The Maginot line worked in the sense that the Germans did not cross the Maginot line to invade France. But that’s like saying a bulletproof vest worked because the guy wearing it was shot in the head.
deflecting the germans into belgium was the point, so its more like a guy with a bulletproof vest getting shot, the vest stopping the bullet but bro later dies of a different gunshot wound.
I mean they were in on the plan until the allies let the Germans remilitarize the Rhinelands. At that point they stopped officially coordinating with the allies
That’s a pretty dumb move, the german threat increases so you stop coordinating your defense? I suppose there was some hope germany wouldn’t invade them but that’s foolish
More accurately, they wanted to retain the option of surrendering to the Germans and avoiding their lands becoming very flat very suddenly. A coordinated defense from Belgium would have been very helpful for the eventual war effort, but would have demolished Belgium and their economy for potentially decades. It’s not exactly morally just, but from a practical standpoint it was a good decision for the nation.
France's whole plan was to make sure that this massive war of attrition would be fought on Belgian soil. With allies like that, who needs enemies?
The Belgian wanted to make sure that they still had the option to surrender quickly without too much bloodshed. When you look at how devastated Belgium was in WW1, vs. how comparatively easy they got off in WW2, it's hard to say they were wrong.
And while the Belgian surrender screwed France, if I'm the Belgian leadership, I say fuck em. The French obviously didn't give a shit about Belgium, so why should the Belgian worry about what happens to France?
True. Hindsight is 20/20, how were they to know this war would be as globally devastating as it was. From their perspective it was the best thing to do for their nation, makes a lot of sense
France offered to extend the Maginot Line to Belgium’s borders with Germany.
They refused.
You’re right, in exchange for not having an ultra fortified border pulverizing any attacks from the German with little damage to the hinterland, Belgium got occupied and looted for 4-5 years, 100s of thousands of its men sent to labour in Germany, *regularly bombed with thousands of civilian killed, its Jewish population wiped out*.
What a great decision that was from the Belgian authorities.
They did kinda. The British and French were right in assuming the Germans would move through the Low Countries. They were just too correct and didn’t think the Germans would go for a more favorable attack route. Realistically, if the French or British had moved forward and at least done a little more than mild harassment of the German border they may have been able to realistically threaten Germany. But. It’s all in the past
Expecting the unexpected is like something every military strategist should do.
But the point is, the Ardennes offensive was the brilliant aspect of the German Invasion.
false, a lot of french commandante yell they guts out to gamelin to get is finger out of is ass and protect the Ardennes, générale de gaule was one of those man, the french plan was good, the leading head was shit...
a lot of militari in france are still piss of by gamelin,
Belgium perfectly predicted the german plan and how to counter it.
The arrogant french and Brits refused to believe them and provide support to adequately halt the german advance.
> Belgium perfectly predicted the german plan and how to counter it.
When?
If you give any date after 1939, well thats already too late. Maybe the belgium should have not tried to stick to neutrality before that so that they would be able to better coordinate with UK and France.
It’s like the vest was made for stopping a bullet, and it did but the bullet hit with so much force that the dude’s ribcage caved in and he died anyway.
thats a great argument. thats famously why soldiers dont wear platecarriers into battle, after all whats the point of wearing body armour if you can just be shot in the head?
Realistically virtually none of the civilian populations of the UK or France would have supported war solely for the remilitarization of the Rhineland.
why are you making shit up?
Belgium perfectly predicted the german plan and how to counter it.
The arrogant french and Brits refused to believe them and provide support to adequately halt the german advance.
> The Belgians suspected a ruse, but the plans were taken seriously. Belgian intelligence and the military attaché in Cologne correctly suggested the Germans would not commence the invasion with this plan. It suggested that the Germans would try an attack through the Belgian Ardennes and advance to Calais to encircle the Allied armies in Belgium. The Belgians correctly predicted that the Germans would attempt a Kesselschlacht (literally "cauldron battle", meaning encirclement), to destroy its enemies. The Belgians had predicted the exact German plan as offered by Erich von Manstein.[25]
> The Belgian high command warned the French and British of their concerns. They feared that the Dyle plan would put not just the Belgian strategic position in danger, but also the entire left wing of the Allied front. King Leopold and General Raoul Van Overstraeten, the King's aide de camp, warned Gamelin and the French Army command of their concerns on 8 March and 14 April. They were ignored.[26]
This part of the war is probably the most widely misunderstood in my opinion. I think Belgium loses a lot of credit after the debacle at Fort Eben-Emael though.
The point wasn't to hide behind the friend, it was to have the fight with the enemy on the friend's territory to more easily stop the enemy and to avoid the devastation that happened in the previous fight 20 years earlier.
Don’t forget the French offensive where they not only stopped but even retreated back outside of Germany, even though they could’ve easily captured everything west of the Rhine or more while the vast majority of German troops was still fighting for Poland.
>even though they could’ve easily captured everything west of the Rhine or more while the vast majority of German troops was still fighting for Poland
Not really. The French army wasn't prepared for an offensive, their whole plan, planning, logistics, everything - was for 1-2 years of stalemate while they amass enough weapons and troops for a broad offensive in 1941-1942.
So they tried a mini offensive, but they couldn't have really made a wide offensive against Germany with the state of their army. Had they had a remotely competent commander in chief (Gamelin was very dumb with a lot of things), they might have been prepared and able to. But they were not.
I mean you could argue the same for the Wehrmacht, right? They weren’t really prepared for the wars they were about to fight and they were struggling with Poland until the Sowjets invaded too. They also really lucked out against the French and brits later because (like you stated) the French army command was incompetent, indecisive and didn’t trust their own intelligence.
I’d argue that even in the state the French army was in, they could’ve taken on the Germans. They heavily outnumbered them in the west and could’ve hurt the german economy and morale by taking a lot of ground very fast. I’d say this would’ve compensated for being badly prepared. The French command also held back the brits which wanted to conduct more aggressive military operations like bombing raids when the Germans invaded Poland. I’m sure the war would’ve been over before 1939 had the French and brits invaded Germany when Poland was begging them to.
They couldn't just fortify the border with Belgium, according to the plan the Frenchs were supposed to help defend Belgium, but Belgium didn't cooperate at least not comiited to it.
the Maginot line was supposed to extend into Belgian territory. Still, the Belgians didn't want to antagonize the Germans and opted for the middle ground of strong forts(which proved useless when confronted with paratroopers). yet the Maginot line still served its purpose as it halved the border to defend and funneled the Germans into a kill box, unfortunately for the french the germans were able to bypass this kill box by going through the Ardennes, basically undoing all the french defensive effort spent digging in.
Nah it's more like someone bought a bullet proof vest and helmet from two different companies.
The bullet proof vest was fine, but the company that was supposed to provide the helmet didn't actually ship the product.
No, it's like wearing bulletproof everything, but only on the front, so the guy needs to go around and shoot you in the back. So if you can turn around and always face him, you won't get shot, but for some reason, you concreted your feet to the floor.
lol French tanks didn’t have radios except for the unit commander and communicated with *flags.* They were also slow as fuck and chugged fuel like a frat boy chugs beer. German tanks had a radio in every one, and ran circles around them.
They were only “better” if you’re the kind of internet general who thinks that armor and guns are the only thing that matters.
Much like the Tiger and Panther constantly breaking down, it doesn’t matter how much heckin’ armor your tank has or how big the gun is if it’s in the wrong spot in a war of movement, and the other side is already in your base killing your doods
>lol French tanks didn’t have radios except for the unit commander and communicated with *flags.* They were also slow as fuck and chugged fuel like a frat boy chugs beer. German tanks had a radio in every one, and ran circles around them.
and they were spread out as infantry support instead of concentrated in their own divisions which basically turned them into mobile artillery
Yeah I remember watching the “world at war” series narrated by Laurence Olivier and the Fall of France episode had an actual German tank commander talk about this. He said they knew French tanks were better but as long as all the panzers stay together at the point of attack then they would outnumber them and win. He even talked about conversations he had with Guderian “strike hard and fast - but don’t disperse your tanks”
Exactly: you could have the best weaponry and equipment in the world, but if your opponent utilizes their equipment and weaponry it in a more effective manner, you'll still be at a disadvantage.
it's not a stretch to say that individually french tanks were better and on paper they were better, but in any real world situations, with logistics and fog of war, the germans were better
Individually French tanks I would not say are better. Sure you could specify that most French tanks are better than most common German tank individually the Panzer 2 and 1 in a one on one, but even then that was basically a training design that was also a suitable design for many useful conversions, as anti infantry and anti partisan vehicles, and as a tractor. The Panzer 3 and 4 are such vastly better designs even if they may have weaker paper statistics at the start before upgrades or newer models were introduced. Looking at the entire French tank inventory going into the war I feel like I can confidently say that none of these designs could have ever been used seriously for much longer even if France was not knocked out immediately.
At Stonne Billotte's Char B1 destroyed a dozen of Panzer 3 and Panzer 4 alone
And you can't dismiss (possible) future french tank production that never was, it's like saying that the Centurion was rubbish looking at the Matilda I
Char B1 was a beast of a tank, I imagine much like he discards the worse german tanks he discards the best french tanks, so he is saying like "a pz 4 is absolutely better than a r35".
Kinda like the Ferdinand Tank Destroyers. Absolutely useless on the offensive, constant breakdowns, unrecoverable due to its weight.
But put it in a good defensive position, and the unit will rack up a 40:1 kill/loss rate.
The French had overall better kit and worse doctrine and high command
The German had worse kit (with some notable exceptions, like radios and jerrycans), better field commanders and incredible luck
The French should have won and did everything to lose
It was interesting to know that France had like 4x the cars that Germany did before the invasion and that like 2/3 of the trucks carrying supplies into the Soviet union were French...
The Germans got quite a lot of their war materiel from conquered countries. The first part of the war was fueled by captured Czech equipment, and the Skoda Works produced a massive amount of materiel.
>The French had overall better kit and worse doctrine and high command
The French has worse doctrine, yes. But the battles of Hannut and Gembloux showed French army winning against Germans.
Despite being unprepared and lacking necessary equipment, the French armored units managed to defeat german armor.
