WWII Question: Could the French government have fought on?

[slayyort]

It wasn't so much cowardly as extremely inefficient. The High command was slow to take in information, slow to make decisions and slow in implementing them. And the ability of the Germans to rapidly move was a nasty shock. After they initially got over that things went a bit more smoothly, albiet too late. But to me there was no reason at all for the French government to give up when it did. Sacking generals and replacing the chief of the army in the middle of a conflict probable didn't help but to be fair the current chief wasn't exactly living up to the standard.

Had the allies moved up their air forces in strength they could have made life much harder for the Luftwaffe which was having a serious impact on allied armor movements. Had the allies practiced better communication they could made better progress with counter attacks against the Germans. Many many little things that could have added up to major dissappointment for the Germans.

But as far as the topic is concerned. Could the french government have fought on? Yes. Would they have? With the inner turmoil in the government and the French high command in the state it was. No. Not without a serious overhaul anyways.

Sidewinder - You're right about them having to wait on the French, personally I'd have pulled my forces back as well. I'd be really interested in seeing how a French officer coup would have done. The problem is which officer would have been put in charge. I don't know how the french citizens would have responded but given the German attack I think they would have supported it until the war ended.

Sea Skimmer - Never heard about the Lancastria incident before. Dang. Agreed on the waste of forces after Dunkirk, but as you said, politics demanded it. The French high command was still far behind in strategic planning. The attempt to meet the Germans in Belgium was a solid plan but the lack of forces on the Meuse was a serious oversight that the British pointed out and the French ignored. However with the French leading the coalition... yeah it'd be hard to sway them that it was wrong. And the Plan still met their standards, just some issues that led to disaster.

[Thanas]

It wasn't so much cowardly as extremely inefficient. The High command was slow to take in information, slow to make decisions and slow in implementing them. And the ability of the Germans to rapidly move was a nasty shock. After they initially got over that things went a bit more smoothly, albiet too late. But to me there was no reason at all for the French government to give up when it did.

If you are unable to offer serious resistance then you have a responsibility to protect the lives of your own citizen. That is a principle of warfare that has been in ages ever since the Pelepponesian war and most certainly even earlier.

Where is the effective resistance you speak of?

But as far as the topic is concerned. Could the french government have fought on? Yes. Would they have? With the inner turmoil in the government and the French high command in the state it was.

How could they have fought on? With what at what position? And how could it possibly have mattered?

[slayyort]

The French government had already given up by 15 May. They quit after five days. There was no excuse for that. The Germans hadn't reached the channel yet, the 1st and 9th Army hadn't been cut off yet. The Germans were advancing yes, but the situation was far from lost. The bulk of their Air Force hadn't been committed to the fight, and French armor had proven a match for the Panzers. I can understand if they completely gave up by early-mid June. When the Germans were pushing through French territory and the bulk of their army had been pushed back. But they didn't. They gave up early and waited it out like a self fulfilling prophecy.

Mid June: You're right, they didn't have anything left. The Maginot line was about to be flanked. The front line was near Paris and it was clear that they couldn't win. I may not agree with it, but for the sake of their population they did need to end it.

Early June: Hard to say they could have turned it around completely. The Luftwaffe (Air defense troops) were devastating the Allies planes, even though the Luftwaffe (fighters) were just coping with the allies. The Germans soundly had the allies there. The luftwaffe was amazing at ground air support.

Mid May: It is completely within reason that the allies could have stalled out the Germans, or made them pay a lot worse for the groudn they took. The Belgian people probably wouldn't have enjoyed the amount of fighting in their territory, but that's the nature of the beast.

Personally the best course of action I believe they could have taken was follow through with the Saar Offensive in September 39.

[Sea Skimmer]

I do like this idea that you think French gave up too easily from bad leadership, and yet you also think it was a bad idea to switch commanders. I hope you can see the retarded contradiction in this. It really makes you hard to take seriously but I'll try.

