French army in 1939

Can Veeky Forums explain to me why french army was considered at this time as the first Army in the world while being such shitty ?

>Still using Lebel, an outdated weapon, even for WW1
>Didn't produce MAS36 in time
>Same of Automatic pistol, machine gun...
>No standard Usage of radio
>Only 2,3 M Soldier at the German Border
>Outdated planes
>Low industrial production
>Low moral

But :

>Had the largest number and best tank
>At the largest number of arty
>Good motorization

It looks like that French army was considered the best, only due to lack of rival.

British and American had not army, German one was under Versailles Treaty and Soviet one was total garbage

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It was considered the best army because it was the strongest army of the winning side of the previous war
As simple as that

I never understood the low morale bit. Just like fall of roman empire everything went to shit and you can't really point on a single cause. But they were fighting a direct threat of a foreign aggressor so , you would expect it to be better.

Up to the end of the napoleonic wars, France had been the undisputed leader in military matters, this ment it was respected more than it should have been post franco--prussian war

Defensive mindset. During World War 1, they won purely based upon defensive tactics - most of the leaders of the French Army were veterans of the first war who didn't bother to innovate and instead wanted to expand fortifications and make things more entrenched. Nobody expected the Germans to roll through the Ardennes either. Plus, the British and French thought tanks were only best used when in a support role.

What kind of helmet this guy is wearing? It cannt be an Adrian helmet

Rifles are generally not very important, artillery is the principal killing arm of the infantry.
Low morale is generally hard to see until the fighting happens, and French morale wasn't low really, it just happened that when command and control collapsed, as with any other army throughout history morale collapsed too because nobody knew what was going on.

"During World War 1 they won purely based upon defensive tactics"
The French launched offensives throughout the war and they won in 1918 because of the Hundred Days Offensive which was a French-commanded effort with the French as the largest Allied troop contingent taking part. Until 1929 all of their war plans with Germany entailed an immediate offensive into Germany, and afterwards French plans were supposed to entail defenses for long enough for military forces to be built up for the offensive. French French paid a lot of attention to defense, but it was supposed to be defense that would clear the ground for an eventual offensive. Doctrine was modified several times between WW1 and WW2, and even if it was never any dramatic changes, that was because the French had carefully analyzed and decided that the current doctrine was better suited to their needs and worked on the battlefield, as compared to doctrine like the Germans. They were wrong, but that wasn't really easy to see until the war broke out. There were German officers who thought the French system was better, for example there was a German officer who published a report on French vs. German tank tactics in... 1937 or 1938, and he said that the French operational usage of tanks (tighter control, subordination to the artillery) was better and the Germans needed to change to use it.

The Ardennes meanwhile, was something that the French thought a possible avenue of approach, but they dramatically over-estimated how long it would take to get through it, 9 days instead of 3, and didn't realize how effective German airpower would be.

>they won in 1918 because of the Hundred Days Offensive
The British army won the war by breaking through the Hindenburg line

>>No standard Usage of radio
What the fuck do you mean by this? That they didn't use radio? This is wrong. That they didn't have a standard for how to use radio? This is wrong. Why the fuck does your post exist?

How would you feel as a soldier if your nation had been thoroughly bent over with millions of deaths suffered in horrific conditions, and now you get to experience it again 20 years later? Frogs got complacent and never really recovered from WW1, and boy did it show.

>why french army was considered at this time
Glorious WWI performance, best tanks at the end of the war, high tech everywhere, unbreakable moral in the trenches... Brits invested into a naval army and French into a land one. Theoretically, they were the best of their time.

>while being such shitty
Commies sabotaging the economy
Crony politicians take all the money
Promotion according to politic allegiance, not merit
No central vision, invest to design 100 anti tank guns, 100 airplanes, 100 artillery, 100 tanks, buy 10 of each
Betrayed by the Soviet Union
Commies actively sabotaged the army and gave intel to the Germans
Stabbed in the back by Belgium
Betrayed by Britain

>Outdated planes
Dewoitine D.520
>One of the most successful D.520 pilots was Pierre Le Gloan, who shot 18 aircraft down (four Germans, seven Italian and seven British)

>and seven British
?

Begone, restless spirit of Charles de Gaulle

>be French
>hate British

>Brits invested into a naval army
what? why didn't they just get a navy?

The Hundred Days Offensive was mostly a French operation, anglo

>Still using Lebel, an outdated weapon, even for WW1
Do you think the germans all had up to date guns? Because they didnt. It takes decades to design, buy and produce a new weapon and have it replace all the outdated ones.
>Didn't produce MAS36 in time
>Same of Automatic pistol, machine gun...
>No standard Usage of radio
They absolutely did use radios.
>Only 2,3 M Soldier at the German Border
Yeah, that's more than any allied country had raised at this point and the strategy was to have the maginot line buy time for a mobilisation to take place.
>Outdated planes
Painfully wrong. The germans lost more than one thousand planes in the month the battle of France took.
>Low industrial production
Blame commies and socialists who thought pacifism was the way to go.
Still outproduced most allied countries btw
>Low moral
Not really until dunkirk. And everyone would've at that point. So much equipment was lost.
In the end yeah no one was really in a position to rival them before Hitler (though the sheer number of soviets...) but it could have easily matched any european country had it had tome as was planned and a united government/people. But you're really underselling them. It was good, except it didnt adapt as it should have to new tactics.