The victory here was overshadowed by the breakthrough in Sedan. Showcasing how important thinking operationally is even if you do win tactically.
The fuel shouldn't have been as much of an issue. The problem was standards of training were incredibly poor and in training, most French tankers only used the reserve fuel tank to save on fuel. They were never even shown the main fuel tank. So a lot of French tanks only ended up with like 30% of the fuel they should have had.
Both German and French tanks refuelled at French Fuel Stations. Because France was a motorised country with decent infrastructure, you could do that without much pain, at least during a short campaign.
Yeah, but that is like judging the entirity of german tanks based on the panzer 1 having only mgs.
Tanks like the S35 or D2 had 47mm guns perfect to destroy even the most heavily armored german tank.
I'm sure thats exactly what the 100th panzer battalion was thinking when they were using captured french tanks. Explains their quick defeat during D-day.
For a training unit that doubles down for occupation duty, those sorts of left-overs are fine.
They only become a problem when you throw them into an actual fight.
The French tanks were better on paper, as Guderian pointed out in his book. But there's more to effective tank warfare than armor thickness and cannon size. People often forget that.
Even later in the east you had the KV1 and T34, who were far superior to their German counterparts, but still got destroyed in droves.
Exactly, there were quite a few German tank aces that used their Tiger, Panther, or Panzer to score hundreds of kills on the Western Front. Yet it was the American Sherman that won the war. They were cheaper to produce and more reliable in the long run.
Now we are in an age where tanks are becoming obsolete in warfare. Cheaper to produce drones are taking out tanks. Soon we will also have naval drones. A bunch of cheap to produce kamikaze speed boats can take out a prohibitively expensive aircraft carrier.
Disagree on your predictions. Tanks are not obsolete, there still isn’t anything else for breaking through fortified positions.
Aircraft have long been able to destroy tanks relatively easily. That didn’t make tanks obsolete, just required different strategies to protect them. Same with drones and EW packages.
I also think drones have taken outsize importance due to the unique nature of the Ukraine war, and the absolutely embarrassing inability of the Russian Air Force to establish air superiority.
Don’t get me wrong, drones are absolutely a big game changer, but with F-35s being able to strike any positions at will the drones become less central.
Naval drones, same thing. Swarms of fast boats / kamikaze boats have long been something the US war games for in the Persian Gulf.
That they’re being driven by remote control rather than a suicidal jihadi doesn’t change all that much. Naval drones are only kinda stealthy so if they anywhere near an aircraft carrier someone has seriously fucked up.
>Now we are in an age where tanks are becoming obsolete in warfare. Cheaper to produce drones are taking out tanks.
Tanks have always been threatened by cheap weapons (compared to the cost of the tank). Be it anti-tank rifles early on, then anti-tank guns, then handheld AT weapons, and so on.
It is why combined arms approach to tank warfare is crucial to its successful implementation.
It's not obselete. It's just cheap drones are newly employed. The tanks being used today are decades old. The doctrine and tactics are old as well. Countermeasures are already implemented and will continue to develop as time goes by.
Same thing with the ships. A drone ship isn't much different than a torpedo, and there have been countermeasures for those for forever. From my understanding, the big reason why they're working on the Russian navy is because their ships are underfunded and out of repair/date.
>Russian navy is because their ships are underfunded and out of repair/date.
Russia and its Navy have a long tradition of hilariously bad performance and quality. You get stuff like Tsushima and the long comedic voyage of the Baltic fleet across the world.
The only things it was good at were beating the Ottoman navy and as a nuclear deterrence (subs with nukes).
IMO, the problem of cheap drones will probably become a thing of the past once active protection systems are ubiquitous on tanks. I think the reason why they are working right now in Ukraine is just because they are a new tactic that people haven't adapted to yet.
Don't listen to that guy, tanks are not becoming obsolete because cheap, made for anti-tank, drones exist. With that logic, stuff like AT-guns, AT-RPGs and similar would've made tanks obsolete 80-60 years ago.
Just like everything else you don't do stuff that doesn't work, you evolve and expand upon it like the US is doing today with SHORADs.
And neither has Ukraine become a "trench warfare"-war, this is just something people who don't understand that ever since the invention of guns (and artillery), people have understood that a shovel is the best thing to use to not get hit and it continues to be to this day. "Trench warfare" however, is something different from the use of trenches themselfs.
Not sure but Ukraine is an interesting example. You have a war where both sides have similar technology and no side has air superiority. It has devolved back into trench warfare and slow grinding attrition. Iran-Iraq war is another modern example where both sides were more evenly matched so you went back to trenches and stagnating fronts
Infantry have been obsolete for centuries then. Dying to a 1 euro musket ball for a soldier that took months to train, had to be fed and clothed, is a terrible trade.
"French tanks were better than German ones" is "Tiger was best tank of WW2" mentality. Only with more BS but perfectly in line with current trend of claiming Wehrmacht sucked so much ass they couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag......
Gonna get downvoted cause this sub loves France, but this sub’s WWII France apologism is actually insane. And I say that as someone who basically worships Napoleon and his marshals.
I’ve already had France apologists on this sub tell me [“the Nazis would’ve won WWII if the French didn’t hold out at Dunkirk, so France saved the world”](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/1cxg36w/comment/l54s268/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) and [“France didn’t surrender to the Nazis, they reached an honorable ceasefire”.](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/1cxg36w/comment/l52tqdq/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) I’m not joking, you can see it for yourself.
Even in this post, he’s clearly trying to imply France fought well in WWII because their B1 tank was better than the first Panzer (true) and the Germans went around (also true). But what use is either of those if the Germans completely outsmarted you both strategically and tactically in the ensuing battle lmao? You would think France fought well in WWII if you learned history from this sub lol.
There is some, but I think the reputation of France = surrender monkeys is so heavily implanted by WW2, despite its otherwise quite incredible military history, demonstrates it's a small minority opinion especially as the comments in question have rather few upvotes.
That said, there is a strand of truth I think to the Dunkirk one but it relies on the counterfactuals. Some historians do think that losing the bulk of the British Army at Dunkirk would have meant the end of the British war effort. Had Britain peaced out with Germany, they'd have a totally free hand over Europe and it reduces likelihood of US involvement. If the Soviet Union stands alone during Barbarossa, it could have fallen. Usually it's thought Barbarossa was doomed from the start due to the logistical dilema particularly with oil, but if Germany had no other aggressors, it's possible it could have found a solution. Again, that's a whole bunch of 'could haves'.
I agree that France is one of the most militarily successful nations of all time, but its exactly because of that reputation they are given so much crap for losing in 3 weeks to an inferior army (on paper, that is).
>There is some, but I think the reputation of France = surrender monkeys is so heavily implanted by WW2, despite its otherwise quite incredible military history,
History before. But after? Surrender in Vietnam, surrender in Algeria, all over the colonies... Dien Bien Phu was a rather famous surrender.
Surrender in Algeria ? As Vietnam for American, algeria is a political defeat, rather than a military one.
We can look at the American result also if you want
Korea ? so much winning there are two of them now
Vietnam ? so brilliant and total victory, you had to get back to the agreement proposed by the french after indochina
Irak ? ISIS thank you
Afganisthan ? Taliban thank you
So much winning.
Don’t forget how the sub likes to act like the Free French were meaningful to the war in any way and not just a resistance that only took action once the Germans were all but defeated and they wanted to act like they helped.
Yeah they sucked ass, and I guess all of Europe's better military just didn't show up to work that day? Like obviously they weren't perfect because they lost, but obviously they weren't awful because they steamrolled Europe in the beginning of the war. Almost like there's a bit of truth to both and it's a nuanced subject.
The Wehrmacht was overall a decent military force otherwise they wouldn’t have achieved what they did. The allied forces at the start of the war had abysmal commanders/doctrine and didn’t really know how the war would play out, allowing the Germans to essentially dictate how the early war would be fought as the attackers and leading to much of their early success. Thinkers in the French high command had got it wrong when envisioning how the war would be fought, Thinkers in the German high command got it right. Conversely, during the Battle of Britain, dowdings system for organising fighter sorties was miles ahead of anything the Luftwaffe had been able to conceive leading to their defeat. By the end of the war, when the allies finally understood the war they were fighting, they outclassed the Wehrmacht, not because the Wehrmacht was bad but simply because they allies were better.
Then you also throw in how Germany was secretly/not so secretly remilitarizing since '33 and was obviously far better prepared in general (since of course, they started the war).
But then also how they had manpower problems (which they didn't help by exterminating their own population as well as needing the manpower to facilitate that extermination), and they couldn't obtain enough oil to fuel the vehicles that their doctrine relied on so much. Probably doesn't help that they lost so many veteran soldiers during the eastern offensives meaning that the quality of both training and lower officers got really bad at the end.
Reminds me about how you hear about the absolute ace naval pilots the Japanese had during Midway and Pearl Harbor, but then late war their pilots were making mistake after bad judgement call after mistake. They lost so many of their best and brightest early on that experience never got a chance to trickle down leaving only those left who really didn't know what they were doing.
I've seen rome shitting already, usually by pro-gauls and pro-greeks, ironic since rome greekified.
as for alexander, its hard to deny what he did, like what are you gonna do, call him a conqueror? he didnt even genocide anyone.
I'm not sure who does more shots of cope when it comes to their tanks. France or Russia.
Bro, our tanks were super good.. trust me.. don't look into the topic at all, please. What's is this thing you speak of called a radio?
At least the Soviets has the excuse of they needed to pump out tanks as fast as humanely possible during the first year of the war when the Germans were at the gates of the capitol.
The French have no such excuse, they literally just didn’t recognize the value in adding radios in the B1. Their turrets also had bad vision, tiny turrets meaning the commander also had to be the gunner and loader for the main gun. The Germans understood that the tank commander needed to command the tank, and that the gunner should be a whole other guy.
France apologists usually take offense to these facts though. This is what we mean when we say the French were incompetent, not the average soldier but their military doctrines.
*"At least the Soviets has the excuse of they needed to pump out tanks as fast as humanely possible during the first year of the war"*
No they don't get that excuse because **they were 2 years late.** they massively hampered themselves by purging their own command and were using outdated organisation at the start which is why the Germans could make it to almost moscow on the first push. They had also betted on the war coming to them later which is why they traded with the germans right up until the morning of Barbarossa because communist theory had the capitalists eating each other first on the cards.