A military coup is stupid. The guy who wanted to fight on the hardest was already prime minister by late May, Paul Reynaud. Reynaud was replaced by Marshal Pétain who then led the nation into surrender. A low ranking general like de Gaulle was in no position to seize power, and in any event, already in Reynaud’s cabinet. Yeah French leadership had all kinds of problems, the problem is once the Germans got past the Meuse one is stuck with a situation of using single divisions, a weak corps at best, to deflect an attack launched by the worlds first actual tank army. Even vigorous counterattacks, or people like Rommel simply obeying Hitlers orders to stop, probuabbly couldn’t have stopped the allied line from being split. The plan was too flawed from the get go placing all the allies mobile troops on the far left.

The idea that you think even a remote chance existed in June 1940, when about 45 French and British divisions were facing 140 German ones, each of which is largely superior in size and firepower, suggest you are also lacking more then a few clues about this topic.

A Saar offensive would have sure beat collapsing in 1940, but it would have only gone ahead with tremendous risks as the majority of the available forces were only partly trained and unevenly equipped. Even in May 1940 only 28 front line French infantry divisions existed, with few at truly full strength in key weapons like anti tank guns, every other one was a reserve unit or a static fortress division. This is worth keeping in mind whenever looking at the battle of France. Many German divisions were also reserve types with older men, much older weapons, but not to the same proportion.

The French meanwhile were painfully aware of how badly the battle of the frontiers had gone in 1914, nearly lost the damn war besides the human toll, and with Poland clearly collapsing more rapidly then any relief an attack could bring, in no small part because of its own poor strategic decisions, it just didn’t make sense to them to risk a massive defeat attempting the same thing. They just did not have the manpower to loose in an early battle and then recover from as they had done in WW1. A big defeat would have meant certainly succumbing to an eventual German counter offensive. The Rhine being such a large barrier was a particular problem, tends to limit how well a 1939 French offensive really could have been.

As for air power, what do you mean move up? The allies fought rather hard in the air and could reach the areas they needed to reach and could reach in useful strength. Are you talking about sending more planes into Belgium to operate from completely unprepared fields or something like that?

The fundamental problem was they were not only outnumbered, but greatly outnumbered in modern fighters, while possessing few modern bombers and unimpressive ground defenses. Contrary to what is often claimed, relatively few planes were lost in the initial Luftwaffe raids, but the constant heavy fighting quickly wore them down as is only to be expected, even a 5% loss rate compounds really quickly if you fly two to four missions a day, every day. Most of this you can blame on the 1936 decision to nationalize the French aircraft industry, and the delay in British rearmament compared to full scale Nazi mobilization from 1934 onward. If anything the best thing for the allies in the air might well have been to base everything deeply inside France so it could be better protected and concentrated as a reserve. Numerous war emergency programs were going ahead that would have altered the balance of air power rapidly, but then this is why the allies went along with the phony war so long anyway.

As it was the allies had no air reserves save the fighters held back in Britain for homeland defense, just as they had few other reserves. Deploying every RAF fighter to France prior to the outbreak of the battle might have made a big difference, the problem is nobody would ever accept that and the Germans had in fact bombed Britain a good number of times prior to May 1940. Mainly in the north targeting naval bases, but the raids were more then enough to prove the threat, and had been limited mainly by the stiff reception they got.

[Spoonist]

The only way any french could have fought on was as similar to the british suggestion of a full union as given 16 June.
ie to evacuate France and place the french troops under semi-british command.
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2 ... 1116189607
That would have cost the french dearly, both in loss of life and resources, but also in what that would then force the germans to do to the french.

So that is not feasable in any sense and mostly a smokescreen by the british to try to get the french to at least surrender their fleet to the royal navy. (Instead they "had to" bomb a large part of it).

[LaCroix]

The only way any french could have fought on was as similar to the british suggestion of a full union as given 16 June.
ie to evacuate France and place the french troops under semi-british command.
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2 ... 1116189607
That would have cost the french dearly, both in loss of life and resources, but also in what that would then force the germans to do to the french.

