Fall of France

Jaws of Defeat

It is difficult to overstate how disorienting France’s collapse was in the spring of 1940. A great power with one of the most advanced militaries in the world that possessed a number of numerical advantages over the German Wehrmacht was not supposed to suffer a catastrophe that would end in six weeks with Nazi troops marching down the Champs-Élysées.

Yet it did happen, despite the efforts of Allied soldiers -- including the approximately 124,000 Frenchmen who died fighting in what would amount to over twice the amount of American deaths in Vietnam.

So what went wrong? Historians, politicians, and generals have offered a wide range of explanations in the wake of the Battle of France from the moment the last shot was fired to today. Some claim French political dysfunction and the public’s supposed reluctance to fight are responsible; others look to the errors of Allied high command in the face German strategic, operational, and tactical innovation; others still point to technology and even luck.

All of these factors contributed to this massive upset, but our hosts and their guest have definite opinions.

Resources:

-Marc Bloch, Strange Defeat: A Statement of Evidence Written in 1940 (1940)

-Eliot A. Cohen and John Gooch, “Catastrophic Failure: The French Army and Air Force, May-June 1940,” in Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War (1990)

-Julian Jackson, The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940 (2003)

-Ernest R. May, Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France (2000)

-Art of the Battle: Animated Battle Maps, “Battle of France, 1940”

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