WW l The French didn't last long in WW ll,did they do any better in WW l ?

Cliff C

One of the cliches I heard as a young soldier has a bit of truth: You will always tend to fight the next war the way you fought your last war.

WWI was the first "modern" conflict that initially saw the battle formations of soldiers marching shoulder to shoulder against their opponents against tanks, aircraft, machine guns, rapid fire artillery, and chemical weapons and the slaughter was horrific. The old tactics fell away and the conflict became a stalemate of trench warfare with little maneuver on either side. Limited "over the top" attacks were met barb wire obstacles that channeled the attackers into kill zones where they were savaged with massed machine gun fire. Poison gas killed and crippled thousands and the flower of French and English young men died in the fields of France.

The French in WWI along with he British basically fought the German Army to a standstill. Older histories stated French casualties in WWI decimated one entire generation.

Following WWI French political leaders swore "never again" and with the mindset that any future conflict must be met by massed troops in well fortified dug in forts, the French Command Structure concieved and built the Maginot Line, which was to be the next war's "super trench". Forward thinking young officers who developed and argued for new and better tactics were ignored or had their careers slowed or stopped. Among these was a young Armor Officer Charles De Gualle who fought to have armor as an independent fighting force and not tied to infantry support. He was ignored.

In 1939 the Germans enveloped the entrenched French Forces trapped inside the forts of the Maginot Line and using combined arms tactics and maneuver, outran and surrounded the French and British Forces, forced the English to abandon their weapons and evacuate France, and forced an amistice upon the French.

French Failures of WWII were at the command and control level, not at the troop levels. The French Army had developed tanks superior to anything the Germans had in 1939, and the French Air Force had designed and started production of some very capable aircraft that could have fought the Germans 1 on 1, and the French had acquired some Armerican equipment and gave a very good accounting of themselves. Unfortunately, it was a case of short sighted self serviing politicians waiting too long and then a case of too little too late when the old ideas were finally seen as lacking.

Side note: The current American Political Leadership can learn from the mistakes of the 1920's and 1930's French and English political leaders and not have to re-invent the wheel. If the USA follows the example of the French there will be no "Arsenal of Democracy" available to us when we need it.

Mac

In WWI they were not defeated, combined with the British Expeditionary Force they managed to halt the German advance, it eventually turned into a stalemate leading to the infamous trench warfare that came into being. The French did a very good job during WWI, just look at Verdun and you'll see why.

The reason they didn't do so well in WWII was the speed of the German advance, they used their mechanized troops to overwhelm weak French positions and just kept on advancing right into Paris. During WWI the technology nor the tactics existed.

ArmyChemo

Read the "Guns of August"

Great book that will give you an isea of how the French performed in early WW1

Jerry

As a matter of fact, the only war the French won was the French Revolution. Only because they were fighting themselves.

Mark F

The French Army bore the brunt of the fighting on the Western Front in WWI and were in overall command of allied forces. Obviously the allies won WWI.

In WWII the French prepared to fight the wrong war and were overwhelmed by superior German tactics, to which they were too slow to respond. If France had extended the Maginot line all the way to the Channel coast instead of stopping at the Belgian border (allowing a huge hole for the Germans to pour in) the Germans would have had a far more difficult tactical problem to overcome.

For all the French bashers it is only fair to point out the Germans also defeated the Polish Army (which was a pretty effective army by the standards of 1939), the British and up until the end of 1942 the Soviet army, which was the largest in the world. The Soviet Union in June 1941 for example had some 20,000 tanks in service compared to only about 5,000 tanks in the German Army and most of the Soviet tanks were better technically.

Dr Hook!

They haven't done well in any battles to date.

boredstiff

Unfortunately, they were mired in 19th century battlethink, & could not readily cope with mechanized rapid-attack warfare...took a while, but with Allied help[, they did all right.

Jimmy Jazz

They, with some help, managed to halt the German advance. At which point the lines shifted very little for the next four years.

chindit

why don't you read about it? If your american then yes they did because you only showed up for the last year!

ryozanpaku

the French did really good in the battle of verdun but not as well in the other battles that went on

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