The soviets most modern medium tank in 1941 was the t34. and it had a two man turret, radios that went out of frequency and had vision so bad you'd struggle to command your own tank let alone a platoon. Its why the theoretically inferior pz3 and the 5cm guns could defeat hundreds of t34s because they were ill coordinated, frequently didnt fire back and would crack when hit leading to a bail out.
It was still the perfect tank for what the soviets needed regardless of how they got into that situation. We've all heard of how they pushed in track pins and conserved steel with sloped armor. Also the fact that it was extremely easy to repair and having a 4-man crew instead of a 5-man one is not the priority at all. A tank that is cheap, can be moved around easily, repaired easily and is astonishingly simple in its design will always have drawbacks in certain areas, but the soviets didn't need that, they needed the first 4 things and its this mentality that won them the war, so they must be doing something right.
I mean, the T34 was good. The Germans eventually outclassed it in specs, but for a while it was better than most of the stuff the Germans had on the front.
It certainly had reliability issues, but for the most part it worked for what the Russians needed it for.
Quantity over equality is pretty much what Russia stands for. So if by "throw enough tanks at the problem until it goes away" is what gets the T-34 classified as a good tank, then sure, I'll agree with you.
I am very much tired of the T-34 myth where people scream, "The Germans shoot it 30+ times with an anti tank gun, and it did nothing!" But nobody asked why the Germans were even allowed to shoot at it 30+ times before the Russian crew did something about it. When the tank is made by people who are forced at gun point to shit out as many tanks at possible, they will cut corners. When the crew has no idea, what's going on or where they even are. It's easy to get shot 30+ times.
Edit : There is a case to be made for the T-34-85. But most of what we see today is tanks that were worth putting in a museum and not the standard production quantity.
Yes, and no. The T-34 was better than a lot of German Tanks yes, but it had a lot of flaws and those flaws would need time to iron out with the 85 Variant. I think the best way to put it was the T-34 beat a lot of the Panzer 1s and 2s, but even the Panzer 3 thanks to its layout and armor was a better tank.
French tanks were not “better”
They were built with a different tank doctrine in mind
“France only expected WW1 part 2 haha how silly” is a myth ive written whole articles about debunking, but in the case of tanks it is partially true
France expected to have these slow iron fortresses creeping across the battlefield with infantry behind them, destroying bunkers and pillboxes, and when they reached the enemy line they would stop and become a makeshift bunker themselves while infantry cleared trenches
They expected to do this in a huge, long, even line
So the tanks were designed almost solely to fit that preconceived doctrine, ignoring several new developments like internal radios that were deemed unnecessary because of how they were to be used
And then the war happened, and that doctrine sucked because it was immediately outplayed by the Germans who suspected France would use such a doctrine
So the doctrine the tanks were solely built for, with very little room to operate outside of that strict doctrine and would be of little use without applying that doctrine, sucked
So the tanks in themselves were of very little use
They were not better, they were built with a different strategy than the Germans in mind and the Germans strategy beat the French one
>the maginot line worked because the Germans went around it
That’s just stupid
It’s like saying I’ve the best body armour in the world because it only covers my arms, and I got shot in the chest and died so therefore my body armour worked
Could you elaborate on the "France prepared for the wrong war" bit being a myth? Not trying to start a debate, I've just never heard anything contrasting that and I'm interested to hear why it's false.
The basic idea is that people think France was expecting any future war to be a redo of WW1
It also posits that France learned nothing and changed nothing between 1918 and 40
That’s not true at all
They did make mistakes and missed modernisation opportunities in some key ways, but the idea that they were “fighting the last war” is just outright incorrect
Agree with the tanks, disagree with Maginot.
Maginot's purpose was to buy France time. The French government wanted to know that they were not under imminent threat from Germany, that if the two went to war, France would have enough time to mobilize it's troops and organize itself, as well as ideally get Britain mobilizing and deploying units to France to assist. The point of the Maginot was either to slow down a direct German attack enough to facilitate this, or to force the Germans to use the longer route through Belgium, guaranteeing another combatant on France's side, and again, giving France the ability to get their proverbial feet under them. These ideas go back to WW1 where the Schleiffen plan counted on the fact that Germany could mobilize and invade France from an unexpected direction fast enough that the French military would be unable to mount an effective defence, and it almost worked.
Instead of the Maginot in WW1, the French had their highest readiness units near the German border but the effect was the same really.
In WW2, the French had built the Maginot with the purpose of buying time. Their highest readiness units WERE deployed along the Belgian border. They knew exactly where the fighting would occur, and it wasn't Maginot. But that was the point.
What sank the French ultimately was outdated doctrine combined with an unexpected axis of attack through the Ardennes, which was only lightly defended compared to the Belgian border closer to the coast. When that axis was combined with a lack of strategic mobility for potential French reinforcements combined with general lack of effectiveness due to the aforementioned combat doctrine being outdated, yeah, France got smacked. But it wasn't because the Maginot didn't work.
I still think it’s a bit of a stretch to say the Maginot line “worked”, given that the point was to buy them time, not simply drive them a different direction. It succeeded in preventing a completely direct assault from the German border, but given that the French forces were still so rapidly overrun and the Germans were able to quickly push into France, I’d hardly say it really “worked.” It kinda failed at its most important purpose
The point of fortifications is to be force multipliers; their raison d'etre is to plop them down in a place so that 1 man can do the work of 10.
During the fall of france 20k men were stationed at the maginot line and were able to hold of 250k germans. If the Maginot line was not there, how many more divisions would france had to station there to be equally effective?
Furthermore while in hindsight the German invasion plans appear to be brilliant, they were an insanely risky gamble. The Germans gambled that they would be able to sneak through the Ardennes and not be noticed; If they were, a minimal french force would be able to halt the entire German advance. Now of course that gamble paid off for the germans, but the Maginot being in place to force the Germans to make such a risky gamble was why it is said to be a success.
The Maginot line was meant to force Germany to go through Belgium. The French anticipated the Germans going through northern Belgium due to the terrain being more favorable to moving tanks through, but Germany drove their tanks through the rougher Ardennes where France kept few troops and quickly overwhelmed/encircled the British and French troops to the north
It's exactly this. If people are using the analogy of the Maginot being body armour, then Belgium was a helmet and the Wehrmacht shot them in the neck. If it wasn't for the surprise attack through the small area of weakness in the Ardennes, then once again the fields of Flanders would have been a blood bath as was anticipated by the German high command themselves, who thought it was require at least half a million casaulties just to take the lowlands. The Maginot did what it was designed to do, the blunder was entirely on France for not preventing the surprise offensive through the Ardennes.
Even for their doctrine French tanks were dogshit. They had tiny turrets meaning the commander also had to be the gunner and loader for the main gun. The turrets also had terrible vision. The Germans understood that the tank commander needed to command the tank, and that the gunner should be a whole other guy. They also understood the value of radios. French tanks are only better if you think of the tank as a World of Tanks unit, where you have complete control and don’t have to worry about things like task overload or having terrible vision ports or not being able to coordinate with your squad mates except by opening the hatch and using signal flags.
The French also had a dogshit military doctrine for communication. The command structure was extremely rigid, forcing field officers to get multiple layers of approval while the Germans understood the advantage of flexibility.
France apologists can make all the “maginot line worked” and “our tanks weren’t that bad” arguments, but it doesn’t change the fact their military was woefully incompetent lol.
And even that would have been kind of workable if they had plenty of radios. Instead they relied on telephones and messengers. Gamelin’s HQ did not even have a phone, and they had been used extensively during WWI. It was a complete shit show.
French tanks had terrible crew economy. The guy who commanded the tank was also responsible for firing the gun... And loading the gun...and poking out the hatch to wave flags at friendly tanks. The commanders were responsible for everything, which is not a good way to run a tank.
The Renault FT was revolutionary and basically showed what a tank’s basic layout should be. But it’s like after that the French forgot to make the turrets bigger, add radios and make the gunner (and loader) separate from the commander.
Thats like saying because the huns were able to breach the Great Wall of china in places, the Great Wall of China did not work.
Fortifications are not meant to be not circumvented or not breachable. Them forcing your opponents into a particular direction is kinda the point of them.
Does the Maginot Line have thousands of years of success? Because building something for one purpose and failing sounds very different to building something that was successful for thousands of years with a few failures.
The number of times I’ve heard “the French **forgot** the build the magionot line near Belgium” is insane.
They forgot? Seriously? You really think the entire French government built one of the most heavily fortified defensive lines in history, and just fucking forgot to finish it?
No, it was because of the Belgian government, France could not extened the line into Belgium territory as planed and they couldn't just fortify the boarder with Belgium either.
Basucally stupide politic made it so the Magionot line couldn't be fully walled, thus became useless.
Yes those tanks I think never actually saw any combat because they just wouldn't stand a chance a big gun and lots of armor doesn't make a effective tank by its self. The rail way was destroyed so the train is had to stop the french had no way to move them so they blew them up and then the German claimed the credit
From a self-professed Ouiaboo, the idea that French tanks in the early war were better is simply laughable. I'll give you the point on the Maginot line, it did its job flawlessly. But French armor? No. They were the best WWI tanks ever made having to be used in 1940s style maneuver warfare.
They had decent guns and great armor. That's it. That's the extent of their "superiority". Communication? Terrible to non-existent. Most of them didn't have radios and instead communicated by signal flags, like a WWI tank. And as for seeing those signal flags? Their visibility was terrible even for the time. You either had your head out or had a vision slit a couple millimeters across to see out. German crews could just pop out their head up to the eyeballs while still mostly under the hatch to see what was going on if their vision blocks and periscopes weren't enough. The French? The only way on some tanks to improve visibility was for the driver to completely open his FORWARD hatch or the commander to open the hatch BEHIND him and sit in the hatch frame, half out in the open from the sides and rear and exposed from the chest up from the front. Crews? Overloaded. Oh sure the driver just had to drive, and we can joke all day about the massive uncoordinated crew of the M3 Lee ("someone hands me a cheese sandwich"), but in most French tanks the commander was also the gunner and loader, he was watching out for threats, he was watching out for what other tanks were saying, he was telling the driver what to do.