>be French
>shoot everything that moves in the sky because "ain't war hell?"

the british had a minuscule contribution to the war compared to the french

The french have an impressive military history, not only in the napoleon times, also much before....
in terms of ratio i would put them in the top 10 world wide, in terms win-lose
The french, germans, english, portuguese, russians are in the top for sure.

>Outdated planes
Painfully wrong. The germans lost more than one thousand planes in the month the battle of France took.

Yeah and the Allies lost twice that number lmao

Allies lost most of their planes on the ground.

because why the fuck not

> Until 1929 all of their war plans with Germany entailed an immediate offensive into Germany, and afterwards French plans were supposed to entail defenses for long enough for military forces to be built up for the offensive.

This is why Remilitarization of the Rhineland was such a big deal. Without the Remilitarization and the Siegfried line, the French army could waltz right to the banks of the Rhine when Germany attacked Poland, and cripple German industry from the get go.

The Siegfried line allowed Germany to hold the Western Front with a light force, while using the bulk of their army to crush Poland. Belgium being a bitch and not allowing military access removed the possibility of an allied attack into Germany while they were occupied with Poland.

I think what he meant is that the French spent almost none of their military budget on radio communication equipment compared to the Germans.

Between 1923 and 1939 the French only spent 0.15 percent of their military budget on radio communication equipment.

This is evidenced by the fact that the Germans tanks all had radio while only the French command tanks had radios thus giving the Germans a tactical advantage in tank vs tank battles. General Gamelin also didn't have a radio communication center in his HQ to keep contact with the various Allied army groups and instead had communiques delivered to him by motorcycle messages and telephone.

What are the numbers the Germans spent?
Nobody ever quote that, maybe it was a really tiny figure too.

russians are a meme.

It was certainly larger enough to be able to give all their tanks radios and completely outmaneuver and overwhelm allied tanks in penny-packet formations at every turn.

Based Pierre joined the Vichy

The French military was fully respected, they just got outmaneuvered because they did not realize did not do much in the military theory and how effective tanks will be in breakthroughs

but the same applies for any other country that fought in WWI

>it's another episode of Teaboos claiming victory in WW1
Literally everyone agrees that British contribution in WW1 on land was not particularly relevant. France did most of the heavy lifting for the whole duration of the war.

Not really
Only the Western Front was truly horrific
So three countries were hit harder than the rest, two of which didn't get their own territory devastated

>being literally cucked is based now

He didn't "join" Vichy tho
Vichy was the continuation of the official French state, so unless they defected to the Free French (which he did once he estimated he had shot down enough British aircrafts to avenge Mers El Kebir), soldiers were automatically in Vichy's army after the armistice

Such delusional French ...

>Do you think the germans all had up to date guns? Because they didnt. It takes decades to design, buy and produce a new weapon and have it replace all the outdated ones.

Germand had modern rifle, modern machine gun and machine pistol where as french were still using weapons from WW1 and 1920's

>They absolutely did use radios

No they don't

>Yeah, that's more than any allied country had raised at this point and the strategy was to have the maginot line buy time for a mobilisation to take place.

The French army was composed of 3,3 M soldiers in 1918

>Painfully wrong. The germans lost more than one thousand planes in the month the battle of France took

They were outdated,weak and in a not lot sufficient number. Had to buy from American.

>Blame commies and socialists who thought pacifism was the way to go.
Still outproduced most allied countries btw

Wrong too, the french industry and production of material was very low

>Not really until dunkirk. And everyone would've at that point. So much equipment was lost.
In the end yeah no one was really in a position to rival them before Hitler (though the sheer number of soviets...) but it could have easily matched any european country had it had tome as was planned and a united government/people. But you're really underselling them. It was good, except it didnt adapt as it should have to new tactics.

French didn't want to fight a long war

>the French were using outdated rifles
>the Germans were also using a 40 year old, 19th century design

What do you think the 98 in K98 stands for user?

Come on, western Europe is not even close to the sheer amount of damage and misery that happened in Russia/USSR in WWI+Civil War

Yes, it's amazing how the French rifles were somehow even worse ey?

daily reminder that this is a photo of completely sane man smiling for a camera with a photo artifact that was pretty common in photos in those days

>Lebel remains all but completely unmodified from 1893 to World War II
>Kar 98K is a 1935 upgrade to an upgrade to the original Gewehr 98

In Marc Bloch's Strange Defeat one of the things he discussed was how surprised he was by the fact that many professional soldiers had absolutely no will to fight against the odds and were willing to surrender immediately, while many others who had never held a rifle in their lives would gladly die in the hopes that it would set back the germans/vichy even slightly. And that until a nation is tested the way France was there was no way to tell which one a person was.

Based Conscripts
Reminder that the French troops who covered the running away of British professional soldiers at Dunkirk were mostly conscripts

>Rifles
Beyond the fact that rifles are irrelevant except for the marine crayon eaters and the anglos, the French had modern rifles available with the MAS-36 and the remaining rifles they had were good enough.

