BoF

[Anaxogoras]

Ok, let's talk about the Battle of France.  There was a lot of great discussion here about whether the Soviet Union did more to defeat Germany than the Western allies, and so I hope to hear more educated opinion about May/June 1940.

More specifically, to what degree was the French surrender brought about by the UK's fleeing across the channel?  Could the UK have maintained a foothold in France despite the disaster at Dunkirk?  Could the disaster have been averted?  Not all of Churchill's decisions were proved correct during the war (Italy?), as much as we admire him today.  Never sending Spitfire squadrons to France has always been a question mark in my mind.

France and the UK were in the habit of making defense guarantees that they failed to back up with meaningful action, e.g. they never declared war on the Soviet Union when it invaded Poland after Germany; failure to attack Germany in 1939 when the opportunity was there.  It seems that the UK was just as tepid about aiding the French as it was about aiding the Poles, or the Finns in the Winter War.

What's your opinion?

[oakranger]

Did Russian beat Germany?  That is a tough debate.  Almost every campaign the Germans had into Russia, have been a failure do to  Allies advancing, Hitler not listening to him CO and Hitler pulling troops, A/C and equipment away from the Eastern front to the western front.  Lets no forget the fear factor Russia's had.  Sending troops 10 to 1 against Germans, the brutal killing of German troops the surrender and physiological methods Russian used on the Germans.   

[Anaxogoras]

Dude.

http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,250753.0.html

[oakranger]

Yea, i see.  but, Russia was just to big to defeat.   

[ridley1]

Well, at the time...it was Chamberlan.

France's defense was the Maginot line...which the Germans simply went around.

The tactics that Germany used were developed in secret and were something completely new.  Gemany split the allies when they hit the coast, leaving the BEF without a decent port to supply them.

[Anaxogoras]

Well, at the time...it was Chamberlan.

Churchill became PM on May 10th, 1940.

[gpwurzel]

As for the limited supply of fighters from England, that was due to the presumption (correctly I might add) that England could not afford to deplete its fighter resources in France. Decision was made to ensure that there were enough to fight the BOB.

Whilst the RAF were being reequipped with spits and hurris, at that time, there were still in fact squadrons of hinds (biplanes) in active service - which were upgraded just before the BOB iirc (I probably dont, but hey ho)

As previously stated, the french defence plan rested heavily on the Maginot line, which whilst impressive, doesn't move, so the hook around into Belgium was, at that time, a spark of  genius. That said, had the disarray in the upper echelons of the French/English armies/air force etc been resolved earlier, it would have been a harder fight. Imo, France would still have fallen - blitzkreig being a new (and awesomely effective tactic), and there was not enough space to trade for time to resolve how to beat it - unlike in Russia.

Wurzel

[Die Hard]

Well, at the time...it was Chamberlan.

France's defense was the Maginot line...which the Germans simply went around.

The tactics that Germany used were developed in secret and were something completely new.  Gemany split the allies when they hit the coast, leaving the BEF without a decent port to supply them.

Blitzkrieg was a development of the theories developed by Fuller and Liddell Heart in the 1920's. Noting secret about it, the Germans just implemented it faster and better than anyone else.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.F.C._Fuller

[Anaxogoras]

I guess I jumped the gun on Churchill:

From wikipedia:

In 1940, Dowding, nicknamed "Stuffy" by his men, proved unwilling to sacrifice aircraft and pilots in the attempt to aid Allied troops during the Battle of France. He, along with his immediate superior Sir Cyril Newall, then Chief of the Air Staff, resisted repeated requests from Winston Churchill to weaken the home defence by sending precious squadrons to France. When the Allied resistance in France collapsed, he worked closely with Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park, the commander of 11 Fighter Group, in organizing cover for the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk.

That no one corrected me on this point indicates, to me, that as a group we know comparatively little about the Battle of France versus other segments of the war.

[Golfer]

As previously stated, the french defence plan rested heavily on the Maginot line, which whilst impressive, doesn't move, so the hook around into Belgium was, at that time, a spark of  genius.

Wurzel

The initial plan wasn't much different from the one they used in WWI.  The von Schlieffen Plan.  Haul bellybutton to the channel through Belgium and the Netherlends, swing south and overwhelm France.

Their second time around they learned the values of mobility and had the tools to keep a fast moving war going using their Blitzkrieg tactics.  The start of WWII is what the Germans wish they had done in 1914.

