French Preparations For WWII

Which is the problem concerning the "French professional army" suggestions on De Gaulle's model that gets passed around. In the Third Republic it is unacceptable. The left is convinced, and not entirely without reason, that a professional army will be used against workers and to suppress them. In 1914 the plan had been outright for the replacement of the army overall with a popular militia, and this had only been scuttled by the outbreak of the war. In 1928 the army had been entirely restricted into a small standing force that trained large reserve elements, short term reserve elements, minimizing the total amount of time that the general population would be serving and thus preventing them from being separated from the general population's values.
This is the heart of the problem the French had, and why they did so badly. Without a large, long-service officer corps they instead decided to rely on a high level of planning at HQ, with orders followed exactly all the way down the line (which reduces their need to train the lower-level officers, meaning those slots can be filled by reservists). Combine with the fact that most orders were still sent by despatch riders and not even by telephone let alone radio, and you've got a toxic mix where it took the French Army three days to react to a situation. Unless they get very lucky, that means they're going to lose a war of movement with the Germans.
As for the rest of the French armed forces, they weren't bad at all - pretty well equipped for what they had to do, although there was a fair bit of defeatism particularly in the AdA. That's mostly a legacy of the interwar turf fights with the Army.

So as for what they can do, that splits into two streams:
  1. Speed of communication - that means the extensive use of radio and telephone to ensure that orders are disseminated much more rapidly. The irony is that being very heavily mechanised/motorised the French are inherently better suited to this than the Germans, but they never went in for it in the big way they should have.
  2. Better training for and more reliance on the more junior officers. This one is a complete political minefield - the professional officer corps advocated by De Gaulle is just impossible, but longer annual training (say officers spend an extra couple of weeks per year doing staff training and TEWTs?) might be possible.
 
Never create the Armée de l'Air and let it stay in the Army. As soon as the AdA was created they worked against the interest of the Army and turned Douhetist, almost completely ignored close air support, favored heavy bomber over fighters (you know, the bomber will always get through...) and had the worse possible relationship with the army. They also restricted the number of people trained, greatly hindering the war effort in 1940 (there were far more plane than pilots at this point). Keeping the Air Force into the armyh won't be the best solution, but it may improve the close air support performance of the AdA which was badly needed during the Battle of France.

Make someone realize that having fast communication is a good idea.

Oh and everything Bad@logic said.
 
This is the heart of the problem the French had, and why they did so badly. Without a large, long-service officer corps they instead decided to rely on a high level of planning at HQ, with orders followed exactly all the way down the line (which reduces their need to train the lower-level officers, meaning those slots can be filled by reservists). Combine with the fact that most orders were still sent by despatch riders and not even by telephone let alone radio, and you've got a toxic mix where it took the French Army three days to react to a situation.

Probablly closer to a extra 24 hours raather than three days, but the point stands. Particularly at the higher levels. Billotte seems notablly slow in reacting. Conversely some commanders appear to be overeacting. ie: the 53rd division received three or four changes of orders from 11 though 14 May, which kept it counter marching about the area west of Sedan & left it badly prepared & exhausted when Guderians corps broke out. Its initial position was not perfect, but at least the 53rd would have been well entrenched when the Germans came.


As for the rest of the French armed forces, they weren't bad at all - pretty well equipped for what they had to do, although there was a fair bit of defeatism particularly in the AdA. That's mostly a legacy of the interwar turf fights with the Army.

If you read through the personal accounts of the common German soldiers & junior officers there is a strong indication they were nervous about the oncoming battle, & that a serious set back at the start would have created morale problems. Post battle morale soared, "it all seemed so easy." as one soldier put it. But, where French resistance bit back hard one sees indicators all was not as Gobbels propaganda described it.


[*]Better training for and more reliance on the more junior officers. This one is a complete political minefield - the professional officer corps advocated by De Gaulle is just impossible, but longer annual training (say officers spend an extra couple of weeks per year doing staff training and TEWTs?) might be possible.
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That could not have hurt anything. The German officers spent as much or more time at map exercises and wargames as any army, & the French were ethusiastic as anyone for that sort of training. More weeks or training each year for the officers & senior NCO would have paid off, even if it meant further reducing initial training for conscripted privates and Series B reserve units.
 
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