France and the Nazi Threat: The Collapse of French Diplomacy 1932-1939 (41 page)

Furthermore, defensive security is not completely consistent. Rather than planning for the total fortification of dangerous borders—
including the Belgian frontier
—the choice went to a compromise solution, planning to use Belgium for some type of maneuver. This continued despite the fact that after March 1936 Belgium declared that it no longer wanted that arrangement.
²
The supporters of the defensive school of thought, therefore, did not follow its logical conclusions.

How could such a chasm be allowed between two incompatible views of security? Because of the French army’s crushing superiority during the 1920s over the Reichswehr, the issue remained at a distant theoretical level. The 1930s would see the tragic consequences when choices, or at least coordination, was required. Was it because of the laziness of public opinion? Or was it because of the inefficient cooperation between the competent government ministries? Was it due to the weakness and instability of the executive branch? All of these elements certainly played a role at the same time. In this chapter we shall examine the military aspects of the problem.

Tragedies lead to the search for those responsible and the nation’s determination to seek revenge. Two of our sources, the Riom trial under Vichy and the parliamentary commission of inquiry after the Liberation, were the results of that unavoidable search. Both efforts show that, besides a few clear-cut cases, responsibility gets diluted and the causes are to be found in greater depth. As early as 1940 the great historian Marc Bloch had discovered as much. “In a nation no professional group can be held solely responsible for its actions…The military staff worked with the instruments the country had provided. They lived in a psychological climate that was not entirely of their making. They were the products of the human circles they came from and what the French community allowed them to become. Therefore, having shown according to his experience, what he thought were the faults of our military command and the part they played in our defeat, a fair-minded person can’t stop there without creating an impression of treason.”
³

A key book by General Tournoux,
Défense des frontières
, would unravel later on the mechanism between the military command, the executive branch and Parliament, and between Parliament and the entire nation.

1.

T
HE
D
OCTRINE

In addressing the
Société d’histoire moderne
, General Beaufre characterized French military doctrine, which had remained unchanged between the two wars, as a “non-strategy.” What he meant was that strategic thinking was a constant evaluation of what was in the balance, the means available and the risks involved. The absence of a goal—France was a “satisfied” country—and the elimination of risk led French military planners to focus exclusively on the means; to accumulate the means to a single end, to achieve security through a defensive strategy.

As early as August 1914 hundreds of thousands of soldiers wearing red pants had experienced in their flesh what one of them, Lieutenant de Gaulle, wrote about in his notebook: “nothing can oppose all-powerful fire-power.”
⁴
Trench warfare seemed to be the ultimate form of combat, leading to the study and testing of the “method,” meaning the conditions required for a breakthrough in the density of artillery shells, deployment of units, etc. The great originator of the “method” was General Pétain, commander in chief of French troops from May 1917. He provided a vivid demonstration in October 1917 during the limited offensive of the Malmaison, inflicting greater losses on the enemy with reduced French losses and taking a small portion of the Chemin des Dames, a long plateau located south of Laon in a west to east direction. Of course, it could also be argued that by replacing the “method” with “surprise,” General Ludendorff had successfully broken through the Italian lines at Caporetto. Furthermore, by using the same tactics on May 27, 1918, his troops had wiped out the entire Chemin des Dames in two hours. The importance the young American army gave to
open warfare
—a war of movement—and the little regard it showed for its French instructors who were teaching
trench warfare
should have also been noticed. The example of Foch and his “butting blows,” resembling those of his opponent Ludendorff, should have been examined.

Yet, immediately following the war, the French were obsessed by the trenches. To replace those open trenches that were dirty, muddy and dangerous with comfortable fortifications, built of thick slabs of concrete covering one’s head, was something everyone wanted. The “French wall” and the “continuous front” became part of the national vocabulary starting in 1920, as well as the “inviolability of the territory,” implying a string
of fortifications along the border. Those were the ideas of Marshall Pétain, who as vice president of the Supreme War Council was head of the French army until 1931. They were shared by General Buat, the chief of staff.

Neither Marshal Foch, who wanted France’s line of defense to be on the Rhine, nor Marshal Joffre, who wanted a defense in depth, could get their views adopted. However, General Guillaumat, in command of French occupation troops in Germany, did his best to fight the Pétain system. “The French wall is a dream, financially speaking, and is perhaps dangerous from the military point of view. It could lead to subordinating any war plan…to the existing or planned fortification. It’s better to build a strong army that can take the offensive. What money is left over, if any, would then be used to organize fortifications as a home base.”
⁵

Debeney replaced Buat (who died in 1923) until 1929 and was close to Guillaumat’s views but focused on reductions in military service, damaging to his main idea of the “nation at arms.”
⁶

A sort of compromise was worked out between the two positions by the Commission for Border Defense, created on December 31, 1925; the northeastern border with Germany was to be fortified. For the Belgian border the secret military agreement of September 1920 appeared to be fundamental because it allowed taking action into Belgian territory. A number of “mobile fortification parks” would back up that move in the non-fortified zone. The Ardennes, located between the non-fortified and the fortified zones, were considered impenetrable and were intended as the “destruction zone.”

Paul Painlevé, who was minister of war, almost uninterruptedly from November 1925 to November 1929, and a strong backer of Pétain, whom he had appointed in 1917. He liked the defensive approach and fortifications. It was on his initiative that studies of fortifications for the northeastern areas were ordered. His successor, André Maginot—a war veteran—however, introduced the law to build a wall that was then called the “Maginot Line” passed on January 14, 1930.
⁷
It should be pointed out that the legislation was obviously connected to the decision made in the summer of 1929 to evacuate most of the Rhineland early on. Even though facing the future line was the entire thick expanse of the Rhineland demilitarized zone, there were no longer any French soldiers on the other side of the border. Taking advance precautions was a good idea since construction would be expensive and slow.

