Why didn't the French last much more than the Poles at the begining of WWII?

[Dromikaites]

In September 1939 Poland was attacked by both Germany and the Soviet Union. Still the badly equipped Polish army lasted for 1 month without any help.

In May 1940 Germany and Italy attacked France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the British Expeditionary Force. It took Gemany just a few days more to defeat the much better equipped and more numerous armies. How can you guys explain that?

Important: I don't want to read the usual anti-French jokes that spawned on the Net as a result of the French attitude towards the Irak war.

[Super_TW]

Dunkirk or Dunkerque:

http://www.rania.co.uk/dunkirk/images/dunkirk1.jpg

http://www.dover-kent.co.uk/history/...w2_dunkirk.jpg

The Battle of Dunkirk occured between May 26th & June 3rd, 1940. This was a plan named Operation Dynamo. It was the plan to take soldiers to England from Dunkirk by using military and personal boats. Operation Dynamo started at 6:57 p.m. on May 26th.

161 ships were available on the first day of Dunkirk. On the first day, 27,936 soldiers were saved. On May 27th only 7,669 soldiers were saved. After this day many people thought that Operation Dynamo was going to be a failure. On May 28th, 17,804 soldiers were taken to Dunkirk. But sadly, two ships were sunk by German bombing. On May 29th, in the morning, three battle ships were lost, which was bad, but 47,310 soldiers were taken to England. On May 30th,53,823 soldiers were taken to England. On this day there were over 800 small craft transporting soldiers. On May 31st, 68,014 soldiers were taken to England from Dunkirk. On this day, winds were bad and blew ships onto the beach, and when the tide fell, lots of ships were stranded on the beach. Despite winds, on this day the most soldiers were transported in one day.

On June 1st, 64,429 soldiers were taken from Dunkirk to England. But sadly, 31 ships were sunk. On June 2nd, some French troops did not come in a steady line and their boats had to leave with only a few soldiers. On this day, only 26,256 soldiers were taken to England instead of 36,256. On June 3rd, the allies surrendered at 9:00 in the morning. Even though the Allies had to surrender, 338,226 soldiers were taken to England.

The Evacuation of Dunkirk


The evacuation of Dunkirk began when the Nazis lured the Allied Forces of Britain and France into a gigantic troop: they attacked the small Dutch countries of Holland (the Netherlands) and Belgium. The Allies rushed to defend them, and Hitler's army of tanks, infantry, and aircraft rumbled to France.
The Allies were too slow and surprised to counter Germany's invasion. Still worse, there weren't any French reserve troops to stop the Nazis.
The Allies planned to evacuate troops by sea if they became trapped, but the Nazis got there first. The Allies were cornered and attempted to make an evacuation. to Dunkirk, France in May 1940.
The British admiral, Bertrand Ramsay was to conduct the rescue operation. It was Ramsay who decided to use civilian boats and freighters in the rescue operation, called Operation Dynamo because Ramsay set up headquarters in a place that had housed a diesel-driven dynamo.
For nine days the boats traveled to and from Dunkirk and each time British and French soldiers watched out to meet them as they arrived. The Nazis dive-bombed and shelled the boats, but didn't attack with tanks until the last day of Operation Dynamo, and no one knows why, because they could have prevented the rescue operation from continuing.

[Torgill]

Maybe it depends on the will of fight? The Poles wanted to defend their fresh gained freedom ( after Ist WW ), and the French soldiers had no strong will to fight ( because of a great human losses in Ist WW a defensive strategy ).

[Uranos]

First, the jokes tell truth in this subject.
And the second thing is that the French had very little tanks and artillery, because before the WWII they decided to build defence forces - The Maginot Line (a line of fortifications on a border with Germany) instead of offence forces like tanks. That is why Hitler attacked neutral Belgium - to avoid French defence, and from Belgium he easily conquered France.

[Turnus]

And the second thing is that the French had very little tanks and artillery, because before the WWII they decided to build defence forces - The Maginot Line (a line of fortifications on a border with Germany) instead of offence forces like tanks. That is why Hitler attacked neutral Belgium - to avoid French defence, and from Belgium he easily conquered France.

Even though the Schlieffen Plan relied on moving through there also. Great use of fortifications...

[shadepanther]

The Allies had more and better tanks than the Germans. They just didn't use them the correct way. They spread them out instead of concentrating the tanks to counter any advances, They also didn't communicate very well with other tanks or with the airforce which the Germans used as mobile Artillary.

The Mobile forces advanced into Belgium to counter the attack into Holland which they though was going to be a repeat of WW2. They got cut off when the German panzers advanced thrugh the Ardennes which the French thought impassable and so put very little forces there. The pocket created destroyed the mobile forces and therefore Northern France was pretty much defencless.

