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History seems to be a popular topic here, along with speculation on historical matters. Well, since the pool seems inviting I think I'll take a dip in it.

Many people consider france and england, particularly their leaders like Chamberlain, were stupid and weak to let Hitler build up and pull so much stuff before going to war with him.

Well, while the maginot line was an utter disaster and based on ww1 mentality, and the assumption an army could not rapidly drive thru the Ardens was proven a fallacy, I must say that I no not believe that england and france acted out of stupidity or weakness prior to ww2.

Rather I think they suffered from a case of reasonableness.

WW1 was called, sadly inaccurately, the war to end all wars, because it was the most horrible war in history to that date. All wars are horrible some at least some people, but ww1 was horror on a larger, grander scale than anything before it. It was the first truly industrialized, mechanized war. It was the first war where flying machines hundreds or thousands of feet above you could kill you with machine gun fire or bombs. It was the first war to use poison gas on any large scale, it was the first war to use submarines that could kill you without you seeing them. It was the first war where artillery could attack cities from well beyond the horizon and t use machine guns on a massive scale.

People had to be forced out of trenches into hopeless and suicidal mass attacks against machine gun nests or be killed i the trench by their comrades. You had to endure the terror of poison gas shelling and see people die horrible from the effects of those gas weapons.

After ww1, people who knew the horror of it honestly, sincerely believed that no one could ever want another war, an even worse one.

The leaders of france and england were reasonable men, their countries had long histories of advancing civilization. They believed in reason and civilization. No same or reasonable man could ever want to repeat the horrors of ww1. That was a very reasonable belief.

Their mistake was not weakness or cowardice, their mistake was failing, or possibly refusing, to believe Hitler could have gone thru ther worst of ww1, as he did, and possibly really want another war, which he did.

I can't criticize them for their mistake, I would rather have sane, reasonable, civilized people leading nations.

But!

These sane, civilized and reasonable leaders need, desperately need, people close to them who are experts on insanity, barbarism and brutality. People who can quietly take them off to the side and tell them, with utter conviction, that the leader on the other side is not a sane, reasonable, civilized person. Someone they can trust and believe when they need to be told they aren't dealing with a reasonable leader, and they need to deal with him now in ways he will understand before he becomes more powerful and more dangerous.

So, there, I admit the leaders of france and gemrany made many mistakes, but i honestly don't think they were weak, stupid or cowardly. I think they just placed too much faith in the belief that no civilized man could experience ww1 and honestly want another war.

Fire when ready.

This is a nonsense argument. Everyone involved knew that war was likely, they simply failed to prepare for and respond to it appropriately. There's a reason why everyone was building up their armies and making plans for war.

Also, no, the Maginot line was not a disaster. It functioned exactly as it was intended to, forcing the attack into a chosen area where it was very likely to be defeated (and probably would have been, if France had responded immediately and with better knowledge of how fast the German advance was going to be). Its only failure was that political issues prevented it from being completed to its full intended length.

From the British perspective I would say three things do stand out as stupid, the failure to take account of the lessons of Spain in the development of the armoured formations as well as not building on the work that Fuller had done (though he was persona non grata)
The failure to leverage the manpower of the Empire at an early enough stage.
The stupidly small size of the first BEF.

 Peregrine wrote:


Also, no, the Maginot line was not a disaster. It functioned exactly as it was intended to, forcing the attack into a chosen area where it was very likely to be defeated (and probably would have been, if France had responded immediately and with better knowledge of how fast the German advance was going to be). Its only failure was that political issues prevented it from being completed to its full intended length.

This. Good luck Blitzkrieging through a Maginot line that stretches from Switzerland all the way to the Belgian coast. Throwing Belgium under the bus was politically unacceptable though, so it didn't happen.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:


Also, no, the Maginot line was not a disaster. It functioned exactly as it was intended to, forcing the attack into a chosen area where it was very likely to be defeated (and probably would have been, if France had responded immediately and with better knowledge of how fast the German advance was going to be). Its only failure was that political issues prevented it from being completed to its full intended length.

This. Good luck Blitzkrieging through a Maginot line that stretches from Switzerland all the way to the Belgian coast. Throwing Belgium under the bus was politically unacceptable though, so it didn't happen.

According to Churchill the British and French seriously considered invading Belgium in order to make use of the defence line of the Albert Canal, which was the original defence plan but Belgium's neutrality pact with Germany wouldn't allow.

The maginot line had turrets that could not rotate to cover the rear and was poorly defended against air and paratrooper attacks.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
The maginot line had turrets that could not rotate to cover the rear and was poorly defended against air and paratrooper attacks.

