French Armies collapse in WW2

Its useful to note that France effectively had no active duty divisions at the beginning of the war.

Due to her political insistence on structuring the Army around conscripts (thus keeping the professional military's influence small, and establishing a "nation-in-arms" supposedly dominated by Republican principles), the peacetime army had shrunk to IIRC only 20 divisions. Upon threat of war, the mobilization plan allowed only ONE move: each active division was broken up to form three divisions composed mostly of conscript reservists.

The best of the three resulting divisions had only 33% active duty officers, 32% active duty NCOs, 55% active duty privates. The newly-created series A divisions had 23% AD officers, 17% AD NCOs, and about 2% AD troops. The series B divisions essentially had no active duty component at all.

Thus, after mobilization, the French Army's best divisions were essentially reserve divisions. Some of these fought well, but none could actually be considered "active duty". And the worst 1/3 of the Army's divisions were just extremely bad.

Due to failure of political willpower, initial active service for conscripts fell to two years, then 18 months, and in 1921, 1922 and 1928, to just 12 months. Longer service was unpopular with the very French people whom the Army was intended to protect. Further, politicians rejected the notion that an extended period of active service was necessary to train the "citizen soldier".

Finally, conscripts were treated as mere numbers. If your active service was spent in, for instance, a support unit, upon call up for war you might be expected to function as a combat infantryman. Whatever specialist skills you had learned were ignored, and you were treated as an undifferentiated cog.

The quality of individual soldiers, and of the Army's divisions, was thus quite low. In the French scheme that didn't matter, since everyone would be trained up during the war, in the presumably extended period of static defensive operations.
Unfortunately, even this didn't work as intended. Units didn't receive the necessary depth of training during the Phony War.

The miracle of 1940 wasn't that the French Army collapsed; it was that numerous divisions even fought as well as they did. The French constructed a wartime army riddled with systemic flaws, then expected it to achieve victory in a 1916-style war.

I recommend reading The Seeds of Disaster by Robert Doughty. If you haven't read it, or something very much like it, then you lack necessary knowledge of the French Army at the beginning of WW2. Breaking Point by the same author provides a revealing look at the actual performance of the French Army and Command during the Sedan battle, and is also recommended.
 
I would be wary of arguments, which one sees from time to time, that the French defeat was due merely to luck, and the incompetence of one or two senior leaders.

Luck exists, but it tends to favor the better army. Why? Because the better army has increased capacity to recognize, respond to, and capitalize upon the opportunities provided by "luck".

Second, incompetent senior leaders are not some unavoidable act-of-God scourge that inexplicably descends upon an army. Rather, it reflects upon the nature of the military system that developed that leader, promoted him to top levels of responsibility, and regards him as adequate for the task.
 

Archibald

Banned
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.

A decade ago French historian Bernard Stora did a very good made-for-TV film about De Gaulle life on the 1939 - 1970 period.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Grand_Charles
http://telescoop.tv/browse/970643/10/le-grand-charles.html

The Moncornet episode (May 16, 1940) illustrates that tragedy you mention.

Let me try to summarize the scene.

France deep countryside. A road with an armoured vehicle and two soldiers. The first seats and do nothing. The second has climbed to a phone pole and desesperately tries to contact a HQ... somewhere.
Enter De Gaulle
"Why don't you fight ?" he asks
"We have order to preserve that armoured vehicle"
De Gaulle aghast, then going up to eleven.
"To preserve it ? And then what you gonna do with it ? expose it on the Champs Elysées, at the Paris Motors Show ? Get up, you two. Let's go fighting !"
 
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