Why was France so Useless in World War Two???
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- Опубликовано: 16 июн 2024
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The main source for this video is:
The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940
Julian Jackson
I met an elderly French man from Nantes who was 20 years old in the French infantry in Belgium in May 1940. He chucked his uniform and stole a bike and clothes. He cycled all the way through Paris with his army cru cut looking like a soldier past German forces who did not stop him once.. He got to Nantes on West Coast where he was stopped by two French police on foot. They asked for his papers, he told them the truth, he was a French soldier and he just wanted to spend the war with his wife and child and that they could hear from his accent he was a local, like them. They arrrested him anyway and he was put on a train all the way back to Germany where he was held for a week. After that time he was brought before a German officer who, after looking down at papers summarising the story and for some long minutes, in impeccable French looked up at him and said " ah so, nice friends you have in France " He told me "even the German officer couldn't believe the French police had arrested me"! He thought he would be shot but spent the duration of the war in a prison camp. 5 long years.
This is what you have to understand when dealing with 1940s France. This was not unusual.. many helped and collaborated and the resistance such as it was, often fought amongst themselves and had conflicting communist influences.
Story related in French to me. The man was called Renaudin and I was dating his grandaughter Maud Renaudin. He is sadly long gone. She is happily married with a grown up family still in Nantes.. just thought I'd share a 100% real story from one who was there but no longer here to do so himself.. I hope he'd approve
"This is what you have to understand when dealing with 1940s France. This was not unusual.. many helped and collaborated and the resistance such as it was, often fought amongst themselves and had conflicting communist influences."
The different resistance groups in France were, generally speaking, cooperating with each other to oust the Germans.
Most of the French didn't collaborate with the Germans. If they had, the Allies would never have been able to land in Normandy.
Do you know the book "100 000 collaborateurs" by Dominique Lormier?
The war was over for France in June of 1940 and it should have been over the UK too. The peace offer from the Germans to the British in July 1940 was beyond easy! Yet it was keep secret from the British people until 2008! There were no demands for reparations, colonies, they could keep the Royal Navy and in addition they offer the UK an alliance with the comittment of up to 12 German Divisions to help defend their empire. The Germans even offered to REMOVE/WITHRAW ALL German forces from ALL conquered territories in the west with the exception of those German territories lost following WW1. All they asked for was an end to the fighting. This young Frenchman has only FDR and Churchill to blame for continuing a war that should have ended in July of 1940.
I'm sure he would be glad you keep his story alive, if you don't tell it, it will be lost...
Sorry, English is not my first language. So if I get you right the French of 40s were not motivated to fight? 🤔
@@phlm9038 90% of the French partisans were Communists controlled from Moscow.
Basically, Germany had very little trouble with any French partisans until the Allies landed in Normany. Then they "came out of the woodwork." to use an American colloquialism.
Sitting around waiting for your enemy to attack whenever and wherever they choose is never an effective strategy.
What would you suggest 'you' do about it? Strike first and be labeled 'the agressor' ?
In almost every war (at least at the start) there is always ONE side taking the initiative. So yes, the other side has 2 options ..wait till the enemy makes its move or strike first and become 'the bad guy'
British army was too weak to contribute anything for an offensive anyway. All they had were planes capable of hitting a city sized target. It would have basically been France vs Germany and France wasn't strong enough to do that and thus they became the second victim of cunning British plans.
Against an ennemy that outnumbers you, you rarely have other choice than to be defensive.
@@robertx8020 That is the most idiotic statement ever. France attacked Germany in 1939 right after Germany attacked Poland. French faced no resistance so they pulled back. If French advanced in Sep. 1939 the WW2 would be over.
@@lesp315 "That is the most idiotic statement ever."
If that is true then you are either very, very young or have not read much .. ./s
" France attacked Germany in 1939 right after Germany attacked Poland."
Listen 'child' NOWHERE in the first post does it say anything about France, Germany or even WW2!
It's written as a general remark about 'why wait instead of attacking'
And so was my response!
" French faced no resistance so they pulled back. If French advanced in Sep. 1939 the WW2 would be over."
So what?
Not relevant to my post
So I guess we can conclude that YOUR reaction is ONE OF THE 'most idiotic statement ever." /s
The French did have the unfortunate circumstance of not having the English Channel between them and Germany.
Inventing radar also helped the English quite a bit.
Starting with Napoleon the French Army could not fight their way out of a paper bag.
@@georgemonaco5961 Napoleon won 70 battles along with 10 defeats, sometimes against coalitions of armies from several nations. The French had a well-deserved reputation for being one of the top armies in the world for quite some time.
@@georgemonaco5961 This is either the most idiotic or the most ignorant comment i had the displeasure of reading. Napoleon won the vast majority of his battles, he basically conquered all of Europe, bringing its largest empires to their knees. It took a huge alliance of all the major powers of the day to bring him down.
well ... as a finnish guy whos grandfather was erasing russians on 20:1 ratio in ww2 ..i can say french were totally useless ..had nothing to do with channel nor napoleon lol =)
Those of us that lived during the prosperity and decadence of the second half of the 20th century have no idea how intensely traumatic the first half was. The industrial revolution gave humanity the promise of the most comfortable life possible in history, but also industrial scale human misery. So the world saw the largest and most devastating war in history, followed by a worldwide economic depression and then the largest and most devastating war in history.
The old world had to burn to make for the new. The wealthiest and most prosperous time in human history, the Pax Americana, could not have happened otherwise.
@@pugilist102 Patently absurd.
@@MrAquinas1 How so? Please explain why I am wrong.
@@pugilist102 There is no such thing as "old worlds" and "new worlds" and revolutions, unless it seems that way to a mind that does not develop a knowledge of real history beyound superficial comic book impressions. History is driven by the delusions of elitists, and an obliging population in denial of their own personal contribution to evil in the world, who will never overcome the vanity that they can overcome the permanent imperfectibility of the human condition once and for all.
I don’t really think it can be underestimated just how much damage the first would war really did. The war had destroyed virtually any real confidence in leadership. Simply too many men had been pointless marched into machine guns and artillery barrages.
The issue with that is that Germany also went through the exact same thing and fielded one of the best armies of that time
@@desmond4912Except that much of the conflict was fought on French soil; hardly any in Germany.
@@desmond4912 Well that would be true except that the Kaiser got the blame and the Kaiser ended up on a train out of the country. He accepted responsibility for the failure and left on his own. France was still being run by the same guys, of course Germany was later run by a guy that would make them wish for a guy that took that kind of responsibility. 🤦
""Over the top""
Do not forget in 1950 the Korean War, then Vietnam....USA had no intention of sinning....many in DC got rich from those wars. EVen with WWII, why before teh Japanese bombimg were all our aricraft moved out to the pacific, then what a a fast way for the USA and tfeh world to recover from the great depression? Trade, war meant purchse and trade, just saying
In every documentary I have seen on this topic, and this video adds to this theory, it was not the French Army that was bad but the French Army leadership and decision makers that were bad.
The leadership was utterly outclassed... they filed to embrace radios that would have seriously sped up their battle procedure and enable a series counter to the Germans.... as we all know they just blamed their allies and gave up.
Yes the difference between the Italian solider and the French soldier is that the French soldier was willing and capable of fighting but was directed horribly, whereas the Italian solider was directed badly and just really couldn't be asked. If Hitler had infiltrated French leadership and wanted them to fuck up the defenses, I don't think even he would have been arrogant enough to suggest some of the decisions that were made. It was so shockingly awful from the French leadership that I seriously would be ok if they were all considered traitors in the history books. Then the fuckers decide to fight the Americans as they enter the war in the Mediterranean. The fact that France was allowed to participate in negotiations was something I always found comical. As if they were anything other than a massive fucking headache. On the flip side the French resistance run and maintained by the every day Frenchman was amazing. Stark contrast
@@jakecollin5499 no way dude😢, we called em surrender monkeys tho, now we have to come up with a new jab😒we all have stereotypes, many outdated, why should France be unblemished?? I say we vote
@@jakecollin5499 all in favor of a new stereotype? Say I
@@jakecollin5499 those against say nay😅
To be fair, the British and other allies didn't fare to well against the Germans in 1939 either. England was only spared because of geography.
yes ... and all the Western allies and Russia-USSR ..(the entente) were still 'tired' from WW1 ... no one wanted a WW2 (and thus no one but Hitler was prepared)
@@neonovalisThat's a poor excuse. Europeans always sit on their hands, Serbia, Ukraine anyone? Euros are simply lazy and Germans are the least lazy, this stuff isn't hard.
yep you don't know your history....
@@neonovalis Nonsense, Europeans have never been proactive.
@@simonsmith7251 The Brits got whipped in the air and on the ground in France.
What is always missing from these documentaries is a perspective on losses. During the Battle of France, Germany suffered 156K casualties and lost 1/3 of the the Luftwaffe in only 6 weeks. It wasn't a walk in the park and the French did fight.