It wasn't designed to ward off attack from the rear because it was supposed to be part of a fixed defensive line stretching from the Alps to the sea, it wasn't designed to ward off paratroop attack because that was the job of the garrison and field divisions that manned it and similarly its AA defences were not fixed defences but the integral AA of those divisions as well as the worlds largest airforce.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
The maginot line had turrets that could not rotate to cover the rear and was poorly defended against air and paratrooper attacks.

And? This is not a RTS where you can theorize about firing arcs or whatever, we have actual history. And the history is that the Maginot line had a goal of forcing any German attack to be funneled into a specific region where the French army would be able to oppose it on favorable ground. The history is that the Maginot line did exactly that, Germany avoided a direct attack and went exactly where the line forced them to go. The French army just failed to respond effectively to the attack and missed their chance to defeat it on the chosen ground before it broke through. Worrying about paratroopers or firing turrets backwards is silly, if meaningful forces are behind the line then it has already failed and the defense has to fall back. Once an attacker bypasses the line there's little or no reason to attack the line itself, those backwards-firing turrets would have had nothing to do.

In short, you seem to have learned your history from LOL FRANCE jokes and not legitimate study.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:


Also, no, the Maginot line was not a disaster. It functioned exactly as it was intended to, forcing the attack into a chosen area where it was very likely to be defeated (and probably would have been, if France had responded immediately and with better knowledge of how fast the German advance was going to be). Its only failure was that political issues prevented it from being completed to its full intended length.

This. Good luck Blitzkrieging through a Maginot line that stretches from Switzerland all the way to the Belgian coast. Throwing Belgium under the bus was politically unacceptable though, so it didn't happen.

As I understand it, the Maginot line was completed as far as it was intended to go. The plan was for the Maginot line to hold the French-German border with minimal troops, allowing the mobile forces to concentrate in the Ardennes forest and along the Rhine river in Belgium. This would have been quite effective as a defense.... except somewhere along the line Belgian-French relations cooled and the Belgians nixed the plan until it was too late.

Rommel spent years creating "fortress europa", the "impenetrable" defenses against an allied invasion. Look up how well it was standing on june 7, 1944.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
Rommel spent years creating "fortress europa", the "impenetrable" defenses against an allied invasion. Look up how well it was standing on june 7, 1944.

I think that was Hitler's brainchild. Rommel didn't take command until the process was well underway, but even on 6/6/44 it was nowhere near completion.

Rommel would probably have preferred to maintain mobile reserves nearby to throw invasions back into the sea, had Hitler allowed it. And assuming Germany had sufficient forces available...

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
Rommel spent years creating "fortress europa", the "impenetrable" defenses against an allied invasion. Look up how well it was standing on june 7, 1944.

Rommel spent much of that time pointing out the futility of walling Europe off, arguing against both his immediate superior (von Rundstedt, commander OK-West) and Hitler himself that the best possible defense was Panzers on the beaches, not holding them back in reserve where they'd be pinned down by air power before the battle even began. His experiences in the desert left him with no misconceptions as to the danger represented by the `Jabos` - CAS aircraft.

They weren't weak, but they were definitely stupid.

Had France actually fully invaded Germany when they declared war on Poland they could have curbstomped the few German units which were between them and Berlin while most of the Wermacht was on the Eastern front. The Germans would have been sandwitched between the much larger French army and the actually fairly substantial Polish army. Germany did NOT have the manpower to face both.

 Grey Templar wrote:
They weren't weak, but they were definitely stupid.

Had France actually fully invaded Germany when they declared war on Poland they could have curbstomped the few German units which were between them and Berlin while most of the Wermacht was on the Eastern front. The Germans would have been sandwitched between the much larger French army and the actually fairly substantial Polish army. Germany did NOT have the manpower to face both.

The trick with that being that French logistics were suited to going to the Ardennes and the Rhine... and no further. Their entire pre-war strategy was to break Germany on their defenses and made no planning at all toward invasion.

Yes, an Anglo-French invasion would have smashed what little German units were on the western front at the time.... had they been capable of invading.

 Vulcan wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
They weren't weak, but they were definitely stupid.

Had France actually fully invaded Germany when they declared war on Poland they could have curbstomped the few German units which were between them and Berlin while most of the Wermacht was on the Eastern front. The Germans would have been sandwitched between the much larger French army and the actually fairly substantial Polish army. Germany did NOT have the manpower to face both.