So that is not feasable in any sense and mostly a smokescreen by the british to try to get the french to at least surrender their fleet to the royal navy. (Instead they "had to" bomb a large part of it).

WTF did I just read?

The British offered a personal union to France in order to not getting it annexed by Germany? Seriously, no wonder the French simply surrendered. In that case, they at least had a chance to be freed by someone who defeated the Germans. If they'd agreed to that contract, they'd been Britain's pet dog for all eternity...

[Sidewinder]

The only way any french could have fought on was as similar to the british suggestion of a full union as given 16 June,
i.e., to evacuate France and place the french troops under semi-british command.

So the British would get French cannon fodder to defend British territories (including its colonies)- so French blood would be shed for Britain, while the British themselves sat back and drank their tea- while France and its territories would be left to rot?

At least, that's what I would think, if I was a French citizen in 1940.

[Spoonist]

Summary from Wiki since the good sources are behind pay walls:

British refusal to allow France to seek a separate peace

By 16 June, Spears and Sir Ronald Campbell were sure that once the French had asked for an armistice they would never fight again. With regard to the French Empire and the fleet, there was a possibility that if German armistice terms were too harsh, the Empire might rebel against them, even if metropolitan France succumbed. It did not occur to them that Hitler would split France into two zones thus dividing it against itself. Early the same morning, Reynaud, nervously exhausted and depressed, asked again for France to be relieved of its undertaking not to make a separate peace. The British took a hard line, pointing out that the solemn undertaking had been drawn up to meet the existing contingency; in any case, France [with its overseas possessions and fleet] was still in a position to carry on. While these top-level discussions were being held, Helène de Portes, Reynaud's mistress repeatedly entered the room, much to the irritation of Spears and the Ambassador. Spears felt that her pernicious influence had done Reynaud great harm.[77][78]

British acceptance of armistice dependent on fate of French fleet

Shortly before lunch a telegram arrived from London agreeing that France could seek armistice terms provided that the French fleet was sailed forthwith for British harbours pending negotiations. Spears and the Ambassador felt this would be taken as an insult by the French Navy and an indication of distrust. Reynaud received the news with derision – if Britain wanted France to continue the war from North Africa, how could they ask her fleet to go to British harbours? He had spoken by telephone with Churchill and asked Spears to arrange a meeting with the British Prime Minister, at sea somewhere off Brittany. The meeting, however, never took place as he preferred to go in a French warship and this never materialised. As the day wore on, Spears became more aware of defeatism – but the hard-liners tended to be socialists. His British uniform struck a false note and people avoided him.[79]

French reject Franco-British Union

On the afternoon of 16 June, Spears and the Ambassador met Reynaud to convey a message from London – it would be in the interest of both countries for the French fleet to be moved to British ports; it was assumed that every effort would be made to transfer the air force to North Africa or to Britain; Polish, Belgian and Czech troops in France should be sent to North Africa. While they were arguing with increasing acrimony about the fleet, a call came through from de Gaulle, who was in London. The British proposition was nothing less than a Declaration of Union – 'France and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations, but one Franco-British Union. Every citizen of France will enjoy immediate citizenship of Great Britain; every British subject will become a citizen of France.' Spears became 'transfixed with amazement'; Reynaud was exulted. When the news got out, hard-liners such as Georges Mandel were pleased and relieved. The proposal would be put before the French cabinet. Spears was optimistic that it would be accepted for how could it be that of the countries fighting Germany, France should be the only one to give up the struggle, when she possessed an Empire second only to our own and a fleet whole and entire, the strongest after ours in Europe'. Yet he joked that the only common denominator of an Anglo-French Parliament would be 'an abysmal ignorance of each other's language'! [80]

While the cabinet meeting was taking place, Spears and the Ambassador heard that Churchill, Clement Attlee, Sir Archibald Sinclair, the three Chiefs of Staff and others would arrive off Brittany in a warship the next day at noon for talks with the French. However, the French cabinet rejected the offer of union; Reynaud would be resigning. One minister had commented that the proposal would make France into a British Dominion. Spears, on the other hand, felt the rejection 'was like stabbing a friend bent over you in grief and affection'. Churchill and his delegation were already in the train at Waterloo station, when news of the rejection came through. He returned to Downing Street 'with a heavy heart'.[81]

[Thanas]

That summary sounds as if it came right out of a british propaganda piece.

