Could France have survived?

Also the French wasted precious time with exhausting and useless drilling exercices like having men building cabins and ditches. As a results one out of four had not fired a shot and one out of two had not thrown a grenade when sent to combat..... worse not every unit had the amno they needed.
One example of a terrible tragedy that is forgotten by history. The Villy la Ferté Bullwork near Sedan. 107 men tried to stop the German advance .On May 17th the turrets were blown up burying the men alive, the block kept being attacked for another 48 hours .Although in a hopeless situation and not being able to fire back the men would not give up and when nothing was left of the pillboxes they took refuge in the galeries. They ended up being unable to come out and all died suffocated....

 

There were at least 4 major operations by Heersgruppe C against the Maginot line in may and june 1940, none of the major fortresses fell to a military assault.

 

Read Clausewitz - war is won by those who have the MEANS and the WILL.

In almost every area tanks, men, artillery pieces anti-tank guns (France) was at least as good and usually more and better than the Germans, even aircraft broadly the same once the superb RAF is added. Britain had a huge navy and the French an excellent one. A good part of the border was protected by the Maginot.

The winner on MEANS - France

The French Army was no different to the German - both were conscript. Forget Britain with only 7 fighting Divisions of which 5 were Regular Army - it was half the size of Belgium's and less than one tenth of that of Germany. Every reguar soldier the British possessed was committed to the BEF. Only 2 Divisions of Canadians were left defending the UK.

WILL - there is the problem that your gaming can't solve.

Time and Time again you read of the French Officers running first. Germany had only 100,000 strong army in 1933 - the French professional officer class was almost as big! Old tired and cowardly (with some notable exceptions). Its not the men to blame - if they were slovenly, and disorganised (which they were), its the officer class who should be blamed. Its rigid structure, promotion by age, nostalgia for a past, slow decision making, cover your backside, refer to the top brass before doing anything etc etc etc.

Compare the Germans in 1941 in Russia - inferior tanks and many less, totally outnumbered, less aircraft, artillery pieces, vastly less troops etc etc but they had the WILL and success after success. But not enough MEANS to knock the Russians out. Thereafter the Russian vastly greater MEANS (with a small help from the Allies) won the day.

 

The "superb RAF" didn't operate in France in strength; only the Advanced Air Striking Force and the BEF Air Element...Battles and Blenheims that suffered terrible losses across three weeks, and Hurricanes; Spitfires only operated "in" France over Dunkirk because of their range impediment.

...of which one wasn't yet formated, and the other DID end up in France, albeit for a very short time. But there were actually another nine divisions in the UK at that point - under training. See David Newbold's thesis on the defence of the UK in 1939 and 1940, specifically the early period under Gen. Kirke and his "Julius Caesar Plan" for home defence.

 

WILL in Clausewitz is only very loosely related to courage, it's more a combination of morale, cohesion and initiative and has a lot more to do with having clearly defined objectives and keeping the initiative, call it the upper hand if you want, than with personal courage. What the French, and the BEF, Belgians and Dutch as well, lacked was a doctrine for mobile warfare that would allow them to react to the shock of combat effectively. IMO they lost the inbitiative from day one of the campaign and never recovered, and victory is all about "imposing your will" not phisically destroying the enemy. BTW the fact that the Spitfire squadrons were held back does not alter the MEANS equation, they were available, holding them back was a command decision not to risk all on one throw of the dice.

 

Well, without the WILL, the USSR would have surrendered somewhere in November, 1941.

Regards,

 

This was definitely the case towards the end of May when the French were calling for more assistance - and british monoplane fighter losses (those Hurricanes) had begun to mount...

But I'm not sure about the decisionmaking process BEFORE May 10th Ive seen a lot of pics of the BEF's airfields in France in late 1939 and early 1940 - and frankly they stank! The Spitfire had a recognised issue with groundlooping, just as bad as the Bf109s reputation for it...an issue which would have been exacerbated by the rough fields the RAF used in France - whereas the wider-undercarriage Hurricane was able to operate there effectively.