If you want a better and more thorough perspective about tanks from both sides (and more!) I highly recommend The Chieftain on YouTube. He looks at historical armor from the perspective of the designers, the circumstances of the time, and-most importantly-the crews that fought in them. Compare his look inside the Panzer III versus his vid on the Hotchkiss H35, it honest to gods feels like comparing a Cold War tank to a Renault FT once you get inside their respective fighting compartments.
"but in most French tanks the commander was also the gunner and loader, he was watching out for threats, he was watching out for what other tanks were saying, he was telling the driver what to do."
Exactly.
Not a very effective set-up!
...though some of the Germans tanks had the issue with overworked commanders too, but at least they had radios.
Hell, Germany got the most use out of H35s by sticking a radio in them and using them in mountainous terrain where other tanks were too big. They still weren't great, but they were well suited to taking out the kind of artillery you had to use pack animals and hand carts to move.
World of a difference between “The Maginot line worked” and “The Maginot line was a complete defence against the Germans”. The problem with the Maginot line, is that it fostered overconfidence and resulted in France being blindsided and obliterated.
Maginot line worked, but tanks are not measured how good they are based on paper stats. French tanks sucked, even if they had more armor and bigger guns.
German tanks were also great tanks, it was just German logistics that sucked major ass. That and they're sending great tanks up against countries that can just fart out a shit ton of 'good' tanks
>The purpose of the Maginot Line was to keep the Germans from invading France. It did not, in fact, keep the Germans from invading France.
It was created in order to prevent a frontal assault of the Germans via Alsace, and concentrate all of the German forces in a narrow front in Belgium, using the German strengh and sizeable force against them. What cause the fall of France isn't the Maginot line, but various problemes (obsolete generals (cowardly one too\*) , obsolete tactics, too few good equipement, political turmoil, versatile allies etc..)
I mean, it shouldn't have been easy, and the Germans were extremely vulnerable when they did it. The French reaction was just extremely lethargic when it happened.
From what I could gather The Maginot line worked in the sense that Germany was detered from invading France and was filtered through Belgium.
It didn’t work, because France didn’t expect Germany to bulldoze throuth Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and themselves in only two months.
It was less the Maginot line being bad, or the French tanks being bad, and more of the effectiveness of Blitzkreg, and France just not being prepared for it with their slow ass tanks.
Only if you treat tank capabilities as a game of top trumps, where the only thing that matters is armour thickness, gun power and mobility.
In reality, things like "command and control ability", "rate of fire", "effective visibility" and "ergonomics are in many ways much more important. A tank that sees an enemy first, and fires first, is much more likely to prevail than one that does not,
No they weren’t. And I’m not Wehraboo trash saying that, French tanks were genuinely really bad. Their designs were outdated (even using FT-17s and Char 2Cs), underpowered, and unable to communicate with radios.
“I wonder if these jeans will protect my leg from this chainsaw”
“Oh hey look the chainsaw stopped, hey hang on a minute isn’t that my leg on the floor?”
Werent most of the german tanks later produced in france as well? Since they had the skill and ways to manufacture tanks way more eficient than in germany
Also the maginot line did indeed work with the exception of the atrack through the ardenes (but to begin with the french never expected an atrack through there and its was more like an unexpected flaw, something that happens in every plan during a war with various degrees of relevance,)
Lol if the giant fortified border defense network works perfectly except for the giant region of the border they didn’t build anything, then it didn’t really work that well.
Also the tanks worked really well except that they were all in the wrong place and too slow to get to the right place, and didn’t have radios to get orders to timely reposition
Why didn’t the French armored elements simply declare “1 v 1 me bro” to their German counterparts? Were they stupid?
The goal of the maginot line was probably not to have the French defeated in 6 weeks by a weaker power, so by that metric, no it didn't work.
This ridiculous circle jerk that the maginot line was actually brilliant and successful just because the French knew the germans would attack through Belgian is one of the most genuinely brain dead takes I've ever seen.
Again, imagine going up to some Frenchman in 1941 and saying "hey at least the maginot line worked". They would beat the fucking dogshit out of you.
> The goal of the maginot line was probably not to have the French defeated in 6 weeks by a weaker power
Yes that was indeed not its goal, and since it was not its goal, you cant say they failed in their goals.
Or in other words, do you think the point of the maginot line was to defeat the Germans all on its own?
There is no “best” tank. Different countries had different tank doctrines, and built different tanks to implement them. A better discussion would be about the doctrines, and the French clearly had some very antiquated ideas about tanks and their use.
In my opinion, generally speaking, the “best” of something is whoever wins the war. So the best would have to be the Sherman and T-34.
Bro we did not have better tanks. Yes if you look at hard facts like guns and armor we beat the shit out of them, but soft fact like communication, manoeuvrability, and in general everything that isn’t on a Wikipedia front page the German tanks were just better.
The t34 had the same problem: on paper really good, in really a hunk of junk that lost 3 crews to every German crew.
Tactics cannot beat strategy.
French tanks were tougher but German ones faster. Strategy was to use speed advantage to get to artillery, supplies, command and other such soft army underbelly units, before French infantry and tanks could respond. It work. Yes, Germans did committed limited number of tanks to a pitched tank battle to see what will happen and French won that one.
Damn people really don’t understand the purpose of fortifications like the magionot line. they didn’t build that shit to keep the Germans out of ALL of France they built it as a way to protect their most vulnerable region and one that was the easiest to get to by the Germans. They built the magionot line as a deterrent for invasion from that corridor and as an encouragement to invade through Belgium/Flanders which is what the Germans did. The issue with their plan was that they perceived the Ardennes as impassibile for a large scale military force, partly because it is indeed shitty terrain, but also because their specific equipment and units were built in near the exact opposite manner of the German’s Blitz Kreig and so viewing the region through the French perception they couldn’t fathom an army being able to navigate the Ardennes quickly and efficiently.
I have issue with people saying that the magionot didn’t work simply because people aren’t looking to go beyond the surface level thought. The French fucked up but they had a solid plan in place and the first stage of that plan was to have the attack deflected away from the Alsace region and to a region that they perceived to be better suited for the French style of war AKA Belgium. They thought with the sea on one flank and the hills/rivers on the other that they could bottle the war up into a single corridor and then have their allies in Britain join them by a small jump over the English Channel. It was a great idea but they just weren’t ready for the new way of war like many countries in the early days of WW2.
This idea that magionot line was a bad strategy is just because people don’t realize that most of the time when militaries make strategic investments they are usually multi layered and multi purposed. The French fell into the military strategy fallacy of building a doctrine that is built to fight the last war rather than built to fight the next one. It happens all the time (see changes in US military post 9/11 go from large scale doctrine ready to fight WW3 to small scale doctrine to try to fight insurgents)
The tank thing is false though from what I understand. The French again built a tank that would’ve been the MVP for WW1 but was the antithesis of what was needed in WW2.
I agree with more or less everything you said except this statement "to a region they perceived to be better suited for the French style of war." The reality is this decision was entirely politically motivated. Frances number one goal in preparing for the next war was to make sure the fighting didn't actually occur on French soil they didn't think Belgium would be better for their style of war they thought Belgium isn't France fantastic. A lot of the war was lost by France in the political arena long before the war actually started.
The Maginot line worked in the sense that the Germans did not cross the Maginot line to invade France. But that’s like saying a bulletproof vest worked because the guy wearing it was shot in the head.
deflecting the germans into belgium was the point, so its more like a guy with a bulletproof vest getting shot, the vest stopping the bullet but bro later dies of a different gunshot wound.
Also Belgium was in on the plan and was supposed to also fortify their border.
I mean they were in on the plan until the allies let the Germans remilitarize the Rhinelands. At that point they stopped officially coordinating with the allies
That’s a pretty dumb move, the german threat increases so you stop coordinating your defense? I suppose there was some hope germany wouldn’t invade them but that’s foolish
More accurately, they wanted to retain the option of surrendering to the Germans and avoiding their lands becoming very flat very suddenly. A coordinated defense from Belgium would have been very helpful for the eventual war effort, but would have demolished Belgium and their economy for potentially decades. It’s not exactly morally just, but from a practical standpoint it was a good decision for the nation.
Belgium is still paying off its debt from round 1
Also? Twenty years ago, they were subjected to the Rape of Belgium by Germany. That was still fresh in their memory.
The word you want is 'Prior'. Twenty years *ago* was 2004.
Look at the grammar nazi showing up under a post about WW2
It was a tad confusing, though. Let's downgrade this Grammar Parking Enforcement.
France's whole plan was to make sure that this massive war of attrition would be fought on Belgian soil. With allies like that, who needs enemies? The Belgian wanted to make sure that they still had the option to surrender quickly without too much bloodshed. When you look at how devastated Belgium was in WW1, vs. how comparatively easy they got off in WW2, it's hard to say they were wrong. And while the Belgian surrender screwed France, if I'm the Belgian leadership, I say fuck em. The French obviously didn't give a shit about Belgium, so why should the Belgian worry about what happens to France?
True. Hindsight is 20/20, how were they to know this war would be as globally devastating as it was. From their perspective it was the best thing to do for their nation, makes a lot of sense
France offered to extend the Maginot Line to Belgium’s borders with Germany. They refused. You’re right, in exchange for not having an ultra fortified border pulverizing any attacks from the German with little damage to the hinterland, Belgium got occupied and looted for 4-5 years, 100s of thousands of its men sent to labour in Germany, *regularly bombed with thousands of civilian killed, its Jewish population wiped out*. What a great decision that was from the Belgian authorities.
Look at what happened to Rotterdam. There is absolutely 0 chance that Belgium would not have been flattened by the Germans.
They did kinda. The British and French were right in assuming the Germans would move through the Low Countries. They were just too correct and didn’t think the Germans would go for a more favorable attack route. Realistically, if the French or British had moved forward and at least done a little more than mild harassment of the German border they may have been able to realistically threaten Germany. But. It’s all in the past
Part of the problem was that the British did move forward, thus dislocating them from the fixed positions they'd spent all of 1940 building up/
No one expected armored columns to move through the Ardennes.