It wasn't that they were cowards they simply got outmanouvered and surrounded by a mobile army while they used WW1 tactics.

Even though the Schlieffen Plan relied on moving through there also. Great use of fortifications...

They did plan to put fortifications there but they had a debate whether or not to include Belgium. That debbate was still ongoing when the war started.

[Freddie]

It amazes me how the Germans took France so quickly. I know there are the tactical and the communications issues that caused confusion but as one of the earlier posts says you have to questions the French will to fight.

Sadly that’s were a lot of the French Military jokes stem from. The fact that they were so comprehensively beaten up made them look like cowards. I don’t mean to have racially slurred the French but that how it came across after WW2 to the Americans and the British.

Perhaps the French psyche was still in ore after the events of the great war, and that’s why they didn’t show the same level of resistance on the battlefield as they did between 1914 and 1918.

[shadepanther]

The British and Americans were beaten pretty badly quite a few times. Infact the strategy they adopted was to completely outnumber the Germans in absolutely everything. They knew they didn't stand a chance 1:1

[Freddie]

If they had to fight one on one they would have had a different strategy, all we were doing was playing to our strengths.

[Clinelly]

Well, APPARENTLY, the French surrendered to the Germans for two POSSIBLE reasons:
1. After WW1, the didn't have the will power to fight another long war.
2. They didn't want to fight because they didn't want to rish damage to their 'beautiful' city Paris. (the Germans and practically everyone else laughed at this)

NB: I read no.2 in a book (i forget which) but i don't know if it's true or not, but what i do know is that the French surrendered.

[Kontos]

The Germans had been girding their loins for war since Hiltler was elected in 1932 [?].
The Germans were keen to prove themselves.
The French and British were unenthusiastic for another major conflict and as a result the lightning bolt of German aggression caught them unprepared, like someone waking you up from a deep sleep by slapping your face.
Britian was lucky to be on an island, France was not so, because nothing was capable of stopping the impetuous German charge.
Geography beat the Germans, the English Channel gave the Brits the chance to recover from the first 'king hit' and like wise on the eastern front the vastness of Russia wore out the momentum to the German Army.

[DarthJames]

The French (and British) wanted a rerun of WW1, whereby they got a slow, drawn out war where Allied economic superiority would eventually prevail.

The German strategy has already been mentioned, but I want to say again how brilliant the Manstein/Guderian plan was. The Germans KNEW that the Allies thought they would go through Belgium again, so when they sent a token force to attack Belgium, all the best Allied units started moving in. The main German force then struck further south, and cut off the BEF and French (first?) army from their supplies. From that moment they were doomed.

1). The French command structure was completely FUBAR. The commander in chief was positioned in a mansion way behind the lines, with the nearest radio several miles away (his excuse was that radio emissions could be traced). He fully admitted that it took about 24 hours for his orders to reach the units they were destined for. Far too long. His chief of staff had an ill defined role, which meant that nobody knew what his authority was for.

2). The French air force sat around and did nothing for the entire campaign. Seriously, the Germans found about 1-2 thousand modern fighters sitting in warehouses after the surrender. They were never put into combat because of a bureocratic bloody mindedness.

3). French tactics (not strategy) were terrible with respect to armour. Tanks would be ineffectively spread out among infantry lines, instead of concentrated as the Germans did it.

4). Politically (and this is where the surrender jokes come in) weak. The French did not want war. When it seemed to be going badly, and Petain made his move, there was no protest.

Interesting bit of Trivia from the campaign:
When the BEF and French armies started rolling into Belgium to protect it from the Germansm the Belgian ambassador in London submitted a protest that they had entered the country without a formal invitation (this as the capital was being overrun).
Belgian soldiers on the French border actually refused to let a British convoy over the border. The British soldier got back into his truck, and drove straight through the barrier!

[Sidus Preclarum]

. The fact that they were so comprehensively beaten up made them look like cowards. I don’t mean to have racially slurred the French but that how it came across after WW2 to [...] the British.

