French Armies collapse in WW2

I have read several items which relate to that dramatic event. The one that has stuck in my mind - especially relating to the unexpected shock dealt to the British was how could such a thing happen. One of the worlds most competent and formidable militaries vanquished so rapidly with such ease.
What tale does history suggest made that disaster an actuality?
 
Essentially the Germans got inside their decision loop, and could do things faster than the French could react to them. Throw in a whole lot of luck for the Germans and a French plan that did EXACTLY what the Germans wanted them to do, and you get the catastrophe of OTL. Change just about anything and the German offensive would probably have bogged down as per the story in my sig.
 
If you're a football fan I would characterize the German invasion by their work rate. The response time of German c3 was way higher than their counterparts, the Luftwaffe was putting out 4x as many sorties as the RAF and French Air Force, and half the army was amped up on amphetamine. That's difficult to compete with.
 
This idea of the Germans being inside the French 'decision loop' or Observation Decision Action cycle is somewhat validated by the frequent war games Halder had run on the various plans every month from November 1939 through March or April 1940. In each itteration on the map table the German side failed to reach a decisive result. Some plans tested were better than others, but few got a result considered favorable.

In the March exercise the intelligence officer who was to play the Allied side argued the French leaders would actually act slower than assumed & acted accordingly. The result of the French or Allies delaying their actions by 48 hours gave the game something akin to the results hoped for.

This game result does not seem to have given the German generals any improvement in confidence. Most were fairly pessimistic & went into the campaign thinking they would be doing well to get a stalemate by the end of summer in September.
 
In the March exercise the intelligence officer who was to play the Allied side argued the French leaders would actually act slower than assumed & acted accordingly. The result of the French or Allies delaying their actions by 48 hours gave the game something akin to the results hoped for.

For their part, in 1938 General Pretelat, then commanding the French Second Army, ran a staff exercise where he was hit by seven German divisions, including two tank brigades, emerging suddenly from the Ardennes to crash into his defensive line on the Meuse. The result was a disaster, and the French line was broken without hope of recovery. This exercise exactly paralleled the actual German attack in 1940. The French response was to mostly cover the whole thing up so as not to "upset the troops." Studying the results in Versailles, Gamelin made no changes to his plan, merely the bland statement that adequate reinforcements would have to be sent in future. Yet Gamelin made no actual plans for how those "adequate reinforcements" would be alerted in time to respond, then moved in time to act, and then positioned in the proper places to have effect.

To add insult to injury, General Pretelat wasn't even in command of 2nd Army when the German offensive broke. He was promoted to the Second Army Group on the Maginot Line where he effectively sat out the decisive part of the war. Pretelat was replaced by General Huntzinger, who apparently never studied his predecessor's exercise.
 
.. the Luftwaffe was putting out 4x as many sorties as the RAF and French Air Force, ....

This was in part because the French Air Force had finally taken delivery of over 600 new aircraft that spring, including 300 from the US. Another seven or eight hundred were to be delivered in June-July. A major portion of the air groups had been withdrawn to south France or Africa to transition to the new aircraft. Getting those back into action proved difficult. In June the French sortie rate was rising while the German rate was falling off.
 
Apart from what others have posted above, there was speed, but not "ease" to the German victory. Look up their butcher's bill.
Just looking at the Luftwaffe's losses, many say it never recovered from the Battle of Britain, during which it lost some 1,800 aircraft. Well, that came after the campaign of France, during which it had lost 1,400 or so.
 
This was in part because the French Air Force had finally taken delivery of over 600 new aircraft that spring, including 300 from the US. Another seven or eight hundred were to be delivered in June-July. A major portion of the air groups had been withdrawn to south France or Africa to transition to the new aircraft. Getting those back into action proved difficult. In June the French sortie rate was rising while the German rate was falling off.

It was also partially because the RAF and Armée de l'Air were gunning for a long war, and sortying 4xtimes per day wears machines and men down to a devastating self-attrition through accidens pretty quickly.

