In WW2 Why DID the French surrender so easily?
Discussion
The seeds of the French collapse in WW2 were in the devasting losses they suffered in the 1st world war, proportionally the greatest of all the combatants, which inflicted considerably physcological damage.
Added to which was the familiar problem (since the 19th century) of demographic stagnation which produced a crippling lack of men of prime fighting age.
Add to the mixture chronic political infighting and nearly as great a fear of the red menance than of Nazi Germany and France was ready to collapse at the first blow.
If you look at it from the French perspective they gave everything to defeat the Germans in WW1 only to have to face them a generation later partly due to a failure by their allies in that war to aid them in properly enforcing the treaty of Versaille.
It is worth bearing in mind that the French commander, Foch, at the end of WW1 predicted of the treaty of Versaille "This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years", for without a permanant military occupation of the Rhineland the Germans would be able to attack easily again.
He also predicted and I paraphrase "the next time the Germans will not strike for Paris but drive for the channel ports and split the allies in two" and indeed they did.
Hitler was not inevitable but many believed a revival of German militarism was.
Added to which was the familiar problem (since the 19th century) of demographic stagnation which produced a crippling lack of men of prime fighting age.
Add to the mixture chronic political infighting and nearly as great a fear of the red menance than of Nazi Germany and France was ready to collapse at the first blow.
If you look at it from the French perspective they gave everything to defeat the Germans in WW1 only to have to face them a generation later partly due to a failure by their allies in that war to aid them in properly enforcing the treaty of Versaille.
It is worth bearing in mind that the French commander, Foch, at the end of WW1 predicted of the treaty of Versaille "This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years", for without a permanant military occupation of the Rhineland the Germans would be able to attack easily again.
He also predicted and I paraphrase "the next time the Germans will not strike for Paris but drive for the channel ports and split the allies in two" and indeed they did.
Hitler was not inevitable but many believed a revival of German militarism was.
Edited by JagLover on Monday 13th December 15:44
Edited by JagLover on Monday 13th December 15:51
Derek Smith said:
The German tactic, lightening war, was quite new and methods to slow it had not been developed. Further, not only did the French retreat but the British expeditionary Force did as well, leading to DG's anti-British sentiments later some say.
Static defences were a silly thing to depend on when there were massive gaps but then there was no money for such things.
If you ignore what happend to Jews, homosexuals and such, life wasn't too bad for the French. In theory only roughly half of Franch was under German occupation.
Whilst they complained about lack of food they had a much better diet than those in England. And they weren't bombed, nor were their cities reduced to rubble, their infrastructure destroyed. Nor were they in debt to America after the war. They did not lose a high proportion of their youth, their shipping and such. They would not even have lost their navy if the British hadn't decided to use it as target practice.
The only problem was that a bit over 99% of the French were in the Resistance. It was a complex arrangement and even Balestre, he of the FIA, was forced to wear SS uniform as the Resistance tailors couldn't quite manage the efficiency of their German counterparts.
The French came out of the war financially much stronger than the Uk did. If they had pulled back from their empire they could have been so much stronger now. But they wasted their advantage.
However, what is irrifutable is that they were all round much better off surrendering than carrying on fighting. Unless, of course, you were Jewish, leftish, homosexual, had mental problems . . .
I suggest that you read that book as well. The Maginot Line actually worked rather well, in that the Germans were forced to go around it. What didn't work so well was the poor deployment of the Allied Forces on the French left flank, which led to the bulk of the Allied forces being cut off once the Germans had broken through at Sedan. It was poor generalship that lost that campaign. Static defences were a silly thing to depend on when there were massive gaps but then there was no money for such things.
If you ignore what happend to Jews, homosexuals and such, life wasn't too bad for the French. In theory only roughly half of Franch was under German occupation.
Whilst they complained about lack of food they had a much better diet than those in England. And they weren't bombed, nor were their cities reduced to rubble, their infrastructure destroyed. Nor were they in debt to America after the war. They did not lose a high proportion of their youth, their shipping and such. They would not even have lost their navy if the British hadn't decided to use it as target practice.