[ghostdancer]

Actually I will have to dig up a bunch of books on the subject but the Germans moving through the BeNeLux area was not unexpected and actually the allies did have a plan for it. Several factors though caused problems .. first the Dutch did not allow the British and French to move into their territory at the start of the hostilities. Second the original plans for meeting the Germans in the BeNeLux area were revised and expanded to try to meet them further in than originally planned.

As I said will dig up the books I read in college on the subject (military doctrine and implementation). But overall it was a much closer thing than people thought. The Germans were as surprised as anybody else and what many authors I have read give to the Germans was their flexibility in their command and control and allowing the battlefield commanders to make decisions. The French forces were much more rigid and the command and control couldn't adapt to the flow of the battle.

[SFRT - Frenchy]

The Maginot line is usually the only thing people remember, but there's off course more to it.

Don't forget a couple of factors :

After WW1 France thought there would NEVER be an another World War, due to the horrors of the first one. As such, they didn't really bother updating their hardware, nor tactics.

To show how prepare we were for war, my grand father got given a gun and 5 bullets before being sent to the front. First time he saw a German it was a Stuka squadron that bombed/straffed them, before meeting a whole panzer division. That went quick.

[Anaxogoras]

Your grandfather sounds like one of those who was called up after the core of the French army had already been encircled in the north.

Your comment about updating hardware and tactics seems like a bit of exaggeration.  After all, France wasn't fighting with WWI tanks and biplanes, and the subordination of infantry to armor was something that De Gaulle had advocated since the 1920s.  The machinery and tactics were there; they were not put to use efficiently and burdened with a cumbersome chain of command.

[Simaril]

Read a fascinating book a few years back called Strange Victory:Hitler's Conquest of France by Ernest R May. Definitely has it's dry spots, but was most revealing. What many don't realize is that the French were well on their way to creating another static front in Belgium before the German's unexpectly erupted from the "impassible" Ardennes after the main French line had moved FORWARD into Belgium.

Bottom line is that the French main body was hampered by two big disadvantages -- its command structure was outrageously, unbelievably inflexible; and the politicians took away the military's best options before the war even started. The Maginot line accomplished its stated goal, and in fact continued to resist for weeks after it had been bypassed and made militarily useless. But the politicians wouldn't allow the military to EITHER build similar defenses along the Belgian border (for fear of offending an ally) OR to advance into Belgian territory when war was declared in order to assure proper defense of France.

So when the Germans started attacking Belgium, the French Army had to wait for political clearance to advance northward and consolidate defensively stronger positions than the pure political boundary allowed. This meant that the first Franco-Nazi battles were closer to meeting engagements than they should have been. Even so, the FRENCH won the armor battles that occurred and stymied German advance. German progress was very slow...UNTIL the forces that got bogged down in the Ardennes broke out from the woods and threatened envelopment. They ALMOST got contained before breaking out, but French dispositions hadn't solidified enough in the area and only a small portion of planned forces were in place. Even after the problem became clear they still had opportunity to "slam the cork into the bottle" and shut things down, but the fossilized command and control systems couldn't cope.

Hitler was not nearly as powerful as later events made him look, and in fact the record shows that many of his generals opposed the war with france. France had more tanks, better tanks, and a larger army than Germany could field. They had the advantages of defense and were fighting on all too familiar ground. Truth be told, even with "blitzkrieg" the French probably SHOULD have been able to stop the Wehrmacht, but the combination of political interference, rigid command structures, and unfortuitous timing in the Ardennes conspired to produce what really was an Unlikely german victory.

[Marauding Conan]

Ok, let's talk about the Battle of France.  There was a lot of great discussion here about whether the Soviet Union did more to defeat Germany than the Western allies, and so I hope to hear more educated opinion about May/June 1940.

More specifically, to what degree was the French surrender brought about by the UK's fleeing across the channel?  Could the UK have maintained a foothold in France despite the disaster at Dunkirk?  Could the disaster have been averted?  Not all of Churchill's decisions were proved correct during the war (Italy?), as much as we admire him today.  Never sending Spitfire squadrons to France has always been a question mark in my mind.

France and the UK were in the habit of making defense guarantees that they failed to back up with meaningful action, e.g. they never declared war on the Soviet Union when it invaded Poland after Germany; failure to attack Germany in 1939 when the opportunity was there.  It seems that the UK was just as tepid about aiding the French as it was about aiding the Poles, or the Finns in the Winter War.

What's your opinion?

Are you asking the cause of the French republic collapse or are you asking if it was the fault of GB that the French republic collapsed?