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Colin P said:
Just how much of their Army budget did they waste on constructing the Maginot Line when they could have financed more Char Bis tanks?
How many of their troops were simply bypassed in the Maginot Line?
Nazi invasion of France (from: Germany & France to develop next gen MBT)
- Thread starter CougarKing
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Just how much of their Army budget did they waste on constructing the Maginot Line when they could have financed more Char Bis tanks?
How many of their troops were simply bypassed in the Maginot Line?
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S.M.A. said:
They were planning for the last war and spending to defend in that fashion. Most of the French troops were bypassed, as they manned the Maginot Line facing a known enemy, as opposed to their Western flank against what was perceived as friendly or neutral nations.
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Not entirely accurate. The French had strong mobile forces in their northern most Army Group (1st Army Group with 1st, 7th and 9th Armies and the BEF). The problem is that they lunged too far forward, and were stuck (and fixed by superior German operating doctrine) on the Dyle River when the Germans made their breakthrough. The Maginot Line, for all its worth, did what it was supposed to do; the Germans avoided attacking it and it protected the Franco-German border.
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German tank doctrine was also well integrated with all the other elements of the forces (including air power), while allied doctrine of the period was wildly disjointed in the case of the French, and although the British had demonstrated a high level of integration in their 1920 era exercises, simply never extended the lessons learned to the force in general, nor had the equipment in sufficient numbers to make the best use of it. Penny packeting "infantry" tanks down to units as mobile fire support didn't help a lot either.
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Infanteer said:
The Battle of Sedan? Wasn't there a significant armoured component of this battle though?
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S.M.A. said:
Yes, but the primary component of it was the forcing of the crossing site by von Balck's 1st Inf Regt of the 1st Panzer Division, which was essentially the schwerpunkt for the entire PzrGp Kleist. Look for Karl-Heinz Frieser's The Blitzkrieg Legend for a good blow-by-blow account of the Meuse Crossing. As Techoviking indicates, Balck was the main effort and had a combined arms force (a tank company and an AT company).
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Technoviking said:
At any point before or during the 1940 campaign, did the French ever consider attacking the Siegfried Line? With the aim of playing havoc in the German rear areas (and logistical lines of the Panzers) if they breached it?
I just have the impression that the Siegfried Line wasn't as extensively fortified as the Maginot Line. But then again, when US forces crossed it later in the war, they did have overwhelming armoured, artillery and air support on their side.
Colin Parkinson
Army.ca Myth
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The Germans also had their own versions of SOF that assisted greatly in the early stages of the war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Eben-Emael
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburgers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Eben-Emael
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburgers
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Colin P said:
Wasn't Eben-Emael just attacked by paratroops/Fallschirm , not necessarily SOF, though?
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S.M.A. said:
The French attempted a half hearted assault on the siegfried line although a much larger assault (40 divisions) had been planned to assist the poles, essentially re-enacting the opening phases of world war 1, but in reverse. At the time, the large bulk of the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe were engaged in the east, so any sort of allied offense would have, likely, led to great success (and there is endless first hand accounts from german army generals at the time expressing grave concerns about this).
To me, the factors that most dont take into account when looking at the invasion of France are the morale/will of the allied nations to be in a war and the fact that the poor performance of the British and French in 1940, more than the strength of the German army, led to the fall of france.
Morale-wise, the French and British nations were not prepared for a war. They had spent the period of 1918-1938 trying to forget world war 1 and neither population had any appetite for another conflict of that magnitude. The Germans, on the other hand, had spent the inter-war periods rejecting that they had been defeated, and though the population wasn't thrilled at the idea of another war, they were more apt to back one. This lack of national morale amongst the British and French was significant, particularly once the German sweep through the Ardennes was complete and they had captured Abbeville and the positions N of the Somme River. In WW1, the French and British armies, though largely defeated, were able to muster the strength to stop the Germans in the battle of the Marne and essentially save the republic (though German logistical problems cannot be discounted). In WW2, the sort of national will demonstrated at the Marne (and Verdun) simply didn't exist, which led the french army, which by all accounts should have been able to hold the Germans N of the Somme, to simply evaporate.
When the Germans invaded in 1940 all military logic indicated that the Germans would be stopped. They had 157 divisions, largely horse drawn and contrary to popular belief very poorly equipped (and more often than believed poorly trained- The bulk of the German army was made up of hastily assembled recruits only trained after 1933-1935. Though some units had combat experience in Spain, largely the German army was in much worse shape than the one that crossed the border in 1914). The Germans had a total of 2439 tanks (mostly Pz Mk 1 and Pz Mk 2, which were no better than slightly armoured machine gun nests) and only 10% of the force was mobilized. Even up to 40% of the German army was 40 years old and up, indicating that they weren't the "uber-menschen" often portrayed in the west, but a hastily assembled, poorly equipped, rag tag bunch.
The French and the British, on the other hand were largely mechanized and way better armed. Their plan to meet the German attack in Belgium made sense, even though French and Belgian intelligence as early as 1937 indicated that an attack across the Ardennes was possible. Even after the attack across the Ardennes the French army still outmatched the German army on paper- it was the breakdown in the armies morale (not the case in 1914) and the lack of national will, more than the Germans, which caused France to fall.
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Colin Parkinson
Army.ca Myth
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S.M.A. said:
I would argue that paratroopers were the SOF of the day at that point. There was no LRDG, SAS yet. The Brandbergers were actually a tad closer to the modern concept.
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Too much money & manpower was invested in the Maginot Line indeed, but building more B1 bis wouldn't have changed the outcome of the war.S.M.A. said:
Although they were powerful foes on the field, they were so slow and such gas guzzler that from a strategic point of view they were barely more mobile than the Maginot Line.
Somua S-35 was the cavalry tank we should have produced en masse.
It was much better than most of what the Germans could oppose, while still retaining some good mobilty.
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