[slayyort]

As for air power, what do you mean move up? The allies fought rather hard in the air and could reach the areas they needed to reach and could reach in useful strength. Are you talking about sending more planes into Belgium to operate from completely unprepared fields or something like that?

I'm not saying they didn't try in the air, the casualties speak for themselves in that regard, and you're right, they did have the range they needed to get to the front and back from their current air bases. The problem with that is one of the basic tenets of air combat. A plane stationed closer to the front will have a faster time to target and return than a plane stationed twice that distance. If they didn't move that fast to get the plane back up in the air after it returned from a mission then there's even more time added between sorties. Then you have to add in their aircrafts deficienceis in their assigned role. Moving their aircraft closer to the front (maybe not belgium but at least closer to the border) wouldn't have made up for their aircrafts issues, but it would give them more time in the air against the Germans.

I know I'll get pounced for it too so I'll add this. The aircraft facilities needed for this move were likely not in place. The crews probably wouldn't have been able to move any quicker without having a negative effect on the air campaign. And the maintenance needs would have likely been way more harmful to them. It's not something that should not and could not be impletemented mid campaign. But it definitely could have been thought out well before the war started.

I do like this idea that you think French gave up too easily from bad leadership, and yet you also think it was a bad idea to switch commanders. I hope you can see the retarded contradiction in this. It really makes you hard to take seriously but I'll try.

I agree I've been contradicting myself a bit with some of my comments. Hopefully this clarifies it a little. I support the idea of replacing an incompetent officer with one that is capable of performing the task. I do not support the idea of sacking officers because of percieved misloyalty. I'm not referring to the replacement of Gamelin with Weygand. I'm referring to Gamelin sacking many of his front line commanders.

[Sea Skimmer]

I know I'll get pounced for it too so I'll add this. The aircraft facilities needed for this move were likely not in place. The crews probably wouldn't have been able to move any quicker without having a negative effect on the air campaign. And the maintenance needs would have likely been way more harmful to them. It's not something that should not and could not be impletemented mid campaign. But it definitely could have been thought out well before the war started.

Looks like already answered you own question, then drew a different conclusion. Pilots become exhausted and the planes need maintenance before you run out of hours in the day, especially if were talking about more then a few days burst of operations as even the short lived Battle for France involved. Meanwhile forward bases get bombed and strafed more often and longer, and may need to move rapidly to avoid being overrun or coming under artillery fire, as well as suffering more from disruptions in communications, which all make it much harder to get that rest and maintenance done. Moving forward is not an advantage when it will just leads to higher losses and lower serviceability which compound each other in the face of substantially superior enemy numbers. Since the French also had a desperate shortage of anti aircraft guns it would be all the worse.

I agree I've been contradicting myself a bit with some of my comments. Hopefully this clarifies it a little. I support the idea of replacing an incompetent officer with one that is capable of performing the task. I do not support the idea of sacking officers because of percieved misloyalty. I'm not referring to the replacement of Gamelin with Weygand. I'm referring to Gamelin sacking many of his front line commanders.

Many of his front line commanders were in fact disobeying his orders, so it is not surprising that some were fired. A coupe guys he didn't fire probably should have been on this basis. The whole problem was Gamelin expected his commanders to follow his orders, but didn't issue many orders, nor did he maintain any sort of radio communications to allow rapid changes of plan. Really dumb. End result is field commanders start doing whatever they want, and then Gamelin didn't and couldn't act quickly to countermand it. But you can't expect a commander that high up to just accept that either. He either needed his commanders to do what he wants, or he needed to be replaced as you cannot expect such an officer to relieve himself. Certainly it was all a problem, but the firings made a certain amount of sense in context.

