Marc Bloch

In this commentary, an historian and a Resistance fighter analyzes why France fell to Germany in World War II.

A Statement of Evidence Written in 1940

Strange Defeat

Andrew John Kinney

I found this book very helpful in understanding the Fall of France in 1940. Although I graduated from West Point and studied military history both as part of my profession and also as an avocation, I could never really comprehend how the Germans pulled off the defeat of France, from a purely military and logistical standpoint. This is one of the books that helped me understand. The short version is that the Germans had the best fighter aircraft force in the world in 1940, and decent tanks (though not the best - that came later), and they used the forces in a way which was unheard of then, and is now standard to all major armies of the world. Move fast, obtain air superiority, punch through the enemy's front line with massed tanks, and then run around in the enemy's rear areas wreaking havoc on their re-supply and sowing fear and confusion. Americans make fun of France's defeat in 1940, but if the American Army of 1940 had been there it would absolutely have been defeated as badly as the French and British were. Fyi, Marc Bloch, who worked in the Resistance after the debacle of 1940 was later killed by the Gestapo.

I later read a very detailed account of the Battle of France by a German historian (The BlitzKrieg Legend, by Frieser), and that book confirms much of what I learned from Bloch's book. Guderian and Rommel took enormous risks, betting that the French and British would stick to their tactical doctrine, which they did, and once the Panzer divisions had punched through the French line at Sedan and began to drive into the rear areas of the Allies, it was all over. The Luftwaffe, acting as what later came to be known as close air support sealed the deal with devastating and demoralizing attacks on French frontline units, and the French had no fighter aircraft capable of opposing the Bf-109's and stopping the Luftwaffe onslaught. The French Dewoitine D.520, the new French fighter meant to match the Bf-109, was absent because its production had been held up enough that none of those aircraft were available in June 1940. That plane, if it had been on hand, was close enough to a match for the Messerschmidt that it would have been a big factor if the French had had, say 2,000 of them. But they didn't, and they didn't have independent tank divisions, and they did not have young generals like Guderian who led from the front.

Strange Defeat A Statement of Evidence Written in 1940

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