177: Playing the Long Game

Description

When they entered the war the British and French had a plan, they would fight a long war against Germany. This would allow them to take advantage of their worldwide empire and their control of the seas. Then after years of rearmament and preparations they would launch their attack. All they had to do was hold off the Germans for a few years while the German economy imploded, it was such an easy plan. It would fail.

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Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War Episode 177 - The Fall of France - Playing the Long Game. This week a big thank you goes out to Peter, Jonas, and John for choosing to support the podcast by becoming members, you can find out more at historyofthesecondworldwar.com/members. On May 25, 1940 British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax would write ‘The one firm rock on which everybody had been willing to build for the last two years was the French Army, and the Germans walked through it like they did through the Poles.’ I am starting with them for what will be the longest series of the podcast so far because they touch on something that is very challenging to remember when looking back on the German Invasion of France in 1940: nobody expected what would happen during the invasion. Everybody, including the Germans, considered the French Army to be more than up to the challenge of the German invasion, and it would prove to be the exact opposite. With the benefit of hindsight we could spend multiple episodes discussing the problems that were only made apparent as the Panzer raced across France, but that would do a disservice to the actions of those at the time and the importance of the reputation of the French Army on the decision making of every leader involved with the campaign. Do not worry, those episodes discussing the causes for the French defeat will come later. Instead I think it is important to start this series of episodes with a discussion of the two themes that will be running throughout the next 32 episodes: the importance of evaluating decisions without the benefit of hindsight and how powerful pre-conceived ideas can be in shaping the interpretation of information. This first theme should not at all surprise long time listeners of the podcast, as it was heavily discussed during the episode on the Maginot Line which was released as Episode 61. But to refresh everyone’s memory: when trying to evaluate decisions made throughout history it is important to keep in mind that the people at the time were making those decisions based on the information that they had available to them at the time, and they were also making decisions without knowing the outcome. For almost every event during the Second World War we have far more information now than they had at the time, and it is important to keep that in mind. We know that the German attacks in Belgium were a distraction designed to hold the French in place in Belgium so that the Panzer forces could cross the Meuse at Sedan and then push forward. At the time the French leaders who were being asked to make decisions did not have a complete understanding of the German plans, in the modern day we have entire books written about the subject. Along with this lack of information, the people making decisions do not know what the outcome of those decisions will be, and we do know what the outcomes are. This puts us at risk of falling into results-based analysis, where we start evaluating decisions and actions based on the result of those decisions, which can never play a role in those decisions at the time. Going back to the previous example, we know that the French would not send sufficient reinforcements to Sedan to prevent the Germans from securing and expanding their bridgehead across the Meuse river, a critical decision for the course of the campaign. In hindsight the French should have sent more troops to stop the Germans, but it gets a bit less clear when you dig into what the French knew at the time and what they believed was happening based on available information. They still made some mistakes, but they are slightly more understandable when the context of those decisions are taken into account. The second theme of these episodes is the power of pre-conceived ideas, particularly as that power relates to analyzing incomplete data and filling in the gaps in that data. By its nature, military intelligence never provides a complete picture of the intentions of the enemy, it is generally just impossible to get to that level of detail particularly early in the Second World War when the ability to gather information was not as advanced as it would be in the years and decades that followed. This put many military decision makers in a position where they had to take incomplete information, sometimes contradictory information, and make assumptions about what that information meant. How those gaps were filled could be incredibly important, and there would be many instances during the campaign when it would lead to disaster, or near disaster. There are too many examples of this throughout the entire Second World War, for all armies and for almost all leaders. But to continue the example from this introduction, when the news of the German actions in the Ardennes, on their way to Sedan, arrived at French headquarters, they did not immediately believe that the Germans were making a major attack through the Ardennes, and instead they believed that it was just a distraction, a diversion away from the real German point of effort in Belgium. Part of this was due to the actions of the German Army and Luftwaffe, both of which made a real show of their attacks in the north, but more importantly the French had spent the better part of 20 years believing that if the Germans were going to launch an attack, they would attack through Belgium. It is not an exaggeration to say that the entire French defense plan, the placement of every division, the construction of every fortification was built around the idea that when the Germans attack they would attack through Belgium. This completely shifted the way that the information was interpreted by French leaders, and instead of re-evaluating the base assumption of their plans, they instead took the information that they received and found a way to fit it into their pre-conceived ideas. This will also be a theme throughout the entire podcast, because it would happen time and time again. Keep those two themes in mind, the importance of resisting the urge for results-based analysis and the power of pre-conceived ideas, throughout the series, as I will be referring back to them many times in the weeks and months to come