Gamelin didn't even like to make decisions quickly, or at all was the real issue, its doubtful he was really acting that rashly even in his firings. Guy was hardly capable of it. Plus the French did just have a history of more or less doing the same thing in WW1and it had often been an improvement. Personally I think I prefer rapid turnover in the officer corps to the other extreme, which was Haig being judged impossible to fire out of feared disruption/moral issues.

[slayyort]

The list of issues they had is like looking at a chore list from hell O.o

So far broken that it's easer to take a hammer to it than a wrench.

[Sea Skimmer]

Pretty much. It does get called the The Great Debacle in some circles for a reason. The allied wartime propaganda effort to explain it, repeated faithfully in Why We Fight Divide and Conquer for everyone's amusement, consisted of claiming that the German invasion consisted of 30 armored divisions and 70 mechanized divisions, and that the allies had few tanks! A big stink took place in 1944 when US newspapers finally published the truth that France and the British had actually had a superior number of tanks. But back then the newspaper industry was willing to hide information like that for the sake of the war effort, and only released it after Overlord had worked as I recall.

You really do need a hammer. Some things could have easily been different, like earlier versions of the Dyle Plan made far more sense by placing the highly mobile French 7th army in the center, instead of on the far left flank to make a futile attempt to link up with the Dutch. Linking up with the Dutch was basically a political move, the planned corridor was narrow and kind of hopeless, plus the Dutch could easily be reached by sea, but France had to prove ect... that they wouldn't abandon everyone like the Poles. But while such changes might have prevent a rapid collapse, they don't solve a lot of other problems that stood a fairly high chance of leading to an allied defeat, like clear inferiority in the air and the horrible command and control problems and so many divisions being fit only for defensive operations and only then against enemy infantry. Switch commanders.. and well we already saw Weygand wasn't very good either (also a staff officer), and he was politically right wing and almost certainly never could have gotten the job otherwise. I don't know of anyone else to suggest who wasn't as de Gaulle was, a fairly low ranking general.

Germany was mobilizing from 1934 onward, while the French and British pursued rearmament at the pace of a major but still a peacetime level of expansion. Only exception to that is the buildup of the Royal Navy, which went as fast as the industry could have gone. France had ineffective industry, and they actually suffered from active sabotage. In one instance someone ruined the rifling on over 200 25mm anti tank gun barrels, one of the reasons why this weapon was in short supply. The French government absurdly was actually actually still willing to export tanks and artillery too, primarily to South America, into early 1940! I can only assume this was because France thought it would help keep certain nations from turning fascist and creating a threat in the allied rear (very big US fear too), but whatever the reason it certainly didn't prove to be a wise idea. On the plus side, they did order ~4,500 aircraft from the US starting in early 1939 when they realized just how screwed up French industry was, but only handfuls had arrived in May 1940, I think the largest number was about 60 DB-7 (later US A-20 Boston) bombers, out of 270 on order. A fair number of those planes proved ended up in RAF and USAAC hands and saw action or training use later. Stuff like that is why what the allies really needed was a successful campaign in Norway to just delay a battle of France. They would have rapidly grown stronger as 1940 progressed. That doesn't solve the problem of awful leadership, but it does just plain make it harder to loose. Germany was already running her industry pretty hard, and it wouldn't be until much later in the war that she'd see really big expansions of her own production in turn. That would only have been worse without occupying France and the low countries and capturing such vast piles of weapons.

[Sidewinder]

France had ineffective industry, and they actually suffered from active sabotage. In one instance someone ruined the rifling on over 200 25mm anti tank gun barrels, one of the reasons why this weapon was in short supply.

I'm assuming you refer to industrial sabotage committed BEFORE the German invasion of 1940. Who committed the sabotage? French Communist activists? Fascist sympathizers?