 

I do not believe any reasonable member of this forum would question the will of a Russian (speaking collectively) defending the motherland, but the USSR had advantages France did not. A manpower reserve to replace initial losses, and more space to retreat to. In all previous German conquests her armies could reach its targets far border in a matter of weeks if not days. In Russia it took Germany, after spectacular victories, months to get close to the Soviet capital. Sometimes having the luxury of time to think is an asset beyond measure.

 

I agree with you completely. I just wanted to correct Scipio's words which sounded (for me, at least) like Germany was the only party having will in war with the Soviet Union.
Speaking about France, I should also agree with you that it had no time to adjust to the rhythm of war set by the Germans. Still, was actual surrender the best way to cope with the situation? I think, no.
France still had powerful Navy which Germans were unable to destroy. It also had bases in North Africa where its planes could land when all continental bases were lost. So, there were some ways to continue resistance using its vaste colonies, like the Dutch did using Dutch East India.

Regards,

 

Dutch East India was administratively separate from the motherland and could stand independently, not so for the French, continuing the war would mean that the Germans would have every right to plunder metropolitan France at will, there was no way to stop them with the remaining forces, and possibly cross to North Africa in force to take Tunisia and Algeria. While the Royal Navy and Marine Nationale together were more than a match for the Italian fleet fighting the Luftwaffe at the end of a long logistical tail and with no radar cover instead of the BoB could well turn into a disaster, and with no air cover and no ports with good repair facilities would the fleets be enough too prevent an invasion? Looking at Crete and the "Race for Tunis" there is reason to doubt it, so metropolitan France's sacrifice had a very good chance to be in vain. Also after the refusal to send the fighters and Dunkirk the faith of the French in British support was pretty low. For France to survive the Germans had to be stopped before taking Paris.

 

The Armee De LAir made a HUGE effort to withdraw to North Africa in the few days before the Armistice - but not much could fly direct, a lot was bottlenecked and lost on Corsica IIRC.

If there wasnt much hope of a sucessful Sealion across 22 miles - how practical would a Ggerman offensive crosing of the Med from North to South have been???

Why would have been without radar cover??? And through the war - although yes, Cunningham took considerable losses from air attack - the Royal Navy (alone) still operated in the Med, reinforced/supplied Malta etc.

Cunningham's forces operated north of Crete in the Argean in May 1941 and routed two attempts to land on the island by aea - without air cover.

And the combined French and British fleets wouldn't have repair facilities? The RN have facilities at Malta, the French at Oran and Tunis...

 

The Axis supplied Rommel for two years and in fact performed successful "invasions" of Tunisia and Corsica after Torch. The Tunisia operation was performed despite the Allies having unquestionable naval superiority and air superiority, in 1940 the Germans would have more planes and the Allies be fighting fron badly equipped bases.

AFAIK there was no radar chain in North Africa in 1940.
The "attempts" were a bunch of caiques escorted by a single torpedo boat, a third attempt from the Italian Dodecannese landed with no interference from the RN. What's more the sort of losses experienced off Crete would have wiped out the Mediterranean fleet within months, the axis well could afford to trade caiques for cruisers.

Malta was well within axis air range and could not be used for major repairs, I don't think Alex had major repair capabilities AFAIK QE and Barham were sent to the USA for repairs after the frogmen damage. Gibraltar had a dry dock but I'm not sure it could take a batteship. Don't know about the dry docks in the French ports but both them and Gibraltar lacked the industrial facilities to locally produce replacement parts and the French navy stores were at Toulon not in NA. We are talking a full effort by the Germans here, backed by the whole of the Luftwaffe, the only time the RN faced that was off Crete. While both sides would take losses the attrition rate would be in the axis favour and the logistics situation would favour them, the British didn't send Spitfires to France in 1940 it's not a given they would send them to French North Africa.
But I don't want to turn this into one more "southern strategy" what if ....

 

Yes, but by that time French Navy was actually "knocked out", while its actions could have made situation for the Germans much worse. Besides, German invasion of Tunisia ended in capitulation of German forces because of inability to adequately supply them.

