Why did the french preform so poorly in ww2 both functionally and moral wise?

They did not. They held out quite well. Their losses for 6 weeks (100k) were extraordinarily high. Germany threw anything they got at the French. But there was just too little time to stabilize the front and counterattack.

Look at the Korean war a few years later. Very similar situation. American and South Korean forces push North fast in a blaze of victory. But then massive counterattacks push them back.

If Britain had redployed its energency reserves and sent the Royal Force in the fight in full by May 20, the French might have pushed back the Germans and even won the campaign or achieved a stalemate

>early WW1 tactics dictated by Napoleon's Cult of the Offensive, leading to catastrophic casualties
>early WW2 tactics dictated by traumatic WW1 experiences, leading to swift defeat
F

They lost the core of their army is such stupid way in Belgium they couldn't fight back.

>they held out quite well

but they literally didnt? they lasted a month with equal if not superior numbers compared to Germany

>If Britain had redployed its energency reserves and sent the Royal Force in the fight in full by May 20, the French might have pushed back the Germans and even won the campaign or achieved a stalemate

the army was already surrendering in droves at that point. to throw more men into the situation would simply increase the chance of Dunkirk ending in disaster

Because they are french.

>but they literally didnt? they lasted a month with equal if not superior numbers compared to Germany

modern warfare between equal enemies, it can be 6 weeks and over or after 5 weeks you counterattack and from the atracker back 800km, look at Korea

>the army was already surrendering in droves at that point. to throw more men into the situation would simply increase the chance of Dunkirk ending in disaster

the Luftwaffe was not superior to the RAF and French airforces. If the RAF had not been withdrawn to England very early on in the campaign and Britain had committed every single aircraft, the Luftwaffe may not have achieved air superiority.

Also, the expeditionary army were not the only forces Britain had at its desposal. Within around 10 days, up to 250,000 further soldiers could have been sent to France to back up the French and push back the Germans. Britain just did not want to take the gamble.

There was a fifth column of marxists and other such vile creatures who undermined the French fighting spirit.

>inb4 laughing off Dolchstoß

Thanks to the Mechelen incident, French and British intelligence obtained a copy of plans for the Nazi invasion of France and adjusted their strategy accordingly. The Nazis were somehow informed of this and formulated new plans that caught the Allies flat-footed when the attacks took place differently than intel indicated.

It's suspected that the rat was disgraced former king Edward VIII. Edward VIII was a Nazi sympathizing shit, palling around with them pre-war and doing worse during it. Hitler wanted to install him as a puppet king to replace his brother George VI and he and his wife seem to have been receptive to it, he told the Nazis that if they kept up heavy terror bombing for a few more weeks the UK would capitulate, and the crown ended up unofficially exiling him to the Bahamas for the duration of the war because of how high a security risk he posed.

In addition to that clusterfuck, French morale was low due to antimilitarism from being bled white by WWI + a near Russian-tier godawful culture of officers treating enlisted like garbage. As mentioned they had little understanding of mobility in warfare, preferring to disperse their tanks among the infantry to supplement their strength and for static defense a la Arab armies in almost every 20th c. Middle Eastern conflict, which meant the concentrated armor tactics of the Nazis tore through them like bog paper. The UK also fucked up by following Churchill's Ten Year Rule suggestion and putting the military on life support during the 1920s, followed by holding back and failing to commit their full available strength to defend France.

>Their losses for 6 weeks (100k) were extraordinarily high
That was not particularly high for any theater of WW2 other than the Western Desert campaign. It pales to the numbers of pretty much any given subsector of the Eastern Front. Axis losses in Husky reached a bit over double that, for an army that was only about 300,000, not 3 million. Other campaigns like Dragoon, Overlord, the fighting around the Sigfried line, to say nothing of the hotter campaigns in the Pacific, all featured FAR higher casualty rates than the roughly 3% the French took over 6 weeks.

>Look at the Korean war a few years later. Very similar situation.
They were not at all similar situations. None of the major powers involved fully mobilized, or had 1/3 of their army cut off to be obliterated.

>But then massive counterattacks push them back.
From a completely different country. The North Korean forces remained ineffective for the rest of the war.

>If Britain had redployed its energency reserves and sent the Royal Force in the fight in full by May 20
The First Army is already cut off by that point, and the tenth, seventh, and sixth are all mauled. You really think a bombing force already demonstrated to be ineffective at CAS and FOUR divisions are making a difference at that point?

> Within around 10 days, up to 250,000 further soldiers could have been sent to France to back up the French and push back the Germans. Britain just did not want to take the gamble.
Ten days later, Fall Rot was about to begin and France was down 64 divisions. Another 10 or so British ones would be throwing good money after bad

>German intelligence actually doing their job and being competent at it
Man, talk about a one in a million chance. The French never stood a chance

really?

It's a shame that everybody seems to be ignoring this post.

>yfw the Dolchstoßlegende was actually true, but it was true for the allies in WW2 and not the Central Powers in WW1

>preferring to disperse their tanks among the infantry to supplement their strength
That's not actually true; they concentrated 3 tank divisions,which matched what the Germans fielded at Gembleaux. What they did have was a similar (but not completely congruent) notion to the early war British of overspecialization of tank design, with dedicated infantry support tanks, which not surprisingly, were supporting infantry. The lighter, "cruiser" tanks with higher mobility and longer barrels on their cannons were concentrated.

The bigger problem is that French doctrine viewed artillery as the primary striking arm and everything else existing to defend the artillery. Which meant that you weren't supposed to leave an area where your guns could support you. Which in turn meant that armor's mobility meant very little except possibly rushing reserves to a point of enemy breach, but given the overestimation the French had of the Luftwaffe's capabilities, they put practically no reserves in place anyway, attempting to repulse them at every point in the line.

tl;dr. They were incredibly stupid, just not in the way you suggested.

Huns lost more men in first 40 days of Barbarossa than in entire 1.9.1939-21.6.1941 period

it's pretty wierd calling the germans huns when they're fighting eastern peoples

t. Graf Kublai von Ulaanbaatar

>always the same two people
Oh look, it's the assblasted p*le again

>Pole
try again Schlomo

The Soviets collapsed just like the French. They hemorrhaged men and materials in the opening weeks. If Russia was smaller it would have capitulated too.

What the Soviets had was a giant buffer to drag out Nazi supply lines and give them time to organize. They also had a larger manpower base to resupply the army with and more excess industrial capacity, so when the blitz was halted, they could deal with it. If France had effectively contained the Germans, even if they lost a ton of men and land, they would have come back too, but they totally lost control of the situation.