The trick with that being that French logistics were suited to going to the Ardennes and the Rhine... and no further. Their entire pre-war strategy was to break Germany on their defenses and made no planning at all toward invasion.

Yes, an Anglo-French invasion would have smashed what little German units were on the western front at the time.... had they been capable of invading.

They could have still invaded and used the time honored logistics method of Loot and Steal. And by the time that can't sustain them anymore they would have been able to set up some sort of supply line, say through a number of easily captured west German ports and the ever convenient Royal Navy.

The real reason they didn't invade was because everybody was paralyzed with fear at the war becoming another Trench war so the British and French were too timid to actually engage.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
They weren't weak, but they were definitely stupid.

Had France actually fully invaded Germany when they declared war on Poland they could have curbstomped the few German units which were between them and Berlin while most of the Wermacht was on the Eastern front. The Germans would have been sandwitched between the much larger French army and the actually fairly substantial Polish army. Germany did NOT have the manpower to face both.

The trick with that being that French logistics were suited to going to the Ardennes and the Rhine... and no further. Their entire pre-war strategy was to break Germany on their defenses and made no planning at all toward invasion.

Yes, an Anglo-French invasion would have smashed what little German units were on the western front at the time.... had they been capable of invading.

They could have still invaded and used the time honored logistics method of Loot and Steal. And by the time that can't sustain them anymore they would have been able to set up some sort of supply line, say through a number of easily captured west German ports and the ever convenient Royal Navy.

The real reason they didn't invade was because everybody was paralyzed with fear at the war becoming another Trench war so the British and French were too timid to actually engage.

Yeah. Good luck looting enough fuel, medicine, spare tank threads etc. Pillaging worked back when all an army needed was food. Modern armies are a lot more complex and require a lot of supplies you can't loot of civilians to be able to keep going. Not to mention that by pillaging, you are making the invasion a lot harder for yourself than it needs to be since it will result in a lot of resistance in the territories you are trying to occupy (which therefore will become very difficult to occupy). In other words, no logistics simply means no invasion. The Nazis thought they could (partially) sustain themselves by pillaging while invading the Soviet Union. The result was lots of starving and freezing German soldiers, not to mention tanks and other equipment running out of fuel and spare parts until they set up more adequate logistics (or as adequately as possible, given the challenges of logistics in Russia). Logistics is everything in a war. All the best tactics in the world are worthless if your logistics aren't good enough. An Allied invasion of Germany would have turned into a disaster without proper logistical support.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
They weren't weak, but they were definitely stupid.

Had France actually fully invaded Germany when they declared war on Poland they could have curbstomped the few German units which were between them and Berlin while most of the Wermacht was on the Eastern front. The Germans would have been sandwitched between the much larger French army and the actually fairly substantial Polish army. Germany did NOT have the manpower to face both.

The trick with that being that French logistics were suited to going to the Ardennes and the Rhine... and no further. Their entire pre-war strategy was to break Germany on their defenses and made no planning at all toward invasion.

Yes, an Anglo-French invasion would have smashed what little German units were on the western front at the time.... had they been capable of invading.

They could have still invaded and used the time honored logistics method of Loot and Steal. And by the time that can't sustain them anymore they would have been able to set up some sort of supply line, say through a number of easily captured west German ports and the ever convenient Royal Navy.

The real reason they didn't invade was because everybody was paralyzed with fear at the war becoming another Trench war so the British and French were too timid to actually engage.

Yeah. Good luck looting enough fuel, medicine, spare tank threads etc. Pillaging worked back when all an army needed was food. Modern armies are a lot more complex and require a lot of supplies you can't loot of civilians to be able to keep going. Not to mention that by pillaging, you are making the invasion a lot harder for yourself than it needs to be since it will result in a lot of resistance in the territories you are trying to occupy (which therefore will become very difficult to occupy). In other words, no logistics simply means no invasion. The Nazis thought they could (partially) sustain themselves by pillaging while invading the Soviet Union. The result was lots of starving and freezing German soldiers, not to mention tanks and other equipment running out of fuel and spare parts until they set up more adequate logistics (or as adequately as possible, given the challenges of logistics in Russia). Logistics is everything in a war. All the best tactics in the world are worthless if your logistics aren't good enough. An Allied invasion of Germany would have turned into a disaster without proper logistical support.

Looting enough to sustain yourself in Russia is radically different from looting enough in western Germany. The distance alone is massive. You're talking a couple hundred miles in an area that is heavily industrialized and has good roads vs nearly a thousand miles of space which has neither decent roads nor much to loot in the first place, and what little there is will be destroyed by the Russians(Who have done this before, as opposed to the Germans). Plus you are not dealing with the Russian winter.

