"Why did France not invade through the Rhine valley in 1939?" Topic

Interesting question…

"Reasons of the top of my head:
– Restricted Route: The Rhine Valley is a valley, hills, often wooded, on both sides, allowing relativly little things to completly block the advance
– Urban environment: There are villages almost directly on the River all the way making both for excellent environment for the defender
– Preregistered landscape: All of Germany and in any case the Rhine Valley was 'pre-registered' as in military cartographers had measured and drawn the whole area allowing an artillery battery going into poistion anywhere and hitting anywhere else in range with the first shot. Which would mean that as little as two or three roving batteries could wreck untold havoc upon the French force while at the same time being nearly immune to counter battery fire.
– Limited to the left side: What bridges there were, either already were destroyed or prepped or destruction, most likely containing the French to the left side of the Rhine…"
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Amicalement
Armand

MUCH easier answer. The French truly believed (as did other nations) that the defensive was the war winning position.

French doctrine that was heavily adopted in the 30s was built upon the premise that the French would win the war through time. Additionally, the war had to stay out of France itself. Invading the Rhine is an interesting topic, but it would have been completely out of their doctrine. Their offensive was to take place through Belgium. The French doctrine just does not seem to have made invasion of Germany available to the French armed forces.

Also, the state of mustering the French army, especially their logistics, barely made France functional by 1940. Lets remember whole companies were struggling to keep up with their own supply which not only limited their advance but, most importantly, to counterattack the Germans during the German breakthrough.

Problem is that this is all very complicated. Immensely so. It has been a while for me (my detailed knowledge is a bit rusty) but I did a term paper on the subject awhile back and felt overwhelmed. Below are the books I narrowed down to and enjoyed:

Bloch, Marc. Strange Defeat. W. W. Norton & Company, [1968] 1999. – Acclaimed historian who was a French officer during the war. He wrote much of this book when he was captured by the Germans as he was working with the resistance. He was executed in 1944 and his book was later found, edited, and finally translated into English in 1968.

Doughty, Robert A. The Breaking Point: Sedan and the Fall of France, 1940. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1990. -Detailed work that any war gamer would enjoy.

Jackson, Julian. The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. – This was the best all around work I encountered. Jackson also, by name, argues against previous works which makes this book an interesting introduction to the fall of France historiography.

Kiesling, Eugenia C. Arming against Hitler: France and the Limits of Military Planning. Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas, 1996. – You want to understand French doctrine and how it affected French actions during the war, read this. Doughty, Robert A has a similar book, but Kiesling's work builds and expands upon Doughty,s work making this the top choice. Doughty is even featured on the reverse cover giving a positive opinion on this book.

May, Ernest R. Strange Victory: Hitler's Conquest of France. I.B.Tauris, 2000. – Very interesting but has its faults. May tends to make the Germans out to be a little to "bafoon" like. Kind of a hero worship of the French I guess. Still a good read from the German perspective.

I did not include articles from journals as they are inaccessible without a university database for most of us.

Now more coffee….

Yep, the whole French military mind-set was defensive at the time.

E.g. the Maginot Line and Eben-Emael …

They did not attack because they chose to defend.

They did not defend because they could not attack.

Wierd how that works out – Fun Tsu

Doctrine, training and equipment--but on a deeper level, I don't think they even seriously considered it. It would start a war, which England would fight to the last Frenchman. Anglo-French mistrust runs fairly deep normally, and remember how opposed the very powerful French Communist Party was to doing anything which might inconvenience Hitler--prior to June 1941, of course.

Fun Tsu? Was that Sun Tsu's comic little brother?

Also, the Germans built the West Wall prior to the war and hyped it up to seem like a rival of the Maginot Line to discourage any French attack while the Germans were busy in Poland. It worked.

The best way to understand why France did not launch an offensive while the Wehrmacht was busy in Poland is to see things from a 1939's Frenchman's perspective. A lot of the 40ish-50ish people – those in executive positions – had been serving 20 years ago in the previous war. They had by no means forgotten what 1914 had cost France, with the all-out offensive doctrine : a disproportionate part of FRench military losses occured in the very first few weeks of the war, and furthermore, the memories of the 1917 Chemin des Dames were still vivid in the population. But IMO, the most important point is that demographically, France could not afford it. About 1M soldiers were killed during the conflict, out of an overall 40 M people. That's 2,5% of the whole, and rises to 10% of adult males. These losses were compounded by the fact that, among all European powers, France was the 1st and, IIRC the only one at the time, to experience demographic decline (sounds weird nowadays, when France has the elast weak natural growth of major western powers, eh? ) Add in the cost of the cripples and gueules cassées (utterly disfigured), and you understand why it was just unthinkable to launch an attack early in the war.

Politics. There was a large anti-war movement in France. They in fact outlawed war. link

The French actually did launch a limited and not very enthusiastic offensive in September 1939 but called it off after only a few days:

link

Interesting threads….

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

Question-What was the state of the French mobilization in early September? Were there any plans for how such an attack would be made? France would not have to have been fully mobilized to launch an attack, but they would have needed enough troops so launching the attack would not have meant stripping troops and equipment from their own defensive lines.