An Account for the Defeat of the Anglo-French Allies in 1940 - Coursework Example

An Account for the Defeat of the Anglo-French Allies in 1940 Introduction The Anglo-French Allies were soundly defeated by the invading German forces in a manner which setup the war firmly against the allies in coming days (Jackson, 2004). The reasons for the quick victory of the Germans are many and complex but the central reason is the same as any victory in strategic terms i.e., the competence of one army overcame the incompetence of the other in the field of battle (Horne, 1969). Of course different historians take different perspectives as to why the Germans were able to simply overrun their opposition in Europe during the early part of the war therefore a more comprehensive answer to the question must come with a fuller analysis. This analysis shows that the Germans had better strategy, battle tactics, good communication, home support, support from businesses, better intelligence and drive to conquer (Jackson, 2004). On the other hand, the allies had little intelligence about the enemy, poor economies, were reliant on poorly thought out defences, could not establish communications or supply lines and eventually had to fold over as German tanks drove from country to country (Horne, 1969). To fully understand these reasons, it would be best to analyse them on an individual basis. German Strategy Blitzkrieg is the popular name given to the operational military system under which quick air bombing is followed by a charge of mobile ground forces at the weakest point in the enemy defence lines (Jackson, 2004). The basic element of this tactic of warfare is the speed of the attack and the surprise it generates for the enemy who is basically caught unaware (Horne, 1969). There is some doubt if the Germans had developed these tactics on their own since Foreign Affairs (1941) describes these tactics as having a German origin while Ellis (1990) suggests that the doctrine could have been developed by other tacticians and copied by the Germans to apply to mechanised warfare. Speed and Surprise Nonetheless, it was effectively employed as a weapon of war and it allowed quick military gains to be made by the Germany forces. Time magazine (1939) was the first popular news source to report on these tactics when a writer described the fall of Poland by saying that: “The battlefront got lost, and with it the illusion that there had ever been a battlefront. For this was no war of occupation, but a war of quick penetration and obliteration—Blitzkrieg, lightning war. Swift columns of tanks and armoured trucks had plunged through Poland while bombs raining from the sky heralded their coming. They had sawed off communications, destroyed animal, scattered civilians, spread terror (Time, 1939, p. 2).” With this previously unseen method of fighting with mechanised and automated machinery, the German troops were able to send their tanks and armour far ahead of their infantry and artillery (Jackson, 2004). In fact, there were times when tanks raged on fifty or so kilometres ahead of their support columns but by being so far ahead they were able to smash through the Polish defences. The infantry which followed was simply there to mop up what remained and move on towards better objectives. In such a situation, the frontlines would be wherever the German tanks decided to take a break to wait for others to catch up to them (Ellis, 1990). Supporting Measures The literal translation for Blitzkrieg is lightning war and the full force of this tactic was not seen in the war with Poland but rather the war with France. No country was able to bring up an effective answer to the blitz of the Germans which led to the Germans being able to defeat numerically and technically superior forces. It must be noted that while the Germans had employed this tactic for getting quick victories it did not come with its own disadvantages since such tactics assume a heavy support column and sustained supply lines (Ellis, 1990). On the other hand, with sustained supply lines and even with a home ground advantage, Norway, Poland and France could not counter this effectively simply because they did not have the tactical competence to deal with the issue. The traditional system of war which they accepted was a war of iteration where both sides try to bleed the other to death. Trench warfare in the First World War is a perfect example of how stalemates can happen between two equally matched opponents and the lessons from that war were learnt better by Germany than by the allies (Foreign Affairs, 1941). Speed, agility and quick manoeuvring look much better than trying to beat the enemy by seeking who will run out of young men first. Strategic Advantage As noted by Kitson (2006), German forces avoided direct contact with the enemy until they were sure about the strength of the enemy and the position of the enemy’s primary resources. Spies were used extensively to support the idea of the blitz and the business of using spies continued unstopped even after the Germans had taken over their military objectives. They sought to disrupt the communications, logistics and judgment abilities of the opposing armies while the morale of the opposition was hit by German propaganda. Ellis (1990) explains this by saying that the brute force used by the Germans was for the purpose of seeking out and securing/destroying several top objectives such as bridges, airfields, radar stations, supply stations, railroad junctions, ports