In 1940, France had by most measures the most powerful military in the world.
More combat divisions, more (and by some standards better) tanks, more aircraft than its competition, including the Germans.
And yet when the German invasion came in 1940, the country collapsed in six weeks.
American conservative wags, often almost badly taught enough in history to pass as Democrats, chuckle and call them “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”. It’s wrong; the French at their best fought fiercely; the German after-action reports in the advance on Dunkirk gave them high marks for courage and skill.
American pseudo-intellectuals blame a “Maginot Mentality”, believing the French idea was to hide behind a line of fortifications that they didn’t yet know had been made obsolete by the Stuka and the Panzerkampfwagen. This, too, is myopic; the Maginot Line was built as a reaction to France’s horrific losses in World War I. The theory was, a line of elaborate fortifications backed by an artillery arm that had emerged from World War I as the best in the world, could enable a relatively small force of middle-aged reservists to hold most of the French frontier, including defending the French industrial heartland that’d been ravaged in 1914-1918, while the younger troops formed a mobile army that in theory had not much less progressive a doctrine than the Germans.
On paper, France should have been able to repel a German attack. Oh, there were problems; the French Army preferred the security of telephones and couriers to the flexibility of radio. Most French tanks had tiny crews – 2-3 men – featuring turrets where one man had a workload that German, British and American tank designer gave to two and eventually three men. There were problems.
But the biggest problem? France was physically and demographically exhausted. With catastrophic casualties among the generation generation that came of age during World War I, the birth rate had crashed. France staffed that large army by drafting nearly everyone and keeping them in the reserves for a long, long time. And yet the baby bust among men in their twenties was a major problem.
Perhaps worse? France was morally exhausted. The war had sapped the nation’s institutions, enervated its culture, left it roiling in two decades of internal political bloodletting – call it cultural depression, maybe the beginnings of slow cultural suicide.
That was exacerbated by near civil-war between Communists and the Right – strife that led much of France to put poxes on both houses (much as Germans did in 1933, when a strongman came along to make politics just go away and let them get along with their lives).
When the Germans attacked in June, 1940, many French soldiers fought ferociously. Not a single German soldier leaked through the Maginot line – only one small outpost fell. The few French tanks using modern doctrine held the Germans to a draw in head-to-head combat.
But the German breakthrough at Sedan, which hinged on many French weaknesses (couriers getting lost, telephone lines breaking) led dizzyingly rapidly to the fall of a France that was, behind the front lines, just not in the mood to fight for itself.
Viewed materialistically, France had everything it needed to resist Germany.
Morally, it collapsed so fast it still shocks the world.
It took four years of occupation, a national reckoning, and a couple of decades of the Francocentric influence of Charles De Gaulle to right the French cultural ship, at least as close to “righted” as France ever gets.
The parallels with America today are a little sobering.
More next week.
You can’t move an army through the Ardennes forest.
Germany: hold my beer.
There are a few missing aspects in the above that are interesting but probably not all that important. Logistics are always the trump cards and you mentioned all three: physical, demographic, and moral exhaustion. Well put.
But….but….but… what about climate change?!!!!
Let’s not forget what won the war: the incredible industrial output of our war factories. Do we still have any or does China have them all.
Wilson had to trick America into World War I, and Roosevelt had to trick us into WW II. There was no huge public demand for war in Europe, before that.
The interesting thing is how the notion that American government should put the interests of American citizens ahead of the interests of the rest of the world, has changed from obvious to hateful.
There are 187 countries in the world. If not America First, then where? America Second? America Twenty-Third? America One Hundred and Ninth?
Eight days ago the wealthy tech entrepreneur Bob Lee was stabbed to death on the streets of San Francisco, in a an area considered relatively safe. Plenty of video after the assault of him trying to find help, but apparently nothing regarding the assault itself. Was it death by misadventure for a guy who’d already moved his home and business from SF because of deteriorating conditions, or was he assaulted by an unhoused symbol of that deterioration?
