Case Red The collapse of France, 1940

498 Pages·2017·24.394 MB·English

by  Robert Forczyk

Case Red
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Dedication
To Sous lieutenant Martial Rousseau,
the first French tanker to die in the Second World War; Lieutenant Paul
Barbaste, killed in action at Monthermé; Lieutenant Maurice
Bourguignon, killed in action at Fort La Ferté and Sous lieutenant Réne
Pomier Layrargues, who shot down the Luftwaffe’s top fighter pilot.
Democracies are built upon the sacrifices of such men.
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CASE
RED
The Collapse of France, 1940
Robert Forczyk
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Osprey Publishing
c/o Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
PO Box 883, Oxford, OX1 9PL, UK
or
c/o Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
1385 Broadway, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10018, USA
E-mail: [email protected]
www.ospreypublishing.com
OSPREY is a trademark of Osprey Publishing, a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
This electronic edition published in 2017 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published in Great Britain in 2017
© 2017 (Robert Forczyk)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any form without the prior written
permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Enquiries should be addressed
to the Publisher.
Every attempt has been made by the Publisher to secure the appropriate permissions for material reproduced in this book.
If there has been any oversight we will be happy to rectify the situation and written submission should be made to the
Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Robert Forczyk has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author
of this Work.
ISBN: HB: 9781472824424
ePub: 9781472824431
ePDF: 9781472824448
XML: 9781472824455
Index by Sandra Shotter
Typeset in Adobe Garamond
Originated by PDQ Digital Media Solutions, Bungay, UK
Front cover: Stuka bombarding, June 1940. (Roger-Viollet/Topfoto)
Osprey Publishing supports the Woodland Trust, the UK’s leading woodland conservation charity. Between 2014 and
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Key to military symbols
Army Group Army Corps Division Brigade Regiment Battalion
Company/Battery Platoon Section Squad Infantry Artillery Cavalry
Airborne Air defense Air Force Air mobile Air transportable Amphibious
Unit HQ
Antitank Armor Air aviation Bridging Engineer Headquarters Maintenance
Medical Missile Mountain Navy Motorized Ordnance Parachute
Reconnaissance Signal Supply Transport Rocket artillery Air defense artillery
movement
Key to unit identification
Unit Parent
identifier unit
Commander
(+) with added elements
(–) less elements
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Contents
Introduction 6
Chapter 1: The Path to Disaster, 1918–39 27
Chapter 2: A Shadow of Doubt 104
Chapter 3: The Centre Cannot Hold 152
Chapter 4: To the Sea 189
Chapter 5: Failure at Abbeville 242
Chapter 6: The Weygand Line 262
Chapter 7: Decision on the Aisne 317
Chapter 8: Disintegration 343
Chapter 9: Mussolini’s Gamble 380
Chapter 10: Occupation 398
Glossary 412
Appendices 417
Notes 432
Bibliography 450
Index 456
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Introduction
‘We shall go on from catastrophe to catastrophe towards
final victory.’1
Georges Mandel, French minister for the colonies, 1939
When I was a military cadet, four decades ago, one of the first things
that I was taught was that the purpose of an army in a democracy was
to deter war and if deterrence failed, to win. In 1939–40, the army of
France’s Third Republic – widely believed to be one of the strongest
and best-equipped armed forces in the world – famously failed at both
tasks and the result was one of the most ignominious catastrophes in
military history. Due to the sudden collapse of France and the eviction
of British military forces from the European continent, it appeared for
a time as though the Second World War was virtually over before it
had even begun in earnest.
The historiography of the Second World War has not been kind to
France. The sudden military collapse of the French Third Republic in
June 1940 has left indelible images of evacuations, mass surrenders
and a triumphant Hitler strutting in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
French defeat has often been regarded as the result of incompetent
military leadership and battlefield cowardice by unmotivated troops,
engendered by moral decay. After that humiliation, Charles de Gaulle’s
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Introduction
attempt to rally a Free French Army is regarded as a merely a footnote
to history until American bayonets returned him to Paris in 1944.
Seven decades later, the French contribution to the Allied war effort in
the Second World War is still regarded as almost negligible.
Many post-mortems have judged the French defeat to be virtually
inevitable by focusing on internal political divisions within the Third
Republic and the allegedly faulty state of military plans and
preparations, although this was hardly apparent to contemporary
senior leadership. Prior to its defeat in June 1940, the French Army
enjoyed a strong international reputation. When Adolph Hitler
ascended to power in Germany in 1933 and began to threaten the
peace of Europe, it was Winston Churchill who famously said before
the House of Commons, ‘Thank God for the French Army’, implying
that it was a solid bulwark against aggression.2 Churchill’s admiration
was based on the French Army’s demonstrated tenacity in the First
World War. In September 1914, Général Ferdinand Foch had
responded to the German push toward Paris with the quip, ‘My centre
is giving way, my right is retreating, situation excellent – I am attacking’
and then launched a successful counter-offensive on the Marne. In
1916, when faced with a major German offensive at Verdun, Général
Philippe Pétain had displayed the same kind of sang-froid, confidently
stating ‘On les aura!’ (‘We shall have them’) and his deputy Général
Robert Nivelle proclaimed ‘Ils ne passeront pas!’ (They shall not pass!).
French rhetoric was matched by French bravery, demonstrated by
Major Sylvain Raynal’s epic week-long defence of Fort Vaux. Individual
positions were lost, but the French Army held and later retook all the
lost ground in counter-attacks.
Aside from Churchill, there were plenty of foreign observers who
were impressed by the French Army’s resiliency in the First World War
and this faith carried over into the post-war period. Although Britain’s
strategy during the inter-war period was to avoid continental alliances
and to focus instead on defence of its extended colonial empire, the
leadership in London believed that French military power would
continue to counter-balance any effort by Germany to alter the status
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Case Red
quo by force. As long as the French Army was strong and could prevent
Germany from gaining control over the Channel ports, Britain did not
need to maintain a strong army of its own for European contingencies.
In April 1938, Churchill still confidently referred to the French Army as
‘the most perfectly trained and faithful mobile force in Europe’.3 When
Hitler refused to be deterred from committing aggression against
Poland, Neville Chamberlain’s government felt confident enough in
France’s ability to anchor the defence of western Europe that it was
willing to call Hitler’s bluff. Yet Chamberlain failed to appreciate that
the French military had significant deficiencies and was unprepared to
fight without significant help from Great Britain. If Chamberlain had
better understood the amount of military assistance France would
require just to survive an armed confrontation with the Third Reich, he
would probably have hesitated to declare war upon Germany.
After the Anglo-French declaration of war upon Germany, military
professionals in both Paris and London noted some serious deficiencies
in the French military, particularly the army’s heavy dependence upon
poorly trained reservists and a lacklustre air force, but believed that
these deficiencies would be ironed out soon after mobilization. When
Paul Reynaud, France’s finance minister, proclaimed ‘Nous vaincrons
parce que nous sommes les plus forts’ (We shall win because we are the
strongest) in September 1939, he was believed in both Paris and
London because, on paper, Anglo-French military and industrial
resources did seem far superior to what Hitler’s Third Reich could
muster. Yet during the winter of 1939/40, doubts began to appear in
England, particularly with Churchill, that French military power had
deteriorated.4 Lieutenant-General Alan Brooke, commander of
II Corps of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France,
commented in his diary in November 1939, ‘I could not help
wondering whether the French are still a firm enough nation to again
take their part in seeing this war through.’5
Across the Rhine, Hitler regarded France as Germany’s mortal
enemy and prepared for a new conflict almost from the start. Yet
Hitler also respected the French Army – which he had fought against
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