and other points of military interest. These tactics and the German strategy used in world war two was certainly a departure from their earlier methods of waging war as reported by Foreign Affairs in 1941: “In 1914 the German cavalry failed utterly to fulfill its task. In 1940 the panzer and motorized divisions seem to have been under a unified command within each of the two army groups. This arrangement, and not simply the perfect composition and the new tactics of these modern cavalry units, was responsible for their decisive successes. The French do not seem to have understood all the possibilities of the new arm (Foreign Affairs, 1941, p. 511).” Once the assault had been made on France and Belgium, the only chance which the allies had to bring about a quick end to the war with a recovery on the continent was to rush away from Belgium towards the lower Somme and to attack from the Verdun region towards the German flank at Rethel. Both of these tactics became impossible because the French High Command could not risk the entire British Expeditionary Force to a German counter attack and there was no reserve force available for flanking the well prepared German army. A War of Movement It has been noted that, “Even two modern tank divisions in reserve south of Montmedy could have dealt a shattering blow to the German advance (Foreign Affairs, 1940, p. 511)”, but since they were not there, it becomes a point which can be discussed by revisionist historians and nothing more. It can not be said that the French or the allies had no idea about the German plan since the French Minister (Baron de Vitrolles) made a speech in January 1940 at the Hauge in which he outlined the German plan in prophetic detail. He said: “The Germans are bound to attack in the late spring or early summer. They simply cannot wait until we and the British attain superiority in manpower and materials. The Germans will attack via the Netherlands and Belgium and the decisive battle of this war will develop somewhere within a radius of fifty miles from Waterloo. It will be a war of movement. And in this kind of warfare we always have been superior to the Teutons (Fodor, 1940, p. 193).” Clearly, the French understood how wars and great wars take place on their land but what they did not realise was that the Germans had some new tactics which could simply overrun their defences. For all practical purposes, the German victory over the French was a simple matter of new thinking overtaking the old despite valiant resistance from the French and allied forces in the region. It was the new style of war and a new approach to using tanks and other armoured units which the allies had no answer to even if they thought that they were superior to the Germans in a war of movement. The Maginot Line Additionally, while the Maginot Line is today considered to be one of the greatest failures and oversights of the Second World War, at the time of construction it was supposed to make France impregnable. Even during the war years, analysts such as Fodor (1940) believed that it was a rather weak arrangement in strategic terms to simply rely on the Maginot Line and not consider what might have to be done if the Germans were able to break through. The German attack which came through the Maginot line was not only dependant on finding the best point from which the line could be crossed i.e. the Ardennes forest, but also on spies who were reporting on defences on the other side (Kitson, 2006). The French believed that the line was strongly held and even after the fall of Paris, they could have held on to the line as a strongpoint of French defence. The idea must have had some merit since Fodor (1940) reports that, “Had they rested in their fortifications which formed an extension of the Maginot Line, they might have withstood the German attack with a fair chance of success (Fodor, 1940, p. 201).” It seems that the Maginot Line formed the backbone of the French defensive strategy yet it was not used as the plans made of the use of the line were lacking. The line itself did achieve the task of preventing a direct sustained attack on France from Germany but when the attack came from other countries surrounding France and the gap within the line, the whole idea of defence collapsed on its own. The line was supposed to only provide a part of the equation for the defence of the country while the other half was supposed to come from the military. Supporting Partners The Germans had no allies in the beginning of the war except German business enterprises and even though many of them deny their history of cooperation with German interests, records show that they did indeed fully cooperate with the Nazi regime and were a willing part of the war machine. It seems clear that many companies willingly cooperated with the Nazis towards the exploitation of Europe. However, it can be shown that the companies had little interest in ideology or the motives of the Nazis; rather, they were interested in making money since that was their business objective. While suspicions of German businesses cooperating with the Nazi regime have been voiced for many years, it was only after declassification of files and the fall of the Berlin Wall that the full extent of the cooperation was made public knowledge (Ford, 2001). In fact, some German businesses were in the process of claiming sympathies from the public for their role in the war while the reality of the situation was far from making their case a sympathetic one. Propaganda