They annihilated and split the coalition forces in 5 days after breaking out the Ardennes and crossing the river Meuse. Their Blitzkrieg overwhelmed any hopes the French, Belgium, and British forces had to organizing a counteroffensive. Regardless of loss of manpower and equipment, I’d say the objective was accomplished. The Germans lost 15 times that during Operation Barbarossa and were defeated in Stalingrad
@@ericjohnson7126 The Brits once the ardennes offensive was confirmed started to pack up faster then you can say "bonjour".
The English are fighting to the last Frenchman.
@@olivierdk2 If the french are not going to fight for France, why should the Brits?
the British got out of Dunkirk by the skin of their teeth, partly as the German army stopped short of Dunkirk rather than finishing the assault, partly due to the extraordinary organisation going into the Naval evacuation and partly due to British fighters taking on the German fighters and bombers around Dunkirk. The comment by Oliver is beneath contempt.
@@richardbanker3910 spot on
One of the contributory factors in France's failure was the supreme commander Gamelin, he headquartered himself in a remote chateau with no radio or telephone communications and relied on dispatch riders to deliver information and dispatch orders.
By comparison, in WWI Joffre hired Georges Boillot, a champion race car driver, to ferry him up and down the lines at 70 mph.
"in kungfu, speed determines the winner." - The Beast, kungfu hustle.
gamelin was as slow as a turtle and turtled up like a turtle
Gamelin actually put on thick earmuffs and had his men blindfold him, and then they buried him in a cave underground at a depth of about 450 meters. And no one in the entire French military would do anything until he gave the command. So they were definitely at somewhat of a disadvantage. Gamelin didn't emerge from hiding until the war had ended, and at that point, Free France was a member of the victorious Allies, so Gamelin was hailed as a genius and a hero.
Yes, and Gamelin eat and drink
too much for beeing capable to fight against the germans.
Gamelin ate and drank too much to be fit enough to fight
against the germans.
Being French and having examined a wide range of sources about this era, I've concluded that the root cause of France's issues during this period was political.
While most nations in continental Europe had evolved into various forms of dictatorships, France remained a democracy, despite numerous coup attempts. However, the severe tensions between the far left and far right plunged the nation into political turmoil: over the 20 years of the interwar period, France experienced 43 government changes and had 37 different prime ministers (serving in a role equivalent to presidents in the Third Republic).
This backdrop of internal strife led to decisions more concerned with preserving the political system than with operational efficiency. For instance, when De Gaulle introduced his book "Vers l'Armée de Métier" in 1935, proposing a few fully mechanized and armored divisions as the vanguard, similar to the German Panzer divisions, the left viewed his proposal suspiciously as a tactic to create a Praetorian Guard capable of overthrowing democracy. Many on the right also objected, fearing that such a force would necessitate a large number of mechanics, who were often socialist and could act as a fifth column within the military.
Similarly, the lack of political consensus resulted in a fragmented aviation industry for almost the entire interwar period, leading to inadequate aircraft production. This deficiency became a critical factor when German air supremacy allowed their forces to advance rapidly, leaving French forces incapacitated.
As for military leadership, these challenging conditions resulted in command being entrusted to the same individuals who led during WWI. This approach persisted even as France capitulated, with leadership then being assumed by the octogenarian WWI hero, Pétain. While it's important not to default to ageism, history shows that nations with dynamic military leadership often benefit from the energy and innovation of younger commanders, rather than relying on veterans of past conflicts.
Nonetheless, chance played a significant role in the outcome of these events. The French strategy (the Dyle Plan Breda variant), which was ill-suited against the German tactics, could have been effective just a few months earlier. The Germans had postponed their attack multiple times for various reasons, and most of their earlier plans would have played directly into French hands. The decision to adopt a new, daring strategy came after the Germans had to cancel another attack due to weather, during which a plane carrying their battle plans crashed in Belgium, compelling them to abandon those plans.
Even though the German strategy ultimately proved to be the perfect counter to the French plan (to everyone's surprise, including the Germans), the situation wasn't immediately hopeless. However, the French response was consistently just a bit too slow, often by mere hours. Had certain events unfolded slightly differently, the Germans might have been forced to halt their advance, potentially leading to a scenario similar to WWI but with the Germans in a far less advantageous position for a war of attrition.
PS: I would add more nuance to the Vichy regime portrayal. The holocaust was not something people were aware of back then, so you cannot say that "many people in Vichy France were totally onboard with the extermination of jews". As for antisemitism, it wasn't stronger in France than in the US nor the UK. France actually had many jew political and industrial figures before the war, and Pétain for example was the godfather for a jew family.
The inclination to simplify history for moral reasons is understandable, including within France, but accuracy is paramount when examining historical events. France had the highest survival rate for Jews in Europe at 75%, despite being fully occupied from 1942 onward. While Vichy did surrender foreign Jews within its territory to Germany, it negotiated to leave French Jews undisturbed. Although there were indeed pro-Nazi elements within Vichy, the situation is complex, with several different Vichy governments succeeding one another, the most collaborationist of which came after France was fully occupied and under complete German control. Pétain, at 85, was largely a figurehead.
A very good precis of events. More could be said. One pertinent point is that as much as the French were hopeless at communications, the Germans excelled with radio and cypher in common use.
Brilliant historical analysis, bravo. Though I don't think I have heard of the plane carrying war planes having crashed in Belguim, do you have a source for this?
@@rahulbinov1987 You are looking for the Mechelen incident, which happened early 1940.
I'm glad to see you cover the political turmoil in France before the war. The French were a people divided among themselves and very little pride or love of country. This made them a nation ill prepared and only marginally willing to risk life and limb for their country. This was the underlying rot that led to their downfall. Almost no one covers this most important contributor to France's defeat. Good work.
The biggest mistake was Frnace abandoning its plan to march on Berlin in WW1 and instead following the USA’s plan to hurt them financially with reparations. Cause so much grief in Germany that let Hitler gain public opinion so quickly
France was no more useless than the rest of Europe when faced with the Nazis and the power of the German army. Poland fell right away, and the others followed. Great Britain was saved only by the fact that they were an island, but they were pummeled by whatever bombs could reach them. WWII could have been won a lot quicker if the Americans had gotten involved sooner, but for the longest time Roosevelt and his administration resisted it because of economic reasons.
Meanwhile in France the country was divided, many were too terrified to rebel against the German invasion, and you cannot blame them. My grandmother described to me the horrendous paralyzing fear watching the German army entering Paris, and the deafening sound that their boots made on the pavement. Her and my grandfather decided early on to enter the resistance, and unfortunately my granddad was arrested in 1942 with five of his friends who were in the same reseau, and all of them were sent to concentration camps in Germany. None of them came back, my granddad died at the liberation of the Sachsenhausen camp by the Russians, of starvation and pneumonia. He was too sick and weak to hang on for a few more months. My mom was six years old and she never saw her father again.
Don’t think that Europeans were just sitting on their behind in their comfortable homes during the German occupation. There was no food, gasoline, nor anything for the civilian population, everything went to the German occupants. My grandma and her sister had to stand in lines for hours with tickets to get a piece of bread, butter, some meat and whatever was available on that day, and some days there was nothing at all. Some people, mostly antisemite monstrous assholes, were more than happy to help the Germans. They were called the Milice, they dressed in those ridiculous black uniforms and worked for the Gestapo. They arrested resistants and Jewish people alike, and unfortunately a lot of those repugnant miliciens did not pay for their crimes at the end of the war, too many. I could go on and on about all I know about those dark times, I am an older French woman who has lived in the USA with my American husband for the last 45 years, and when I was growing up in France, the war still permeated a lot of our lives. It was talked about, thought about, it was in the realistic French films we watched, books we read. WWII was a war not just endured by armies, it was a war that abused, tortured and decimated a huge part of civilians population all over Europe. That kind of war never affect only one generation, it always affect two, and often enough three depending on the circumstances lived through by your family. Try to understand and respect it. Thank you.
Fascinating. Everybody in France was in the resistance. When the war was already won.
And all you do is come out with the same old rubbish about UK being saved because it was island. It was saved because it had the strongest navy in the world by far and good aeroplanes. And a population ready to fight.
@@valiantvanadium6996 And the reason it could invest that much into it's navy is because as an Island it's all the Brits needed to stay safe, it shouldn't be that hard to understand … Also let's be honest for a second, the Brits barely fought in WWII, in fact they barely fought in both WW. They could leverage their better navy to mess around with easy and distant targets but played second, if not third, fiddle in any major front, folding when it was lost and following when it was won. I mean just looking at the number shows how little they actually contributed besides logistics (which are still very important in their own rights). That is actually pretty normal when looking at history, England always was a very subpar land power and mainly went by using diplomacy and financing greater powers.
@@valiantvanadium6996 no, not everyone “was in the resistance “ in France, and some were in it starting in 1940! You sound like one of those hateful people determined to disrespect and undermine everything and everyone around them. I wonder which side you would have been on if you had been there in those days?