Say that to the brits evacuated at dunkirk, or to the guys of the Eight Army ...
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/5/14/55627/2665 : not a bad read .
also, from the wikipedia :

Some of the suggested causes of the Allied defeat were:

* Treason: this theory was very popular at the time of events. A Fifth column was supposed to be cooperating with a host of disguised German agents. After the war this was conclusively shown to have been a case of mass hysteria, but such stories are still repeated in some popular accounts.
* Equipment imbalances. Contrary to popular opinion, often assuming that the Germans had a completely mechanized army, while the French only had WWI equipment, there was no general disparity of armament levels. It's generally acknowledged that in a pure battle of attrition, the Germans couldn't have won.
* Communication difficulties. The French communication system relied almost entirely on the public telephone network rather than radio. The telephone lines were often cut, either by military action or by acts of sabotage and often the only way of sending messages to the front was by dispatch rider. Allied Commanders complained that they often had no information for days and when it did arrive, it was hopelessly out of date.
* Defensive attitude: French overreliance on the Maginot Line, a chain of forts built along most of the French-German border. It is undisputed that the French left the strategic initiative to the Germans.
* Failing strategy: General Gamelin's decision to send his best forces north to defend against invasion through the Low Countries, combined with Hitler's decision, against the advice of the German General Staff, to adopt the Manstein plan after an aircraft that was carrying a copy of the original invasion plan crashed outside German territory.
* Outdated tactics. It's often assumed that there was a neglect of tank warfare by the French. The French built a larger number of modern tanks than the Germans did and these were on average better armed and armoured. Also it isn't true that they divided them among the infantry in penny-packets: even the independent tank battalions were combined in Groupements and allocated at army level. However, the French suffered from an inflexible division in infantry and cavalry tanks: ironically the former were poorly trained to cooperate with the infantry and so couldn't execute modern combined arms tactics. In theory the operational doctrine of both armies was based on partly mechanized manoeuvre warfare; in practice the French shied away from it, while the best German field commanders were so bold as to let it develop into pure Blitzkrieg if the situation allowed.
* Quality and guidance of German troops in combat. The French population was much smaller and more aged: they had to draft a lot of elder men to form so-called "B"- divisions, which they then couldn't train properly as most professional instructors were needed to man the "A"-divisions. To compensate for the lack of capability, French infantry doctrine stressed the importance of methodical procedure, leading to inflexibility. The Germans too had many insufficiently trained reserve divisions; but those infantry units used for the breakthrough all consisted of young and well-trained men. Their officers on the tactical and operational level were considered the best in the world.
* More controversially, defeatism (or a lack of willingness to fight) among the French and particularly French leaders. This hypothesis was very popular in France itself with such books as Strange Defeat by Marc Bloch. American journalists, being neutrals at the time, observed much of this on both sides: the German populace wasn't enthusiastic about the war either. Most German generals were opposed to the campaign.
* Intense French losses during World War I caused an inability for the French to regenerate the resources necessary to defend France in 1940.

a rather pointless exercise, biut still : compare the respective allied/geman losses & advance during the 39 days of the campaign of frances and the russian/german losses &advance during the the first 39 days of Barbarossa ...

[shadepanther]

Well,
2. They didn't want to fight because they didn't want to rish damage to their 'beautiful' city Paris. (the Germans and practically everyone else laughed at this)

NB: I read no.2 in a book (i forget which) but i don't know if it's true or not, but what i do know is that the French surrendered.

They knew what happened to Warsaw. If you had seen what happened to the city when they didn't surrender I think you wouldn't want to fight in your capital

[Stanislaw Poniatowski]

The French lost so quickly in 1940 because the French WERE cowards, plain and simple. You see this extreme amount of cowardice all throughout the French Army in 1939 and in 1940, in respects to even simple operations in defence, such as holdinging onto Bridges and producing effective counter-attacks against the German Spearheads. What people ignore is how incredibly vulnerable the German Panzer columns were in regards to SUpplies and reinforcements coming through the rear. At times the German Panzer Divisions had completely outran their Infantry, leaving them wide open to attack from any sort of opposing force, weither it be by Infantry for other armoured units. The French had numerous instances of digging in along rivers such as the Meuse and the Somme as well, however on the SIGHT of Germans, they merely packed up and left. Leaving the vital rivers to be easily crossed by the Germans. De Gaulle, himself the "Great Fighter and defender of France" was caught up with the France's cowardice issues when his Armoured counter-attack managed to break through German lines... however he then a few days later turned tail and retreated.

The French Air Force was a fiasco, not just because of the simple stupidity of the Nationalized French air industries pumping out useless aircraft, but due to the enormous amount of Aircraft that couldn't be maintained. The British moved 30% of their aircraft to France, while the French only activated ~25%. Why you ask?, because the rest of the aircraft were broken and needed serious amounts of maintanance. By the end of the campaign, what was available for the French and British in France in terms of aircraft were actually beginning to turn the tides on the Luftwaffe. The Germans had flown up to 5 sorties a day and were tired after a month of this, day and day, while the French were rested and flying on average just a single sortie. However once the tides had begun to turn, the French air Force was flown to North Africa, where it en masse, sided with the Vichy French government.

Of course, the sheer fact that the French were unwilling to put any sort of resistance up to the Germans before the war and when they invaded Poland in 1939 is quite enough. France almost by itself, condemned many millions of Poles to their deaths.

