Nazi invasion of france

Not OP, but I would point out that in WW1, a German division was organizationally a LOT bigger than a French one; those 27 German divisions actually outnumbered the 39 French and 6 British divisions, by almost 3:2.

...

what is that from?

Great post

Didn't know that, thanks. Still, being outnumbered 3:2 is much better than (assuming the French were fielding infantry divisions with ~15,000 men each in 1940) being outnumbered 2:1 by a better led and experienced enemy.

1940: the fall of France by Andre Beaufre

he goes on to explain that despite how obviously vulnerable to a counter attack the german breakthrough was it never materialized for a few reasons
-nearly all training of french soldiers had been geared towards how to properly man static defenses, and not how to rapidly mobilize and counter attack
-when the forces in belgium were ordered to wheel about and meet the germans south of them they were unable to get there in time because the roads were hopelessly clogged with refugees
-all of the armor reserves south of the german advance had been meted out in "penny packs" where every little chokepoint was given a few tanks to defend it, which was useful for static defense but made mobilizing armor for a counter attack impossible
additionally almost no tanks had radios so were unable to communicate with eachother or with aircraft in the way the germans were, and a fear of dive bombers paralyzed many who were in a position to delay the german advance.

A few pages after that pic he launches into another diatribe saying that its tempting to label Belgium's surrender and the departure of the BEF as betrayals that sealed France's fate, but that France as the leader of the alliance had given them absolutely no reason to think this was going to turn around, and that "with the exact same alliance we failed to stop the bleeding where Joffre and his officers did. No one is to blame for that but us."

This.
France was waiting for the German main force to hit either the maginot line, or start coming through Belgium. Instead they Went over the Ardennes mountain region - A move that shouldn't have been possible except for the new mechanisation of the german army. Once the nazis had passed through the Ardennes they had successfully infiltrated France. All other defences were placed facing Belgium to the north or Germany to the south. The French couldn't mount a counter offensive because they didn't have time to re orient their lines and pull back their troops - the Germans just stayed in their vehicles and made from paris.

Because they didn't want their city destroyed for no reason at all

Surprisingly nice thread, for this topic

Don't worry, /pol/s law means that we'll get some stormfags soon enough, but it's a great thread while it lasts.

I'll plug for The Wages of Destruction while I'm here, which is a great book on the shambolic german economy and war machine

sigh... I'll get it over with
>because they are non white
>Fucking Muslims
>something something ..the Jews
>lmao *picture of African person in Paris*

There was no way that they could have made an orderly retreat to paris.
The french high command didn't have a plan for pulling back from the maginot line. Also, even if they wanted to, they wouldn't have been able to undertake an orderly retreat from the line to paris, because the germans had absolutely raped their rear echelon forces and supply lines, and their mechanized units controlled the major roads.

I will add to this that if you enjoy "Strange Defeat" then you'll also be interested in "Strange Victory" which was intentionally written as a sort of spiritual companion to the former, filling in the gaps that the original author never could have known.

The French was too politically divided at the time, and couldn't mount a united front against Germany. Some factions wanted to surrender and work with Germany.

I think it's really interested how before their fall they were a disorganized mess but they learned their lessons and the Free French forces were organized around mobility.

You have forgotten the power of /pol/
>because the socialists intentionally weakened the French army
>cavalry traditionally represented the nobility
>tanks are the modern-day cavalry
>socialist traitors spread out the tanks instead of concentrating them out of fear of a reactionary coup, destroying French military capacity

I don't get the whole France surrender meme?

They had almost half of their country occupied and were fighting a war on two fronts.

Its only logical they surrendered??

France's strategic/operational mobility in 1914 was more or less equal to Germany's, and as the defender France benefited from interior lines of communication which grew shorter as German columns neared Paris. Joffre's offensive plan was moronic, but to give him due credit, when he realized that Paris was in danger he made very competent use of the French rail network to rapidly pull corps north and throw up a new defensive line on the Marne just in time to blunt Moltke's momentum and throw the Germans back.

In 1940, German doctrine and force structure permitted them far more mobility than France. The panzer groups moved much faster than Moltke's columns in 1914, and the French simply did not have the C2 capability to pull units and throw them into blocking positions fast enough to blunt German momentum.

In particular, in June 1940, General Gamelin actually ordered the correct flanking counterattack against Guderian's bridgehead on the Meuse which could have cut off the panzer salient, but Gamelin was replaced by Weygand before the order was executed and Weygand temporarily halted his orders to review them. By the time Weygand gave permission to attack, the battle was already lost. French corps and division commanders should have had the authority to proceed with the counterattack on their own initiative, but they did not and the high command could not react fast enough.

Even if France had not surrendered, they could not have stopped the Germans taking Paris nor put up any meaningful defense of the city. The simply did not have enough combat-effective formations left in position to get there before the Germans did.

Also worth remembering that in 1914 the French thought they just had to hang on until the Russian Memeroller was ready to drown the kaiser with a billion cossacks. In 1940 there was no second front to divert Germany, so the French had no expectation of relief.

