How the fuck did France fumble this?
>>18566524It wasn't that France was especially incompetent, but the incredible genius of the German tactics. The blitzkrieg was all new warfare in terms of aggression and mechanized power output. They broke through the main defensive line and encircled the French, see on this map...The 2-pronged assault effectively cut them off from allies and squeezed the French into a shrinking territory until they were defeated. If they had not let the germans get through the line with their tanks, or reacted sooner to retreat and await reinforcements, maybe they could have lasted a while longer, but this wasn't possible at the time in real history because France did not believe in radios for military communication, and still used runners who would deliver messages in-person... Pigeons and horse carriages were not quick enough to warn the rest of France about the German blizkrieg
European countries had never faced tactics like this, that's why the initial German advance was so dramatically successful.
>>18566543>to await reinforcementswhere could they be reinforced from? hmm?
>>18566524>hide behind your defensive line like in WWI>too poor to build that defensive line from the channel to the medIt's in Starcraft being completely dependent on bunkers and missile turrets only to get beat by your enemy running past them and into the squishy part of your base.
>>18566543>It wasn't that France was especially incompetentOh no, they were, these things are not mutually exclusive. Their primary industrial zone was up against the German border, it was protected by the ML and AAA every km but it was still literally on the border. Their tanks were old with outdated comms as well as doctrine, undermanned crews with old training. Their command was no better, lacking real aggression and expecting a repeat of a war from 20 years ago. And to top it off, and everyone forgets this; every single one of their soldiers and people were being asked to put their necks on the line....For Poland. In hindsight, the tradeoff is AMAZING. If France goes all in we can prevent tens upon tens of millions of casualties. And It would only cost *maybe* 1mil French and almost as many Germans, half as many English possibly. But at the time? "Germans (not nazis, GERMANS) are being mean to some of their minorities and they invaded Poland which is like, 20 years old. and we're not even declaring war on the Bolshevicks who also invaded Poland...Right. So my son/brother/husband/father/cousin/uncle is going into the trenches....For fucking Poland? WHY exactly??" And it's not like they're Englishmen or Americans that are content fighting both world wars everywhere but in their own country. The fighting, all of it, would have been happenign in their own backyards. In reality it would have prevented immense damage and suffering. But in their eyes the motivation was not there. And their performance, dedication and determination suffered accordingly.
>>18566557>too poorIt wasn't just the cost. At the end of the day making defenses that are more than adequate to repel an enemy force is not actually that hard or costly. They spent over 4 years improving that very same skill 20 years before. And they got very good at it. The Maginot Line was where it was for two reasons, It protected the industrial heart of France and it signaled to its allies that France would not hide behind her defenses as they were overwhelmed by mass human waves of German infantry, as the hun are wont to do.
>>18566524The French didnt have trench guns to effectively deal with slightly underground Germans, like you think its whatever until you have to get across a trench and 5 German bayonets impale your legs from belowThey even complained that the weapons were unfair and inhumane when the US and UK started using them to mow down people in trenches
>>18566607i wish i had a trench gun
>>18566524They were planning to fight world war 1 again. They dug elaborate trenches and fortresses up and down the German border. They stockpiled ammunition and shells and were ready to hold a defensive line and bleed the advancing German army dry the way they had done in WW1. And the Germans used light tanks, motorbikes, horses and meth to just run right over it. Turns out a defensive line doesn't count for much if you choose not to attack it and send your army around it.
>>18566611The idea that the Ardennes was undefended is a misconception, Its defenses were just lighter and lacked the massive, heavily fortified concrete bunkers of the main Maginot Line. The Ardennes sector still had a network of lighter concrete blockhouses, machine-gun pillboxes, barbed wire, and anti-tank obstacles at key crossroads and river crossings and second tier troops manning it. These were the French Ninth and Second Armies, reserve divisions of older family men with less training and outdated equipment and light cavalry units intended to delay, not stop, an advance. And just across the border, the Belgian army had an elite light infantry unit called the Chasseurs Ardennais, that would destroy infrastructure in the face of advancing enemies.When the German army launched its invasion in May 1940 (Case Yellow), the light defenses actually performed their initial job—Belgian and French border units blew up bridges and engaged in brief, fierce firefights that caused massive, miles-long traffic jams on the German side.The French strategy failed because the Germans moved far faster than the French ever calculated. Utilizing highly coordinated air support (Luftwaffe) to act as flying artillery, German engineers bridged rivers in hours rather than days. By the time the French High Command realized this wasn't a minor diversion but the main German assault, the elite Panzer divisions had already punched through the light defenses at Sedan, outflanking the main Allied armies, cutting them off from reinforcement and directly threatening the base of French war manufacturing.
>>18566607>>18566610If the USA entered the Central Powers in 1917, I'm sure the Yanks would have loved the backsaw bayonet and the Krauts would have quickly adapted the Auto-5 shotgun for their stormtroopers.
>>185665241815 is the best year.
>France 1938>allied with the USSR???
