Why Did France Fall?
Evaluating Julian Jackson's analysis of the fall of France in 1940
Several weeks ago, I read another book about early-twentieth-century France - this time, France in World War Two, focusing on the Battle of France in 1940 that led to Germany occupying France for the next four years, until the Anglo-American invasion at D-Day. Historian Julian Jackson (whom I'd known from his (later) definitive biography of Charles de Gaulle) wrote The Fall of France, telling the tale of the campaigns and digging into the question so many people have asked over the years and decades since: What went wrong? Why did France fall?
It's a fascinating question, and I was frankly surprised by the answer Jackson gives. But, while it does sound plausible, I don't think he's fully proved his case.
To briefly tell the historical background, before the war, the French had planned to fight Germany on a short north-south front running through Belgium, which was allied with France and Britain. To ensure the war would be focused there, France built the expensive Maginot Line of fortifications along the Franco-German border. Once in Belgium, they'd be ready for a long war while the British-led blockade strangled the German economy. Unfortunately, after the French and British betrayed Czechoslovakia to the Nazis at Munich, Belgium ended its alliance and declared neutrality. They did invite the French army in once Germany invaded Belgium anyway, but then the German army punched through the Ardennes Forest which France had thought impassible, with a quickly-moving army of Panzer tanks. Thus, France quickly lost.
Jackson accepts this story and looks into why France lost. On the military operational level, he blames primarily the lack of a strategic reserve (which had been reallocated to aid in the push north to Belgium, so it wasn't there to block the German breakthrough in the Ardennes), and the poor communications that kept the other French armies from moving quickly enough to respond to the breakthrough.
There're many arguments about why these two things happened. It's clear that Belgium's declaration of neutrality in the 1930's contributed by disrupting the previous plans for moving French armies into Belgium, and Jackson traces when the French command reallocated that reserve - but he doesn't really dig into why they were willing to take that risk. It's not clear why the communications were so poor and the response so slow - at least, it's not clear to me, and Jackson lays out the facts without digging into why. He seems to think the fault is clear. I agree, something was wrong. But, we must be careful not to read in modern assumptions to a year where most of the French and German armies still depended on animal-drawn carts - how many radios did other armies have in 1940? Still, at the least, something should have been done to not let so many generals get so dangerously out of touch.
The more interesting point is that Jackson holds this operational failure was the sole cause of the fall of France. Most people blame other problems like warweariness and pacifism (very prominent themes in French politics ever since World War I), and the political divisions between quasi-Socialist Left and quasi-Fascist Right (also prominent themes of French politics for decades) for leading France to surrender rather than keep fighting. These problems definitely existed; Jackson doesn't deny they were problems in France.
But, Jackson argues they were also present in other countries. If Britain or Germany or some other country had been quickly defeated, he argues, we could attribute their defeats to the warweariness and pacifism and political struggles that were historically present there too. They weren't, which let their popular mood turn to carry on. But France was operationally defeated, which left those problems visible.
This's not inherently implausible. Frequently, people have been biased in how they interpret historical trends by what happened in the future. I still remember one history of Poland I picked up as a teenager which mentioned in the preface that, after the fall of Communism, new histories were reinterpreting Polish history to be less negative. For another example, Adam Tooze's excellent Wages of Destruction analyzes how the Nazi economy kept covering up its failings (at the time, and in the eyes of most historians until Tooze) by conquering other countries.
I wouldn't be surprised if (as Jackson argues) France's defeat led to historians viewing its pacifism and political struggles as more prominent than they actually were at the time. But, is this the full answer?
One counterargument to Jackson's thesis would be to hold up the avidly-collaborationist French government which ruled at Vichy during the German occupation, under the defeatist Marshal Petain who had been given dictatorial powers by the French government after their military collapse. This does show there were very strong tensions in French society, even before the war. Robert Paxton's monumental 1972 study Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order shows that the Vichy regime wasn't imposed by the Nazis, and wasn't following Nazi policy. Rather, it was a French ultraconservative self-coup, led by the ultraconservative Petain and his supporters. They acted on their own, motivated by preexisting trends in French politics and society. Paxton extensively walks through their debates, their personnel, their laws, and their diplomacy to show this. The Nazis pressed them into some individual actions, but little more. When the Vichy regime purged liberal elements in French civil and political society, that was all their own doing.
On the other hand, Jackson could argue that similar things would happen in other countries in similar circumstances. This seems implausible in some places like Britain - even if the Nazis had somehow managed to invade Britain, I can't imagine any British figures forming a regime like Petain formed the Vichy regime. However, Vidkun Quisling in Norway, and King Leopold of Belgium, did in fact mount similar coups to found Nazi-supporting governments, though they didn't have anywhere near as much independence as Vichy either in the coup or in the resulting government. Still, I think there is a significant difference. Quisling and King Leopold acted on their own, while Petain was appointed dictator by the French legislature (even though it was acting irregularly.) Similarly, Quisling and Leopald didn't have anywhere near as much popular support as Petain had at the start (before his regime spent it down through the abject failure of its domestic and foreign policies).
Regardless of what one has to say about Vichy, I think Jackson's thesis does fail to explain the consequences of the operational defeat. Definitely, the operational problem was sufficient for a military defeat. But then, France completely failed to fight after the major defeat. Generals were found weeping rather than even attempting to salvage their armies, and townspeople sabotaged any effort to build further defenses lest it lure the Germans to fight more.
Jackson would say that other countries would've done the same thing after a similar defeat, and he does point to pre-war pacifist movements in other countries. They did exist. But, they weren't as vicious during the war in other countries as they were in France. Other countries were overwhelmingly defeated by the Nazis, such as 1939 Poland or 1940 Norway or 1941 Soviet Russia - but we don't see them roll over and give up resistance like France did (a few months after Norway). Rather, they continued fighting until Poland and Norway were completely overwhelmed, or until Soviet Russia was saved by further armies. They were willing to fight a rearguard action trusting in the future; France wasn't. Jackson doesn't mention these differences.
This seems to point to some degree of defeatism and pacifism in France beyond that found in other countries. This makes sense to me, given how World War One had left France even worse off than other countries. The Western Front was almost entirely fought on French soil. 4.4% of the French population was dead in battle, and an additional six percent wounded. Whole towns were destroyed. Even today, some land is too dangerous to walk through. Meanwhile, they knew that Germany had been left resentful and ready for a new war - and German manpower outnumbered French, thanks to a higher birthrate in Germany. French leaders knew this very well, and shivered. "I make the foreign policy of our birth-rate," Prime Minister Briand said in the 1920's.
Jackson tells very well the story of the battle where France was pushed over the edge into falling. His analysis of France's operational failures in 1940 is very good. He paints more vivid pictures than many other books I've read - perhaps because he's more tightly focused on this particular story. Also, he has a very interesting idea that, had France not collapsed so quickly, the public mood would have changed to support the war. But, while I'm hesitant to say so about a practicing historian like Jackson, I believe he hasn't proven his case about what caused the collapse. The uniquenesses of France, and the problems of France, go deeper than what he argues.