The French and the British prepared for a long war, the Germans for one quick strike. The Luftwaffe needed a month of rest and refit after the French campaign before they could mount serious sorties over Britain and start the Battle of Britain, that is how worn out they were.
 
The incredibly slow French C3 also worked against them. They distrusted radios and relied on phones which can be easily cut but couriers were the main method of relaying commands.

By the time the French were reacting to something, the Germans were already moving on and the French were just reeling all the time.

As PDF said though, if anything had gone wrong for the Germans it could have easily bogged down, it was a close run thing.
 

Redbeard

Banned
The very different C3 reaction times came from very different doctrines. The French had their based in WWI, where battles were won by a systematical approach and where any deviation of the huge plan would mean your (massive) fire and (slow) movement would fuck each other up. Initiative was discouraged: "Don't think, just do what I told you - on time!". If the plan was allowed to fold out it would deliver crushing effect on the enemy, both in defense and in offense. And BTW the French army wasn't especially defensively minded. But it found itself far from ready for any offense in 1940, but probably would have undertaken one in 1941, if allowed to. Much like the mid to late 1918 offensives.

The Germans in contrast had refined and tuned the principles of Moltke the Older, where every man was expected to know the mission a couple of steps up, and also encouraged to use his own initiative and knowledge of the situation to find a way to the target.

So when the French 55th Division met the German main onslaught its commander drove around for 17 hours to find his superiors to get new orders, and in contrast Guderian actually disobeyed orders to slow down because he from closer to the frontline judged that he had an opportunity to be utilised.

Afterwards that was called "Blitzkrieg" but actually it wasn't a conscious doctrine before. Without the basic German principles of leaderships it would not have been possible however.

Blitzkrieg soon was blunted on the Eastern Front and I'll claim that the allied armies crushing Germany in late WWII used doctrines closer to the French in 1940 than the ditto of Germany in 1940.
 

Ramontxo

Donor
This thread touching a classic question, full of information and answers is one of the reasons it is such a luxury to be member of this site. Thanks A LOT. :)
 
There is one root cause to add. The cause of all evils. Politics.


Nearly all frenchmen had been infantrymen, poilus, in WWI. So to pander to the electorate, french politicians pushed the idea that WWI had been won by the Poilus (and by them only). So they had to promote infantry generals at all high level commands and the career of any officer who advocated relying on something else was slowed (at best).

In many ways, the 1918 French army doctrine (even without taking into account the fact that it was veteran troops) was better than the 1939/40 one. in 1918, the french had more tank and more tanks with radio than in 1939, they had an air corp dedicated to achieving air superiority on a given front and use it to pond the foe logistics to bits and they were concentrating 100s of tanks in support of single attacks. All that institutional knowledge was lost, as it was the poilu who won the war.
 
It was also partially because the RAF and Armée de l'Air were gunning for a long war, and sortying 4xtimes per day wears machines and men down to a devastating self-attrition through accidens pretty quickly.

...

There was that. One of the reasons the French AF put priority on getting the new machines operational that summer vs keeping a higher number of air groups operational with older machines.

Apart from what others have posted above, there was speed, but not "ease" to the German victory. Look up their butcher's bill. ... after the campaign of France, during which it had lost 1,400 or so.

More than it lost during the first six weeks of Op Barbarosa. On the ground the Germans lost about 15% more soldiers than in the first six weeks in the east.
 
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The very different C3 reaction times came from very different doctrines. The French had their based in WWI, where battles were won by a systematical approach and where any deviation of the huge plan would mean your (massive) fire and (slow) movement would fuck each other up. Initiative was discouraged: "Don't think, just do what I told you - on time!". If the plan was allowed to fold out it would deliver crushing effect on the enemy, both in defense and in offense. And BTW the French army wasn't especially defensively minded. But it found itself far from ready for any offense in 1940, but probably would have undertaken one in 1941, if allowed to. Much like the mid to late 1918 offensives.