It would be a reasonable proposition for a very short term advance for the French to push forward off of what they could plunder. It was NOT reasonable for the Germans to plan the same in Russia. Apples to oranges.

Most of Germany's industrial capacity is located in the western portion of the country for crying out loud. 50 miles in from the border and you've got the entire Rhur! Without their industrial heartland the Wermacht would run out of equipment pretty fast.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
They weren't weak, but they were definitely stupid.

Had France actually fully invaded Germany when they declared war on Poland they could have curbstomped the few German units which were between them and Berlin while most of the Wermacht was on the Eastern front. The Germans would have been sandwitched between the much larger French army and the actually fairly substantial Polish army. Germany did NOT have the manpower to face both.

The trick with that being that French logistics were suited to going to the Ardennes and the Rhine... and no further. Their entire pre-war strategy was to break Germany on their defenses and made no planning at all toward invasion.

Yes, an Anglo-French invasion would have smashed what little German units were on the western front at the time.... had they been capable of invading.

They could have still invaded and used the time honored logistics method of Loot and Steal. And by the time that can't sustain them anymore they would have been able to set up some sort of supply line, say through a number of easily captured west German ports and the ever convenient Royal Navy.

The real reason they didn't invade was because everybody was paralyzed with fear at the war becoming another Trench war so the British and French were too timid to actually engage.

You are seriously saying that the French were stupid because they didn't advocate the commissioning of war crimes? It would have been interesting to see how the French army would have reacted had they been seriously ordered to attack Germany, their moral had never recovered from '17 and with all the political turmoil and communist agitation within the nation itself there offensive spirit was practically non-existent (their defensive spirit wasn't a lot better in many units).

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
Rommel spent years creating "fortress europa", the "impenetrable" defenses against an allied invasion. Look up how well it was standing on june 7, 1944.

And your point is? Look up how well the Maginot line worked in actual history, not just your pet theory of how it should have worked. It did exactly what it was intended to do, and the French failure was elsewhere.

To my knowledge, the french failure on the field was mainly because of an outdated doctrine in the use of armor, despite having some of the best tanks. Instead of having dedicated armored units, like germany did, french units were a mix of infantry and tanks, as it was since WW1.

So french units had the speed of the infantry and the logistic needs of an armored unit. Plus, tanks would not drive themselves to battle to save fuel, but were carried to it, sometime even by horses...

I recall that pre-war, the General De Gaulle and other youg high officers, have been strong advocates of the creation of specialized units, but their opinion was dismissed as the HQ was mainly a "vieille garde" of ww1 veterans.

Edit : turns out I was wrong, see ingtaer answer bellow

 IronSlug wrote:
To my knowledge, the french failure on the field was mainly because of an outdated doctrine in the use of armor, despite having some of the best tanks. Instead of having dedicated armored units, like germany did, french units were a mix of infantry and tanks, as it was since WW1.

So french units had the speed of the infantry and the logistic needs of an armored unit. Plus, tanks would not drive themselves to battle to save fuel, but were carried to it, sometime even by horses...

I recall that pre-war, the General De Gaulle and other youg high officers, have been strong advocates of the creation of specialized units, but their opinion was dismissed as the HQ was mainly a "vieille garde" of ww1 veterans.

No that's not right, the French formed their armour into three types DLC which were a mix of horse and tank (light cavalry division), DLM which were a mix of armour and mechanised infantry (light mechanical division) and DCR which used heavy tanks and mechanised infantry. Their doctrine was sorely lacking though especially when it came to fire and maneuver but also cooperating with air/artillery/AT guns.

Again, needs Margaret McMillan.

More history, less History Memes.

 ingtaer wrote:

 IronSlug wrote:
To my knowledge, the french failure on the field was mainly because of an outdated doctrine in the use of armor, despite having some of the best tanks. Instead of having dedicated armored units, like germany did, french units were a mix of infantry and tanks, as it was since WW1.

So french units had the speed of the infantry and the logistic needs of an armored unit. Plus, tanks would not drive themselves to battle to save fuel, but were carried to it, sometime even by horses...

I recall that pre-war, the General De Gaulle and other youg high officers, have been strong advocates of the creation of specialized units, but their opinion was dismissed as the HQ was mainly a "vieille garde" of ww1 veterans.

