No More Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys

[besilarius]

A great "might have been" for wargamers would be the fighting that would have occurred to the southwest of the Ardennes as the panzers broke out.
The French First Army, with most of their armor and mechanised troops, were originally placed very near this area.
However, the capture of the original german plan of attack (which was almost a carbon copy of the Schlieffen plan) made the French move the armor to the Belgian frontier.
Had it remained in place, there would have occurred a massive tank battle.
Probably the germans would have won because of better doctrine, combined arms, anti-tank guns, and the Stuka.
Still, the French might have stopped the panzers, and it would have given us a lot of scenarios.

[Longdan]

That is very much my understanding of what could have been.  Hitler gave that stop order
before Dunkirk because he felt he had pushed his luck way too far.  What if the Panzers had been stalled
near the Meuse?  Would he have given in to the conservatism of the General Staff?

[DicedT]

Sure, you can post it to FP. We could always use more grogs there.

"Lions led by donkeys" can be said about the British Army at the Somme or the U.S. Army in Iraq. France's problem is the same as Poland's. It's located next to Germany, a larger, more disciplined and militaristic neighbor over the last 150 years. If Britain or America were separated from Germany by a frontier instead of an ocean, they would have fared no better.

Michael

Back to the OP (maybe I should post this to FP?)...

Is it not fair to to say that France's politicians and generals have repeatedly shown to be wanting, while the common soldier has acquited himself fairly well (given the circumstances)?

The record of french pilots from WWI certainly stands on its own merits, and the French infantry suffered tremendous losses and hardship due to blind strategic mis-management, not from a lagging esprit de corps in the soldiers.  "Charge the machine guns" can only be ordered so many times until an offensive will grind to halt.  IIRC, it was John Keegan who said that the French defensive strategy in WWI to be so short-sighted (depending heavily upon the fighting spirit of the soldier as opposed to sound tactics) that it is rivalled only by the Dervishes.

And in the post-war year, I think the French forces in Algeria were more frequently guilty of harshness or brutality than of battlefield cowardice.  That's not to say I support or condone gov't sponsored military heavy-handedness, but they certainly didn't run from a fight.  And the reputation of the FFL has always been "hardcore" (perhaps not the right word).