The only problem was that a bit over 99% of the French were in the Resistance. It was a complex arrangement and even Balestre, he of the FIA, was forced to wear SS uniform as the Resistance tailors couldn't quite manage the efficiency of their German counterparts.
The French came out of the war financially much stronger than the Uk did. If they had pulled back from their empire they could have been so much stronger now. But they wasted their advantage.
However, what is irrifutable is that they were all round much better off surrendering than carrying on fighting. Unless, of course, you were Jewish, leftish, homosexual, had mental problems . . .
The rest of the stuff you wrote about the French not suffering from the occupation is Grade A bilge. French youth were forcibly deported to Germany to work in arms factories or on fortifications; French industrial towns were often bombed and towns such as Caen and Calais were almost wiped off the map; many French citizens were killed in reprisals for resistance activities, even children; food and fuel shortages were common and were a major concern for the Allied armies after D-Day; the French railway network was smashed to bits; America did direct Marshall Aid to France to ward off communism but it was hardly an easy route back to normality; France contributed 10 divisions to the invasion of Germany and committed several divisions to be deployed to the Far East against Japan before the A-bomb intervened. De Gaulle did not trust the British or Americans because he feared being marginalised in favour of a more malleable French figure such as Darlan (and he was right, Roosevelt was constantly trying to undermine De Gaulle); his attitude had nothing to do with Dunkirk or the fact that the BEF fared no better than the French army in resisting the Germans.
Derek Smith said:
The only problem was that a bit over 99% of the French were in the Resistance. It was a complex arrangement and even Balestre, he of the FIA, was forced to wear SS uniform as the Resistance tailors couldn't quite manage the efficiency of their German counterparts.
I am either being very dense, or you have typed a load of poppycock. 99% of France was in the Resistance? I think not. SS uniforms? What are you on about? Derek, more water with it at lunchtimes man! 
TEKNOPUG said:
Derek Smith said:
And they weren't bombed, nor were their cities reduced to rubble, their infrastructure destroyed.
Yes they were; we flattened most of Normandy chasing after Jerry. 20,000+ French civilians died between D-Day and the liberation of France. We dropped over 590,000 tonnes of explosives on France. More than half the total that was dropped on Germany itself.And do they thank us, do they f
k.....I read somewhere that one of the main HQ's was still using motorbike couriers for urgent messages as they had not got around to radio and land lines. But the blitzkrieg way pretty much stitched it all up as far as I have read. Close air support and armor going in fast and hard.
Bluebarge said:
I suggest that you read that book as well. The Maginot Line actually worked rather well, in that the Germans were forced to go around it.
I've got to say that I can't see it working all that well if you could go around it. I did not suggest that the French did not suffer. The point of my post was how well it did not only in comparison to how Britain fared but mainly as to how they would have come out of the war if they had fought on.
If you compare Paris to London you will see major differences in the average age of the buildings. And the main reason for this is rather obvious.
You suggest there were food and fuel shortages in France. I seem to remember reading once that this was just the same in the UK. In fact for the majority of the war it was decidedly worse in this country. When the tide turned against Germany in the war on their eastern front then the French began to suffer more.
You also suggest that some French towns were 'wiped off the map'. This is an exaggeration and also there were a number of English towns and cities that fared far, far worse.
The British rail network also had one or two bombs dropped on it. And there was no major offensive against infrastructure by bombing until the build up before D-day.
And the French youth were sent somewhere. Yes, I know. But our youth were sent somewhere as well, and it wasn't into factories but aircraft, armies and ships. My father had seven brothers and of his of his 10 sisters most were married, some more than once. He lost five brothers, one in WWI. Every married sister lost their husband. One or two were in WWI the rest in WWII. They were in the merchant navy in the main. None were killed working in a factory although one brother of my father was killed running a pub in Portsmouth. He’d lost a lung when his ship was torpedoed in WWI.