The French worked on the Maginot Line uninterruptedly from 1930 to 1939.
⁸
The initial funds of 2,900 million francs voted by Parliament
were quickly used up. A law of July 6, 1934, authorized 1,275 million francs for 1934 and 1935. The workforce was made up in part by North African regiments. As of January 1, 1936, the system was sufficiently advanced for the Commission for the Defense of the Borders, now called “Commission for the Organization of Fortified Areas,” to be disbanded.
⁹
It was high time; two months later German troops were to arrive on that same border to dig in and begin building fortifications on their side.

The creation of a fortified line does not imply that a country’s strategy should be
defensive
. It can be viewed as a base from which a powerful and rapid army group could attack the enemy. But at a time of tightened budgets
¹⁰
and soon of less numerous classes of conscripts, how could France pay for concrete and mechanized weapons? That was Guillaumat’s forecast. The Maginot Line also required permanent troops or “fortress units,” thereby reducing the number of soldiers available for mobile forces. But there was above everything else the “deployment doctrine.” This originated in a fundamental document, the IGU—the temporary instruction on the engagement of large units—dated October 6, 1921, and by and large Pétain’s inspiration.
¹¹

The IGU begins with ever increasing firepower. Therefore defensive units must also be increased. The war will actually require the mobilization of huge masses prepared through universal conscription. Regular army units with reduced manpower—“the cover”—were to protect the massive call-up or prevent that of the enemy. A progressively more solid defensive front was set up and that was the location from where the counteroffensive would begin later on. The offensive was therefore postponed until that time. Something not considered during peacetime planning, as Michalon and Vernet noted,
¹²
“The idea of a rapid movement beyond the borders with a small number of units but armed with modern weapons, didn’t seem to appear…
within official military thinking
.”

On August 12, 1936, the temporary IGU was replaced with new instructions, repeating the same ideas stating that fifteen years later “the body of doctrine set by eminent leaders following the victory must remain the charter for the deployment of large units.” Technical progress, the revolution of the combustion engine that some unofficial theorists demonstrated effectively were viewed by established authorities as “not changing the basic existing rules from a tactical stand point.”
¹³

In a noteworthy study published in 1976, General Vial
¹⁴
compared the IGU to the equivalent document of the German military, also dated 1921, the
Führung und Gefecht der verbundenen Waffen
(FuG). It also concluded—
who wouldn’t have?—that superior firepower was essential and wanted to use it for movement and battlefield action. As Vial states, the IGU’s “cautionary approach” became a “vigorous approach” in the German document. To the French “grinding strategy,” the Germans opposed an “annihilation strategy.” In 1921 they could be bold in their theories since their forces had been greatly reduced by the treaty and couldn’t stop the French army. But be it national character or the influence of the authors, they immediately decided to go beyond the First World War. Pétain did not want to do that. His successors, Weygand then Gamelin, felt that there was no need to do so either; Weygand because he was saddled with financial and manpower shortages; and Gamelin no doubt out of respect for authority and a propensity toward compromise. French doctrine would remain unchanged in 1939–1940. All France had to do was hold out until…1941.

After the doctrine we may now examine the
plans
. At this point it was
plan D bis
that was operational since April 15, 1935. Those expecting to find grand strategic and tactical views as in the German “Schlieffen plan” of 1906 or “Overlord,” the Anglo-American plan of 1943–1944, will be disappointed. It is only a simple “concentration plan” that puts into application the sacred principles of the IGU.
¹⁵

We shall examine the composition of the army later on—both regular army and reservists—and we have seen the different measures that had been planned in March 1936: alert, reinforced alert and security. We shall only mention the plan’s conclusions:

“1. Cover the vital centers near the border;

2. Cover mobilization and concentration operations;

3. Give units being assembled sufficient time to acquire necessary cohesion. Only then
and according to the march of events may we think about improving the situation along the initial defensive front to begin the counter-offensive at the right moment.
”
¹⁶

What was the strategic doctrine of the French air force and navy at the time? Both branches of the service, because of their mobility and rather rapid changes in strength compared to potential adversaries, had specific problems from the strategic standpoint.

The key issue for the air force was its relationship to the ground forces that were all-powerful in the 1920s.
¹⁷
The army saw the air force as an extension of its strategy, which meant ensuring the protection of mobilization behind the fortified line that the air force was expected to protect. Marshal Pétain, who had been appointed inspector general of air force defense of the territory in 1931, felt that the Maginot Line was not
enough. He concluded that a
defensive
air force was required but readily accepted that it would be independent and under the command of an air force general. Weygand had much more conventional views, and felt that much closer collaboration was required and that, with the exception of a reduced general reserve, the air force should be under the army’s command. The army needed a strong air arm for intelligence and reconnaissance, a fighter unit within every army corps and a bomber unit that would closely cooperate in the battle on the ground. The air force was therefore expected to be a
cooperative air force
.

The air force had a grand and much bolder vision of its role. In order to disrupt an enemy air attack, it would need to engage in an air battle “that may require the deployment of all of its available units.”
¹⁸
This was not intended to be an all-out offensive. The air force did not adopt the famous doctrine of Italian General Douhet who thought victory could be achieved by using only the air force, that bombing the civilian population would break enemy morale. “That manner of waging war cannot be used by us and we refuse to attack the civilian population if only as reprisals. We therefore refuse in advance to seek the decisive outcome through the air force alone.” The Spanish Civil War would confirm those views: “The material and moral results of air force bombing either of cities or fortifications have in general been very much inferior to the capabilities used,” wrote Captain de Colbert, the military attaché in Lisbon.
¹⁹