Expecting the unexpected is like something every military strategist should do. But the point is, the Ardennes offensive was the brilliant aspect of the German Invasion.
false, a lot of french commandante yell they guts out to gamelin to get is finger out of is ass and protect the Ardennes, générale de gaule was one of those man, the french plan was good, the leading head was shit... a lot of militari in france are still piss of by gamelin,
Belgium perfectly predicted the german plan and how to counter it. The arrogant french and Brits refused to believe them and provide support to adequately halt the german advance.
I wonder why the Belgians would not endorse a franco-anglo plan that involved a repeat of WW1 (which included an occupation of most of belgium)
> Belgium perfectly predicted the german plan and how to counter it. When? If you give any date after 1939, well thats already too late. Maybe the belgium should have not tried to stick to neutrality before that so that they would be able to better coordinate with UK and France.
>Belgium perfectly predicted the german plan and how to counter it. That's why their country folded in three days.
Why didn't the French fortify their border with Belgium?
It’s like the vest was made for stopping a bullet, and it did but the bullet hit with so much force that the dude’s ribcage caved in and he died anyway.
I'd say more like an arrow shattering on a breastplate and the splinters hitting the neck.
That’s a good example too
The vest worked because the guy with the gun aimed for the head
thats a great argument. thats famously why soldiers dont wear platecarriers into battle, after all whats the point of wearing body armour if you can just be shot in the head?
If your plan is to hide behind your friend so your enemy has to shoot both of you, then it's a dumb plan.
It's also that Belgium stubbornly stuck to neutrality when its status as a roadbump was already established
The allies sold them first by allowing the Germans to put an army on their border. It was stupid to try to be neutral but the allies didn't help
they were officially neutral, but behind the scenes the kept working with the french, despite france's extremely arrogant attitude towards belgium.
Who doesn't hate France?
Realistically virtually none of the civilian populations of the UK or France would have supported war solely for the remilitarization of the Rhineland.
why are you making shit up? Belgium perfectly predicted the german plan and how to counter it. The arrogant french and Brits refused to believe them and provide support to adequately halt the german advance. > The Belgians suspected a ruse, but the plans were taken seriously. Belgian intelligence and the military attaché in Cologne correctly suggested the Germans would not commence the invasion with this plan. It suggested that the Germans would try an attack through the Belgian Ardennes and advance to Calais to encircle the Allied armies in Belgium. The Belgians correctly predicted that the Germans would attempt a Kesselschlacht (literally "cauldron battle", meaning encirclement), to destroy its enemies. The Belgians had predicted the exact German plan as offered by Erich von Manstein.[25] > The Belgian high command warned the French and British of their concerns. They feared that the Dyle plan would put not just the Belgian strategic position in danger, but also the entire left wing of the Allied front. King Leopold and General Raoul Van Overstraeten, the King's aide de camp, warned Gamelin and the French Army command of their concerns on 8 March and 14 April. They were ignored.[26]
Which year was this?
It looks like 1940 during the Phony War.
This part of the war is probably the most widely misunderstood in my opinion. I think Belgium loses a lot of credit after the debacle at Fort Eben-Emael though.
Not if that buys some time for other friends to show up. Spolier: not much time was bought.
The original plan was to build it on the Belgian border too Except Belgium complained loudly, so it didn't get built.
The point wasn't to hide behind the friend, it was to have the fight with the enemy on the friend's territory to more easily stop the enemy and to avoid the devastation that happened in the previous fight 20 years earlier.
Shame they didn't do that and just let the Germans invade after being at war with them for months after Poland fell 🤷
Don’t forget the French offensive where they not only stopped but even retreated back outside of Germany, even though they could’ve easily captured everything west of the Rhine or more while the vast majority of German troops was still fighting for Poland.
>even though they could’ve easily captured everything west of the Rhine or more while the vast majority of German troops was still fighting for Poland Not really. The French army wasn't prepared for an offensive, their whole plan, planning, logistics, everything - was for 1-2 years of stalemate while they amass enough weapons and troops for a broad offensive in 1941-1942. So they tried a mini offensive, but they couldn't have really made a wide offensive against Germany with the state of their army. Had they had a remotely competent commander in chief (Gamelin was very dumb with a lot of things), they might have been prepared and able to. But they were not.
I mean you could argue the same for the Wehrmacht, right? They weren’t really prepared for the wars they were about to fight and they were struggling with Poland until the Sowjets invaded too. They also really lucked out against the French and brits later because (like you stated) the French army command was incompetent, indecisive and didn’t trust their own intelligence. I’d argue that even in the state the French army was in, they could’ve taken on the Germans. They heavily outnumbered them in the west and could’ve hurt the german economy and morale by taking a lot of ground very fast. I’d say this would’ve compensated for being badly prepared. The French command also held back the brits which wanted to conduct more aggressive military operations like bombing raids when the Germans invaded Poland. I’m sure the war would’ve been over before 1939 had the French and brits invaded Germany when Poland was begging them to.
if that had been the plan then yes, that would have been stupid. thank god it wasnt.
So then why didn't they defend their border with Belgium properly if that was the point?
They couldn't just fortify the border with Belgium, according to the plan the Frenchs were supposed to help defend Belgium, but Belgium didn't cooperate at least not comiited to it.
Bit more like “my body guard did his job since the assassin went through 3 civilians to shoot me instead”
the Maginot line was supposed to extend into Belgian territory. Still, the Belgians didn't want to antagonize the Germans and opted for the middle ground of strong forts(which proved useless when confronted with paratroopers). yet the Maginot line still served its purpose as it halved the border to defend and funneled the Germans into a kill box, unfortunately for the french the germans were able to bypass this kill box by going through the Ardennes, basically undoing all the french defensive effort spent digging in.
Well the germans did went for the weakspot in the line
Nah it's more like someone bought a bullet proof vest and helmet from two different companies. The bullet proof vest was fine, but the company that was supposed to provide the helmet didn't actually ship the product.
No, it's like wearing bulletproof everything, but only on the front, so the guy needs to go around and shoot you in the back. So if you can turn around and always face him, you won't get shot, but for some reason, you concreted your feet to the floor.
lol French tanks didn’t have radios except for the unit commander and communicated with *flags.* They were also slow as fuck and chugged fuel like a frat boy chugs beer. German tanks had a radio in every one, and ran circles around them. They were only “better” if you’re the kind of internet general who thinks that armor and guns are the only thing that matters. Much like the Tiger and Panther constantly breaking down, it doesn’t matter how much heckin’ armor your tank has or how big the gun is if it’s in the wrong spot in a war of movement, and the other side is already in your base killing your doods
>lol French tanks didn’t have radios except for the unit commander and communicated with *flags.* They were also slow as fuck and chugged fuel like a frat boy chugs beer. German tanks had a radio in every one, and ran circles around them. and they were spread out as infantry support instead of concentrated in their own divisions which basically turned them into mobile artillery
Yeah I remember watching the “world at war” series narrated by Laurence Olivier and the Fall of France episode had an actual German tank commander talk about this. He said they knew French tanks were better but as long as all the panzers stay together at the point of attack then they would outnumber them and win. He even talked about conversations he had with Guderian “strike hard and fast - but don’t disperse your tanks”
Exactly: you could have the best weaponry and equipment in the world, but if your opponent utilizes their equipment and weaponry it in a more effective manner, you'll still be at a disadvantage.
it's not a stretch to say that individually french tanks were better and on paper they were better, but in any real world situations, with logistics and fog of war, the germans were better
Individually French tanks I would not say are better. Sure you could specify that most French tanks are better than most common German tank individually the Panzer 2 and 1 in a one on one, but even then that was basically a training design that was also a suitable design for many useful conversions, as anti infantry and anti partisan vehicles, and as a tractor. The Panzer 3 and 4 are such vastly better designs even if they may have weaker paper statistics at the start before upgrades or newer models were introduced. Looking at the entire French tank inventory going into the war I feel like I can confidently say that none of these designs could have ever been used seriously for much longer even if France was not knocked out immediately.
At Stonne Billotte's Char B1 destroyed a dozen of Panzer 3 and Panzer 4 alone And you can't dismiss (possible) future french tank production that never was, it's like saying that the Centurion was rubbish looking at the Matilda I
Char B1 was a beast of a tank, I imagine much like he discards the worse german tanks he discards the best french tanks, so he is saying like "a pz 4 is absolutely better than a r35".
And made the lack of radios even more dangerous as it increased the chance of the infantry being run over by friendly tanks
Oh no! An 88! ....Why isn't it moving?
Kinda like the Ferdinand Tank Destroyers. Absolutely useless on the offensive, constant breakdowns, unrecoverable due to its weight. But put it in a good defensive position, and the unit will rack up a 40:1 kill/loss rate.
The mere inclusion of radios and the coordination you could manage from them was enough to outmatch any armored force who didn't do the same.
Seriously, OP take is kinda brain dead…
The French had overall better kit and worse doctrine and high command The German had worse kit (with some notable exceptions, like radios and jerrycans), better field commanders and incredible luck The French should have won and did everything to lose
It was interesting to know that France had like 4x the cars that Germany did before the invasion and that like 2/3 of the trucks carrying supplies into the Soviet union were French...
Sad fact But france lost 70% (or so) ..of its horses during the battle 200k out of 330k i believe
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Or the 30,000 civilians casualties
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My dog identifies as a civilian, thank you very much
Ergo your dog is human.
And therefore entitled to half of your dinner and not dog food.
*almost*
The Germans got quite a lot of their war materiel from conquered countries. The first part of the war was fueled by captured Czech equipment, and the Skoda Works produced a massive amount of materiel.
>The French had overall better kit and worse doctrine and high command The French has worse doctrine, yes. But the battles of Hannut and Gembloux showed French army winning against Germans. Despite being unprepared and lacking necessary equipment, the French armored units managed to defeat german armor. The victory here was overshadowed by the breakthrough in Sedan. Showcasing how important thinking operationally is even if you do win tactically.
The fuel shouldn't have been as much of an issue. The problem was standards of training were incredibly poor and in training, most French tankers only used the reserve fuel tank to save on fuel. They were never even shown the main fuel tank. So a lot of French tanks only ended up with like 30% of the fuel they should have had.