The French, like the British, enjoyed a bit of Marshall aid. But immediately post war the USA pulled all subsidies from the UK and we were bankrupt. Completely broke. We had to go cap in had to our allies and ask for a loan which we didn't fully repay until 2006.
Not only do I accept that the retreat of the BEF hurt the French but I think I actually mentioned it in my grade a bilge posting.
Whether DG was upset by the pull out of the BEF is hardly up for dispute. There are reports of his comments on many post war books. Whether it was the start of his anti-British feeling I don't know. Perhaps that why I prefixed the statement with 'some say'.
Now think on this. The French try to resist the Germans. There is hand to hand fighting in the streets of Paris. The Germans surround it. They launch attack after attack over a period of months. Thos inside end up eating rats and the leather from shoes. The British can't help. They are under attack themselves and are fighting for their own survival. They had no long range bombers and would struggle to carry a firework all the way to Paris and without escorts would not need to carry fuel for the route back.
My suggestion, made quiet clearly I felt, was in defence of the French. They chose the best option. It was not necessarily a case of cheese eating surrender monkeys. It was the sensible thing to do. Had they fought on they would have had a lot of their country destroyed. Now if you think that is grade a rubbish and that the French were CESMs or that if the Germans had fought their way through the country then that is your point of view. Mine is that they would have been worse off.
And I still think that.
For the majority of the occupation the French ate considerably better than the English did. Have a look at the rations for a family and remember that the full ration was not always available. My family came from the east end of London. They lived near to the river. I think there were bombing raids on 13 consecutive nights once. The French were spared that.
You've got a point of view. I'm not only happy to read what other people think and enjoy it. At times I have realised my preconceptions were wrong but that has normally been when people are certain of their point of view and therefore don't need to be rude.
The war was the biggest thing to happen to my family. The survivors spoke of it often. They told me how much they had to eat throughout the war, and that was when they were lucky. There was no doubt that up until the turnaround in the war for the Germans the French ate a lot better than the English did.
I suggest that given what would have happened had they continued to resist the best choice for the French was to surrender. You might think otherwise.
Derek Smith said:
Bluebarge said:
I suggest that you read that book as well. The Maginot Line actually worked rather well, in that the Germans were forced to go around it.
I've got to say that I can't see it working all that well if you could go around it. Tyre Smoke said:
Derek Smith said:
The only problem was that a bit over 99% of the French were in the Resistance. It was a complex arrangement and even Balestre, he of the FIA, was forced to wear SS uniform as the Resistance tailors couldn't quite manage the efficiency of their German counterparts.
I am either being very dense, or you have typed a load of poppycock. 99% of France was in the Resistance? I think not. SS uniforms? What are you on about? Derek, more water with it at lunchtimes man! As for the SS uniform bit, J Balestre came out of the war suggesting that he was a great reisistance hero. This went on for a while and then womeone unearthed a photo, in fact more than one, of him in SS officer's uniform knob hobbing it with German SS. A newspaper printed it and said that he was a naxi collaborator.
JB sued, saying that being in the SS was part of the career structure of the resistance (this may have lost a bit in translation) and that all his colleagues in the SS would vouch for him. Or would do if they hadn't all mysteriously died. he won the case and was awarded one franc damages.
Sorry to be obscure.
Derek Smith said:
Tyre Smoke said:
Derek Smith said:
The only problem was that a bit over 99% of the French were in the Resistance. It was a complex arrangement and even Balestre, he of the FIA, was forced to wear SS uniform as the Resistance tailors couldn't quite manage the efficiency of their German counterparts.
I am either being very dense, or you have typed a load of poppycock. 99% of France was in the Resistance? I think not. SS uniforms? What are you on about? Derek, more water with it at lunchtimes man! As for the SS uniform bit, J Balestre came out of the war suggesting that he was a great reisistance hero. This went on for a while and then someone unearthed a photo, in fact more than one, of him in SS officer's uniform knob hobbing it with German SS. A newspaper printed it and said that he was a nazi collaborator.
