By Robert Forczyk
Osprey Publishing, 2017
485 Pages
5 of 5 Stars.
There has been a lot of ink spilled about the reasons France fell to a numerically inferior Wehrmacht in little more than six weeks. The gold standard for telling the story is, of course, Alastair Horne’s To Lose a Battle. Most of the attention that is paid to the battle is on the first three weeks, from the initial fighting to the evacuation of British forces at Dunkirk in early June. The second half of the fighting beyond the Somme river is almost seen by most historians as anti-climactic, a fight the French could not hope to win, nor should they have even tried.
Mr. Forczyk makes this sacred cow, along with a lot of others, into a great historical hamburger. Simply put, forget all you knew about the French Campaign of 1940. Read this book. It will change your view of the campaign.
The book does a fine job of setting the stage all the way from 1918, when France was on top of the world seemingly, with Germany supine as the price of Versailles and punished for the humiliation of 1870 and the bloody price of 1914-18. Mr. Forczyk makes an excellent case that the average Frenchman was ready and willing to fight in 1940! And often, they did, especially the colonial units (more on this later). It goes into French inter-war defense policy and the evolution of the Franco-British alliance of 1939. It makes a good case that France was rather sober in its appreciation of the Nazi threat and that Britain may have been the nation to underestimate Herr Hitler.
What failed France in 1940 was a combination of a weakness in her political class, her generals not completely understanding modern warfare (they didn’t completely misunderstand that, but most of her commanders were still, to an extent, stuck mentally in the First World War). France had a modern air force and the largest army in Western Europe. She had more tanks than the Germans, and they were designing their own answer to the Panzer divisions, but in some cases, it was too little, too late. The best way to describe France in 1940 was that she was a victim of her own success.
Furthermore, Mr. Forczyk makes a case that the entire plan to advance to the River Dyle in Belgium to reinforce the flank of the Maginot line was doomed to failure. This was because an inability of French politicians and military men to have the mental honesty to recognize the Belgians were determined to remain neutral in any future European conflict, the German invasion of 1914 is seen in many Belgian circles as having been a fluke.
But no matter the issues of her higher commanders, the truth is, the French fought quite hard when given half a chance to do so. The French troops at Sedan, where the Germans flanked the allies, were part of the 9th Army, a reserve formation, and couldn’t really be expected to perform as well as the cream of the French army, who was fighting the Germans hard in Belgium. Even as events turned against them, the French continued to acquit themselves well. Moreover, sizeable British forces remained in France after Dunkirk, and fought on till mid-June.
But the human drama of the last three weeks of France’s resistance to the Germans, and the defense of the Somme are told very well in this book, as well as some not so pleasant truths, such as the German reaction to the French colonial troops, which differed little from their better-known actions in Russia a year later. The Germans, as it turns out, did not fight a clean war in France. Colonial POWs were shot, and if their French officers protested, they were often shot as well.
The book puts a lie to the idea that the French were seeing themselves as beaten even at this late date in 1940. French morale had risen before the final German assault on the Somme river line. The French defense was not a thin crust with little to no reserves, but instead, a real defense in depth. When the German assault finally came, it initially failed to gain a breakthrough, and it took the Germans several days to get any kind of breakthrough, and only the actions of the Luftwaffe managed to keep the French off-balance and unable to mass and counterattack the overextended Panzer spearheads.
Mr. Forczyk writes in an excellent style and has the experience of being a US Army armor officer and attached to the S-2 staff with the National Guard’s 29th Infantry Division. He has a Ph.D. in International Relations and National Security. In short, he has a good working knowledge of the subject, and has a strong background. He writes in an excellent and accessible style. In short, if you are someone who games the 1940 campaign, buy this book.
How Is This Book of Use to a Wargamer?
This book is of use to a wargamer because it puts attention to the lesser told story of the 1940 campaign, the last three weeks of the campaign. Contrary to most histories of the campaign, there are plenty of games one can find to play, especially for miniatures players. Local counterattacks and stubborn French defenses in depth against an exhausted German combined arms force makes for a very interesting game.
Moreover, the book makes a great argument that most wargames rate the French quite badly. The conventional wisdom about the French army is wrong, and even when their backs were to the wall along the Somme, they fought very hard, and in some ways, it was the nerve of its higher commanders that failed first.
To me, what’s the greatest thing about this book is that it makes hamburger out of sacred cow, and it does so with a very good writing style and in a way that doesn’t insult the reader. I mean it, if you game the campaign, buy this book. It’s available from Amazon in a variety of formats.
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At Epoch Xperience, we specialize in creating compelling narratives and provide research to give your game the kind of details that engage your players and create a resonant world they want to spend time in. If you are interested in learning more about our gaming research services, you can browse Epoch Xperience’s service on our parent site, SJR Research.
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(This article is credited to Jason Weiser. Jason is a long-time wargamer with published works in the Journal of the Society of Twentieth Century Wargamers; Miniature Wargames Magazine; and Wargames, Strategy, and Soldier.)