SpitfireIX
Philosopher
Further, as has been explained to you so many times, and you continue to ignore, Germany was not prepared for war in 1938, either.
Split Thread WWII & Appeasement
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HansMustermann
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To be fair, though, it might as well have been.
It's not just the likes of me who post-facto say that the French were totally not ready for a war. E.g., Mikhail Tukhachevsky noted as early as 1935 that the French doctrines are unfit for a fast war of maneuver as they would be too slow to react. Which turned out to be true. A lot of the acting inside the French decision flow in 1940 wouldn't even be as much a case of German Blitzkrieg, as just the French decision flow being way too slow.
I would also add that at no point between 1919 and 1940 did they have ANY plans for an offensive.
Far as I know, the Brits didn't try picking too hard on their French friends, but I wouldn't be surprised if enough people at HQ level would have, at the very least, preferred to not test in practice exactly how much help France would be.
Edit: just to make it clear, I'm not picking on the French soldiers per se. Nor on their national spirit. And some of their officers I would rate as the smartest in the world at the time. But the interwar politicians on whom that army depended were... rather unfit, to say the least.
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Regarding the decision flow: What was the state of French radio technology or industry at the time? Their system's reliance on telephone lines seems ridiculous in hindsight. One can find stories about General so-and-so trying to find a phone in a small village or waiting hours at a cafe for a call. Other times, they had Generals wasting an entire day driving or flying off for a meeting with Gort, or whoever, and ultimately being unable to find anyone.
From reading the book Crystal Clear, I know a bit about the American, British, and German radio industry, but I've never run across anything about the French in 1939-1940.
From reading the book Crystal Clear, I know a bit about the American, British, and German radio industry, but I've never run across anything about the French in 1939-1940.
Forgot to add: If anyone is interested in a comparative look at the French, British, and German air forces 1939-1941 the book Unflinching Zeal has a lot of info. Be warned, the writing is a bit dry and doesn't flow well at times.
HansMustermann
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Well, as far as I know, France was a bit late to the radio party, with the first broadcast happening in 1921, with an antenna put on the Eiffel tower. Production and sales of radios were also somewhat slow, compared to the US and other places, with many French having to gather at the pub or whatever to listen to a radio.
And for the army, well, it was pretty much a non-starter all across the board. In '40, their tanks still had to look for flag signals from other tanks, for example.
Still, I don't think by '40 it would have been that hard to get at least SOME radios for the army. I mean, the technology was there. If anyone were willing to pay for some radios, the factories existed that could have produced some.
It think though that the bigger problem were the politicians, who didn't trust the army as far as they could throw it. In a sense they were more scared of their own army ever getting in a position to pull a coup d'etat, than they were of the Germans.
And especially anything that would need more of a permanent corps of professional soldiers to operate the technical stuff, or at least to properly train the new recruits in their operation. well, it just scared the pants off them even more.
Now mind you, I don't have any hard data to say that radio was particularly opposed, but seeing the reaction to stuff like de Gaulle's proposal to professionalize the armor... well, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if radios were in the same boat.
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I was just thinking it was time for Henri's fortnightly post and lo and behold here it is.
The most obvious points are that the USA was largely irrelevant in 1938 since it was the French army that would have been engaging the Germans. And of course yet again Henri ignores the fact that the entire German leadership barring Hitler was aware that Germany was in no state to face the Czechs, the French and the naval blockade the British would inevitably impose.
The most obvious points are that the USA was largely irrelevant in 1938 since it was the French army that would have been engaging the Germans. And of course yet again Henri ignores the fact that the entire German leadership barring Hitler was aware that Germany was in no state to face the Czechs, the French and the naval blockade the British would inevitably impose.
SpitfireIX
Philosopher
Even granting all this, the Germans still would have had to have conquered France in order to have gotten at Britain, and it's unlikely that they would have been able to do that prior to the spring of 1941, for a variety of reasons. First, as we've frequently discussed, the 1940 campaign was a near-run thing as it was; subtracting all the materiel and personnel that would have been lost due to conquering Czechoslovakia would have made it virtually impossible.
Your point about the lack of French offensive capabilities is well taken, and I believe it's been alluded to a few times in the past. However, Britain and France would still have been in a far better position had they gone to war in 1938. They would have had at least an extra year of production on a wartime footing, and probably two, before the Germans would have been in a position to launch a blitzkrieg that would have had a reasonable chance of success. Plus Germany would have been pinched by the blockade a year earlier, and not receiving resources from the Soviets. So the result could well have been a stalemate that Germany was bound to lose in the long run, just as in the First World War.
And even if Germany had managed to conquer France in 1941, Britain would have been in an even stronger defensive position to resist an air attack.
HansMustermann
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Yes, well, I didn't say Germany could win. Just that I can see France not being as much help there as some people seem to assume they would.
The French didn't need to go on the offensive, the German generals fully expected the British and French to dig in and fight a long war, which they knew would spell doom for Germany as it was cut off from world trade with a Soviet Union that was not a supplier of raw materials and this in the aftermath of burning through their stocks of ammo and fuel against the Czechs. People look at the events of 1940 and not only underestimate the French but greatly exaggerate the capabilities of the Germans. The German army of 1938 is utterly inadequate to mount an offensive in the west and if they tried they would most likely end up with the kind of modified Schlieffen plan that was on the cards until February 1940. Even with the extra year that Munich bought the Polish campaign of 1939 revealed some alarming flaws in the Wehrmacht that took many months to address and that was in a scenario where they had access to Czech weaponry and Soviet raw materials.
The overall point is not that war would have been easy for Britain and France in 1938 but that they would have fought it on far better terms than they did in 1939/40. In the end it was German weakness that forced Hitler to accept the terms on offer, not any diplomatic cunning on Chamberlain's part. It was Hitler that bought crucial time at Munich, even if he fumed at doing so.
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