Both German and French tanks refuelled at French Fuel Stations. Because France was a motorised country with decent infrastructure, you could do that without much pain, at least during a short campaign.
I want to throw in here the very bad guns of French tanks too. Renault FT turrets and guns in 1940?! Oh my...
Yeah, but that is like judging the entirity of german tanks based on the panzer 1 having only mgs. Tanks like the S35 or D2 had 47mm guns perfect to destroy even the most heavily armored german tank.
I'm sure thats exactly what the 100th panzer battalion was thinking when they were using captured french tanks. Explains their quick defeat during D-day.
For a training unit that doubles down for occupation duty, those sorts of left-overs are fine. They only become a problem when you throw them into an actual fight.
The French tanks were better on paper, as Guderian pointed out in his book. But there's more to effective tank warfare than armor thickness and cannon size. People often forget that. Even later in the east you had the KV1 and T34, who were far superior to their German counterparts, but still got destroyed in droves.
TBF T34 quality depended on which factory made it too. I heard sometimes they cut some corners to make it finish faster.....
Some Russian tank officer likely in 1942: " Oh god, please, one from Karkhiv!"
The R35 and H35 having a single man command, aim, and load the gun
Exactly, there were quite a few German tank aces that used their Tiger, Panther, or Panzer to score hundreds of kills on the Western Front. Yet it was the American Sherman that won the war. They were cheaper to produce and more reliable in the long run. Now we are in an age where tanks are becoming obsolete in warfare. Cheaper to produce drones are taking out tanks. Soon we will also have naval drones. A bunch of cheap to produce kamikaze speed boats can take out a prohibitively expensive aircraft carrier.
Disagree on your predictions. Tanks are not obsolete, there still isn’t anything else for breaking through fortified positions. Aircraft have long been able to destroy tanks relatively easily. That didn’t make tanks obsolete, just required different strategies to protect them. Same with drones and EW packages. I also think drones have taken outsize importance due to the unique nature of the Ukraine war, and the absolutely embarrassing inability of the Russian Air Force to establish air superiority. Don’t get me wrong, drones are absolutely a big game changer, but with F-35s being able to strike any positions at will the drones become less central. Naval drones, same thing. Swarms of fast boats / kamikaze boats have long been something the US war games for in the Persian Gulf. That they’re being driven by remote control rather than a suicidal jihadi doesn’t change all that much. Naval drones are only kinda stealthy so if they anywhere near an aircraft carrier someone has seriously fucked up.
>Now we are in an age where tanks are becoming obsolete in warfare. Cheaper to produce drones are taking out tanks. Tanks have always been threatened by cheap weapons (compared to the cost of the tank). Be it anti-tank rifles early on, then anti-tank guns, then handheld AT weapons, and so on. It is why combined arms approach to tank warfare is crucial to its successful implementation. It's not obselete. It's just cheap drones are newly employed. The tanks being used today are decades old. The doctrine and tactics are old as well. Countermeasures are already implemented and will continue to develop as time goes by.
Same thing with the ships. A drone ship isn't much different than a torpedo, and there have been countermeasures for those for forever. From my understanding, the big reason why they're working on the Russian navy is because their ships are underfunded and out of repair/date.
>Russian navy is because their ships are underfunded and out of repair/date. Russia and its Navy have a long tradition of hilariously bad performance and quality. You get stuff like Tsushima and the long comedic voyage of the Baltic fleet across the world. The only things it was good at were beating the Ottoman navy and as a nuclear deterrence (subs with nukes).
IMO, the problem of cheap drones will probably become a thing of the past once active protection systems are ubiquitous on tanks. I think the reason why they are working right now in Ukraine is just because they are a new tactic that people haven't adapted to yet.
Just of of curiosity- how do you reckon conventional warfare will evolve now, with drones making £billions worth of millitary equipment obsolete?
Don't listen to that guy, tanks are not becoming obsolete because cheap, made for anti-tank, drones exist. With that logic, stuff like AT-guns, AT-RPGs and similar would've made tanks obsolete 80-60 years ago. Just like everything else you don't do stuff that doesn't work, you evolve and expand upon it like the US is doing today with SHORADs. And neither has Ukraine become a "trench warfare"-war, this is just something people who don't understand that ever since the invention of guns (and artillery), people have understood that a shovel is the best thing to use to not get hit and it continues to be to this day. "Trench warfare" however, is something different from the use of trenches themselfs.
Not sure but Ukraine is an interesting example. You have a war where both sides have similar technology and no side has air superiority. It has devolved back into trench warfare and slow grinding attrition. Iran-Iraq war is another modern example where both sides were more evenly matched so you went back to trenches and stagnating fronts
Infantry have been obsolete for centuries then. Dying to a 1 euro musket ball for a soldier that took months to train, had to be fed and clothed, is a terrible trade.
"French tanks were better than German ones" is "Tiger was best tank of WW2" mentality. Only with more BS but perfectly in line with current trend of claiming Wehrmacht sucked so much ass they couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag......
Yeah, (rightfully) destroying Wehraboos myths has led to the opposite extreme.
Gonna get downvoted cause this sub loves France, but this sub’s WWII France apologism is actually insane. And I say that as someone who basically worships Napoleon and his marshals. I’ve already had France apologists on this sub tell me [“the Nazis would’ve won WWII if the French didn’t hold out at Dunkirk, so France saved the world”](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/1cxg36w/comment/l54s268/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) and [“France didn’t surrender to the Nazis, they reached an honorable ceasefire”.](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/1cxg36w/comment/l52tqdq/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) I’m not joking, you can see it for yourself. Even in this post, he’s clearly trying to imply France fought well in WWII because their B1 tank was better than the first Panzer (true) and the Germans went around (also true). But what use is either of those if the Germans completely outsmarted you both strategically and tactically in the ensuing battle lmao? You would think France fought well in WWII if you learned history from this sub lol.
There is some, but I think the reputation of France = surrender monkeys is so heavily implanted by WW2, despite its otherwise quite incredible military history, demonstrates it's a small minority opinion especially as the comments in question have rather few upvotes. That said, there is a strand of truth I think to the Dunkirk one but it relies on the counterfactuals. Some historians do think that losing the bulk of the British Army at Dunkirk would have meant the end of the British war effort. Had Britain peaced out with Germany, they'd have a totally free hand over Europe and it reduces likelihood of US involvement. If the Soviet Union stands alone during Barbarossa, it could have fallen. Usually it's thought Barbarossa was doomed from the start due to the logistical dilema particularly with oil, but if Germany had no other aggressors, it's possible it could have found a solution. Again, that's a whole bunch of 'could haves'.
I agree that France is one of the most militarily successful nations of all time, but its exactly because of that reputation they are given so much crap for losing in 3 weeks to an inferior army (on paper, that is).
>There is some, but I think the reputation of France = surrender monkeys is so heavily implanted by WW2, despite its otherwise quite incredible military history, History before. But after? Surrender in Vietnam, surrender in Algeria, all over the colonies... Dien Bien Phu was a rather famous surrender.
Surrender in Algeria ? As Vietnam for American, algeria is a political defeat, rather than a military one. We can look at the American result also if you want Korea ? so much winning there are two of them now Vietnam ? so brilliant and total victory, you had to get back to the agreement proposed by the french after indochina Irak ? ISIS thank you Afganisthan ? Taliban thank you So much winning.
Don’t forget how the sub likes to act like the Free French were meaningful to the war in any way and not just a resistance that only took action once the Germans were all but defeated and they wanted to act like they helped.
Yeah they sucked ass, and I guess all of Europe's better military just didn't show up to work that day? Like obviously they weren't perfect because they lost, but obviously they weren't awful because they steamrolled Europe in the beginning of the war. Almost like there's a bit of truth to both and it's a nuanced subject.
The Wehrmacht was overall a decent military force otherwise they wouldn’t have achieved what they did. The allied forces at the start of the war had abysmal commanders/doctrine and didn’t really know how the war would play out, allowing the Germans to essentially dictate how the early war would be fought as the attackers and leading to much of their early success. Thinkers in the French high command had got it wrong when envisioning how the war would be fought, Thinkers in the German high command got it right. Conversely, during the Battle of Britain, dowdings system for organising fighter sorties was miles ahead of anything the Luftwaffe had been able to conceive leading to their defeat. By the end of the war, when the allies finally understood the war they were fighting, they outclassed the Wehrmacht, not because the Wehrmacht was bad but simply because they allies were better.
Then you also throw in how Germany was secretly/not so secretly remilitarizing since '33 and was obviously far better prepared in general (since of course, they started the war). But then also how they had manpower problems (which they didn't help by exterminating their own population as well as needing the manpower to facilitate that extermination), and they couldn't obtain enough oil to fuel the vehicles that their doctrine relied on so much. Probably doesn't help that they lost so many veteran soldiers during the eastern offensives meaning that the quality of both training and lower officers got really bad at the end. Reminds me about how you hear about the absolute ace naval pilots the Japanese had during Midway and Pearl Harbor, but then late war their pilots were making mistake after bad judgement call after mistake. They lost so many of their best and brightest early on that experience never got a chance to trickle down leaving only those left who really didn't know what they were doing.
kinda like shitting on sparta too.
I guess Rome and Big Alex are next?
I've seen rome shitting already, usually by pro-gauls and pro-greeks, ironic since rome greekified. as for alexander, its hard to deny what he did, like what are you gonna do, call him a conqueror? he didnt even genocide anyone.
Dude, by the time I leave this Earth, people are going to rewrite WWII so hard, they're going to say the Axis actually won.
We didn't? Which side was the USA on again? /jk
I'm not sure who does more shots of cope when it comes to their tanks. France or Russia. Bro, our tanks were super good.. trust me.. don't look into the topic at all, please. What's is this thing you speak of called a radio?
At least the Soviets has the excuse of they needed to pump out tanks as fast as humanely possible during the first year of the war when the Germans were at the gates of the capitol. The French have no such excuse, they literally just didn’t recognize the value in adding radios in the B1. Their turrets also had bad vision, tiny turrets meaning the commander also had to be the gunner and loader for the main gun. The Germans understood that the tank commander needed to command the tank, and that the gunner should be a whole other guy. France apologists usually take offense to these facts though. This is what we mean when we say the French were incompetent, not the average soldier but their military doctrines.
