Excellent find, Armand! A very interesting piece -- well researched and well reasoned.
It brings together several diverse elements to built the total picture of how/why the French were so decisively defeated:
- During the interwar period the French studied only their own 1918 victories in WW1. German interwar studies covered more battles across several years of WW1 including both victories and defeats. As an example the French did no formal study of Cambrai (1917 and not a French battle), from which the Germans drew several important conclusions.
- During the interwar period the French centralized and controlled the processes of doctrinal development. The Germans had a far wider range of ideas and inputs from the ground up.
- The French spent far less on communications technology and equipment than the Germans. This was guided by the French doctrine of "the methodical battle", which left no room for mid-battle course corrections or improvisations, and therefore needed very little coordinating between lower level units.
The conclusion is that questions of which tank had a better gun or more armor entirely miss the point. And assertions that the French lost due to morale failures also miss the point -- there were reasons that French units lost confidence in their leadership.
All in all a very interesting read.
-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)
is excited to paint something new.
