The Challenge:

On March 20, 1940 Paul Reynaud took over as Prime Minister of France, as public opinion pushed for more energetic efforts on the war.  The relationship between Reynaud and General Maurice Gamelin, head of the French army, quickly deteriorated and Reynaud pushed hard to get Gamelin replaced.  The French government actually fell over the issue on May 9, 1940, one day before the start of the German offensive, but Gamelin remained in place to preside over the disastrous first week of fighting between the French and Germans.  

Let’s say that on March 20, 1940 Reynaud replaced Gamelin with--you.  With less than two months to work, but with the benefits of hindsight, could you stop the German offensive?  To make the scenario somewhat realistic, there are some constraints.  

•  You can’t tell anyone that you know the future.  (They would just lock you up anyway).
•  You don’t have absolute power, any more than Gamelin did.  As a matter of fact, you face a divided and rather confused command structure.
• As soon as you start changing things, you decrease the value of your knowledge of the future.  For example, if you redeploy troops so that your strongest forces face the historic lines of German advance, German intelligence is likely to pick up that fact and react to it.  That means that the Germans may not attack precisely or even in broad outline in the same way that they did historically, though they may not have time to change too much without delaying their offensive.
• You also cannot count on the Germans coming on exactly the same date they did historically, though the Germans gained major advantages by attacking at a time where a prolonged period of good weather was likely, and that probably means around May 10 or later.
• Because of time constraints, you will not be able to make major changes in the composition of French forces, their equipment, or their training.  You can move forces around and reorganize them to some extent, but you do have to be conscious of the fact that moving men or units around may well weaken unit cohesion, thus making units less effective.  Also, there are logistical limits to the amount of moving around of units you can do.  Any new divisions you establish will be of limited use by May 10 because they will have had limited time to establish trust and working relationships within the unit.
• You have to deal with Allies such as Britain, who have their own ideas and interests that may diverge from yours.

What do you have to work with as French commander?  Contrary to popular mythology, the French army of 1940 was not a relict of the First World War, hopelessly behind the Germans in technology.  Nor was morale in the French army hopelessly bad.  

The design of the French army: The French designed their army to fight the kind of war that the French expected to fight based on their experiences in World War I and on their observations of the Spanish Civil War which had ended less than a year before the beginning of World War II.  Based on that experience and those observations, the French expected a period of fast, bold movement lasting a few weeks, followed by a prolonged period of brutal attrition which the side with the most access to manpower, industry, and raw materials would ultimately win.  Given a relatively short front, and enormous amounts of manpower and firepower, a period of stalemate seemed inevitable on the western front.  The French prepared to take advantage of the brief period of movement to move as far into Belgium and hopefully Holland as they could without risking an encounter battle with the Germans.  They then intended to impose that stalemate and then finally to prevail in the shoving match that they thought would follow.

Based on their experiences of World War I and their observations of the Spanish Civil War the French felt that hastily thrown together offensives would only result in extremely high casualties for the attacker.  They didn’t intend to give up the offensive, but they also didn’t intend to suffer the huge number of casualties that armies had suffered in offensives during World War I, and that had also occurred in inadequately prepared offensives during the Spanish Civil War.  As a result, the French emphasized “methodical battle”.  That meant carefully prepared offensives backed by massive artillery firepower and supported by tanks and aircraft.  Historically, ‘methodical battle’ meant that the French reacted too slowly to counter German moves, and were almost always two or three steps behind the Germans.

Strengths and weaknesses: The biggest single strength of the French Army was probably its artillery.  The French had a lot of it and knew how to use it well.  The biggest French weaknesses were in their airforce, which had fewer planes and generally lower quality planes than the Germans, in their relative lack of radios and anti-aircraft guns, in the relatively slow reaction time of their command structure, and in the training of some of the poorer quality divisions.  The “B” series divisions were composed almost entirely of older reservists, many of whom had served in the army for only one year ten years before.  France had 16 of these series “B” divisions, and historically many but not all of them performed very poorly.

Armor: In spite of the stereotypes, the French army had a lot of tanks, and in some ways those tanks were more powerful than those of the Germans.  French tanks weren’t really usable as German-style Panzers, as the Germans discovered when they tried to use captured French tanks in that role.  The widely used French tanks had one-man turrets, which forced the commander to play a variety of other roles.  That limited his ability to command the tank.  French tanks also typically had relatively short ranges between refueling stops. The French built a large number of light tanks like the R35 and the H35 that had good armor, but a very limited short-barreled 37mm gun with little anti-armor capability.  Later French tanks like the H39 and R40 sometimes had a longer-barreled 37mm gun with much more respectable performance, but the majority of French light tanks still had the short-barreled 37mm gun by May of 1940.  

The French distributed their armor in four types of organizations.  They had a lot of independent tank battalions, primarily designed to support infantry.  The independent tank battalions were primarily equipped with R-series tanks, though some still had World War I FT-17s and a few had more powerful D1 or D2 tanks.  Five light cavalry divisions combined horse cavalry units with a few dozen tanks and light armored vehicles.  The combination didn’t work very well because in order for the divisions to work as a unit, the mechanized elements had to slow down to the speed of the horse cavalry, while the horse cavalry lost some of their ability to move in rough terrain.