>Radios
The French did use radios, just read the following page about radios
france1940.free.fr/armee/radios.html
They tended to really love telephone wires and couriers, and were particularly bad operationally with radios, but they did have them and they used them.

>Army size
What are you arguing about with being composed of 3.3 million soldiers in 1918? That the French army in 1918 was larger? The French 1940 army reached technically around 5 million men iirc, but the French had global responsibilities.

>Air force
You're not responding to the guy's claims. The French managed to cause great harm to German air power in 1940.

>production
The French produced an equivalent amount of tanks in 1940 (1,245), to the British (1,399, despite only having half of the year available. French production was ramping up constantly throughout 1940.

>French didn't want to fight a long war
Useless opinion and conjecture

All of the important French tanks (ie. those with 3 man and above crews) had radios, and they were distributing them to some of the later models of 2 men tanks. Besides, giving the shit infantry tanks with 2 men radios is pretty useless anyway, since all they're good for is machine gunning some German infantry and making the French infantry feel comfortable attacking. They were never planned to be more than that.

>It was certainly larger enough
So what is it?

Stop being thick and claiming that brits somehow made a miniscule contribution
It was a joint fucking effort

Not that guy but have any of you actually read about what broke the Hindenburg line? It was a theee pronged assault consisting of a northern offensive (mostly British/Belgian) a central offensive (primarily British) and a southern offensive (mainly American although involving the French as well). Despite having overall command and the largest, most battle-hardened army of the allies, the French were a secondary partner in all three offensives which together broke the Hindenburg line

>Beyond the fact that rifles are irrelevant except for the marine crayon eaters and the anglos, the French had modern rifles available with the MAS-36 and the remaining rifles they had were good enough.

Nope, MAS 36 didn't been produced in a enough large scale and most of french soldier still used Lebel

>The French did use radios, just read the following page about radios
france1940.free.fr/armee/radios.html
They tended to really love telephone wires and couriers, and were particularly bad operationally with radios, but they did have them and they used them.

The use of radio wasn't systematic contrary to Germans

>What are you arguing about with being composed of 3.3 million soldiers in 1918? That the French army in 1918 was larger? The French 1940 army reached technically around 5 million men iirc, but the French had global responsibilities.


That the French army should had deployed more than 3 M across French border in order to win

>You're not responding to the guy's claims. The French managed to cause great harm to German air power in 1940.

The loses are due to anti-aircraft gun, most of the french airplanes were taken down on the floor

Also, the Germans had more than 4000 aircraft, the french, something like 2500

>The French produced an equivalent amount of tanks in 1940 (1,245), to the British (1,399, despite only having half of the year available. French production was ramping up constantly throughout 1940.

Yes, they produced a lot of tank but their production of primary resources such as steel, coal... and GDP was too low to compete with Germans and every Allied power.

>French didn't want to fight a long war
Useless opinion and conjecture

Nonsense

The French didn't wanted to have a new world war with Germany like in WW1, they only declared war against Germany as a warned and was expecting a peace after the collapse of Poland by no attacking German before may 1940

The French of 1914 would had launch a massive offensive

>The use of radio wasn't systematic contrary to Germans
You dumbass French infantry divisions had radios at the company level, just like Germans.

>The loses are due to anti-aircraft gun, most of the french airplanes were taken down on the floor
Are you retarded? You think German aircraft were destroyed in their aerodromes in GERMANY?

So many salt...

>Are you retarded? You think German aircraft were destroyed in their aerodromes in GERMANY?

The historian talk of about ~360 Germans planes taken down by French airplanes in a total of ~1000

The Luftwaffe was superior in number and in quality for sure

>You dumbass French infantry divisions had radios at the company level, just like Germans.

Not at all scale.

Like it was said, most of the tank didn't used Radios and squad leader was still using flag to indicate order to others tank.

>The French of 1914 would had launch a massive offensive
But the context was completly different. In 1914, France could launch huge offensives, because Germany was fighting against Russia too. In 1939, France was alone, and Germany still had a huge demographic advantage.

The french had a fantastic military w/l ratio of 60-70 since charlemagne til the end of napoleon.
After napoleon ended, it went into the shitter going at most around 40% or some shiat like that

Russia took a lot of time to mobilize her Army and France was virtually, during 2 months, taking all the burden

In 1939, only 20 Germans divisions were opposing to 80~ french divisions

>Russia took a lot of time to mobilize her Army
No, it actually mobilize way faster than what was expected, which lead Moltke to modify the Schlieffen Plan in order to send reinforcements to the east.
>In 1939, only 20 Germans divisions were opposing to 80~ french divisions
In 1939, maybe, but it was useless for France to launch a huge offensive in Germany, as the french forces would be completly encircled by the german armies coming back form Poland.
The french decided to wait because they needed men and were waiting for the british. The Dyle plan exist because the french wanted to save most of the belgian armies in order to stabilize the front.

They could make the front in the Rhine river and took Westphalia

>In 1939, France was alone
Yeah? How about POLAND?

Poland was already defeated by the time France had finished to mobilize.