OK. Let's stay on positions we are now.

Regards,

 

Having the Toulon fleet attack the Axis is a myth. Join the allies ? Impossible from a logistically point of view. It was scuttled by the sailors because it's was their only way left to prevent it from falling in German hands. A large fleet like that needed considerable quantities of fuel, supplies, amno and crew and those had been plundered by the Armisitice conventions for over 2 years.
The Germans were surprsed by the Toulon events, but they were not stupid and had taken measures to make sure the fleet could not leave all the sudden and attack the DAK (one of those was to limit the Vichy army to 100.000 men only, mostly infantry and few sailors, not to mention that some of those were firemen)
Preventing those ships form falling in German hands was an act of Resistance, and a big one too. Some say those ships could have joined the Allies . What if they Germans took the fleet intact and if those ships joined the Axis instead? They would have been dearly needed around Malta, Italy, Sicily , Crete and Gibraltar for instance.

 

By the end of 1942 the Germans did not have enough fuel and crews to put at least half of those ships into action. Actually, in the best case, they could have used 5 or 6 destroyers for escort purposes.
Besides, after Battle of the Barents Sea (December 31, 1942) Hitler decided to scrap the surface fleet, and concentrate on submarine war. In such a situation, German naval command would never risk its positions and try to put French ships into action.
Battle of the Barents Sea - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Regards,

 

I'm glad you put invasion in inverted commas there - for the only real invasion of Tunisia by the Germans was the DAK crossing the border from Libya and running up against Gen. Barre's small defence force; the German coup-de-main and taking control of Tunisia happened after Vichy representatives had flown to Tunis and explained the political realities of life to the local government...

Where in 1940 would the Germans have been flying from? If they had linger issues over Southern England - how on earth were they going to support landings in Algeria???

Chain, no....but Malta's radar would have given warning of raids/aircraft leaving Sicily.

 

The point is not what the invasion fleets consisted of - but that Cunningham was prepared to commit his forces into a sea area dominated by enemy air power to carry out the interception

As for losses - where's the KM??? Certainly not in the Med And the RM was reduced dramatically by the end of 1940...so who is there able to - and more importantly willing to - escort German invasion fleets?

Would that actually stop the British attempting to? It didn't stop them attempting to repair the Illustrious there until it was hit again in dock and judged to be too vulnerable. After all - in the event of German attempts to attack North africa directly, the British would have had to reinforce Malta's defensive capacity.

The "whole" of the Luftwaffe? From where??? There's a capacity issue over fields in Sicily as of 1940.

But in THIS situation they would send them far earlier to Malta...for there's minimal pressure on Fighter Command.

 

Just a quite re-emphasis before things get too sidetracked...

In a "France fights On" Scenario...

The French Mediterranean Fleet isnt IN Toulon to be taken by the Germans, it's in North Africa and still allied with the British, so no need for CATAPAULT or a french relocation.

Which means - apart from anything else - French submarine forces are free to patrol the Med as well as the RN's...

In this situation - Malta is easy peasy to reinforce/protect - for British convoys can travel the length of North Africa from the West along French-controlled coastline under Armee De L'Air protection before dashing in a matter of hours to Malta by night.

It's also theoretically possible for Corsica to be turned into the same sort of bastion as Malta was if the will to do so is there - similarly creating an objective the Axis HAS to take before moving further. And again - one at the maximum range for LW/RA escort fighters as of 1940

A France Fights On scenario is one where the Allies control ALL of the African/East Med littoral except Libya; one that denies the Kriegsmarine access to the Mediterranean - leaving Axis amphibious ops at the mercy of the willingness of the Italians to protect them. And starting as early as Calabria, this willingness is questionable. And how willing are they going to be with TWO Allied fleets opposing them???

 

That's what I said in my first sentence. It was simply out of the question, not to mention that in 1942 many of those ships were outdated and out of order due to a lack of maintenance.

 

Yes, in this case I agree with you completely. The only chance of French Navy to join the Allies was in 1940, in 1942 it was really too late (at least for the Navy as a whole).

Reagrds,