>>18566524France trusted the eternal Anglo too much, the eternal Anglo wanted to appease Hitler, which ended up giving him all of French allies on the silver plate The rest is a history, France become politically isolated in 1940, and got crushed by a country of twice their size, industry and population
>>18567020Anglo-Germanics are the source of all evil in the world
>>18566524france was only a superior power on paper, internally they were a mess and nobody wanted to go through another ww1 style slugfest like last time
>>18566524a horrid combination of France being a massive political shitshow (even by french standards) and Frances military pretty much being out of touch and lacking any initiative which pretty much allowed Germany to easily sucker punch them
>>18567272French officers failure to take initiative, and even more mystifying, refusal to use radios ment they handed a victory to the Germans. The French refusal to attack, while their allies the poles were holding the Germans for a month also shows lack of elan
>>18567277in all fairness for the poland part, France pretty much had no intel on how much of the German army was in poland by that point which when combined with the fact France wasn't really ready for a fight it was a logical decision to not risk it with the info and situation they were in, sure in hindsight it might have been worth it to bum rush them but they didn't have that plus we can't even say for certain it would have worked
>>18567279I bet "in hindsight" the poles regret not giving up the daznig corridor after being used as a bullet magnet while thinking the French were going to open a second front. It was betrayal
>>18566543Not to mention that Germany had their front line on meth
>>18567277>The French refusal to attack, while their allies the poles were holding the Germans for a month also shows lack of elanThis is a meme. They did attack, they were just repulsed. Unless your idea of attack is to just send suicide charges until Germany's defense broke for lil ol Poland which was never gonna happen.
>>18566524France had it's spirit and body subverted by Communists, who hated their own country so much that they preferred German occupation to it. That doesn't mean French Communists worked together with the Germans. It just means that Communists always subvert their own host nation like a parasite and weaken it. In that sense Communism is similar to a disease.
by 1938 both Romania and Yugoslavia had given up on French hegemony.Romania became pro-German after they occupied The RhinelandYugoslavia became pro-German after Munich
I have been told that if people had listened to De Gaulle the Battle of France may have gone very differently. My instinct is they'd probably still lose but maybe not quite so quickly-any insight from WW2 anons?
>>18568085France was to weak to defeat Germany without Russia help, just like in WW1. If they were more competent it could buy them few more weeks max
France should have launched a campaign against Germany the second Versailles was violated
>>18568105>>18568287It is indeed interesting to consider historical turning points and their potential alternative outcomes. Many factors contributed to the complex events that led to the Second World War. Imagining different scenarios allows for a deeper understanding of the forces at play during that era. The consequences of such global conflicts are always profound and far-reaching. Reflecting on these historical moments encourages thoughtful consideration of the past. Damn frogs...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-Power_Pact
>>18566524This map doesn't represent the reality of the european situation at all at the start of WW2. Romania and Yugoslavia (more divided than Romania but still) left to the german side after they violated Versailles and the french didn't do anything about it (last time they did, their "allies" sided against then and they were condened worldwide) and the Soviet Union was a massive german ally troughout the first part of the war (1939-1940) supllyng then with resources and in the case of the invasion of Poland, even manpower necesary to win faster.
>>18568287agreed, every major country sitting around while Germany mobilized hardcore in central europe because they felt pity for Germany was nuts
>>18568401>they felt pityIt wasnt pity, it was ennui
Well there certainly were many opinions on this question by the people who were there, because as you note even the Germans didn't expect it. I once read a book called "Strange Defeat", written by Marc Bloch in 1940 that had some interesting insights on this. He was a history professor and Captain in the French army during ww2, who later fought in the resistance and was killed by the gestapo.Among other things he talks about cripplingly low morale because French democracy was failing. You had people on the right looking at Italy openly calling for fascism in France, and people on the left calling for a dictatorship of the proletariat, with moderates shrinking. It was increasingly feared this would lead to civil war, and France being conquered by Germany was seen by some as a blessing in disguise because it answered the question of "what will France's future be" in a way that avoided open civil war. France will be fascist, done and done. In 1940 he felt many French soldiers hated each other more than the Germans, so didn't see any point fighting to preserve a failing system.If you read others though, they had different assessments. Andre Beaufre was a staff officer to a general in the high command. In his book 1940: the fall of France (this pic is a page from it) he blames an outdated and inferior system of getting orders from the front, and the civilian leadership shuffling the high command at the absolute worst moment, which caused a planned attempt to breakout the troops trapped in Belgium to be cancelled by the new cnc who wanted to first evaluate the situation. 3 days later he ordered essentially the same attack on a now stronger German line, which failed.If you read de Gaulle he blamed it on an outdated strategic mindset that downplayed maneuver. He had been advocating for major reforms of the French army to be more like Germany's, yet was rebuffed by the high command. To him France's failure was in some ways a personal vindication.
>>18566557>too poor to build that defensive line from the channel to the medThe issue was the Belgians. The original plan for the Maginot Line was to cover the entire western border of France but this meant the Belgians would be essentially thrown to the German wolves in the event of a war, so they cried and said they'd literally ally with the Germans if that happened.France was forced to minimize the Maginot Line along the Belgian border and promise to move into Belgium to defend them, which allowed the Germans to carry out a left hook and get behind the French (and British) forces.
>>18566524The French Republic and its addiction to failure. When Germany hit it with everything it got, no surprise it folded. Total shitshow political system bleeds into everything else, even to this day with its empowered executive.
>>18567365The communists were actively sabotaging the entire war effort, since Stalin asked them to agitate against it in line with the Molotov Ribbentrop pact goals. The French socialists even coined the phrase “Why die for Danzig.” The entire farce is why the French resistance was far more disorganized than it should have been, since its most active ideological participants only started doing so upon Soviet orders in 1941.
>>18567293>>18567279Poles started the war.http://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxULD-70y8HKBIwMsvYe__JF9gGE5mheHf
>>18568578Why not compromise and extend the line through Belgium
>>18566974>>18568305>Adolf Hitler justified the remilitarisation of the Rhineland by the ratification of the Franco-Soviet Pact by the French Parliament and claimed that he felt threatened by it. In the UK parliament, the former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George who was sympathetic to Germany stated that "if Herr Hitler had allowed that to go without protecting his country he would have been a traitor to the Fatherland".