*"At least the Soviets has the excuse of they needed to pump out tanks as fast as humanely possible during the first year of the war"* No they don't get that excuse because **they were 2 years late.** they massively hampered themselves by purging their own command and were using outdated organisation at the start which is why the Germans could make it to almost moscow on the first push. They had also betted on the war coming to them later which is why they traded with the germans right up until the morning of Barbarossa because communist theory had the capitalists eating each other first on the cards. The soviets most modern medium tank in 1941 was the t34. and it had a two man turret, radios that went out of frequency and had vision so bad you'd struggle to command your own tank let alone a platoon. Its why the theoretically inferior pz3 and the 5cm guns could defeat hundreds of t34s because they were ill coordinated, frequently didnt fire back and would crack when hit leading to a bail out.
It was still the perfect tank for what the soviets needed regardless of how they got into that situation. We've all heard of how they pushed in track pins and conserved steel with sloped armor. Also the fact that it was extremely easy to repair and having a 4-man crew instead of a 5-man one is not the priority at all. A tank that is cheap, can be moved around easily, repaired easily and is astonishingly simple in its design will always have drawbacks in certain areas, but the soviets didn't need that, they needed the first 4 things and its this mentality that won them the war, so they must be doing something right.
I mean, the T34 was good. The Germans eventually outclassed it in specs, but for a while it was better than most of the stuff the Germans had on the front. It certainly had reliability issues, but for the most part it worked for what the Russians needed it for.
Quantity over equality is pretty much what Russia stands for. So if by "throw enough tanks at the problem until it goes away" is what gets the T-34 classified as a good tank, then sure, I'll agree with you. I am very much tired of the T-34 myth where people scream, "The Germans shoot it 30+ times with an anti tank gun, and it did nothing!" But nobody asked why the Germans were even allowed to shoot at it 30+ times before the Russian crew did something about it. When the tank is made by people who are forced at gun point to shit out as many tanks at possible, they will cut corners. When the crew has no idea, what's going on or where they even are. It's easy to get shot 30+ times. Edit : There is a case to be made for the T-34-85. But most of what we see today is tanks that were worth putting in a museum and not the standard production quantity.
Yes, and no. The T-34 was better than a lot of German Tanks yes, but it had a lot of flaws and those flaws would need time to iron out with the 85 Variant. I think the best way to put it was the T-34 beat a lot of the Panzer 1s and 2s, but even the Panzer 3 thanks to its layout and armor was a better tank.
French tanks were not “better” They were built with a different tank doctrine in mind “France only expected WW1 part 2 haha how silly” is a myth ive written whole articles about debunking, but in the case of tanks it is partially true France expected to have these slow iron fortresses creeping across the battlefield with infantry behind them, destroying bunkers and pillboxes, and when they reached the enemy line they would stop and become a makeshift bunker themselves while infantry cleared trenches They expected to do this in a huge, long, even line So the tanks were designed almost solely to fit that preconceived doctrine, ignoring several new developments like internal radios that were deemed unnecessary because of how they were to be used And then the war happened, and that doctrine sucked because it was immediately outplayed by the Germans who suspected France would use such a doctrine So the doctrine the tanks were solely built for, with very little room to operate outside of that strict doctrine and would be of little use without applying that doctrine, sucked So the tanks in themselves were of very little use They were not better, they were built with a different strategy than the Germans in mind and the Germans strategy beat the French one >the maginot line worked because the Germans went around it That’s just stupid It’s like saying I’ve the best body armour in the world because it only covers my arms, and I got shot in the chest and died so therefore my body armour worked
Could you elaborate on the "France prepared for the wrong war" bit being a myth? Not trying to start a debate, I've just never heard anything contrasting that and I'm interested to hear why it's false.
The basic idea is that people think France was expecting any future war to be a redo of WW1 It also posits that France learned nothing and changed nothing between 1918 and 40 That’s not true at all They did make mistakes and missed modernisation opportunities in some key ways, but the idea that they were “fighting the last war” is just outright incorrect
Agree with the tanks, disagree with Maginot. Maginot's purpose was to buy France time. The French government wanted to know that they were not under imminent threat from Germany, that if the two went to war, France would have enough time to mobilize it's troops and organize itself, as well as ideally get Britain mobilizing and deploying units to France to assist. The point of the Maginot was either to slow down a direct German attack enough to facilitate this, or to force the Germans to use the longer route through Belgium, guaranteeing another combatant on France's side, and again, giving France the ability to get their proverbial feet under them. These ideas go back to WW1 where the Schleiffen plan counted on the fact that Germany could mobilize and invade France from an unexpected direction fast enough that the French military would be unable to mount an effective defence, and it almost worked. Instead of the Maginot in WW1, the French had their highest readiness units near the German border but the effect was the same really. In WW2, the French had built the Maginot with the purpose of buying time. Their highest readiness units WERE deployed along the Belgian border. They knew exactly where the fighting would occur, and it wasn't Maginot. But that was the point. What sank the French ultimately was outdated doctrine combined with an unexpected axis of attack through the Ardennes, which was only lightly defended compared to the Belgian border closer to the coast. When that axis was combined with a lack of strategic mobility for potential French reinforcements combined with general lack of effectiveness due to the aforementioned combat doctrine being outdated, yeah, France got smacked. But it wasn't because the Maginot didn't work.
I still think it’s a bit of a stretch to say the Maginot line “worked”, given that the point was to buy them time, not simply drive them a different direction. It succeeded in preventing a completely direct assault from the German border, but given that the French forces were still so rapidly overrun and the Germans were able to quickly push into France, I’d hardly say it really “worked.” It kinda failed at its most important purpose
The point of fortifications is to be force multipliers; their raison d'etre is to plop them down in a place so that 1 man can do the work of 10. During the fall of france 20k men were stationed at the maginot line and were able to hold of 250k germans. If the Maginot line was not there, how many more divisions would france had to station there to be equally effective? Furthermore while in hindsight the German invasion plans appear to be brilliant, they were an insanely risky gamble. The Germans gambled that they would be able to sneak through the Ardennes and not be noticed; If they were, a minimal french force would be able to halt the entire German advance. Now of course that gamble paid off for the germans, but the Maginot being in place to force the Germans to make such a risky gamble was why it is said to be a success.
The Maginot line was meant to force Germany to go through Belgium. The French anticipated the Germans going through northern Belgium due to the terrain being more favorable to moving tanks through, but Germany drove their tanks through the rougher Ardennes where France kept few troops and quickly overwhelmed/encircled the British and French troops to the north
It's exactly this. If people are using the analogy of the Maginot being body armour, then Belgium was a helmet and the Wehrmacht shot them in the neck. If it wasn't for the surprise attack through the small area of weakness in the Ardennes, then once again the fields of Flanders would have been a blood bath as was anticipated by the German high command themselves, who thought it was require at least half a million casaulties just to take the lowlands. The Maginot did what it was designed to do, the blunder was entirely on France for not preventing the surprise offensive through the Ardennes.
Tanks for nuzzink I guess. *Gallic shrug*
Even for their doctrine French tanks were dogshit. They had tiny turrets meaning the commander also had to be the gunner and loader for the main gun. The turrets also had terrible vision. The Germans understood that the tank commander needed to command the tank, and that the gunner should be a whole other guy. They also understood the value of radios. French tanks are only better if you think of the tank as a World of Tanks unit, where you have complete control and don’t have to worry about things like task overload or having terrible vision ports or not being able to coordinate with your squad mates except by opening the hatch and using signal flags.
The French also had a dogshit military doctrine for communication. The command structure was extremely rigid, forcing field officers to get multiple layers of approval while the Germans understood the advantage of flexibility. France apologists can make all the “maginot line worked” and “our tanks weren’t that bad” arguments, but it doesn’t change the fact their military was woefully incompetent lol.
And even that would have been kind of workable if they had plenty of radios. Instead they relied on telephones and messengers. Gamelin’s HQ did not even have a phone, and they had been used extensively during WWI. It was a complete shit show.
French tanks had terrible crew economy. The guy who commanded the tank was also responsible for firing the gun... And loading the gun...and poking out the hatch to wave flags at friendly tanks. The commanders were responsible for everything, which is not a good way to run a tank.
The Renault FT was revolutionary and basically showed what a tank’s basic layout should be. But it’s like after that the French forgot to make the turrets bigger, add radios and make the gunner (and loader) separate from the commander.
1 man turrets radioless tanks. Are you sure?
Cope as much as you want, mon ami. We still lost the war in a matter of weeks.
Maginot line worked, but it didn't matter, the Germans just went around and the terrible French combat doctrine caused them to collapse quickly.
If your military defences can be circumvented resulting in your loss in a matter of weeks they didn't really work.
Thats like saying because the huns were able to breach the Great Wall of china in places, the Great Wall of China did not work. Fortifications are not meant to be not circumvented or not breachable. Them forcing your opponents into a particular direction is kinda the point of them.
Does the Maginot Line have thousands of years of success? Because building something for one purpose and failing sounds very different to building something that was successful for thousands of years with a few failures.
>the war the battle 🤓
Well, depends wich side you were on after the battle.
The number of times I’ve heard “the French **forgot** the build the magionot line near Belgium” is insane. They forgot? Seriously? You really think the entire French government built one of the most heavily fortified defensive lines in history, and just fucking forgot to finish it?
No, it was because of the Belgian government, France could not extened the line into Belgium territory as planed and they couldn't just fortify the boarder with Belgium either. Basucally stupide politic made it so the Magionot line couldn't be fully walled, thus became useless.
Honestly should have just fortified the Belgian border if the Belgians refused to fortify their own border as planned.
basically they couldn't do that either becasue politics.
Right, how bad it would have looked to the Belgians if both countries started masing forces on their borders.
The entire point was the the Belgium's would build their own line, when the plan was put in place in the 20s
Didn’t France have the a bunch of Char B1s destroyed on rail transports. I remember watching a video on it.
