The Fall of France in World War II.

Authors Avatar

The Fall of France in World War II

In the year 1918, Germany and its allies, Austria and Turkey, were defeated by the forces of France, Great Britain, Italy, Belgium, and the United States in the terrible war now known as World War I.  To ensure that Germany would be of no further threat to French security, French premier Georges Clemenceau sought revenge against the Germans at the peace conference in Versailles. France demanded the demolition of German militarism and a great reduction of German territory. France recovered the provinces of Alsace and lost parts of Lorraine, and all German overseas colonies were seized and parceled out among the Allies. The Armed Forces of Germany was deprived of its military and naval air forces, and the army was reduced to a limit of 100,000 men (Flory & Jenike 356). Propelled by a strong sense of revenge, these demands were not enough for Clemenceau and other French statesmen. French minister Etienne Clementel argued that if Germany was left without any real and permanent redistribution of economic resources, France might once again be threatened by Germany’s industrial strength. This vision became the basis policy of the French government, and great reparation payments were forced upon the Germans, which not only ruined the German economy, but also produced an unsurprising outrage amongst the German people. After the Treaty of Versailles, the triumph of the victory over Germany promoted a feeling of confidence amongst the French, who were assured that Germany could never again rise to provoke another World War. Despite all the efforts to cripple and contain Germany, France had neglected in preparing herself well enough to attack, relying very heavily on defensives. When the time came for the French to fight against Germany in the Second World War, France was clearly unprepared.

In an effort to contain Germany through alliances, the Locarno pacts of 1925 with Poland and Czechoslovakia also brought about a sense of security for France against potential German aggression. Czechoslovakia was promised protection and support against any German attacks. These treaties were negotiated in secret under the major powers of Europe, and were regarded as the promise of a new era of peace in the war-exhausted world. German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann insisted on a reduction of the forces occupying the Rhineland, which was under the control of the French and British at the time. The pacts resolved territorial disputes between Germany and Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belgium and France, and steered toward a new era of Franco-German cooperation (Mazower 109). Economic cooperation increased between the two countries, and a Franco-German commercial treaty was signed in 1926 (McMillan 99).

After the war, each nation's army carefully studied the methods of warfare and weapons used during the war, and began to puzzle out improved strategies to fighting a war. France had already been invaded by Germany twice within the previous fifty years, and to prevent another invasion, the leaders of the French Army were determined to construct a vast defensive barrier along the entire border between France and Germany. Named after French minister of war Andre Maginot, the Maginot Line was a long line of concrete and steel forts armed with many “large, long-range cannons, concealed machine guns and antitank gun emplacements, deep ditches, barbed-wire entanglements, areas of buried explosive mines,” and many other obstacles designed to keep off any enemy attacks (McGowen 12). The line stretched from Luxembourg to Switzerland, and was considered a masterpiece of the highest technological advancement at the time (Evenson 232). An important new weapon used in the war, the tank, was carefully studied and experimented with by the French Calvary. In 1935, France organized what was the world’s first tank division, known as a Division Legere Mechanique (DLM), or Light Mechanized Division (McGowen 17-18). It was firmly believed by most of the world’s military experts of the 1930s that the French Army was the world’s best, and that the Maginot Line was indisputably impenetrable by any army.

Join now!

Also in 1935, French leader Pierre Laval signed a mutual assistance pact with Russia, but neglected to develop it with following staff talks and a military convention. This was a major failing for France, as it came to be that Germany should sign a ten-year non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union in 1939. This provided Hitler with a great benefit in avoiding a two-front war with Russia. A similar mutual assistance pact was signed between Czechoslovakia and Russia, but this, too, became past.

In 1936, Adolf Hitler began to display signs of belligerence by sending troops marching into ...

This is a preview of the whole essay