I see how that transferred from grandparents down wards.. the terror, pain & the ptsd reverberating for years generating more pain
France fell faster than Poland and Poland was invaded on 2 sides and only about 10 percent of the Polish army was mechanicalized.
"I'd rather have a German division in front of me than a French division behind me." - General George S. Patton
No, it was wrongly attributed to Patton by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger on Fox News. Patton commanded French troops, the 2nd Armored Division of General Leclerc, integrated in the Third Army of Patton, that he greatly appreciated.
@@phlm9038 Ah. Interesting. Thanks for the clarification. 👍
French First Army lands at Marsaille....August 1944...operation Anvil.
[ don't much care for Churchill's 'Dragoon' name for it.]
Ultimately, France brought the defeat to itself. The men on the ground fought hard, the numbers are actually impressive- B1 tanks rampaged into German occupied villages wiping out dozens of tanks, the outnumbered air force caused so much damage to the Luftwaffe that it might have played a role in the German's defeat at the battle of Britain.
But no matter how hard the individual soldiers fight, if your chain of command is so impossibly stupid as to NOT bomb the ENTIRE German invasion force out of existence while it remains as sitting ducks in the Ardennes and end the war right there then you stand little chances in a war of millions of men.
These generals were, for the most part, generals from WW1, so-called war-heroes... From a war that involved a lot of merely charging at the German trenches. Not only were they "old-school", prone to use outdated tactics, they were OLD, and I mean REALLY REALLY old, they might not even have been all there in some cases, I believe.
It's not like the French had great success in the Great war.
@@Etaoinshrdlu69 That's the point. There were a few good strategist, namely Foch, but Petain, Gamelin and the rest of them who ended up being generals by WW2 were certainly not of the same level.
Frankly I see little cunning strategizing in just throwing more men than your foe into the No Man's Land.
The truth is quite simple: the English Channel saved the UK from France's fate.
@@grantsmythe8625 It's not like it suddenly appeared. Had it not been there then the make up of the UK's forces would have been significantly different and would have included a much better and larger land component. In terms of Navy and Air the Nazi forces were nowhere near a match for the UK's.
@@richardharding8438 Larger/better land component? And where would they find the men? They sent every single soul they had to France and still couldn't stop the Nazis but the English Channel did what the British and French armies combined could not do.
Pétain's quote is always truncated. He said that the Germans would be pincered as they left the Ardennes forest "provided that the necessary and adequate defenses were built", which wasn't the case.
Apart from Petain's assessment, the French High Command had confirmation on many occasions throughout the 1930s that the Ardennes could be crossed and the Meuse be reached by armoured vehicles in 3 to 5 days, which is roughly what happened.
So the French HC had an accurate assessment of the potential "Ardennes" scenario.
It wasn't "the French", but Gamelin, who decided that the German Ardennes thrust could only be a diversion, and devised his Dyle-Breda plan with no strategic reserves and ignoring reality.
Wasn't it a British tank commander (or thinker?) who suggested that the Ardennes could indeed be penetrated? The French management were slow to come up with anything innovative and effective. I understand ALL their equipment was outdated with shortcomings of some sort. Still can't beat the daring and creativity of the British (who were also good to incorporate many exiled European (esp. Polish) Mathematicians and other engineers/scientists. We couldn't have beaten the dastardly Germans without their help.
The French should never have committed so many of their top troops and equipment in the North.
At least half should have been kept back close to Paris so
they could move to wherever they were needed quickly and to strike fast and effectively.
Then they could have moved huge numbers to stop the Germans at the Ardennes forest.
It's as though the French went to a casino and put all their money on one bet and lost it.
I do get confused about the insistence of "impassable". From everything I've read the French high command's understanding was "Impassable if lightly to moderately defended"... Given the unprecedented investment in constructing and manning the maginot line across then entire country, it boggles the mind to think that they knew the weakness and for a relatively small investment they could have prevented a distracting or second front (let alone THE major offensive) from ever developing. It would be easy to fall into believe the conspiracies about Petain...
Do you have a reference for 3-5? I thought it was 9-14 was the analysis available to the High Command.
Thank you for your incredibly insightful historical video. I happened to click on it and started watching, and was fascinated by your information. Both my parents were war refugees from the Soviet Union, so my whole life I've been interested in WW2 history. Thanks again :)
The outnumbered French First Army fought with such tenacity defending the Dunkirk Evacuation pocket at Lille, only surrendering when they ran out of ammo, that a German general accorded the French troops military honors. They were permitted to parade with their arms. He said of them, "I see in these French soldiers the same determination and defiance as those at Verdun." This angered Hitler, who had the general dismissed.
When American troops landed in French North Africa in order to outflank the Germans the French treated them as an invading enemy and fought against them on the landing beaches killing many.
Not the only French to receive the Knights Cross I'm sure .
Subtlety is not a strength of the Fascist's mindset. My enemy is my inferior, that's all. It's all black and white with them.
British troops were also fighting as a rearguard for those [British & French] troops being evacced.
@gordonAfranks Yup. May they always be reminded of such shameful actions (as well as the fact that most narratives pushed postwar in France [mostly by DeGaulle] are codswallop), albeit - like Mers-El-Kebir - entirely the result of the French military brass having more ego & neurosis than military sense.
Germans attacked Sedan in the 1870 Franco prussian war. They repeated this in WW1. The french built a fort at Sedan but staffed it with reserve conscripts. Defence in depth at Sedan would have stopped the Nazis dead. The spanish civil was only 3-4 years before and the French generals must have watched the newsreels with stuka's taking out key infrastructure. Gamelin's bunker in Paris had no phone lines or radios. He intended to write letter delivered by messengers with millions of refugees on the roads. He was dumb as a box of rocks.
No. He was dumber than a box with no rocks.
The French used to be pioneers in military radio commo, but in WW 2 they all but abandoned it
Just a reminder that the Briish Army did not win a single battle* against the Germans or Japanese before late 1942. (*Maybe Operation Crusader, but they tried very hard to lose that an the guy who single-handedly won, Auchinlek, was fired six months later).
@@lllordllloyd The difference was that GB could retreat to their 'island' and regroup ..France didn't have that luxery ..if there had been a landbridge, German would be the default language in the UK by now
General Altmeyer dod not say that he was prepared to get himself killed at the fromt of a vatallion, he said that he would have to live the consequences of not getting himself killed at the front of a battalion
Nice video! Sums it up quite accurately :) Thanks very much. Hope you continue with this good work.
Great storyline and even better footage! Love it!
1st - they are French
2nd - they do French things
3rd - see 1 & 2
The title should be... "Why was Britain so useless in the Battle Of France???". Britain declares war on Germany. Nine months passes and Britain has TEN PERCENT of the opposing army in France to fight Germany...the most powerful army on earth??? Sure, France's leadership were fossils, but Britain was no ally.
France fought Germany ALONE. France lost almost 500,000 men in that short period while the British were RETREATING. Britain lost a little over 60,000 men. Only the British and their propaganda machine, can turn their gutless retreat into, "the heroic evacuation of Dunkirk". Always know who's telling the narrative.
Had the French military been organized along the lines of a war of maneuver, had the leadership not been stuck in the 1870's and the first year of WWI, had French politicians had the courage to back their military leaders and had the military even considered the ubiquitous use of radio communication, used their tanks (then the best in Europe) as tanks instead of mobile artillery.... the list goes on, and on, and on, and on. The principal reason the French lost the Battle of France is that the leadership throughout the military (with a few exceptions) were more concerned with their careers and the politicians were more concerned about being seen as the "savior" of France. In other words, the French lost the Battle of France because they were French. The individual soldiers were damned fine fighters, their leadership from the bottom to the top seemed to be staffed by men freshly off the short bus.
Didn’t the British also evacuate over 300,000 men from Normandy ports and further south?
@@user-wo4kn6ge6j No. The Brits evacuated by sea between 320000 and 335000 men both British and French from Dunkirk on the northern coast of France, east of Calais. That evacuation, organized by the Royal Navy involved thousands of small civilian vessels as well - apparently anything over thirty foot in length that could make the trip across from Dover to Dunkirk.
@@user-wo4kn6ge6j There were British forces that were evacuated from Normandy as well as other ports in June 1940. This was after the second B.E.F. linked up with British forces that had been cut off by the German breakthrough and who now had a chance to escape. (Yes, after Dunkirk the British Army went back to France to fight the Germans some more).
what if anything has changed?
@@user-qs2ge1yb7b No idea. You'd have to ask a Frenchman. I do know that while France remains a member of NATO it has since the middle 1960's viewed any NATO facilities on French territory as an occupation force. They are a lot like the Turks - they're great allies so long as it doesn't cost them anything or they are actually required to fulfill the responsibilities of that alliance.