The Germans in contrast had refined and tuned the principles of Moltke the Older, where every man was expected to know the mission a couple of steps up, and also encouraged to use his own initiative and knowledge of the situation to find a way to the target.

So when the French 55th Division met the German main onslaught its commander drove around for 17 hours to find his superiors to get new orders, and in contrast Guderian actually disobeyed orders to slow down because he from closer to the frontline judged that he had an opportunity to be utilised.

Afterwards that was called "Blitzkrieg" but actually it wasn't a conscious doctrine before. Without the basic German principles of leaderships it would not have been possible however.

Blitzkrieg soon was blunted on the Eastern Front and I'll claim that the allied armies crushing Germany in late WWII used doctrines closer to the French in 1940 than the ditto of Germany in 1940.

There was a more pedestrian reason for this difference. The nazis threw funds at their military they did not have. The build up from 1935 was finance by serious deficit spending, accounting tricks, and looting the Austrian & Cezch economies. Resources the French leaders did not have acess to. The result was the German conscript inducted in 1936 or 2938 had about double the training of his French counterpart. The Depression left the French army with funds for a standard 18 months initial training for a conscript. Reduced from the 1920s standard of 24 months The Germans had a base of 24 months and increased it to 36 months. When the conscription classes of 1936 came due for discharge to the reserves a large portion were kept on active service until the war came.

The refresher training for the reservists was much the same. Far more weeks each year for the German soldier than for the French. & much the same for the NCOs & officers.

The outcome was the French could not progress past the initial stages of training during peace time. They could lay down a foundation of drill and basics, but the next levels where a leader could benefit from things like initiative were never reached. This defect was understood by the French generals, but any politician who proposed a military budget on the scale the nazis had was criticized for risking the economy.

The solution forced on the military leaders was to plan a intensive post mobilization training program. That had been implemented for the "Active" or first wave units a few weeks after mobilization, & to a lesser extent for the 'Series A' formations, the B series formations were not to start the full training program until the spring of 1940.

When you look at individual unit performance in the May-June campaign the first echelon units did fairly well. Even some of the second echelon units did ok too. ie: the 18th Inf Div fought Rommels 7th Pz Div for two days virtually alone & was withdrawing in good order when the promised support did not show up. It was the poorly trained formations like the 53rd, 55th, 61st, or the 71st that rapidly collapsed under pressure. All four of those occupied critical positions when Kleists three mechanized corps rushed them & all were left unsupported for a critical 24 hours due to the slow reaction time of the senior leaders. Better quality units like the 101st Fortress Div or the Morrocan Div of the 1st Army held their positions vs armored attacks, until ordered to retreat.
 
The incredibly slow French C3 also worked against them. They distrusted radios and relied on phones which can be easily cut but couriers were the main method of relaying commands.

They distrusted radios for a reason. They had a good signals intel service, which got better when the Polish cryptanalysits joined them in November. They assumed the Germans were equally skilled & that any radio messages were at risk.

There are some complex reasons the French were unable to use their signal intel, some of which I dont quite understand yet. Part seems to have been the doctrine for intel use by commanders, but another part was certainly the slow command cycle. Tactical intel tends to be very short lived & the items gleaned from German radio traffic were often obsolete by the time French combat units received orders.
 
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France falling to Germany was as ASB as Sealion. But because one happened and the other didn't, we get the general opinion of AH.
 
I also think it's important to mention the French didn't seem to have their hearts in it. There was a lot of defeatism or pessimism among the top politicians and generals. Therefore when things went wrong, there was a strong element of, "Well, we gave it our best shot. Let's get the whole thing over now then." The country was very demoralized.

This has its roots in the losses of WWI haunting the nation, and the huge political turmoil that marked the Third Republic in the interwar years.

