Quote:
Originally Posted by von Rundstedt
Actually France did invade Germany and Asterix was right in that the French used 9 divisions to occupy the Saarland, although several local skirmishes did take place Hitler shrewdly decided to ignore the French invasion, he knew the French would not go any further and he was proven right, Poland had demanded that France do more but the French Command was up to the job.
Hitler remarked later after the last French troops had evacuated over the border, that had the French had gone onto a full offensive, Germany did not stand a chance, Hitlers gamble had paid off in the short term.
But had France decided that a full invasion was to take place then Germany occupied with it's war in Poland would have been defeated within weeks, Germany would have no choice to divert vast numbers of divisions in Poland westward to face the French giving Poland a valuable opportunity to regroup and maybe launch some offensive action, Germany could not defeat a coordinated two front war against Poland and France. I would say by 15th October 1939 Germany signs the Surrender Treaty and Germany would be carved up, never again to threaten her neighbours. And saving some 50 million lives. Poland becomes bigger with a large slice of Eastern Germany and Western Germany assorbed into France,
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I respectfully disagree. I don't think Hitler or his generals ignored the Saar offensive at all, but in fact watched it very carefully. If anything, they were probably very surprised that nothing came of it. We have to remember, for all the French knew, the Seigfreid Line was just as intensive and formidable as the Maginot Line, and they certainly weren't about to make headlong attacks in an attempt to penetrate it. I would also like to add that, after the German invasion of Poland, there was a hurried meeting between the Polish attache in Paris and the Senior French High Command. Given the timetable for Gamelin to gather enough strength to mount an attack of any kind would be too late to affect the outcome in Poland. This confirmed the Polish attache's worst fears: the Poles at the meeting
knew it would be too late to save Poland even before the Saar attack was launched.
In addition, you've left out one key player in all of this: Stalin. The French had managed to gather their forces for the Saar offensive on the very eve of the Russian invasion of Poland. The carving up of Poland had been decided by Hitler and Stalin, via Ribbentroop and Molotov, and I seriously doubt Hitler would have gone it alone into Poland if he wasn't sure how Britain and France would react. Hitler knew how to gamble and take risks, but I believe he would have thought going it alone into Poland was too great a risk. It was much more beneficial for Hitler to have Stalin eat half the cake.
Yes, the French could have done this, and done that, and so on and so on.....but that is exactly my point. The French could have done something had a VERY many circumstances changed within their military and government, but I simply believe there were way too many circumstances that required changing to be anything near realistic in order to achieve a dramatic and different result.
If we're to really engage in alternate history, then we could say: Had France not fallen into economic and societal dissaray between the wars, and had their been no huge labor and communist movements, had their industries both civilian and defense not been paralysed by massive strikes and worker's revolts, had the French not been divided by extremist political chaos in the 1920s and 1930s, had all the old generals been retired, had all the old and obsolecent weapons and equipment been abandoned and replaced with new materiel beginning in the early 1930s and not late 1930s and early 1940, had Belgium and Holland not remained neutral, had their intelligence on German forces been more accurate and reliable, had they trashed their old doctrinal method of warfare, had they done ALL that and then some....then yes, perhaps the war could have been over by Fall, or Winter of 1939 at the latest.
However, I still maintain that given what the French
did have and what they
did know (and for that matter, what they
did not know), I still don't see how the outcome would have been much different. Far too much would have had to change for it to be otherwise. There were simply too many things which had gone wrong within France itself in the 20 years leaning up to WW 2.