Following such a high-profile killing you’d think there’d be nonstop coverage abut the quest to find out what happened and who was responsible, but now it’s soporific crickets out there. Officials aren’t saying anything, and no one’s asking questions. Strange, isn’t it? Perhaps both Lee and the Narrative were gutted.
Bob Lee was murdered right in the heart of Nancy Piglosi’s shithole district.
All good Mitch, but in the end Germany just out maneuvered France and the Brits.
Out generaled them.
Then those debilities you reference kicked in.
Old, OLD French generals too.
“There was no huge public demand for war in Europe, before that.”
WWI & WWII destroyed the cream of the European gene pool, and destroyed the industrial dynamo of Europe in the Rhine Valley.
No more brother wars.
“Mpls Crime Watch” posts a running account of controlled demolition in Minnesota. It’s absolutely incredible.
What stands out for me is the widespread possession, and use of fully automatic weapons. The joggers up there are no longer satisfied with Glocks or AR’s unless they’re fitted with an extended magazine and a giggle switch.
There’s a clip from last night, that documented dozens of full auto gunshots in North Mpls. Someone is fabricating and installing auto sears up there, and it’s not the 75 IQ joggers.
The ATF and FBI should be tracking this shit down, but they’re too busy investigating elderly White Supremacists™️ and angry soccer moms at school board meetings.
21 million sq ft of empty office space in downtown Minneapolis & that number is only getting bigger.
That’s almost a square mile of empty office space.
Frey is hinting at a plan to convert empty office space to living space.
Good luck with that.
This is a death spiral. All of Minneapolis’ plans for “sustainability” have come to nothing. They planned for global warming over decades, not ill-considered pandemic restrictions on business & society & the inevitable riots that followed.
What kinlaw noted. More or less, the French ignored the likelihood that the Germans would dust off the Schlieffen Plan and re-use it. Which the Germans did, and the French advantages in materiel and armor became moot as massed armor overwhelmed the portion of French armor that actually was there.
Mapped over to our country, about 50 years back, Americans started learning the hard way that happened when you let a lot of “little” crimes slide, and when you undercharge and under-prosecute the big crimes.
More or less, we are ignoring the possibility that the left would re-use their Schlieffen Plan. Oopsie. Just discussed this with my daughter this morning.
Two more large companies are abandoning Minneapolis, Portico Financial is moving to Edina and CBRE is moving to Bloomington. When a large commercial real estate broker abandons a city, it tells a pretty grim story about that city.
For Minneapolis to even start making a comeback, it would have to put a lot of people in jail.
Who in the Minneapolis or HennCo judicial systems are willing to do that? There is no political support for that, not from the judges, not from the county attorney, not from the state. Ellison won re-election by condemning the idea that the AG would take cases away from criminal friendly county attorneys.
Here is an example of a corrupt institution, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
Look at this article:
“Proposal aims to keep better track of hate crimes, bias incidents in Minnesota: Bill at Capitol would train police, empower community organizations to help collect data.”
Hate crimes are crimes. There is no commonly accepted definition of a “bias incident.” The reporter uses the terms interchangeably throughout the story. The idea that such data would be compiled by “trusted community groups” is absurd. Who decides which community groups are to be trusted? How are they audited for trust?
If you were to think that this was propaganda, you would be correct. The article’s author is not paid by the Strib. Her salary is paid by two left wing organizations, the Minneapolis Foundation and Report for America.
https://www.startribune.com/legislature-track-underreported-hate-crimes-bias-incidents-minnesota-minneapolis/600266275/?refresh=true
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“Eight days ago the wealthy tech entrepreneur Bob Lee was stabbed to death on the streets of San Francisco, in a an area considered relatively safe.”
NW explains that being wrong actually shows how right he was. Good cautionary tale about judgment-rushing, which is a temptation to all of us.