There was also the whole idea that the British would sue for peace after the French gave up. There is evidence that indicates if the French understood that Britain would fight on regardless and the war was going to last for more years that the armistice offered by Hitler would never have been accepted. Its conditions were tolerable if meant to last for several months or to the end of the year, but not for years on end.

The Germans got lucky in that their attack happened during a critical period when French leadership overall was weak, and their initial success exploited it.
 
I also think it's important to mention the French didn't seem to have their hearts in it. There was a lot of defeatism or pessimism among the top politicians and generals. .. .

Horne pointed out the Germans had something similar going on. A large portion of their generals thought the attack plan would fail. Morale of the best trained units on both sides were good, but when you dig into the average or the subpar German units morale was actually not all that. Horne in his history of the campaign 'To Lose a Battle' described the Wehrmacht as a "... sharp but brittle instrument...", judging that had the battle stalemated the morale of the common soldiers could have cracked just as easily as the French.

I've read a few auto biographies of common German soldiers who were in this campaign, & a junior officer or two. Their memories seem to bear out Horne. That is they were confident in their own ability, & that of their regiment, or corps, and they were determined to do their best, but they had a sense the whole thing could go badly & their effort or lives wasted. They were not yet infected by victory disease, & the sort of fear of the nazi regime that drove them in 1943-45 was not yet in place.

So much of the soaring German morale depended on how easy the opening weeks were. The pessimism of the generals was set aside & the first signs of victory disease started to show.
 
The result was the German conscript inducted in 1936 or 2938 had about double the training of his French counterpart. The Depression left the French army with funds for a standard 18 months initial training for a conscript. Reduced from the 1920s standard of 24 months The Germans had a base of 24 months and increased it to 36 months.
In addition to that: The Hitler Youth already put boys through a bit of paramilitary training which later on the Wehrmacht could build upon. I doubt French boys went through anything similar.
 
The Ardennes is where? The Belgians had curled up into a strict neutrality in 1936. They only actually started properly coordinating with the WAllies when attacked. Their forces covering the Ardennes withdrew north activating demolitions as they went. They presumed the French would cover the exits from the Ardennes; instead their demolitions impeded the French occupying the vacuum. The French presumed the Belgians would fight a delaying action and they would have time to deploy. The Panzerwaffe attacked into this vacuum.

A year before the attack and a year after Pretelat's map exercise Gamelin toured this part of the frontier and expressed serious concerns about anti-tank and artillery shortages and general French weakness in the sector. In the September he laid out to Ironside more or less the German plan of attack. It would not succeed because the French were not Poles! I can't find the reference at the moment but I believe he also made a report before he took over from Weygand concerning the vulnerabilty of the Ardennes to tanks. Liddel Hart had proposed an armoured offensive in the reverse direction when asked in 1933 what should be done in the event of a German attack.

The history of war in NW Europe is littered with attacks on this vector. The Allied C-in-C has drawn or had his attention drawn to it on multiple occaisions. He knows he will have no cooperation from Belgium until it is almost too late and does not know what they will do. Even without all that it would be an attack on a force boundary. ?

The WAllies had concluded the correlation of forces would be overwhelmingly against the Nazi's in very short order. The month previously they had pulled of what should have been impossible in Norway; the Poles, with armed forces modeled very much on the French had been defeated rather more quickly than expected. It was known time was not on the German's side. The WAllies themselves had not been prepared to attack into the sketchiest prepared defences. The Germans invented Kriegspiel; the WAllies had the examples of the Michel Offensive and Caporreto. It is quite stunning that it never occurred to anyone to put themselves in the German's shoes and work out some scenarios of what they would do in that predicament. Almost until Rommel reached the coast at Abbeville, Hitler had the nagging feeling the Panzers were driving into a trap. If the French had not been so fixated in believing the Germans were going to throw themselves on French bayonets for some odd reason; Gamelin could have made this so. Strange Defeat, Strange Victory.

Four and a half years later there was a re-run over the same ground. That is perhaps even more astonishing.
 
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