How does France defeat the German Attack in 1940

Hmmm.

Can you apply a lesson learned, here, about luck? That lucky German NCO at the Meuse? Maybe he knew how to time his rushes and use cover well. The Germans losing Schlieffen 2.0 and the Berlin maniac deciding to use the Mannstein plan on a whim? It develops that the maniac tended to distrust "sound" advice and often used his "corporal's intuition". Professionals, the good ones, usually prepare well for what they expect their opposites to do. What was the Dyle plan but a designed head-on meeting engagement to disrupt Schlieffen 2.0? How was anyone supposed to know that the Germans would postpone two months so they could use the Mannstein stacked echelon scheme? German logisticians were tearing their hair out because they could not for Murphy figure out how to push gas and bullets forward in the amounts they thought a breaching operation would need. They were right on paper but the breech operation went much faster than expected. I've written this twice, but if the Germans get hung up around Stonne for 96 hours, they are in a world of hurt. If they lose the bridges in the Cologne, Mainz, Trier triangle they are in a world of hurt. If their headhunters don't unsnarl the Ardennes traffic jams they are in a world of hurt. This is not luck. This is planning and execution. If the French are just as fast or can apply kinetics to the criticals I mentioned, we would be writing about how unlucky the Germans were and boy was Mannstein an idiot for trying to plan a move through the Ardennes.

Luck can be "seen" in the exploitation of a found circumstance, rather than; "boy, the Germans sure had all these happy accidents". Being an actor in the presence of opportunity is not uniquely German nor can the French soldiers be blamed for being unlucky, either. The opportunities must be created and they must be pushed to the point of fanaticism. If they are not being generated, the difficult question must be asked "why not?" and the fixes must be applied once an answer is found. From later actions, I know the French found their answers and the Germans were the ones cursing "all that French Luck". ( General Alphonse Juin: a little thing called Operation Diadem, which Alexander "borrowed" is an example of "French luck".). So I guess the lesson learned is: create the opportunity, exploit the results and let the other side become demoralized, because of "your luck". When you can apply that lesson learned, wonderful things "happen".
 
Consider the strange case of the Billottes, father and son - the father, Gaston, died at the worst possible moment, May 23 1940 in a stupid car accident. The son, Pierre, fought bravely at a much lower echelon - including at Stonne !

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaston_Billotte

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Billotte

The father started out as a French marine? Lots of colonial service including that nasty Rif War. Then his speeding car plows into a truck on 23 May 1940? I have witnessed a few of these accidents. Usually some one human was not paying attention to what is going on, and the collision can be traced to his error. Who hit whom? Who was the driver?

Now the son, Pierre, puzzles me. Of course he escapes from the Germans which is what I would expect, makes his way to Russia and from there to the UK where he joins de Gaulle. He makes his mark with the Free French so that when the French army returns to France he becomes one of Leclerc's battle group (task force in the parlance of the day) commanders. Then he falls out with Leclerc after being instrumental in the Liberation of Paris. He turns around and creates his own division (10th Infantry) from the French Forces of the Interior and operates with distinction through the rest of the war. After the war he objects to the French government of the day being "too Atlantic" and then turns around and is a co-founder of a French society to bring the Americans into a pan Atlantic community? He has some offices in various administrations, usually covering French exterior departments. I'm not sure what he was about with the Algeria crisis. Was he a Gaullist or was he reefing into the wind as we would say when a politician is tacking one way or the other depending on public opinion?

Very curious individual.
 
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