No that's not right, the French formed their armour into three types DLC which were a mix of horse and tank (light cavalry division), DLM which were a mix of armour and mechanised infantry (light mechanical division) and DCR which used heavy tanks and mechanised infantry. Their doctrine was sorely lacking though especially when it came to fire and maneuver but also cooperating with air/artillery/AT guns.

All right, thanks for fixing what I sayed

 ingtaer wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
They weren't weak, but they were definitely stupid.

Had France actually fully invaded Germany when they declared war on Poland they could have curbstomped the few German units which were between them and Berlin while most of the Wermacht was on the Eastern front. The Germans would have been sandwitched between the much larger French army and the actually fairly substantial Polish army. Germany did NOT have the manpower to face both.

The trick with that being that French logistics were suited to going to the Ardennes and the Rhine... and no further. Their entire pre-war strategy was to break Germany on their defenses and made no planning at all toward invasion.

Yes, an Anglo-French invasion would have smashed what little German units were on the western front at the time.... had they been capable of invading.

They could have still invaded and used the time honored logistics method of Loot and Steal. And by the time that can't sustain them anymore they would have been able to set up some sort of supply line, say through a number of easily captured west German ports and the ever convenient Royal Navy.

The real reason they didn't invade was because everybody was paralyzed with fear at the war becoming another Trench war so the British and French were too timid to actually engage.

You are seriously saying that the French were stupid because they didn't advocate the commissioning of war crimes? It would have been interesting to see how the French army would have reacted had they been seriously ordered to attack Germany, their moral had never recovered from '17 and with all the political turmoil and communist agitation within the nation itself there offensive spirit was practically non-existent (their defensive spirit wasn't a lot better in many units).

It’s not a war crime to steal material from the enemy.

 Grey Templar wrote:


It’s not a war crime to steal material from the enemy.

My question for you is... why do you assume that German factories would be set up to produce parts and ammo for French gear? Why do you think the Germans would stockpile French parts and ammo?

The simple fact is, without resupply from France and Britain, the combined armies would quickly have run out of fuel (Germany didn't produce much oil and didn't have vast stores to loot), parts, and ammo in short order, while the Wehrmacht would have had whatever was stockpiled to work with while they beat up on the now disarmed Allied forces.

There's a reason professional soldiers study logistics...

I agree that England and France were not weak prior to WWII. They were still world powers.

However, unlike Germany they did not want war and wanted to maintain the international world order. Germany did not. Therefore, they were willing to do thing and go places that England and France could not politically go.

For example, the British and the French were re-arming and re-organizing their military forces in response to German aggrandizement in the East. However, such efforts take time and they simply ran out of time as the German's attacked first. Germany had been more than willing to ignore the international communities arms limitation efforts post-WWI. England and France were participants and leading lights in these efforts.

 Vulcan wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:


It’s not a war crime to steal material from the enemy.

My question for you is... why do you assume that German factories would be set up to produce parts and ammo for French gear? Why do you think the Germans would stockpile French parts and ammo?

The simple fact is, without resupply from France and Britain, the combined armies would quickly have run out of fuel (Germany didn't produce much oil and didn't have vast stores to loot), parts, and ammo in short order, while the Wehrmacht would have had whatever was stockpiled to work with while they beat up on the now disarmed Allied forces.

There's a reason professional soldiers study logistics...

I'm not assuming anything like that. Picking up your enemy's weapon and using it has happened ever since War was invented.

Whats more, the French would not have been low on bullets. Since you know, there wouldn't have been much fighting had they invaded immediately because the Germans were all in Poland. Plus, they wouldn't have to go all the way to Berlin. They would just have to take the major German industrial areas and then dig in. Sure, the Germans could counterattack, but now they'd be fighting in their industrial heartland instead of being supplied by it. The French could have managed that much at the very least.

Its also a question of Why are the French so incompetent that they can't prosecute a war 100 miles over their own border? The answer isn't that they couldn't, its that they didn't want to.

They tried, they failed. The couldn't mobilise fast enough to interfere with the fall of Poland and they didn't even try to attack the Siegfried line.

So, does anyone else think that the leaders of France and england honestly believed Hitler was posturing and saber rattling to rebuild germany's economy after ww1 and its disastrous treaty and really believed no one could possibly want a repeat of ww1?

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
So, does anyone else think that the leaders of France and england honestly believed Hitler was posturing and saber rattling to rebuild germany's economy after ww1 and its disastrous treaty and really believed no one could possibly want a repeat of ww1?

I think they really really hoped and wanted it to be that way, and like many politicians they allowed that desire to distort that view of reality... right up to the point where it bit them on the backside.