While we can control how we view and evaluate the events of the Invasion of France, there are the facts of the events that occurred. On May 10th the Germans would begin their attack, primarily focused in those early hours on The Netherlands and Belgium, then over the course of the next three days they would also make their way through Luxembourg and the Ardennes. By May 13th they had crossed the river Meuse at multiple locations, which would unleash their concentrated armored forces that had moved through the Ardennes for a race to the coast. They would reach the coast on May 20th, trapping the strongest formations of the French Army and the entire British Expeditionary Force in Belgium. The French and British pocket would be slowly reduced over the following days, as they retreated towards the port of Dunkirk from which thousands would be evacuated, without most of their equipment. This evacuation would end phase 1 of the campaign, with the entirety of northeastern France, Belgium, and The Netherlands in German hands. Phase 2 of the campaign would begin on June 5th when the Germans began their second attack, codenamed Plan Red. By the 25th of June the armistice between France and Germany was signed. The roughly 6 weeks of the French campaign would be a story of constant disasters for the French and British armies as they tried to find a way to stop the German attacks. And the scale of the disaster would lead to many different searches for a cause among successive groups of French leaders. This would begin almost immediately after the campaign, then continue through the war years with events like the Riom Trials, and then into the post-war years. The list of possible causes that has been developed over the last 80 years is too long to list in one episode, ranging from pacifism among the French civilians, to the negligence of military leaders to plan adequately, to the French 40 hour work week, to a lack of unity among the politicians of France. All of these possibilities and theories have evidence for and against, but I prefer a broader statement for why France was defeated in 1940. During the years before the war, and into the months of inactivity after the invasion of Poland, and then through the 6 weeks of invasion French leaders, both political and military, simply did not understand what was going to be required of them to successfully meet the German challenge. This was often caused by a rejection or misunderstanding of available information. By not understanding the war they were going to have to fight they did not prepare adequately, and then when the war started they chose a strategy which handed to the Germans the initiative which played completely into the hands of the German military.

The period from the declarations of war by France and Britain on September 3, 1939 until the German invasions of May 1940 is often called the Phoney War. This was a period during which the nations were at war, but neither side was making an active effort to attack the other along the shared Franco-German border. During this time both sides in the conflict believed that delaying operations was to their benefit, and to the detriment of their enemies. For the German military they needed time to subdue Poland and then move their forces West to prepare for an invasion, which they would then delay until the Spring of 1940 which allowed for not just a replenishment but an enhancement of the strength of the German land and air forces. On the British and French side they used these months to increase the speed of their rearmament campaigns and to prepare for the German invasion that they believed would occur in the future. There was never any serious conversations about an attack into Germany, other than a small attack into the Saar region in the opening weeks of the war, which more closely resembled a reconnaissance in force which was ordered back across the border as soon as it encountered German resistance. The Western Allies were also preparing for a long war, and they had built their entire strategy around such a long war. They believed that if the war continued for many years they would win due to their global economic power and their ability to blockade Germany just like they had done in the First World War. All they needed was time and to use that time to build up their forces. This was reflected in the conversations among French and British leaders in the last months of 1939 during which there were three major topics of conversation: the events in Poland and its quick defeat, the ongoing blockade of Germany and its effectiveness, and the search for Allies in Eastern Europe to try and distract Germany from an attack in the West.

The rapid defeat of Poland, with the main resistance coming to an end less than a month after the invasion began came as a major shock to the Western Leaders and threw off their plans considerably. The French Prime Minister Daladier would say after the war that “The collapse of Poland, was unexpected and completely surprised the High Command. General Gamelin had said he hoped the resistance of the Polish army would last over the winter, which would permit us to act in the spring.” As early as September 12th the French and British leaders had written off the Poles, with the general belief being that there was nothing that they could do to help them with for example Chamberlain stating in a September 12th meeting that “It was clear that nothing the Allies could do would save Poland from being overrun. The despatch of such war supplies as was possible would certainly encourage their resistance, but the only real help to Poland lay in winning the war.” The collapse of Polish resistance, particularly after the Soviet invasion on September 17th forced a reconsideration of many plans that had been built. This included administrative conversations during a September 16th meeting of the Supreme War Council during which the topic of conversation was if shipments of supplies to Poland should be recalled or diverted to other nations in Eastern Europe. There were also more immediate concerns, with reports arriving as early as September 22nd that German military formations that had been used in Poland were already on their way West, although it would take more time for some of the major armored and motorized units to begin moving west. By the end of the September Gamelin believed that the Germans might attack as early as October 16th, and that they could start their offensive at anytime between that date and the middle of November when it was likely that they would postpone until Spring. All of this worked against the long term strategy that the two nations were hoping to pursue, things were just happening too fast.