JB sued, saying that being in the SS was part of the career structure of the resistance (this may have lost a bit in translation) and that all his colleagues in the SS, sorry Resistance, would vouch for him. Or would do if they hadn't all mysteriously died. He won the case and was awarded one franc damages.
Sorry to be obscure.
The French option to surrender only appears to be the best one in hindsight; something that was not available to them at the time. You argue that France came out of the war better than we did becuase they chose to surrender, rather than fight. The only reason for this is that we did indeed choose to continue to fight and eventually liberate France.
Had we come to an agreement with Germany and withdrawn from the war, France may still be occupied to this day and may have not turned out quite so well for them, particularly if the country and it's people had been milked dry in the on going battle with the Soviet Union, which it surely would of done. Being a puppet state of Nazi Germany, or quite possibly a communist satellite of the conquering Soviets is hardly an enviable position. The question is not so much the political surrender of the nation but the abject capitulation of the armed forces.
Had we come to an agreement with Germany and withdrawn from the war, France may still be occupied to this day and may have not turned out quite so well for them, particularly if the country and it's people had been milked dry in the on going battle with the Soviet Union, which it surely would of done. Being a puppet state of Nazi Germany, or quite possibly a communist satellite of the conquering Soviets is hardly an enviable position. The question is not so much the political surrender of the nation but the abject capitulation of the armed forces.
Derek Smith said:
You also suggest that some French towns were 'wiped off the map'. This is an exaggeration and also there were a number of English towns and cities that fared far, far worse.
Look up Oradour-sur-Glane, among others. I'm not sure that any British town or village was exterminated and burned to the ground, despite the bombing and concomitant immense suffering visited on parts of the population.TEKNOPUG said:
The French option to surrender only appears to be the best one in hindsight; something that was not available to them at the time. You argue that France came out of the war better than we did becuase they chose to surrender, rather than fight. The only reason for this is that we did indeed choose to continue to fight and eventually liberate France.
Had we come to an agreement with Germany and withdrawn from the war, France may still be occupied to this day and may have not turned out quite so well for them, particularly if the country and it's people had been milked dry in the on going battle with the Soviet Union, which it surely would of done. Being a puppet state of Nazi Germany, or quite possibly a communist satellite of the conquering Soviets is hardly an enviable position. The question is not so much the political surrender of the nation but the abject capitulation of the armed forces.
I take your point. Things could have been much different. The fact remains that we did carry on fighting so the buggers got away with it.Had we come to an agreement with Germany and withdrawn from the war, France may still be occupied to this day and may have not turned out quite so well for them, particularly if the country and it's people had been milked dry in the on going battle with the Soviet Union, which it surely would of done. Being a puppet state of Nazi Germany, or quite possibly a communist satellite of the conquering Soviets is hardly an enviable position. The question is not so much the political surrender of the nation but the abject capitulation of the armed forces.
But compare France not so much with us as with Poland under the Germans.
My father was confident that once the BEF pulled out the French were doomed.
There are lots of options if we use the word if. I read a book in the 60s which ran with the supposition that Germany decided not to invade Russia and instead attacked Britain.
Despite the speeches it was suggested, with evidence, that we would have surrendered before the Germans reached London.
The conclusion was that the USA would not have come into the war, puppet governments would have been established here, in Ireland and in France. Scotland would have been given independence but would also have had a puppet government. The Germans would, ostensibly, have pulled out to spend some time building their resources for the attack on Russia. Barbarossa would have taken place in 44 and they (we?) would have had tacit support of the USA. The technology gap would have increased and the country might well have been overrun, or at least the government would have collapsed and something more Germany friendly established.
It was anticipated that Pearl Harbour might well have still taken place but that America would have had more resources to deal with the attack. Germany would have abandoned its erstwhile ally.