The key element people forget about Blitzkrieg called Bewegungskrieg at the time. Is the most important element the encirclement, the french coast meant that the germans had a huge natural feature to complete the encirclement. They just had to go straight and the encirclement had occured and they initiated it from one of the shortest distances.
Thanks for this presentation, and appreciate your research and analysis and your thoughts on this very awkward topic.
If I’m not mistaken the Germans were the only ones who had thought to install radios in their tanks so they could quickly react to changes in the order of battle. My college Russian history professor was a French officer and then later intelligence agent whose cell mates at one point in captivity were all executed by the Germans. It was extremely fascinating listening to him relating anecdotes about the war. Then also the Maginot line was not only incomplete, but it apparently never occurred to the French that the Germans were even capable of great maneuver warfare to simply bypass it. Then of course the allies were too slow to increase their air power including at sea in the form of long range ASW flying boats, escort carriers, or large attack carriers. The French could have taken the Germans out in 1936 but they weren’t aggressive spirited enough to punish the Germans for violating the treaties that they’d signed.
FM radios with throat mikes and tanks artillery and planes used in schwerpunkts.
American tanks had them in WWII.
" Then also the Maginot line was not only incomplete, but it apparently never occurred to the French that the Germans were even capable of great maneuver warfare to simply bypass it." What is Dyle plan? People getting their history from r/history is getting annoying.
The difference was every GE tank had a radio, while in other armies, only the command tank had one. Except for the Americans and late war Brits, who also had radios in every tank.
One of the best programs I have seen. Well done
Really enjoy these educational documentaries Henry. I liked the map animations showcasing the battles that took place. Is there a link on RUclips to where I could find them? Cheers, Liam from World War Military History.
Excellent video.
I think Churchill summed it up best. When asked why the Battle of France was lost, he replied:
"This battle was lost years before. When Hitler declared rearmament in defiance of the Versailles Treaty. When he reoccupied the Rhineland. And France did nothing. Finally, when Britain and France surrendered to his demands at Munich".
Analyzing opponent armament statistics (who has more of what) means little in an actual battle. What counts is fighting spirit.
Right on! Politicians unwilling and/or unable to make the necessary decisions AND convince the public that some sacrifices NOW will be redeemed LATER!!
Have you not met a French person ?
Did you ever hear what the British wartime World War one PM said about the early WW2 period? His name was David Llyod George and he said that none of the post world war one countries was worth another World War. Starting another WW over a German city that wanted to be reunited with Germany (Danzig) was insanity and not worth 60 million dead soldiers. There was clearly an agenda from FDR as he was trying his best to get a war going between Germany and Poland from 1937 on. If Marshall Pulsudski had still been alive some solution short of a war would have found and no war ever would have broken out over Danzig. As it turned out Poland was one of the big losers of WW2. Only tthe USSR and the USA were winners in that insane war. Britain lost it's Empire and was bankrupted at the same time.
"France did nothing" France invaded Germany in the 30s and occupied their land for a time lol. The brits were angry at them for doing that. Churchill was a warmonger who invaded more nations than Germany did. The more I hear from this guy the less I understand how he led anything.
England is rarely blamed for anything. Government NOT doing it's job should be considered the major problem, not the armies.
The original plan for Case Yellow was the main attack through Belgium and Netherlands. That’s what the French military planned for. When that plan fell into the French hands due to an accidental airplane crash, the Germans switched to the Manstien plan. This caught the Allies completely off guard.
Thanks great video and told so well!
Germans were able to synchronize artillery, armor, at guns, airplanes while french and british did not (a problem the british will continue to have in north Africa against Rommel). French armor was meant to follow infantry, not meant for deep penetrations like the panzers. The french logistic was not meant to support french armor in long moves. Often the french armor had to leave the battle when running out of munitions or worse, abandon the tank because no more fuel. A lot of french armor was wasted that way. Another problem with the french and british, was no proper synchonisation between infantry and armor, no proper synchronisation between the french and british during counterattacks. An example is the battle of Stonne (french armor attack without infantry then later infantry attacks alone). Overall nobody was ready for this kind of war of movements in Britain, France, U.S. at the beginning (look how the americans performed at Kasserine, by chance commanders like Patton were given leadership after that), nor in Soviet Union. A lot of allied commanders though they would be fighting another trench war.
Deffos better with the quieter classical music. Love these long form vids! :)
The Germans had Pervitin, the best medical grade metamphetamine ever produced at industrial scale, the French only had Beaujolais…
Pervitin caused terrible side effects, not something to be proud of.
@@davidperry7128 like victory :D
@@orkhepaj hahaha... after a few years it led to defeat... too many crack heads running around
Winning the battle, then the war, is the only thing that counts. If you're in an army, consider yourself already dead. If you get out of the war alive, or intact, you're lucky. That was the philosophy of the Germans and Japanese.
@@davidperry7128 I don't think Hitler and his generals were concerned about the long term side effects of Pervitin, or anything else for that matter.
Excellent video- I learned so much- your four points for the failure make sense.
An excellent video - thank you. My neighbour was a tank driver with a British tank in France at that time. He was very bitter about those early battles , and said ‘the French were appalling to us - they hated us - they would poison their wells rather than let us have the water we needed from them - and we were there to help them!’. In the end he had to withdraw to Dunkirk, abandoning the tanks at the outskirts. He was evacuated by the Royal Navy from the beaches of Dunkirk.
In the 1980s my mother - a driver with the ATS in WW2, partly based in London - visited Paris with a friend. She came home very upset at how untouched by war the buildings of Paris where whereas parts of London were even then still being rebuilt. ‘How could they just hand it over’ she questioned - ‘we were ready to fight street by street in London’.
Excellent work. I really enjoyed this explanation
The French had suffered terrible losses of manpower in WW1, with an estimated 1.4 Million killed and 4.2 Million wounded. There was a total fear of another bloodbath, which France could not afford. Hence the French readiness to acceept defeat. Goebels playing on the French paranoia also said,
"England will fight to the last drop of French blood!"
Yes. It does make you wonder why we spent so much blood and treasure defending France in the 20th century. They are not even grateful today.
Course the 🤡would say that, who had the last laugh though?
@@cpj93070 Me
The UK also suffered massive losses in WW1, we also feared a bloodbath, but our soldiers went and fought and died to help France out with little thanks and the statement that we would fight to the last drop of French blood is a massive insult as we kept fighting on their behalf even after they had surrendered.
@@malcolmfannon4589 One might be left thinking that the intention was to draw Britain into the war...nothing more.
Great video topic
7th Panzer won the Tour de France.
I believe that was the Das Bike Division!
Erwin Rommel's Ghost Division
😂😂
I thought it was the French Army retreat!
But the Nazis lost the world tour by a land slide. 😂
Absolutely fantastic Henry ,really great that your doing more and more content ,really enjoy listening to your narration ,Brilliant.
The title should be... "Why was Britain so useless in the Battle Of France???". Britain declares war on Germany. Nine months passes and Britain has TEN PERCENT of the opposing army in France to fight Germany...the most powerful army on earth??? Sure, France's leadership were fossils, but Britain was no ally.
France fought Germany ALONE. France lost almost 500,000 men in that short period while the British were RETREATING. Britain lost a little over 60,000 men. Only the British and their propaganda machine, can turn their gutless retreat into, "the heroic evacuation of Dunkirk". Always know who's telling the narrative.
Where do you find all the video footage for your videos? I’m just curious.
The French also had generals from WW1 who were too old by then and slow to think quickly and react. Additionally they were too rigid in their strategy despite intelligence reports of the advancing German front.
Excellent summary! One deeper factor: French generals were convinced that even a very well equipped enemy would never advance faster than 5 kms (3 miles) per day. The military academies cadets had been trained for years to hold fortresses and supply them. Not to react swiftly to an attack. WW1 mentality plus better planes and tanks.
and communications
The time unit of measurement for battle at that moment was days for the Frenchs, hours for the Germans. The french army could move at 5 kph (1 mph) in average, the German assault units could achieve 40 kph (25 mph).
This being said, when the speed contest happened after the Sedan breakthrough, guess who fatally won? 😑
Very detailed and interesting Henry
I was lucky enough to live in France (a long time ago - 2005/6) and it’s amazing how different countries teach kids about the same conflict. My French friends told me how they are taught that the British army fled, deserting them in their fight against the Germans. Us Brits are taught that we had no choice but to withdraw as the Allies were getting pummelled, France was lost and the heroic evacuation at Dunkirk allowed the war to continue. There is still a lot of resentment in France over the idea that Britain abandoned the French and the Germans could have been defeated had we stayed. I can't say I agree with that assessment.
The French guys I knew also said they were taught that the British ‘betrayed’ them at Oran, which remains a highly controversial topic.
I wonder if the French are taught that the Brits weren't the only ones leaving via Dunkirk. Approximately 120,000 French soldiers also "fled" France!
such cope the leadership does... shameful.
Don't know which friends you have, but that's not what I have been taught myself. And I do not know what Oran means; do you mean Mers-el-Kebir (July 1940)?