[Sea Skimmer]

Both sides caused all kinds of problems from 1934 onward as they fought each other and the government nobody liked but communists were seen as the worst, and a serious threat to French security, though this (as in actual commie uprising) had been discounted by 1939. The war industries also suffered a lot from strikes, and lots of work accidents because the revitalized war industries had to hire lots of inexperienced workers and were trying to fire strikers all the time. All of this became much less of a problem after the actual outbreak of war, as the communist saw Stalin's alliance with Hitler as a betrayal and even most fascist didn't want France overrun by force. However the public perception was that the problem was getting worse, which didn't exactly help moral or national unity in the war effort. Low production figures were taken as proof of sabotage ect... which also helped prevent the proper corrective actions to raise production from taking place. Its also made it hard to tell what really was sabotage.

Pretty much everyone in the west suffered from industrial problems in the led into the war, if Germany much less then others, but France was simply in one of the worst positions to afford them. Part of the problem was, people just didn't think Hitler was such a bad guy in his first couple of years in power. France for various reasons had its 1936 government, led by one Leon Blum, actually get elected on the platform of nationalizing all armaments industries so the merchants of death and whatever, where not controlling the arms tap of the world.

The first place they went was the aircraft industry because it also did have a structural problem, it needed consolidation to be at all capable of making planes by the thousands. Instead the disputes over how exactly to nationalize it just kept the industrial problems going as the government, management and workers all had some very different ideas on what should happen. It also effectively strengthened the unity and will of the workers to strike on any topic. The actual level of control the government ended up with wasn’t that good either. Didn’t help that almost all plants were around Paris, and Paris and French politics, boy, not like that ever caused violent problems before. Things get even better because some of the more successful companies were not nationalized, so the workers went on strike endlessly to demand it. A whole level of political nonsense and disunity also existed above this that was just made worse by the government having partial direct control of the war plants. Large scale orders for new planes and plants to make them only began in 1938 as a result. Even one year earlier, as the British began general rearmament in 1937 would have made a real difference.

If the government hadn't done something in 1936, the situation would have been hopeless, but other options existed then the half assed nationalization done, such as the British basically got small aircraft firms to join up with other larger companies making cars and other products that could then provide the basis for large scale production, instead of forcing consolidation. Worked great in WW2, not so good postwar but that was its own set of problems. Even just full on nationalization might have worked better End result is French aircraft industry was a mess and France under armed in the air even though France had outproduced everyone else in WW1, in spite of major chunks of its industry, raw materials and territory being in Germans had the entire time! France had a much bigger air force in 1918 then in the 1940 campaign, though of course 1940 planes weighed a lot more. Still not good.

You also had the issue of fifth columnists come May 1940, which proved almost completely imaginary once the campaign began, but no small amount of resources was consumed guarding against them. At least a few recorded instances exist of the British and French executing Belgian civilians, one can only assume rabid fascist sympathizers who took up arms against them. A few such incidents also took place in WW1. I've never heard of this within France by French citizens, though spies existed, but this didn't stop thousands of random people from being arrested and interrogated for looking funny near military units and key and not so key facilities.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

You also had the issue of fifth columnists come May 1940, which proved almost completely imaginary once the campaign began, but no small amount of resources was consumed guarding against them. At least a few recorded instances exist of the British and French executing Belgian civilians, one can only assume rabid fascist sympathizers who took up arms against them. A few such incidents also took place in WW1. I've never heard of this within France by French citizens, though spies existed, but this didn't stop thousands of random people from being arrested and interrogated for looking funny near military units and key and not so key facilities.

Speaking of that, there was a communist strike in Belgian while the French were deploying forwards which severely held up several French armoured units by a pacifist faction that refused any kind of imperialistic war whatsoever. I've seen various references to it, mostly in French histories; they apparently blockaded a critical railroad tunnel for several days when the local communist unions voted to strike, which was enough to seriously impact some of the fighting in France. Unfortunately there is very little documentation on it as the group had connections with some people who went on to become very prominent left wing politicians in Belgium; so you can only find english language sources in totally insane anti-bolshevik Bircher rants which make it out to be more of a big deal than it was.