There seems little doubt that if the Germans did get a foothold in the country we would have fought them on the beaches (let's face it we didn't do much fighting in France), the landing grounds, the fields, the streets and places like that but London, well that's a bit iffy.
The government was by no means unified behind Chruchill and there was a fair bit of pressure to come to some form of agreement with Hitler whilst we were still holding some cards. Many people in the east end were not averse to saying: Ok, you've got France, you can have it now let's start playing football.
But, of course, we'll never know.
Derek Smith said:
Bluebarge said:
I suggest that you read that book as well. The Maginot Line actually worked rather well, in that the Germans were forced to go around it.
I've got to say that I can't see it working all that well if you could go around it. I did not suggest that the French did not suffer. The point of my post was how well it did not only in comparison to how Britain fared but mainly as to how they would have come out of the war if they had fought on.
If you compare Paris to London you will see major differences in the average age of the buildings. And the main reason for this is rather obvious.
You suggest there were food and fuel shortages in France. I seem to remember reading once that this was just the same in the UK. In fact for the majority of the war it was decidedly worse in this country. When the tide turned against Germany in the war on their eastern front then the French began to suffer more.
You also suggest that some French towns were 'wiped off the map'. This is an exaggeration and also there were a number of English towns and cities that fared far, far worse.
The British rail network also had one or two bombs dropped on it. And there was no major offensive against infrastructure by bombing until the build up before D-day.
And the French youth were sent somewhere. Yes, I know. But our youth were sent somewhere as well, and it wasn't into factories but aircraft, armies and ships. My father had seven brothers and of his of his 10 sisters most were married, some more than once. He lost five brothers, one in WWI. Every married sister lost their husband. One or two were in WWI the rest in WWII. They were in the merchant navy in the main. None were killed working in a factory although one brother of my father was killed running a pub in Portsmouth. He’d lost a lung when his ship was torpedoed in WWI.
The French, like the British, enjoyed a bit of Marshall aid. But immediately post war the USA pulled all subsidies from the UK and we were bankrupt. Completely broke. We had to go cap in had to our allies and ask for a loan which we didn't fully repay until 2006.
Not only do I accept that the retreat of the BEF hurt the French but I think I actually mentioned it in my grade a bilge posting.
Whether DG was upset by the pull out of the BEF is hardly up for dispute. There are reports of his comments on many post war books. Whether it was the start of his anti-British feeling I don't know. Perhaps that why I prefixed the statement with 'some say'.
Now think on this. The French try to resist the Germans. There is hand to hand fighting in the streets of Paris. The Germans surround it. They launch attack after attack over a period of months. Thos inside end up eating rats and the leather from shoes. The British can't help. They are under attack themselves and are fighting for their own survival. They had no long range bombers and would struggle to carry a firework all the way to Paris and without escorts would not need to carry fuel for the route back.
My suggestion, made quiet clearly I felt, was in defence of the French. They chose the best option. It was not necessarily a case of cheese eating surrender monkeys. It was the sensible thing to do. Had they fought on they would have had a lot of their country destroyed. Now if you think that is grade a rubbish and that the French were CESMs or that if the Germans had fought their way through the country then that is your point of view. Mine is that they would have been worse off.
And I still think that.
For the majority of the occupation the French ate considerably better than the English did. Have a look at the rations for a family and remember that the full ration was not always available. My family came from the east end of London. They lived near to the river. I think there were bombing raids on 13 consecutive nights once. The French were spared that.
You've got a point of view. I'm not only happy to read what other people think and enjoy it. At times I have realised my preconceptions were wrong but that has normally been when people are certain of their point of view and therefore don't need to be rude.
The war was the biggest thing to happen to my family. The survivors spoke of it often. They told me how much they had to eat throughout the war, and that was when they were lucky. There was no doubt that up until the turnaround in the war for the Germans the French ate a lot better than the English did.
I suggest that given what would have happened had they continued to resist the best choice for the French was to surrender. You might think otherwise.