And they want the UK in the EU????
There was a second BEF that landed in France after Dunkirk. It was quickly withdrawn when the writing was on the wall. This included 1st Canadian Division which landed, moved to the front, then retreated back to the UK without firing a shot.
Thank you 4 this video.
Henry, all I can say is another brilliant video. Keep doing you mate, build it and they will come!
I always wondered why France having declared war on Germany Sept 3rd 1939 did not realise most of the Wehrmacht was busy in Poland and open to attack.This actually happened in November 39 when a large incursion was made by the French into the Saarland virtually unopposed.The nervous French high command ordered them to withdraw.After the war senior German military observers said that they had little to stop the french reaching into the heart of the Reich.
I have always wondered about this as well. The Poles even sent word to the French that almost all German army units were tied up in Poland. You'd think that the French would have the good sense to trust an ally and an intelligence service that managed to crack enigma. To make matters worse, the Polish battle plan was basically a fighting withdrawal to the Vistula River, where the Germans would be stuck and hit from two fronts... but the Soviets came instead of the French.
the maginot line was built for defense with still artillery. There were some mobile infantry units and tanks in Belgium but several nations would have to agree to invade Germany and lose the ability to retreat behind the line in case of bad scenario. The blitzkrieg used by the germa nand their crossing of the ardennes were not considered a possible scenario
Numerous times in history, militaries have focused on fighting the last war. I think that's the long and short of it: the French command had the the Great War in mind when planning for the defense of France, and so concentrated on perfecting their defenses (hence the emphasis on fortifications, most prominently the Maginot Line). France's (and let's be fair, Britain's, too) failure to go on offense in 1939 flowed from lack of will, lack of original thinking, and lack of imagination-along with a healthy dollop of risk aversion and a big chunk of wishful thinking.
Because mobilization and gathering enough forces and supplies for an all-out attack takes time, that's why !
the river Meuse is "mews" lol.. always love it when narrators pronounce things properly. really gives me confidence in the narrative
Excellent video
I also think the slaughter of World War 1 had a effect on all of them. Remember, the French came close to mutiny and overthrow during the Great War. Also, factor in that the French thought they would be fighting a well dug in static war against a enemy who would hurl themselves against a murderous wall if they even dared to attack, therefore not training or even really considering a mobile war of combined arms movements and counter movements and the communications required to do that. I have also read that the relatively new "warbirds" terrified the everyday troops, which at that stage was probably true. A couple of years later, air attacks became "normal", so to speak, for the combatants.
Yup. Even the U.S. with a only a 1 year involvement, [ 1917-1918 ] took enough losses to scare politicians into isolationism in the 1930's.
Did rommel and some of the other divisional commanders combine storm trooper tactics with tanks and aircraft.
France also lost almost twice as many men (killed) in ww1 than Britain did, which would have met a similar fate if it wasnt separated from the continent by the English Channel. And besides their superior tactics and weaponry the Germans also had some battlefield experience by then. So to say France was 'useless' is incorrect and disrespectful.
Indeed. ruclips.net/video/pU7IBDnnqFk/видео.html
Also to see your country being invaded by a Murderous German blitzkrieg with aircraft tanks and artillery in your own country. Blowing up the infrastructure that’s very very stressful and hard to take France, like Britain was probably still World War I weary, unlike the Germans organised and run by a fanatics.
From what my grandpa told me france put up a fierce fight
I am german btw
Yes the French did put up a fight, against Australia.
@@seanlander9321 Yup! Better than the chocolate aussie army who got spanked by the jap. Btw as australianopithecus won ANYTHING? lol
fierce fights between equal forces don't last one month. He is just showing professional courtesy :)
@@seanlander9321 Be careful, the Aussies did put up a good fight against the Japanese. Our American friends put a stop to it when they dropped the atomic bomb.
@@jimbo43ohara51 Australia had an alliance with America, not a dependency.
What are those clips that look like it's from a movie? what movie is it?
Yes that's my question too
I thought it was Robert Hardy as Churchill but I'm not sure
I'm impressed how you can make a half hour long video with about 8 minutes of footage!
"The German chief of staff wrote that there was only a 10% chance for it to work" while showing the actual quote that says a very different thing is a bold thing to say. But nice analysis your format is very compelling, that part just stuck out to me lol
Basically, France lost because of a trick play. The Nazis scored the most shocking trick play touchdown in history
Guess you didn't watch the documentary..The Germans made a good move sure, but they got lucky. Lucky with total incompetence from the French generals. Debatably the most incompetence ever displayed on a battlefield in human history.
True….but it’s because they foolishly fell for the trick play! Couldn’t even believe what their reconnaissance photos were telling them
@@jasonstewart8363 W/o luck, unless you have very superior numbers (like the Russians had in 44-45), all battles van be lost ..so making it sound like the german only won 'jsut because they got lucky' is only part of the truth ..it was mostly won because 'blitzkrieg' tactics and (wrong) allied assumptions...
@@jasonstewart8363You can't chalk it all up to luck. Especially when you even said it was because the French generals were incompetent.
The Japanese in Singapore did even bigger. You nerds should read more
I think a large part of the problem was the French military leadership, or rather, the lack of it. Old men fighting the last war. Inflexible, suspicious of allies and unimaginative. The French had an excellent army, but their generals let them down...
The French outsmarted themselves. They had been warned that the German Army was holding training exercises using tactics with tanks and bridge-build equipment in the Black Forest months ahead of the French invasion by the Polish and the French Generals laughed.
The French military was a great fighting force. But like the Italians, they had a corrupt government that invested in the previous war and exhausted their economy to where they simply gave up to a pointless cause when their own government was willing to cooperate with the Nazis. Also, during WW1 France was extremely close to having a mutiny so despite the reputations of the Italians and French military, they were tired so you can't blame them
Two armies did mutiny in World War One: the Russian, and the German. The 'mutinies' of 1917 are much more accurately described as 'strikes'. English writers were happy to use the morally-loaded 'm' word rather than give their own soldiers ideas about how to confront incompetent leadership.
@@DavidCooney-pz4ru Thank you for this analysis. "lmao", what a great historian work.
@@Jean_Robertos he obviously knows a lot about history 😂😂😂
Another tid bit, before the French surrender, Italy declared war on France, a very bad idea it proved to be but, that would come after the French capitulation. Also the battle of Arras saw the German armoured spearhead nearly cut in half, the cooperation between French and English armor units was not practiced enough to make this battle an allied success, Germany was much more trained in mobile warfare than anyone but Stalin knew about, see, Germany had spent years secretly practicing the blitzkrieg deep in Russian territory, long before war broke out, stalin knew exactly what Germany was capable of because he enabled the training that specifically violated the treaty of Versailles, Germany built for the Soviet army a tank factory, actually called the tractor factory and eventually known as tankograd. It was built before Hitler and Roosevelt came to power.
Oh, and don’t forget the Earth’s flat and the moon landings were faked.
The systems changing the work required to move forward right now dude.
In the 1920s and early 1930s (before the Nazis took over in Germany) there was indeed clandestine military co-operation between Germany and the Soviet Union. At that time, both were considered pariah nations by the Anglo-French imperial elites, for different reasons, and it was in the interest of both to collaborate.
Great summary, my friend. New subscriber here. Just got back from the Ardennes and the Meuse river valley. It really is hard to believe a motorized army could traverse that area so quickly in that time of the year. Lots of flooding potential. There must've not been too much rain that year, so the Germans were in a sense lucky from that point of view too.
It is good to have a real witness here 😀.
@@phlm9038 Ah, taking a piss there, mate?
@@thegood9 No, absolutely not. I am sincere. It's good to have a real description of the place.
@@phlm9038 No worries! It really is a beautiful area, though. Recommend a tour through there if you ever get the chance!
@@thegood9 Okay thanks.
My Dad was with Patton in France towards the end of the war. I never heard him say a single bad word about any group of people anytime... Except the French. He would tell a story, which basically implied the French, were totally thrilled that the German's being defeated, by their wonderful friends the English & Americans ! He said he knew this because they were constantly being loudly cheered on by all the Frenchman, which they passed on the road. Yelling the encouragement, as they were sipping wine & lounging in the sun, on their picnic blankets with their lady's ...🍾
As pointed out by Len Deighton in his book "Blitzkrieg", Frances's failure to utilize radio contributed greatly to their inability to respond quickly to the Nazi's maneuvers..
The French NEVER engaged the germans, the told their forces to get out of the way and not engage. The british had only about 100 matilda tanks that were VERY slow, yet they stopped a force more than twice their number but were eventually outflanked and forced to fall back, there was NEVER even a single French tank engagement despite having 40 times the number of tanks that England did.
There is a theory that the germans bought off the French general staff, and at EVERY stage from years before to every step of the battle, the French general staff WAS able to get orders out even though they used messengers(although nothing near what it would be if they used radios) but their orders were never to engage and just told them to get out of the way. Mostly the French forces were just cut off and if they ever did fight it was being drasticly out of of supplies or just surrendered without even fighting.