The French also had two types of divisions based around armor.  The three DLM’s or light mechanized divisions grew out of cavalry divisions, and were used for cavalry-like missions, primarily to screen infantry as it got into position.  The DLMs had roughly two-thirds the number of tanks that a Panzer division had.  DLMs proved themselves capable of taking on a Panzer division if they were on the defensive, but they didn’t have a lot of offensive clout.  

The three DCRs grew out of the infantry.  They have often been called armored divisions, and in some ways they were.  They contained most of the French B1 heavy tanks, along with some H39 light tanks.  DCRs were not really designed for fast movement or maneuver warfare in the same way that panzer divisions were.  Given proper training and planning they might have been effective in limited offensives designed to force an enemy line back a few miles.  They didn’t have the range or the support services necessary to do Panzer-style offensives though, and for the most part they performed poorly in the war.  That was partly because the armored elements moved by rail, while logistics elements went by road.  In the chaos of the German invasion, linking logistics to armor proved difficult.  Also, some French commanders seemed unsure what to do with the DCRs, in one case scattering tanks over a wide area to act essentially as pillboxes.  The third DCR would have just been forming in late March as you took over.  The French hastily threw a fourth DCR together as the fighting raged.  The third and fourth DCRs weren’t really ready for combat when they were forced into the fight.

Course of battle: Historically, the Germans managed to lure the best French and British forces into Belgium, then sent their best-equipped, best trained divisions, including the bulk of the Panzer divisions to slash through the Ardennes and into weak French divisions, primarily B-series, along the Meuse River.  Once they broke through those divisions, the Germans threatened Paris and also threatened to break through to the English Channel, cutting off Allied forces in Belgium.  The French had to scramble to guard against both threats.  That was difficult because French reserves were minimal.  Gamelin had gambled.  He took the French Seventh Army, with six of the best, most mobile French divisions, including one of the DLMs, out of the central reserves and sent them all the way through Belgium in an effort to link up with Holland and help keep the Dutch in the war in an operation called the Breda variant.  

The Germans were able to pit the best German divisions against the poorest trained, poorest equipped French divisions.  Some of those French divisions broke and ran, starting a rout that affected the morale of surrounding French units and units coming up to plug the gaps.  Once they broke through the initial French line, the Germans never let the French get a firm defensive line set up to stop the Panzers in their rush to the English Channel.  Once the rout started, millions of refugees clogged the roads and made it very difficult for Allied armies to move or be resupplied.  The Germans were very good at this kind of fast-moving, chaotic battle.  The French weren’t good at that kind of battle.  Once the Germans reached the Channel, they cut off the bulk of the best equipped and trained Allied armies.  That effectively knocked France out of the war, though the French continued to fight for another few weeks, and actually fought rather well most of that time.

The key to the battle was that the French over-estimated the amount of time it would take the Germans to move major forces through the Ardennes.  The French calculated that the Germans would need 10 days to cross the Ardennes and reach the Meuse in force.  That wasn’t unreasonable.  The Germans initially figured on eight to ten days for such a move, but managed to cut it down to less than three days.  Ten days might have given the French time to solidify their lines in Belgium and get their mobile forces back into position to counter any German move on the Meuse.  Three days didn’t give them that time.

How could the French win?  The key to winning is to make the enemy fight the kind of war you’ve prepared for.  If the Germans break through and turn the battle mobile, it gets very difficult for the French to win.  If the French can avoid or quickly seal off any breakthroughs, and especially if they can cause significant attrition in the Panzer divisions, they force the Germans to fight the kind of battle that France has prepared for.  The first ten to fifteen days of the active fighting are crucial.  The French need to move into Belgium to avoid having the fighting devastate the farms and industries of northern France.  That movement creates a window of opportunity for the Germans though.  Until the French solidify their lines in Belgium, France has the bulk of its best and most mobile troops tied up in the move into Belgium.  Once those lines solidify, France can replace the mobile troops with ordinary infantry and move the mobile troops back into reserve.  The Germans would then have to break through prepared French lines.  If they managed a breakthrough they would then have a very limited time to exploit that breakthrough before the French bring up mobile reserves.  The German army of May/June 1940 probably won’t win a war of production and attrition against the Allies.

So the question is: how can you minimize the chance of a German breakthrough in those first ten to fifteen days?  That seems easy.  After all, you know where the German attack occurred historically.  Why not just shift enough high-quality divisions to the Meuse in front of the Ardennes that the Germans can’t possibly break through there?  If you can’t find enough high-quality French forces to do the job, move part of the British Expeditionary Force to the Meuse.  The problem with that, of course, is that the Germans will almost certainly pick up on the move and adjust their strategy.  What if you wait until the Germans are committed and then shift forces in front of their lines of attack?  That could still be a problem.  Historically, the attacks that drew the Allies into Belgium involved several panzer divisions (4) and other reasonably strong forces.  If you pull too much French power to the Meuse, those diversionary attacks may become a real threat, and the Germans may shift forces to take advantage of any breakthroughs.

So, what would you do?  What affect do you think the changes you make would have?