I've no doubt you've reason to be proud of your family's efforts during the war, but that's no excuse to cast aspersions on the fighting spirit of other nations, based on limited or no knowledge at all.
The French suffered heavy casualties in the Battle of France (and the French carried on fighting long after the BEF had left the battlefield in disarray), as others have pointed out the tonnage of ordnance dropped on France was more than half that dropped on Germany, many French people suffered during the Occupation in a way which many Britons did not - the strain of bombing is well-documented, the knock on the door from the Gestapo is another experience altogether. The French made a major contribution to the Allied war effort and fought right up to the end of the war, long after the bulk of France had been liberated. Some French towns were still under German occupation until April 1945.
Rural France may not have suffered too much from rationing for parts of the war, just as rural Britain didn't, but the cities certainly did. And just as you know British people who suffered in the war, I know French people who were deported to Dachau for working for the resistance, others who joined the French Army of Leclerc to participate in the advance into Germany and others who lost family members in reprisal shootings by the SS and Ostruppen.
Yes there were acts of collaboration, just as there were in the occupied Channel Islands. If you want an idea of how many people in the UK might have been prepared to accept Nazi occupation, try reading "Fellow Travellers of the Right" by Richard Griffiths.
And for anyone else who thinks that the British Army was let down by the French in 1940, try reading Lord Alanbrooke's memoirs. Not only was it widely recognised that the BEF was too small to have any influence over the outcome of the Battle for France, but he recognised that the British Army had been unable to achieve any significant victory over the German Army until over 3 years after the start of the war, and even then British troops were unable to achive victory without a significant numerical advantage over the Germans. This remained the case throughout the war.
So I'm afraid the implication that the French didn't fight and their troops were inferior to the British is just not supported by the facts. What is clear is that the German army was more effective than the Allies man-for-man right up until the end of the war.
It's a very flawed supposition though. The Germans had nothing to gain from attacking & conquering France or Britain; other than to stop us making war with them. Had we turned a blind eye to their invasion of Poland then they would never had looked west. Why would they? What they were after was land expansion to the east and to destroy the perceived threat of Communism. The idea that they would invade Britain rather than Russia is folly. They had nothing to gain other than to knock us out of the war so that they could concentrate on the east. That and the fact that they simply weren't capable of nullifying the Royal Navy and mounting a successful seaborn invasion.
Derek Smith said:
There seems little doubt that if the Germans did get a foothold in the country we would have fought them on the beaches (let's face it we didn't do much fighting in France), the landing grounds, the fields, the streets and places like that but London, well that's a bit iffy.
The scenario was run as a war game with as many original people as could be found. Germany stood no chance of invading us; they would have had very inadequate boats for the crossing and negligible air support due to range once they got here.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea_Lion
Edited by grumbledoak on Monday 13th December 17:35
grumbledoak said:
Derek Smith said:
There seems little doubt that if the Germans did get a foothold in the country we would have fought them on the beaches (let's face it we didn't do much fighting in France), the landing grounds, the fields, the streets and places like that but London, well that's a bit iffy.
The scenario was run as a war game with as many original people as could be found. Germany stood no chance of invading us; they would have had very inadequate boats for the crossing and negligible air support due to range once they got here.I'll try to find a linky.
A number of German aircraft were adapted to carry special towel dispensers.
Ayahuasca said:
iirc France suffered more casualties per day in WWII (up until their surrender) than in WWI.
In the long run it was a good thing they surrendered - who would go to Paris for a romantic weekend if it looked like Coventry or Warsaw?
By the same token, it may be worth remembering the German General von Choltitz*, who declined to defend Paris to the last man in 1944 and therefore saved it from the fate of Caen and other less fortunate European cities...In the long run it was a good thing they surrendered - who would go to Paris for a romantic weekend if it looked like Coventry or Warsaw?
* I say "may be" because he was either a humane man who couldn't face the destruction of a beautiful city, or a brutal b'stard with an acute sense for the changing of the wind. Depending on whom you read (and whom you believe!).
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