You can thank the French for Dunkirk
Why?
@@JustinHH22 Because they halted the German's who would over-run the beaches as the British ran away.
@@JustinHH22The French held their lines for as long as they could, some units fought until they ran out of ammunition. They essentially sacrificed themselves so that some of their units as well as England’s units could escape. France saved a lot of men by fighting hard.
Did the French even have the resources in the area to stop the traffic jam anyway? Lots of talk about ho easy a target but equally important is the capacity to destroy it. The French had a huge problem with allocated resources to where they needed to be.
Great vid! Thank you. Btw you don’t pronounce the ‘s’ at the end of Ardennes.
so useless..
Even if the Battle of Dunkirk ended in failure for the Franco-British armies, it is important to specify the heroism of the French soldiers who allowed the English to evacuate their troops ,
Nearly 350,000 men managed to leave Dunkirk, but 35,000 others were forced to capitulate on June 4: the overwhelming majority were French, the defense of the re-embarkation having been ensured by their divisions caught in the trap. While they almost act as extras in the British newspapers of the time (and in Nolan's Dunkirk), it is they who will defend until the end the evacuation of the boats for Dover, heroic and essential actors of a “miracle” that they will pay for with their lives or with several years of captivity. The national navy also came to lend a hand and also lost several warships.
I'm glad you pointed this out. I am old enough to have spoken to many British Army veterans of the Second Workd War. From those I spoke to ( and there were many), most had a lot of respect for French soldiers. Let's not forget their sacrifice at not only this campaign but Monte Cassino, and Normandy to name a few places.
Yes 345,000 troops of which 125, 000 were French.
@@westcountrypastygalloper8747 at Monte Cassino
It is the Algerian soldiers for many who are distinguished
Also
@@timothylyons5686 your point??
@@garelalexandre3252 not all French stayed and fought.
35,000 Brits did.
Once again excellent research, Henry! Hesitating, dithering and arguing is a uniquely French trait in Europe. Arrogance played also a major role - it always comes before the fall.
Thank you for your stupid display of Francophobia. Would you say that Napoléon had dithered?
@@swampwiz😂😂😂Napoleon was not even French to begin with.
+@Touriste 24h/24 Today, you cannot be racist towards Jews or black people, but your cultural and ethnic racism is still possible against the French! It's the remains of your Anglo-Saxon culture!
It just recalls once again that you have to have a plan. A brilliant one.
What is the name of the movie that goes at the background at 21:12?
L'appel du 18 juin (2010) - Félix Olivier.
ruclips.net/video/8ZwbU1CB-KU/видео.html
At Arras, the British heavy Matilda tanks rattled the Germans. Rommel had to scrape together a patchwork of anti-aircraft guns to stop the attack.
Arras is one of the most overlooked and great "What Ifs " of history, stunningly so in fact
The German High Command were never actually keen as a man on Von Mansteins plan, and rightly so, but Hilter was always a high stakes poker player as with the Rhineland in 36 so it greatly appealed to him and that was that But it WAS extremely risky
So in the run up to Arras OKW were getting incresingly EXTREMELY twitchy and expected a significant counter attack so I thnk the psychological effect of this made Rommel wildly overestimate the Allied forces at play
To the point that I believe the 10th Panzer Division had Its orders changed and It was brought back to be kept in reserve in case of further counter attacks
The 10th Panzer I believe was heading to Dunkirk and would have arrived BEFORE the Allies reached there and set up any kind of perimeter
Its not a giant step to imagine then that with possibly 250,000 plus British POWS being offered a free ticket home IF the UK signed on the dotted line of Hitlers very "generous" peace terms and NO "miracle of Dunkirk" to nail fate and providence to that Churchill who was already under huge pressure form Halifax's camp could have stood , public pressure and this huge leverage would have been too great and he would have fallen and Brtitain come to peace terms with Germany
This was certainly more like the vision Hitler expressed in his less well known 1928 2nd book the "Zweites Buch" where he see's a future alliance with Britain as natural Germanic allies
And then as a consequence France also come to peace as this was the condition for a general "Peace in the west" ....?
This is all what Ifs so I will stop there because look just how far your imagination can wander in this scenario as to how things could have turned out differently If not for that small "insignificant" attack at Arras?
@@crispycat4852 Excellent points! 👍
Good idea, good start. BUT, typical German improvisation determination prevailed.
The French were psychologically beaten having exhausted themselves in WWI.
The Germans were rolling the next day. The British have a history of over-rating minor operations that were a mosquito bite to the enemy. All the attack proved was the British can't co-ordinate their forces... a lesson Rommel would take to heart and teach the British again and again.
Of course, that's also just how the Waffen SS apologists will be writing about their half-arsed efforts in July/August 1944, so it's not just the Brits.
British Matilda captive: "We think it very unsporting of you Germans to use anti-aircraft guns on tanks!"
German flak captor: "Ja, and ve think it very unsporting of you British to use tanks that only an anti-aircraft gun can knock out!"
Absolute twaddle. The French would have beaten the Germans if they could have. The French collapse had nothing to do with the ability of French soldiers, they are as brave as any. Simply the French army had no satisfactory leadership. The leadership that it had was still attepting WW1 tactics against a determined mechanised oppenent.
I'm not sure the video said otherwise?
not so sure, with 10% of mechanisation, see also the video
So why did they turn around when they confronted ONE machine gun in the 1939 Invasion Of Germany?
@@valiantvanadium6996 who invaded Germany in 1939? Interesting ----
@@valiantvanadium6996 Yes, that's totally a single machine gun that repelled them, they cowered in fear after that. On a far more serious notee, they were told to turn around because Gamelin was obsessed with defensive tactics, and he had a lot of pressure politically. Also many in France believe the Soviets were allies with Hitler and that attacking Germany to rescue Poland would mean the Soviets would declare war too. We have Hindsight, let's not forget this
Great review and analysis. The only constructive criticism I have, is to slow down man! :)
Have you ever heard of the Micro Machine pitchman? He also worked with Federal Express, back in the 80's.
Your research, info and voice are great but just because we're looking at a Blitzkrieg. It doesn't mean you need to race through it.
I'm not trying to be mean. I am joking a bit but that's just me. :)
I guess I can slow down the video but I prefer to watch it, as it was intended.
It's fortunate that I have watched and studied the war, or I would have been uber confused.
Like I said. This channel seems great so far. Therefore I will subscribe and give it a thumbs up.
I'm looking forward to more content.
Cheers from Montreal Quebec Canada
Excellent documentary. What does penny drop mean?
It means they eventually realised what the german plan was
France's issue was command, it actually suffered because it won the first world war, and therefore didn't learn the lessons the Germans learned. Also the 1930s were a period of political chaos in France with the Right and Left bitterly disunified. So when the German's came they didn't have the tactics to counter new methods of fighting and they didn't have the will to fight. Essentially it was that simple. A lesson of the dangers of overconfident democracies in the face of intense will and determination.
Germans made a totally insane leeroy-jenkings move. 4-5 coins flips had to go just the right way for them but they got them. No aerial bombing of the huge traffic jam (biggest gamble), the river crossing, the French slow response and ineffective counter-attacks. Totally reckless gamble but that was literally Hitler on speed. At that point he had been using meth induced drug cocktails for four years from his quack doctor since 1936.
The French were violated 😂
"I'd be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. . . . Oh what the heck I'll laugh anyway." Joker.
What is this about
Manchild
Great video. I would suggest you could have mentioned sinking French fleet by Royal Navy. Otherwise I really enjoyed your work. Thanks
To be fair, though, it wasn't just the French army that fell back and collapsed in the face of the German advance in 1939. The entire British expeditionary force was there with them... England was saved by the mother of all moats.
Completely forgetting that was exactly what the British Expeditonary Force was too. Actually the British have the French army to thank for getting the bulk of their men back in Operation Dynamo, the small boats armada that picked up the British and some french soldiers and shipped them over the channel.
Erwin Rommel had surrounded five divisions of the French First Army near Lille. Although completely cut off and heavily outnumbered, the French fought on for four days under General Molinié in the Siege of Lille, thereby keeping seven German divisions from the assault on Dunkirk and saving an estimated 100,000 Allied troops. In recognition of the garrison's stubborn defence, German general Kurt Waeger granted them the honours of war, saluting the French troops as they marched past in parade formation with rifles shouldered.
Although Churchill had promised the French that the British would cover their escape, on the ground it was the French who held the line whilst the last remaining British soldiers were evacuated.
Enduring concentrated German artillery fire and Luftwaffe strafing and bombs, the outnumbered French stood their ground. On 2 June (the day the last of the British units embarked onto the ships), the French began to fall back slowly, and by 3 June the Germans were about 2 miles (3.2 km) from Dunkirk. The night of 3 June was the last night of evacuations. At 10:20 on 4 June, the Germans hoisted the swastika over the docks from which so many British and French troops had escaped.