Partners For example, the case of German media giant, Bertelsmann is one situation which demands a close examination. Bertelsmann claimed that it was shut down by the Nazi government in 1944 and created a legend of Nazi resistance which led to it being granted an operational license in the years after the war. However, as reported by the BBC, it was probably shut down due to the shortages created by the war and not their defiance to the Nazis (BBC, 2002). In fact, the reality was quite different since Bertelsmann made huge profits by collaborating with the Germans at the time and published volumes of anti-Semitic texts during the Nazi era. Moreover, those profits were made using Jewish slave labour in Latvia and Lithuania which took the company from a small school and religious books publisher to one of the media giants in the modern world. The propaganda machine certainly helped the Germany assault since printed material often meant wider and more permanent distribution than the radio. The company targeted the youth market with its publication of The Christmas Book of the Hitler Youth which multiplied its sales by a factor of twenty (BBC, 2002). Additionally, Heinrich Mohm, who was the head of the company at the time made substantial donations to the SS funds and had close links with the propaganda ministry and won contracts for more than 19 million books which were published before and during the war. However, nothing is more interesting than the fact that once these facts were made public by the fact finding commission, the company immediately issued an apology for its activities during the war and the falsification of its own history (BBC, 2002). Of course there were certain shining examples where industrialists and businesses did not cooperate with the Nazis in any way. Oscar Schindler for instance is a famous example that has been immortalized by Steven Spielberg. The international organization which commemorates holocaust survivors, Yad Vashem extended its highest honuor to Berthold Beitz who was the head of the Krupp foundation in Essen and risked his own life to save Jews from camps during the reign of the Third Reich (Wiesen, 1996). There are certainly examples of Germans protecting their Jewish friends and their lives are monuments to heroism (Wiesen, 1996). However, there were also other companies which cooperated in making arms and ammunition, machines for the blitzkrieg and chemical gas for the death chambers. Their crimes were brushed under the carpet for a long time with the effective and intuitive use of superior public relations techniques as well as an adjustment of historical facts (Hayes, 1987). The Friends of the Allies On the other hand, the allies themselves and the friends of the allies were a rather weak lot since the alliance itself was unsure of the purposes of the war. Amongst the French, there were those who actually sympathised with the plans of Nazi Germany and spied on their behalf during the Vichy times. Kitson (2006) reports that while most of the enemies were German, “there were also some French citizens, particularly from the disputed border area of Alsace, who considered themselves to be German. These people worked for the Reich out of patriotism and were often vocal in their support for the Germans (Kitson, 2006, p. 40).” The allies had not understood the rationale behind the war since several sources such as Kitson (2006), Fodor (1940) and Cairns (1974) have pointed out that the will to fight was not observed in the allies during the beginning of the war. Although the German population itself was not really enthusiastic about the war, the propaganda machine had certainly worked in the favour of the Germans. However, the drive and vision of the German leadership offered a lot more than the half hearted attempts of a counter attack by the French army. Conclusion While the causes for the start of the Second World War were many and complex, the reasons for the early defeat of the allies are certainly not as complex. The situation as it was created during the early part of the war left very little room for the allies to show any signs of pushing back the Germans. In fact, those signs could only be presented once the Russians had produced effective counters to the German offensive much later in the war. Works Cited BBC. 2002, ‘Bertelsmann admits Nazi past’, BBC.co.uk. [Online] Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2308415.stm Ellis, J. 1990, Brute Force, Penguin. Fodor, M. 1940, ‘The Blitzkrieg in the Low Countries’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 19 no. 1, p. 193-206. Ford, P. 2001, ‘Europes halting path to resolve Nazi era’, Christian Science Monitor, vol. 93, no. 132, p. 1-12. Foreign Affairs. 1941, ‘German Strategy’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 19 no. 3, p. 495-515. Hayes, P. 1987, ‘Fritz Roessler and Nazism: The Observations of a German Industrialist, 1930-37’, Central European History, vol. 20, no. 1, p. 58-80. Horne, A. 1969, To lose a battle, Little Brown & Company. Jackson, J. 2004, The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940, Oxford University Press. Kitson, S. 2006, ‘Spying for Germany in Vichy France’, History Today, Vol. 56, no. 1, p. 38-45. Time. 1939, ‘Blitzkrieger’, Time.com, [Online] Available at: http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,761969,00.html Wiesen, J. 1996, ‘Overcoming Nazism: Big business, public relations’, Central European History, vol. 29, no. 2, p. 201-237. Read More