One of the primary reasons that the British and French put their faith in a long war strategy was due to their belief that a Blockade of Germany would be very effective at impacting the German economy. This view was heavily impacted but the clear evidence after the end of the First World War that the Allied blockade during that war had been very effective at impacting Germany and Austria-Hungary. Unfortunately for the Allied leaders, while economic warfare was an important part of their pre-war planning, almost immediately after the war started there would begin to be doubts that it would effective in the current conflict. The key problem, as pointed out by a British Ministry of Economic Warfare report as early as September 1939, was that the general alliance situation was so drastically different in 1939 than it had been in the earlier war. Importantly the Soviet Union and Italy were on better relations with Germany and that made it much easier for Germany to import goods in ways that the British and French could not stop them. Germany was simply less dependent on imports from across the Atlantic than it had been in 1914, and that was the area where an allied blockade was most effective. That report from the Ministry of Economic Warfare would just be the first of many in the months that followed with reports transitioning from trying to make it clear that there would be new challenges for the blockade to reports clearly stating that the blockade was not having the effects that were hoped. One of the challenge that was faced by British and French leaders around this topic was the general belief before the war that the German economy was close to collapse even before the invasion of Poland began. This caused them to think that even a small impact from a blockade would be able to push the strained German economy over the edge, but this was completely incorrect. It was true that the German rearmament efforts were hindered by the shortage of certain raw materials, but that was just as much due to ineffective planning and cooperation than anything else. This is also one of many examples of a nation underestimating the economic resiliency of an enemy and their ability to impact an enemy’s economy. The Germans would make the same mistake when it came to the British during the Battle of Britain and the U-boat campaigns in the Atlantic. The fact was that during the Second World War the ability of economies to continue to operate even in very adverse conditions was remarkable, and it was very difficult to defeat an enemy through a campaign that primarily targeted their economic capabilities.

Another key feature of Allied strategy in the early months of the war was a search for something to distract Germany with. We have already discussed one of the outcomes of these discussions with regard to possible British and French action in Norway. But there were also many other instances of attempts to try and find somewhere other than northern France where the Germans might be induced to fight. There were also efforts to rebuild Allied support in Eastern Europe after the defeat of Poland to provide the threat of a two front war on Germany. This is a large enough topic that episode 3 of this series will focus on the British and French efforts to create an alternative front for fighting to occur, but the importance for the Long War idea was that it was felt to be essential that fighting occur somewhere else to avoid the possibility of the fighting in France disrupting the continued rearmament efforts of both nations. The entire basis for the long war plan was that eventually, through their combined economic power, Britain and France would be able to outbuild Germany, and then when they had the equipment and firepower lead they could begin their military campaign to defeat Germany. But this was only possible if French industry was protected and insulated from the effects of war so that it could work as efficiently as possible.

When evaluating all of the actions taken by British and French leaders around their long war plan, there is a problem because it would both fail horribly and yet was successful in the end. In terms of France, the attempts at staging a long war would be an important reason for its defeat, because it would allow the Germans to carefully choose their moment to attack and would forfeit the one time that a French attack may have been effective while the German forces were distracted in Poland. The weakness of the German defenses facing France in September 1939 would be emphasized in many German writing during and after the war that any French and British attack would have probably met with success. General Halter would say at Nuremberg that “The success against Poland was only possible by our almost completely baring our Western border. If the French… had used the opportunity presented by the engagement of nearly all our forces in Poland they would have been able to cross the Rhine without our being able to prevent it and would have threatened the Ruhr, which was decisive for the German conduct of the war.” Once the decision was made not to attack at the height of Polish resistance, the entire concept of the long war began to run into problematic evidence and an erosion of support even before it was proven to be incorrect with the German invasion. On the British side much of the erosion of confidence in the long war would be driven by the reports of the Ministry of Economic Warfare. One message sent to the British ambassador in France, sent on March 25th, would say “To believe that time is at present working for us is, today, an error; we can only reclaim the direction of the war if we forestall the initiatives of the enemy and impose on him our own; strike at the weakest points of his equilibrium without allowing him time to recover…” In France there were similar concerns that time was not on their side due to reports that even though the French were trying to ramp up their industrial output they were still being outpaced by the Germans, and instead of slowing down German product was accelerating. By the spring of 1940 one almost gets the sense that several Allied leaders believed that they had made a mistake, but they were past the point where they could alter course. They had missed their change in September 1939 to transition from a long war to a short was strategy when they did not attack during the campaign in Poland, even with all of the risks that such an action would have involved. But all of these problems are balanced against the fact that, in the end, in 1945 the Allies won a long war and the strategy pursued by the Western Allies was largely similar to what had been the driving forces behind the actions of 1939. There was an emphasis on spreading out German strength around multiple theaters, a massive focus on economic warfare through the use of strategic bombing, and a general effort to outbuild the Germans before unleashing an unstoppable attack directly at Germany. The war, in the end, was long, and in that war the Allies were victorious. But in 1940 in France one thing would be made very clear, the war had not been long enough for the French and British to prepare for the German attack. That will be the topic for next episode, which will focus on the British and French preparations for the expected German attack during the Phoney War period between September 1939 and May 1940.