The desperate resistance of Allied forces, especially the French forces, including the French 12th Motorised Infantry Division from the Fort des Dunes, had bought time for the evacuation of the bulk of the troops. The Wehrmacht captured some 35,000 soldiers, almost all of them French. These men had protected the evacuation until the last moment and were unable to embark. The same fate was reserved for the survivors of the French 12th Motorised Infantry Division (composed in particular of the French 150th Infantry Regiment); they were taken prisoner on the morning of 4 June on the beach of Malo-les-Bains. The flag of this regiment was burnt so as not to fall into enemy hands.
I'm a British historian. You are right.
Many French soldiers escaped to Britain as well, enabling them to fight again and reclaim their country.
We may have to thank the French for our escape, but France has to thank us for coming back and ejecting Germany.
This, a thousand times. The Battle of France wasn't a French defeat, it was an Allied defeat.
I believe about 300,000 soldiers escaped to England, mainly without equipment. Of that number about 100,000 soldiers were French most of whom returned to France shortly afterwards.
My understanding is that Churchill have orders that the French and Belgians were not to be told about the BEF withdrawal at Dunkirk, however the French still provided cover at some sacrifice and consequently abandoned a plan for a counterattack at Arras. Initially only British forces were evacuated, which even the French generals viewed as fair. Some French were evacuated in the later stages of the withdrawal.
So easy with hindsight, both my uncles were Dunkirk veterans that lived to tell the tale. Don't forget the French helped in defending our retreat. Also look at the bravery of their resistance fighters later in the war. Would D Day have worked without the French resistance greasing large amounts of train rolling stock with carborundum grease?
Yes mistakes were made but unfair to right off a nation
Hmmmm. French resistance only started up after Hitler invaded Russia. As such, Communist only. De Gaulle did well in reducing communist influence. No doubt about that.
But resistance around D day, largely a myth. Most French were "RDM" resistant de derniere minute
Should have mentioned that the lack of Radios was important for the slow reaction of French units. Not even the main HQ hade wireless radios and They used MC ordonances and normal telephone lines.
The overview provided a helpful outline, but more context is needed to fully address why France was so ineffective in WWII. Key questions to explore include: What was the prevailing public sentiment after WWI? What were the political/ideological currents that made the French susceptible to demoralization? How did the government's actions and the public's trust in institutions evolve over the course of the war? Examining these contextual factors would offer a more comprehensive understanding of France's rapid capitulation. Based off what we know so far, France wasn't really liberated, it was moreso in a civil war when DDAY occured.
Well, it's not only France. Let's not forget that actually until 1942 the germans were successfull everywhere. The British were able to retreat behind the channel. Due to it's size soviets ware able to give up land for time. France couldn't use either tactics
Well apart from at sea or at in the air. There was never any question of Britain loosing the war after the Battle of Britain and it was only a matter of time before Monty won in North Africa. If the Russians had not entered the WW2, the war would have ended in stalemate. By 1942 British manufacturing was starting to catch and overtake that of Germany.
@@timphillips9954 My point is not to diminish the merit or bravery of Royal Navy or Royal Air Force. They were brilliant indeed but they played such a major role because of Britain’s geography. It may look childish to play a kind of “what if…” game (e.g what if Channel didn’t exist…) but coming back to the vid title “why was France so Useless in WWII” I think it’s worth noticing that until El Alamein and Stalingrad in 1942 every armies who faced the Germans on the ground were defeated (including BEF in Belgium, France Greece or Crete BTW).
From there we may wonder if the 1940 blitzkrieg success has more to do with German army excellence than French army failure.
@@JohnDoe-cr6ct LOL. The BEF were 300000 against 1.3 million. As for your second point geography is important for every nation including the US, Japan, Russia and even Germany. The Germans would have walked straight through the US in 1939 if they had been boardering each other.
Finally hard to find much German success following Monty and El Alamein.
@@timphillips9954 That was not the case until the USA joined the war, the UK was being strangled by the U Boats and Hitler wanted them to surrender so he could use his forces on one front to destroy the Soviet Union. Had he used those resources against the UK they would have crushed them. The Easten front and Pearl Harbour changed everything.
@@timphillips9954 Just to point out there was an additional 200,000 British soldiers that went back over to France after Dunkirk.
18:17 "As the French were pissing around" 😂😂😂
I love watching vids where the creator is clearly passionate about the topic
I heard that the French tanks had 5 gears....1 to go forward and 4 to go in reverse. 😂
2:51 : “relatively few German forces went through Belgium” this is mistaken, the main thrust did go through the Belgian Ardennes. Moreover the map of Belgium is wrong : the most southern part is gone and is marked as French…The author seems to think the Ardennes are not in Belgium. Apart from this the vid is very good.
A very good video
Thank you !
Just one slight but very significant point I would highlight though Is the reference to Vichy as a "Vassal state" during the Intro and the debate over this
This is a very contentious Issue and one I would not blame anyone one bit for avoiding in what Is a very sticky subject in French history
Its not particulary relevant to this video which Is about the reasons for the collapse previously anyway but I would just say that the actual legal and political status of Vichy has been a back and forth debate that has never been fully resolved
Its France and Its a COMLPICATED subject to put it basically
So I'm not saying it is wrong throw this term into the ring at all, Its fair comment In the debate to label It a Vassal state, some argue this but others would not and that it was closer to a fully sovereign state and also I would add that this actually suited German policy better in the Occupied Zone EG if you look at the Abetz/ Hitler meetings in August 1940 at Obersalzberg for example
I think 30 countries acknowledged It as such and 6 kept ambassadors in Vichy , including of course Roosevelts close associate Admiral William Leahy until the Torch landings backing Vichy as a better horse if you like than a certain almost equally Anglophobic General in London
Vichy certainly have some cards to play and DID push back on numerous occassions, sometimes quite forcibly on certain subjects
The vast majority of the regimes members would certainly have NOT considered themeselves anything but a Soveriegn state and nationalists and were hostile to the Germans privately with their Military Intelligence services working with the Right wing Resistance groups like ex Vichy member Frenays Combat who met Vichy Interior minister Pucheu privately on several occasions to discuss their activities in the Unoccupied zone
They even had the Abwehr V mann Henri Devillers responsible for the break up of Combat North at the end of 1941 immediately arrested and executed as a GERMAN spy when he reentered Vichy territory in early 42
They also refused to return General Henri Giraud to the Germans when he escaped from Konigstein In April 42 and made his way to Vichy so angering Himmler he had large numbers of Girauds family arrested This was a VERY high profile incident as well and Giraud was still staunchly and openly Petainist AND anti German during this time
So THEY certainly didn't interpret events, rightly or wrongly as making themselves passive German puppets with no agency
Funnily Jacques Doriot head of the largest French Fascist Party the PPF who later founded the LVF in July 41 and fought on the Eastern front (which later formed part of the infamous 33rd Charlemagne SS whose members were amongst the final die hard foreign SS defending Hitlers Bunker in Berlin in April 45 ) even left Vichy to head back to Paris at the end of 1940 dissapointed that as a true ideological Fascist in his eyes Vichy was NOT anywhere NEAR collaborative enough and saw itself as a genuinely SOVEREIGN state
He wanted to make the case about this and increased political involvement for the PPF to Abetz and the MBF in Paris but was roundly rebuffed The Nazis were never keen anyway on giving homegrown Fascists too much political power, they knew the beast better than anyone else if you get the point?
Anyway as I said a complicted subject , thats the point I want to make. there was never any simplistic monolithic "Vichy regime", though there was certainly a strong nationalistic , clerical , anti republican "Petainist Cult" and the terms Resistor and Collaborators are considered insufficient and over simplistic now to describe all the different nuances at work so It a subject still worth debate that surprises many people sttill who were taught the post war narratives
As a post script obviously the introduction of STO in 1943 would tend to tip from this point the argument towards a more traditonal "Vassal" state situation though many would see this as the workings of Laval mainly but I think Its fair to say this actually signalled the death knell and final nail in the coffin for Vichy as legitmate Sovereign Nationalistic government in the eyes of even many of its previiously most staunch supporters
I work in France and Paris as a historical guide and specialise in WW2 and the Occupation so I've been round the houses as they say on this subject many times and am just doing a little devils advocate maybe to pique interest😉
But anyway thank you for this great video !
Great knowledgeable piece.The allies fought Vichy forces until 1942 in the middle east,Africa and even Madagascar.Not to mention the sinking of much of France's navy.Mitterand served Vichy in a minor role.Another note, some 50,000 french servicemen escaped Dunkirk.Only half stayed in Britain,the rest went back to France.In the end after the war, former Vichy politicians went on to influence the setting up of the Iron and Steel community,the precursor of the EEC and then the EU.De Gaulle was fully aware of this,hence his dislike of the EEC stuffed with former Vichy and 3rd Reich figures as it was e.g Walter Halstein.