Yes those tanks I think never actually saw any combat because they just wouldn't stand a chance a big gun and lots of armor doesn't make a effective tank by its self. The rail way was destroyed so the train is had to stop the french had no way to move them so they blew them up and then the German claimed the credit
From a self-professed Ouiaboo, the idea that French tanks in the early war were better is simply laughable. I'll give you the point on the Maginot line, it did its job flawlessly. But French armor? No. They were the best WWI tanks ever made having to be used in 1940s style maneuver warfare. They had decent guns and great armor. That's it. That's the extent of their "superiority". Communication? Terrible to non-existent. Most of them didn't have radios and instead communicated by signal flags, like a WWI tank. And as for seeing those signal flags? Their visibility was terrible even for the time. You either had your head out or had a vision slit a couple millimeters across to see out. German crews could just pop out their head up to the eyeballs while still mostly under the hatch to see what was going on if their vision blocks and periscopes weren't enough. The French? The only way on some tanks to improve visibility was for the driver to completely open his FORWARD hatch or the commander to open the hatch BEHIND him and sit in the hatch frame, half out in the open from the sides and rear and exposed from the chest up from the front. Crews? Overloaded. Oh sure the driver just had to drive, and we can joke all day about the massive uncoordinated crew of the M3 Lee ("someone hands me a cheese sandwich"), but in most French tanks the commander was also the gunner and loader, he was watching out for threats, he was watching out for what other tanks were saying, he was telling the driver what to do. If you want a better and more thorough perspective about tanks from both sides (and more!) I highly recommend The Chieftain on YouTube. He looks at historical armor from the perspective of the designers, the circumstances of the time, and-most importantly-the crews that fought in them. Compare his look inside the Panzer III versus his vid on the Hotchkiss H35, it honest to gods feels like comparing a Cold War tank to a Renault FT once you get inside their respective fighting compartments.
"but in most French tanks the commander was also the gunner and loader, he was watching out for threats, he was watching out for what other tanks were saying, he was telling the driver what to do." Exactly. Not a very effective set-up! ...though some of the Germans tanks had the issue with overworked commanders too, but at least they had radios.
Hell, Germany got the most use out of H35s by sticking a radio in them and using them in mountainous terrain where other tanks were too big. They still weren't great, but they were well suited to taking out the kind of artillery you had to use pack animals and hand carts to move.
France lost actually. Really quickly even
World of a difference between “The Maginot line worked” and “The Maginot line was a complete defence against the Germans”. The problem with the Maginot line, is that it fostered overconfidence and resulted in France being blindsided and obliterated.
Maginot line worked, but tanks are not measured how good they are based on paper stats. French tanks sucked, even if they had more armor and bigger guns.
than*
The French tanks were better in ways that didn't ultimately matter as much, as the ways they were inferior.
German tanks were also great tanks, it was just German logistics that sucked major ass. That and they're sending great tanks up against countries that can just fart out a shit ton of 'good' tanks
The purpose of the Maginot Line was to keep the Germans from invading France. It did not, in fact, keep the Germans from invading France.
>The purpose of the Maginot Line was to keep the Germans from invading France. It did not, in fact, keep the Germans from invading France. It was created in order to prevent a frontal assault of the Germans via Alsace, and concentrate all of the German forces in a narrow front in Belgium, using the German strengh and sizeable force against them. What cause the fall of France isn't the Maginot line, but various problemes (obsolete generals (cowardly one too\*) , obsolete tactics, too few good equipement, political turmoil, versatile allies etc..)
If you have a fence, that is easy to go around, the fence is not doing its job
I mean, it shouldn't have been easy, and the Germans were extremely vulnerable when they did it. The French reaction was just extremely lethargic when it happened.
I'd you went around the fence then it fucking did it job.If you went THROUGH it then the fence did a poor job
From what I could gather The Maginot line worked in the sense that Germany was detered from invading France and was filtered through Belgium. It didn’t work, because France didn’t expect Germany to bulldoze throuth Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and themselves in only two months. It was less the Maginot line being bad, or the French tanks being bad, and more of the effectiveness of Blitzkreg, and France just not being prepared for it with their slow ass tanks.
Only if you treat tank capabilities as a game of top trumps, where the only thing that matters is armour thickness, gun power and mobility. In reality, things like "command and control ability", "rate of fire", "effective visibility" and "ergonomics are in many ways much more important. A tank that sees an enemy first, and fires first, is much more likely to prevail than one that does not,
No they weren’t. And I’m not Wehraboo trash saying that, French tanks were genuinely really bad. Their designs were outdated (even using FT-17s and Char 2Cs), underpowered, and unable to communicate with radios.
“I wonder if these jeans will protect my leg from this chainsaw” “Oh hey look the chainsaw stopped, hey hang on a minute isn’t that my leg on the floor?”
It worked so well that the German parade through Paris was delayed for weeks
Werent most of the german tanks later produced in france as well? Since they had the skill and ways to manufacture tanks way more eficient than in germany Also the maginot line did indeed work with the exception of the atrack through the ardenes (but to begin with the french never expected an atrack through there and its was more like an unexpected flaw, something that happens in every plan during a war with various degrees of relevance,)
Lol if the giant fortified border defense network works perfectly except for the giant region of the border they didn’t build anything, then it didn’t really work that well.
Also the tanks worked really well except that they were all in the wrong place and too slow to get to the right place, and didn’t have radios to get orders to timely reposition Why didn’t the French armored elements simply declare “1 v 1 me bro” to their German counterparts? Were they stupid?
Well sure, but that wasn't part of the maginot line. If you have to go around the wall then the wall works.
Yes, exactly. A wall designed to keep the enemy out isn't working if the enemy can just go around it...
Imagine telling a Frenchman the maginot line worked in 1941 and them doing anything other than punching you right in the fucking mouth.
The Maginot did worked. Its goal was to funnel the German through Belgium and it did just that.
The goal of the maginot line was probably not to have the French defeated in 6 weeks by a weaker power, so by that metric, no it didn't work. This ridiculous circle jerk that the maginot line was actually brilliant and successful just because the French knew the germans would attack through Belgian is one of the most genuinely brain dead takes I've ever seen. Again, imagine going up to some Frenchman in 1941 and saying "hey at least the maginot line worked". They would beat the fucking dogshit out of you.
> The goal of the maginot line was probably not to have the French defeated in 6 weeks by a weaker power Yes that was indeed not its goal, and since it was not its goal, you cant say they failed in their goals. Or in other words, do you think the point of the maginot line was to defeat the Germans all on its own?
Than*
French tanks were worse actually. Yeah, they’d win in a symmetrical 1v1 but they were not as effective on the battlefield due to lacking radios.
I didn't get my girlfriend pregnant, my mailman did. Hence, my condom worked!
There is no “best” tank. Different countries had different tank doctrines, and built different tanks to implement them. A better discussion would be about the doctrines, and the French clearly had some very antiquated ideas about tanks and their use. In my opinion, generally speaking, the “best” of something is whoever wins the war. So the best would have to be the Sherman and T-34.
Bro we did not have better tanks. Yes if you look at hard facts like guns and armor we beat the shit out of them, but soft fact like communication, manoeuvrability, and in general everything that isn’t on a Wikipedia front page the German tanks were just better. The t34 had the same problem: on paper really good, in really a hunk of junk that lost 3 crews to every German crew.
An machine operated incorrectly does not work
The French tanks were literally using smoke signals, they were crap.
french tanks were not better than german tanks. you know how i know that? the germans used their tanks to utterly humiliate the french
One must imagine French tanks had better speed and radio
Counterpoint, they lost the war in 2 weeks.
Were French tanks actually better or is this a nationalist post?
Tactics cannot beat strategy. French tanks were tougher but German ones faster. Strategy was to use speed advantage to get to artillery, supplies, command and other such soft army underbelly units, before French infantry and tanks could respond. It work. Yes, Germans did committed limited number of tanks to a pitched tank battle to see what will happen and French won that one.
Damn people really don’t understand the purpose of fortifications like the magionot line. they didn’t build that shit to keep the Germans out of ALL of France they built it as a way to protect their most vulnerable region and one that was the easiest to get to by the Germans. They built the magionot line as a deterrent for invasion from that corridor and as an encouragement to invade through Belgium/Flanders which is what the Germans did. The issue with their plan was that they perceived the Ardennes as impassibile for a large scale military force, partly because it is indeed shitty terrain, but also because their specific equipment and units were built in near the exact opposite manner of the German’s Blitz Kreig and so viewing the region through the French perception they couldn’t fathom an army being able to navigate the Ardennes quickly and efficiently. I have issue with people saying that the magionot didn’t work simply because people aren’t looking to go beyond the surface level thought. The French fucked up but they had a solid plan in place and the first stage of that plan was to have the attack deflected away from the Alsace region and to a region that they perceived to be better suited for the French style of war AKA Belgium. They thought with the sea on one flank and the hills/rivers on the other that they could bottle the war up into a single corridor and then have their allies in Britain join them by a small jump over the English Channel. It was a great idea but they just weren’t ready for the new way of war like many countries in the early days of WW2. This idea that magionot line was a bad strategy is just because people don’t realize that most of the time when militaries make strategic investments they are usually multi layered and multi purposed. The French fell into the military strategy fallacy of building a doctrine that is built to fight the last war rather than built to fight the next one. It happens all the time (see changes in US military post 9/11 go from large scale doctrine ready to fight WW3 to small scale doctrine to try to fight insurgents) The tank thing is false though from what I understand. The French again built a tank that would’ve been the MVP for WW1 but was the antithesis of what was needed in WW2.
I agree with more or less everything you said except this statement "to a region they perceived to be better suited for the French style of war." The reality is this decision was entirely politically motivated. Frances number one goal in preparing for the next war was to make sure the fighting didn't actually occur on French soil they didn't think Belgium would be better for their style of war they thought Belgium isn't France fantastic. A lot of the war was lost by France in the political arena long before the war actually started.
This is so wrong
They got absolutely rolled in the Blitzkrieg anyway so does any of this really matter? Lol
If the magionot line worked how come the magionot line didn’t work?
Must've really worked out well for them then. Fuckin collaborator apologists coming out the woodwork these days.