable?
The Zone is actually quite small, and it's more accurate to say that the French plan was to fight in Belgium rather than in France. If the Germans didn't want to invade Belgium, then - that's fine, no war. (If the entirety of the WW1 fighting, meaning four years of intense artillery and poison gas bombardment, had been in Belgium, the area of the as-originally-established Zone Rouge would have been about 4% of Belgium; the area of the current zone rouge would be about 0.3% of the country.)

It was too small for the deployment plan the French developed.

They needed all their troops at the front, which still failed to halt the German advance. The fact they deployed them as they did points to poor deployment plans, but the lack of reserve points to a manpower pool that was too small. If the French had put less men on the frontline, it would have been even less effective at stopping the Germans.
Actually, the correct comparison is that, if the French had had more men, they'd have put them on the front line as well (if using their historical deployment plan). Their doctrine was unfortunately flawed, and saw no need for reserves (thus they didn't keep any).

Remember, the Germans essentially concentrated a huge fraction of their army to punch through a very small part of the French front line, and after that they didn't face much actual fighting with that section of the German army.

Bottom line is - if the French had felt they needed a reserve, they'd have made one - for example, by using the Eschaut plan instead of Dyle-Breda.

Which only accounted for 10% of the allied troops IIRC. Coupled with the French army being undersized for their own deployment plan, I would posit the British needed more troops as well.

It's not truly fair to use numerical counts with the British force size, since the British were essentially all the equivalents of DLM or DCr (mech/armoured units). It's more accurate to say that the British provided a large fraction of the mobile "elite" units.


I judge the Maginot Line in the context of what it was designed for: the defence of France. France fell and the Maginot Line saw barely any fighting whilst it fell. Therefore, I conclude the Maginot Line was a failure.

If France didn't fall, the Maginot Line would still see barely any fighting. The Maginot Line worked as designed - the problem is with the rest of the French military.

In any case - the Maginot Line let the French thin out their forces on the German border, so they could deploy more further north. It freed up lots of precious French manpower for the task.
Without it the French would have been more vulnerable, not less.
 

Redbeard

Banned
It is my impression that the original strategic reserve was the main part of what was sent into Belgium together with the BEF - and got cut off! Which then left the French with no reserve with which to counter the focussed German attack through the Ardennes.

Gamelin apparently based his plan on the Germans doing exactly what Gamelin's plans expected them to do - attack through Belgium like they had in WWI. Having a plan based on the enemy doing only what they are expected to do is of course asking for trouble, especially when you don't even have a serious recon out where the enemy COULD come (like Ardennes). A few hours extra notice of the German concentration in the Ardennes might have been enough for the unhappy 55th Division to be slightly more ready for the onslaught. It was a Division with mainly older reserve personnel, but also quite well equipped with artillery. Or just a tiny PoD like the Divisional commander finding his Corps HQ sooner. In OTL he drove around in his staff car for 17 hours to get orders about how to do now the Germans are attacking!

IMHO the French lost that campaign from the top and their doctrines were outdated vs. swift moving Germans like Guderian, but when that is said I'll claim that their army in general was much better than what they are usually credited for. Yes - a lot of their units were mainly old reserve personnel , but so was a lot of German units. They were just not seriously committed in May 1940 but the French reserve units like the 55th Division met the best the Germans had and in overwhelming numbers.

The German doctrine of local initiative and swift capitalisation of any opportunity indeed did shortcut the very systematic French doctrine, and NO army could survive being so repeatedly shortcut in its CCC as the French was in 1940, but I'll also claim that with just a slight German hesitation - or slightly better French CCC - the Germans would have bogged down and the French would have fought as tenaciously as in WWI.
 
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