Yes but either you oppose nazism or you don't.
@@jillybe1873
Why? Why Nazism in particular? Is that the ONLY thing people have ever either only opposed or only not opposed in history ?
In a definitive monlothic manner ?
Did the 38 countries at the Evian confernence in 1938 oppose or not oppose Nazism?
Did the Soviet Union oppose or not oppose Nazism when It signed the Molotov Ribbentrop pact In August 1939?
Did Goering oppose or not oppose Nazism when he signed release papers for his brother Albert to get dozens of people released from Nazi camps?
Did Churchill oppose or not oppose Nazism when he countered Himmlers "secret" proposals in 1943 to depose Hitler with an offer that if he took him alive and handed him over to the Allies for trial and included members of the Kreisau circle in a new government then the Black corps would be acceptable to maintain stabiity and security in a new "Himmler" Germany? No wonder MI6 assasisnated him within hours of capture ......cough cough ......
Did Degaulle oppose or not oppose Nazism when he gave the Legion of Honneur to Maurice Papon in 1961 and appointed him chief of Police in Paris ? Then chief of Aviation Sud ? You know Papons history too right? If not go read about him and then come back and answer if you think DeGaulle opposed Nazism or not ?
I'm not saying what there is one answer or the right or wrong answer because its like any object, it can look very different depending from which angle you CHOOSE to view It
You can also oppose or support something through both action and Inaction
I'm playing devils advocate to maybe help you avoid oversimplisitc generalistaions IE "Opposition" can change in meaning over time and take many different forms depending on context
i'm keeping this as simple as possible because I don't want to write a 2 hour lecture after having spent over 4hrs this afternoon taking a group on a tour about the Occupation of Paris by the Germans , the resistance and the Holocaust
In fact I may have already over complicated It for you , I'm sorry if I have
I really liked the narration and editing in this. Please don't exhale so much to put on the dramatic voice though, it doesn't sound right. Your normal accent sounds great.
Actually it would at least as relevant to ask Why France did not collapse in the First World War already ?
It would have been an extremely "normal" thing to happen that Germany had invaded all of France in a few month in 1914. It did not happen only because of an almost miracle. At that time the French gathered strength and courage to put up a desparate fight like the one the Russians put up in 1941-1945.
But miracles and sacrifices cannot happen everytime.
Also, I assume the author and most of the viewers and commentators here are English or American. I think it is an extremely hard thing, if not impossible, to picture what is truly means to have your own country invaded by a superior force, when the country you were born in has never known a true war (a "true" war being a war fought on land, where defeat means your family will suffer greatly and your home be destroyed or taken from you).
The battle of Verdun was a miracle in 1916. The french soldiers were absolut heros ! It 's the kind of most epic battles in the history.
Really cool video so far (i'm at 4:40, haven't finished it yet), but I think in a narrative video like this one where voice plays a major role, controlling your breathing - both during recording and afterwards, during the edit or post-production with sound software - would be great.
Not trying to flame or hate, I also struggle to achieve it when I speak through a mic; but it'd mean a great step up in quality imo.
The extended answer to this question can be found in William L. Shirer's "The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940," which covers French social, political, economic and military factors leading up to the war. It can be viewed as a companion volume to his much-better-known "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich". Shirer spent more than a decade in Europe in the 1930s, principally in France and Germany, where he knew many of the principal actors in both countries, and wrote extensively about them in his years abroad. I found the book fascinating - and eye-opening.
The French Army simply wasn't ready for the tactics and strategy the German Army used in 1940 - blitzkrieg. French military thinking hadn't evolved much from 1914, which is why they built the Maginot Line. They were planning for another trench war. The Wehrmacht simply went through Belgium and the Netherlands, completely avoiding the Maginot Line. Oops......
The French had roughly double the number of tanks the Germans had, but France didn't have them concentrated in armoured divisions like the Germans. French tanks were scattered among the infantry divisions, so their effectiveness was greatly reduced. It was proven by the Allies in WWI and the Germans in Poland that tanks are best used en masse, but the French didn't learn that lesson from WWI, and it cost them four years of German occupation.
"The Wehrmacht simply went through Belgium and the Netherlands, completely avoiding the Maginot Line"
That was exactly what the French wanted by building the Maginot Line. The Maginot Line was built to protect the heart of France's industries.
I spat my coffee when I read the title ... hilarious!!! 😅
My great grand father was a captain in the infantry in dunkirk. He fought till the end to protecting the british who were retreating and protect his homeland. He finished the war in a prisonner worker camp in Germany because he don’t wanted to surrender. It’s always sad me to see that the english doesn’t even remember that we fought for them being capable to return to they country.
Well angloids know nothing about history, and they gotta use the only subject they have to trash talk France over and over, to lack for their inferiority in everything else
The english (british) do remember the dunkirk evacuation, in fact there are ceremonys every year at the memorial in dunkirk in remembrance, and we definitely learned about it in school...just as the remembrance services commemorating all the men who died returning to the same beaches to help liberate france.
We do actually, and it's so sad that you French always go on about how we British were cowards and ran off back to our Island, you see why we have a go at you French sometimes the things you say about us, it's tit for tat.
@@cpj93070Actually, the fact that some French - not "the" French - say that is because 1. A Vichy propaganda to blame defeat on the English after the Armistice, propaganda that has been recyled by the pro-Vichy French far right even after WWII (anglophobic sentiment was prominent in the far right). 2. It is true that the British remember Dunkirk but - and I have surveyed a lot of sources - in nearly all cases the French contribution is barely mentioned while the "little boats" story is completely idealized (the actual role they played in evacuating the soldiers was way inferior to the navies). Which is odd.
And it is true that in the English-speaking there is a somehow constant bashing at the French military while in France we usually don't laugh about our once-enemies this way (and in this regard, I thinks this honours us). In France it's more the nationalist people who will laugh at England or other countries based on military prowess, conquests and other "viril" topics.
Anyways, it has always baffled me that countries so developped and civilized as the U.K. and the USA are so obsessed with being seen as the best, the victors, obsessed with rankings of everything (Top 10s list of everything), with a very manichean vision of things (it's either white or black). There is a narrative in the media - - and you can clearly see and quantifiy it on RUclips - where it's always Azincourt, Crécy and Poitiers and all the English know these battles, and it's insane and funny because in France we really don't care and don't go "Bouvines, Patay, Formigny Castillon". In this sense, I think that in France we are very relaxed (which signifies we are actually more confident about our history) and talk about our defeats and victories alike without problem. Actually, the media and the people usually know more about the defeats (Azincourt etc.) than the victories even if we are the country with more military victories in history. But I would be interested in knowing more on your perspective.
@@yozza4978 They had to return because they fled four years before .
Excellent in respect of all the military aspects and I applaud your analysis which was concisely and very interestingly put. I have to wonder about another aspect of the French collapse though and the divisions in their nationhood at that time. Communism was on the rise and many of the ruling class (similar to those in Britain) had leanings towards Herr Hitler on the basis of retaining their ranks (self interests) against this rise of populist Communism.
I wonder if the chaos of the French at that time was not always sheer stupidity of their generals but rather a ruse of retaining power by this elite, working under the Germans and crushing the communists? The quick and decisive division of a large portion of France into these elites hands seems in marked contrast to the confusion of fighting for France. I think it also should be said that many French fought heroically hard and were dreadfully let down. The escape of the British army at Dunkirk had much to do with the French and British rear guards fighting to the end as well as the heroics of the RN and small boats. The pro German Vichy French actions during the war also seem to me to also highlight this division and treacherous intent towards their own country and peoples, traitors from within undermining everything for self interest and what they believe is right. I would really like your opinion.
Very good analysis. If the. French had any honor, they should be ashamed, but instead they continue with arrogance.
I suspect collusion, partly for the reasons you have given, butalso for what France stood to gain, namely, Britain and her empire.
I think it's a little bit of both. Ineptitude and treachery within the French leadership might explain why they caved in.
An excellent comment and one that goes to the heart of the matter. The Second World War was very much a class war; the only real fighting resistance to the Nazi occupation of France came from the pro-Communist working class, which also had to contend with local traitors and collaborators. I recommend the 1973 movie "Lacombe, Lucien" for an insight into the nature of the Vichy regime.
Poor leadership and loss of air superiority. There, saved a lot of time.
All true but that would make for a very short video 😂and I would add indecisiveness...
Germay went through French and British troops in a few weeks
@@sharonprice42 And then they did the same in Greece
Excellent military analysis with good videos to support it. The major variable you fail to insert, though, is the desperately chaotic political situation in France during the 1930s. They went through countless governments or PMs, from left to right, but often Communists. One double military consequence: the French armament industry was nationalized on July 7, 1936, while the French aviation industry followed on July 17, 1937. The whole of French society was divided, and therefore so were the military leaders. That is the main reason of the 1940 catastrophic defeat.
The title of the video suggests that you stand on business and i must subscribe