>nearly all training of french soldiers had been geared towards how to properly man static defenses, and not how to rapidly mobilize and counter attack
This illustrates one important difference between the Germans and the French, in that the French simply did not trust their conscripts. Since the National Assembly reduced conscription time to 1 year, the French Command was convinced that the conscripts would be absolutely useless outside of a static defensive position from which they could benefit. THAT was why the Maginot was important: it would allow the conscripts to simply hold most of France's border, so that the much-smaller standing army (into which most of France's most modern tanks and equipment had been poured) would defeat the Germans in a war of maneuver in Belgium. And it was that small core of elite troops that were trapped in Belgium by the thrust through the Ardennes. Whatever the numerical might of France's remaining forces, most of them were just poorly trained garrisons.

Part of it, mind you, was probably self-fulfilling prophecy, especially given that Germany's conscripts performed fine in comparison because Germany was willing to allocate resources evenly. There are a lot of anecdotal accounts that the average French conscript barely had the chance to fire his rifle, and there are certainly non-anecdotal accounts of them being saddled with the rejects of France's armored force (the outdated D2s and Renault FTs).

>given that Germany's conscripts performed fine in comparison because Germany was willing to allocate resources evenly.
Not the guy you're responding to, but Germany did NOT allocate resources evenly among its troops, not even close. Differences were more due to training, populism, and great degree of trust in the lower ranking officers than what the French did. I don't have stats in front of me, but I'd actually be willing to be that one of those French Maginot Line garrison divisions was equipped better than his German counterpart manning the Sigfried line at the same time.

>The men who were witnessing and living through this drama beneath a cloudless sky did so with stupor and dejection, but could not bring themselves to believe that this was real, that France was dying and that something would not happen to save us at the last moment.

>because the socialists intentionally weakened the French army
>socialist traitors spread out the tanks instead of concentrating them out of fear of a reactionary coup, destroying French military capacity
These are not true?

Crossposting someone else's link from the Saar Offensive thread. Grad thesis about Gamelin's decisionmaking in 1940: spectrum.library.concordia.ca/977623/1/Parker_MA_F2013.pdf

It's true. Also, Guderian's advance through the Ardennes was made possible because he met an elderly Jew who showed him the path through the forest in exchange for a shekel.

>I don't get the whole France surrender meme?
Then youre a fucking retard. No one has an obligation to hand hold you through decades worth of cultural jokes.

Google it you clueless mong.

>Bitching about /pol/ preemptively
>No /pol/ as of yet.

You guys are worse than /pol/. You're the ones shitting up the thread.

>Germans outnumbered French 3:1
Literal retard. Opinion discarded. Kill yourself you fucking waste of space.

How anyone could be this misinformed about the most documented conflict in human history is beyond me.

So how far did the Germans went in France? Did they had much control in the south of France, even to the border with Spain?

its a shame that Bloch was killed by the gestapo in 1944 so never got to write a follow up. The intro to strange defeat where he wonders if the book will ever actually be published really got to me.

I'd say that probably had more to do with the fact that De Gaulle had for years been writing advocating a reform of the French military around mobility.

is this bait?

>That in turn eliminated roughly 1/3 of the French force in about 10 days

Holy shit. I knew the invasion was fast but that's intense.

france hat a whole year you dumb fuck, they even made steps into germany

See, this is a subject I would love to discuss on Veeky Forums. Was France right to withdraw from the Rhineland and attempt to hold their borders while waiting for allied support? Meaning losing the advantage from the northern half of the Maginot line AND being deep in enemy territory and being massively outnumbered when the Wehrmacht returns from Warsaw.
Everyone gives them shit for not invading Germany while they had the chance, but really, is anyone willing to argue it would have made a difference or stopped an encirclement and subsequent destruction of the French army?

>Reading comprehension.
They did not have a whole year from May 10th, when the German offensive started.

>Was France right to withdraw from the Rhineland and attempt to hold their borders while waiting for allied support?
Yes, although I wouldn't go so far as to say it would have stopped in an encirclement and destruction of the French Army. I mean, the Saar offensive was pretty worthless as it was, and it never even contacted the main German belt of defense, the Sigfried line. There's really no indication that it was capable of penetrating it, especially as the Germans were very rapidly (far more rapidly than the French) mobilizing forces. axishistory.com/axis-nations/145-germany-heer/heer-unsorted/3420-the-german-mobilization-1939

You need a significant, significant advantage to start breaking through when you attack someone, especially a dug-in defender. France had an initial advantage, but one that was pretty much only going to last two weeks, and that's not enough time for them to penetrate and make rapid gains, especially with a doctrine that emphasized slow, "methodical" battle, centered around never going anywhere without artillery support.

If seriously attempted, the overwhelmingly likely result is that it simply would have petered out on the Sigfried line, especially since main Polish resistance was broken on the 13th, only 4 days into the offensive, which gives Hitler the opportunity to recall units from Poland if the newly formed reserve units aren't capable of stopping the advance.

whoops, half of the post was meant in response to