[Sidus Preclarum]

hmmm..
A pole here is having issues .

[O'brien the Protector]

I think it was becuase of the german mechnanized troops ( I dont remember the exact number, but I think out of the 150ish diviiosns Hitler had in 1939, some 32 were mechanized ( infantry with vehicle support) and panzer divions ( although they had relitivly few in 1940), and ofcopurs the french generals terrible miscoculation ( they thought the germans would do a replica of the WW1 shileigffen plan). What happened was that HItler sent foch with a army group that went through belguim and into northern france, when the french saw that they were preparing to go by the northern rout agian, they thoguht they were using teh schilfen pan agian, adn sent most of thier forces north, even taking aay experianced solderis from the northern sections of the maginot line and replacinv them with reserves. then, the other army group ( there was a third to the south of that also) attackeda a notehrernn seciton of teh maginot line ( it wasent a actual poart of the amginot line, it was a extention of it), esasily borke thoguh it, and hten the panzer diviions seperated form the main army and quickkly rolled to the french nortehr western coast, and took port by port heading towards the frenh main forces. I dont rmember well what happened nex,t but I think the french started retrwseating but were cought between fochs arm group and the panzers, or they didnt retreat and were cought between the panzers and foch. The way i see it, the french lsot becase , although they had many tanks, they were all assighned as support to infntry, so without any seperate tank divions, they had no way to stop the german panzers, band the amazing speed at which everyhtign happned, which didnt give the french geneals enough time to collec t their wits and figure out what to do ( even though thir position was more or less hopelss by the time the panzers reached the coast.

also, Hitler didnt employ sucha grand strategy to poland. HE was much mroe cuasitons when ti came to poland, I think he was trinyg to save as many of his soldiers as he could in rpeperation for the assualt on france.

[shadepanther]

Of course, the sheer fact that the French were unwilling to put any sort of resistance up to the Germans before the war and when they invaded Poland in 1939 is quite enough. France almost by itself, condemned many millions of Poles to their deaths.

France was not ready for war in September. They had to completely mobilise their army and assign equipment, which woudl take at the very least a month. They could of lauched an attack but if they got through they would not have had anything to back them up with. I suppose they thought Poland would hold on longer than they did in a WW1 battle.

[Pompeius Minus]

And the second thing is that the French had very little tanks and artillery, because before the WWII they decided to build defence forces - The Maginot Line (a line of fortifications on a border with Germany) instead of offence forces like tanks.

The Maginot line has often been misunderstood.

First of all it only accounted for a very small part of the French defence budget, something like a few percent. There were other more expensive and less useful programs, like the new class of battleships. Second, the Germans actually avoided the Maginot line in 1940 which means it wasn't totally useless. Thirdly, the French had plenty of tanks in 1940. What they lacked was doctrine, radios, and a political will to fight after the first setbacks.

That is why Hitler attacked neutral Belgium - to avoid French defence, and from Belgium he easily conquered France.

You are confusing 1914 and 1940. The Schlieffen plan in 1914 was the surprise assault through Belgium. The original plan in 1940 was basically a repeat of the Schlieffen plan, with the important difference that the French and British had anticipated this and moved their own forces into Belgium.

However on von Manstein's initiative the main thrust of the German attack in 1940 was changed to the Ardennes, which resulted in the best French and British units being cut off in Belgium. This probably decided the campaign.

[Pompeius Minus]

The French lost so quickly in 1940 because the French WERE cowards, plain and simple. You see this extreme amount of cowardice all throughout the French Army in 1939 and in 1940, in respects to even simple operations in defence, such as holding onto bridges and producing effective counter-attacks against the German spearheads.

You are being too harsh on the French and giving the Germans too little credit.

The Germans in 1940 had both skill and luck. Maneuvers like the air assault on Eben Emael, the Sichselschnitt through the Ardennes, and the crossing of the Meuse were brilliant military achievements. France lost the political will to fight after the intitial setbacks, but this has to be seen against the backdrop of the national disaster that was world war one (where France lost more soldiers than the US has done in all its wars put together, for example).

As for "producing effective counter-attacks against the German spearheads" I'm sure the French leadership wanted to do this, but blitzkrieg was a new concept and its speed and success surprised everyone (including Hitler). The British were not successful against the Germans in 1940 either.

France almost by itself, condemned many millions of Poles to their deaths.

I think you are being too harsh on the French again here. No nation except Germany was ready for war in 1939, and every country suffered initial fiascos.

The difference was that the British (who had a water obstacle) and Soviets (who had strategic depth) survived the initial setbacks, while the French and Poles did not.