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Modern War Studies
Arming Against Hitler: France and the Limits of Military Planning
In May-June 1940 the Germans demolished the French Army, inflicting more than 300,000 French casualties, including more than 120,000 dead. While many historians have focused on France's failure to avoid this catastrophe, Kiesling is the first to show why the French had good reason to trust that their prewar defense policies, military doctrine, and combat forces would preserve the nation.
Kiesling argues that France's devastating defeat was a consequence neither of blindness to the German military threat nor of paralysis in the face of it. Grimly aware of the need to prepare for another war with its arch enemy, French leaders created defense preparations and military doctrines in which they felt confident.
Rather than simply focusing on what went wrong, Kiesling examines the fundamental logic of French defense planning within its cultural, institutional, political, and military contexts. In the process, she provides much new material about the inner workings of the French military, its relations with civilian leaders, its lack of adaptability, and its overreliance on an army reserve that was poorly organized, trained, and led. Ultimately, she makes a persuasive case for France's defense options and offers a useful warning about the utility of the "lessons of history."
The lesson for contemporary policymakers and strategists, Kiesling suggests, is not that the French made mistakes but that nations and armies make policy and strategy under severe constraints. Her study forcefully reminds us how hindsight can blind us to the complexities of preparing for every next war.
Kiesling argues that France's devastating defeat was a consequence neither of blindness to the German military threat nor of paralysis in the face of it. Grimly aware of the need to prepare for another war with its arch enemy, French leaders created defense preparations and military doctrines in which they felt confident.
Rather than simply focusing on what went wrong, Kiesling examines the fundamental logic of French defense planning within its cultural, institutional, political, and military contexts. In the process, she provides much new material about the inner workings of the French military, its relations with civilian leaders, its lack of adaptability, and its overreliance on an army reserve that was poorly organized, trained, and led. Ultimately, she makes a persuasive case for France's defense options and offers a useful warning about the utility of the "lessons of history."
The lesson for contemporary policymakers and strategists, Kiesling suggests, is not that the French made mistakes but that nations and armies make policy and strategy under severe constraints. Her study forcefully reminds us how hindsight can blind us to the complexities of preparing for every next war.
280 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 3, 2021
Professor Kiesling says that France "trusted" in their military doctrine between the world wars because they had no other choice. She faults insufficient training of conscripts and rusty skills among reservists for France's inability to conduct offensive operations, reinforcing the defensive cast of the army. True enough, as far as that goes. But she simply skates over the self-Cannae committed by the French army in its desire to avoid fighting another war in the vital northeast of France, home to much of its industrial potential. The rush to the Dyle river and the city of Breda, and indeed the tripling of the left wing that rushed forward, is still IMO the fatal flaw in French military planning, a flaw that allowed the German drive through the Ardennes to reach the Meuse and the Channel, cutting off the Allied armies and driving them into the sea at Dunkirk - fortunately for Britain, onto hastily assembled ships.
A better trained French army, more capable of taking the tactical offensive in reply to German moves, would have still been at extreme risk of encirclement by the error of the Dyle plan. If, at a minimum, French General C-in-C Gamelin had NOT added his strategic reserve, the 7th Army, to the advance, a stalemate was in reach, facilitating the French doctrine of a long war.
A better trained French army, more capable of taking the tactical offensive in reply to German moves, would have still been at extreme risk of encirclement by the error of the Dyle plan. If, at a minimum, French General C-in-C Gamelin had NOT added his strategic reserve, the 7th Army, to the advance, a stalemate was in reach, facilitating the French doctrine of a long war.
August 8, 2012
The real problem seemed to be French military manpower policies: no time was really dedicated to advanced training.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews