Could France of fought on?

[Octospire]

After the evacuations of Allied troops at Dunkirk do you think it would of been possible for the French Armed forces to fight on and hold the line or perhaps even push the Germans back?

Personally my knowledge of this particular subject is somewhat limited and I would like to hear some opinions on the subject from those of you in the know.

What I do know is the British offered support what exactly I am unsure but it must of been something substantial as Churchill wouldnt of wanted to lose Britains only ally.

Another question would be could the RAF of gone on the offensive from airfields in Central France in order to push the Germans back, fight the Battle of Britain over the skies of France instead, this would also give crucial time for the remaining French factories to go into production overdrive of all war making materials.

[Gargantua]

They surrendered because of insuficient public and political will.

The back of their army was broken,  even if they had fought on, thier doctorine, organization, and discipline/discplacement was all wrong.

They would have got their buts kicked.

[Lazarus]

There are two camps.
One that says she should have fought on until she was totaly defeated.
The other says they recognised the inevitable and  saved their country from untold  destruction and lived to fight another day.

In reality the German losses were mounting and if the fighting had continued they would have had casualty lists of Russian Front proportions. The bulk of the French Army was intact and you can not outflank someone with nowhere left to run. If they had fought it out it would have cost the Germans the bulk of their tank force.
A clue is the terms offered to France. She was not fully occupied and this was the sweetener offered to save German lives.
One can contrast the two methods.
Germany was in the same position in 1944. Defeat was inevitable but she chose to fight on. Because of this 2 million plus of her own population were killed. Her country was totaly ravaged and she gained not a single thing that was not on offer in 1944. The whole last year of the war was nothing but a complete disaster for Germany.
I believe there are those who hold up this  perverse example of insanity as some great military virtue-as if stupidity had any advantages!

[Gargantua]

Defeat was inevitable but she chose to fight on. Because of this 2 million plus of her own population were killed. Her country was totaly ravaged and she gained not a single thing that was not on offer in 1944

Actually, she didn’t CHOOSE to fight on.  The allies determined that they would only allow unconditional surrender.

Millions of people dying, the country being ravaged, etc, all would have happend anyways.

From the German outlook,  sure the dice were 2%, but better to take a gamble on trying to change their fortunes, than garuntee the same result anyways.

In fact Lazarus, and this will shock you,  the adult death rate in Germany, AFTER the war was over, was 10 times that, as it was when they were at war.

SO in a significant sense,  trying to gamble on a change of fortunes (Perhaps A-bomb development), wasn’t an unreasonable decision to make.

[CWO Marc]

@Octospire:

After the evacuations of Allied troops at Dunkirk do you think it would of been possible for the French Armed forces to fight on and hold the line or perhaps even push the Germans back?

I agree that lack of political will and a lack of good top-level military leadership were a big part of France’s problems.  From a purely technical viewpoint however – in other words, just focussing on the military mechanics – the question of whether France could have dealt successfully with the German invasion falls into three parts.

First there’s the initial stage of the invasion, when the German armoured forces punched through the Ardennes into France and toward the Channel, and then swung up to drive the main Allied forces seaward towards Dunkirk.  When faced with a Blitzkrieg attack of this type, the defender basically has two options.  Option one is to conduct a defense in depth, as the Russians did in 1941.  France is much smaller than Russia, however, and hence less suitable for this kind of defense.  Option two – which is only available if the attack is concentrated along a single narrow axis, as the German attack indeed was – is for the defender to aim his mobile forces at a point behind the main weight of the enemy armoured forces in an attempt to separate the armoured spearhead from the follow-up units (the infantry and the supply columns).  I think that NATO’s 1970s version of this concept was called FOFA – “follow-on forces attack”.  Anyway, with proper leadership, France might have been able to do this successfully during the first phase of the German attack because the German armoured units were fairly concentrated.

The second stage of the attack was the German drive down from Dunkirk into the bulk of France.  In that stage, I think the Germans were too spread out for France to have been able to use spearhead-separation tactics.  So by then, I don’t think France could have fought on successfully (particularly given the losses they’d already suffered) even if the leadership had been up to it.

The third part of the subject is whether France could have fought on “from the empire” after the fall of France – in other words, by refusing to surrender, and by continuing to use the French colonial empire as a staging area for continuing resistance against the Axis, as Churchill urged France to do.  It would no doubt have been possible, but it wouldn’t have done much to affect Axis control of France and the rest of Western Europe.  I think the main effects would have been to complicate matters for the Axis during the North African campaigns led by Rommel, and to make the struggle for naval control of the Mediterranean a bit easier for the Allies.

[Lazarus]

@Gargantua:

Actually, she didn’t CHOOSE to fight on. The allies determined that they would only allow unconditional surrender.

That does not stop them accepting terms so no they were not forced into fighting. It was a decision freely entered into and a catastrophe of her own making.

@Gargantua:

Millions of people dying, the country being ravaged, etc, all would have happend anyways.

Over 75% of the total  tonnage of all bombs were  dropped on Germany in 1944-45. For the last 12 months it would be 50%
German cities and infrastructure was devastated and 2 million + of her citizens died needlesly. If she had taken terms in 1944 all that would have been avoided. Indeed if the Generals had succeeded then those same terms would have been grabbed with both hands
I have no time for the  argument that ‘honour’ compelled her to fight on.

@Gargantua:

In fact Lazarus, and this will shock you, the adult death rate in Germany, AFTER the war was over, was 10 times that, as it was when they were at war.

It would shock anyone to learn 30 million Germans died (because of the war) after it was over.
The number is simply too high to have any credibility.
I will accept score settling went on but there is a saying, reap what you sow

[Gargantua]

Reap this

In early October 1945 the UK government privately acknowledged in a cabinet meeting that, German civilian adult death rates had risen to four times the pre-war levels and death rates amongst the German children had risen by 10 times the pre-war levels

Wiggers, Richard Dominic (2003), “The United States and the Refusal to Feed German Civilians after World War II”, in Vardy, Steven Bela; Tooley, T. Hunt, Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe, ISBN 0-88033-995-0. Page 280

I apologize Dr. Lazarus, The Adult death rate was only 4x,  It was the Child Death Rate that was 10x.

Hmm… that sounds like a pretty damn good reason to fight on to me.

That does not stop them accepting terms so no they were not forced into fighting.

Believe or knowing that your children are going to be starved to death, raped, murdered, or turned into the slaves of a soviet government, is what easily would have stopped ANYONE from surrendering - whilst there was still a chance (even if it was 2%).  In fact, the LACK of terms forced Germany into a position, where it was FORCED to fight to survive.

The number is simply too high to have any credibility.

I find what you are saying incredibly Ironic.  In our other thread, you are saying the Germans executing “millions” of POW’s.  And you don’t have a source.  But my source which I have provided, which comes from British Cabinet Meeting minutes, apparently has no credibiity.

And I don’t know where this number of 30,000,000 of yours comes from???

[Lazarus]

@Gargantua:

In our other thread, you are saying the Germans executing “millions” of POW’s   Â

No I did not.
Here is the actual post:
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=16779.msg957446#msg957446

My words are:  Is that counting the millions of POW’s they starved to death or shot on the spot?

There is no dispute 3 million  Soviet POW’s died. I referer to the millions who starved to death or were shot.
Twisting  my words to mean what you think I said will not work if I can repost the originals.
I make no distinction between those Soviets murdered on capture or slowly strarved to death in the following weeks. To me they are both inhuman acts of savages.
Do you think shooting them quickly is a worse fate?

and the links I gave you are for 1 part of the Russian Front and in the early days and not the whole war.

[Mistergreen]

Sadly Gargantua your own quote goes against what you said:

In fact Lazarus, and this will shock you,  the adult death rate in Germany, AFTER the war was over, was 10 times that, as it was when they were at war.

In early October 1945 the UK government privately acknowledged in a cabinet meeting that, German civilian adult death rates had risen to four times the pre-war levels and death rates amongst the German children had risen by 10 times the pre-war levels

I for one assume that the death rate during the war was greater then before the war.

[Lazarus]

I had picked up on it but I was not quite ready for another dogfight over precise definitions of specific words-one battle at a time!
The death rate for the war was  an aberration and thus any claim it was  exceded by a factor of 10 (or 4) in peacetime was simply not credible.
The backdrop to these claims there was a post war genocide visited on the German people is a staple of far right sites and those who believe the wrong side won in WW2.

If you are of this mindset then here is another source to re-inforce your prejudice

http://hungarianhistory.com/lib/vardy/vardy.doc

[newpaintbrush]

Lazarus, you’re going to ignore any evidence that contradicts your opinion, so what’s the point in pretending to have a discussion?

Re:  OP

After the evacuations of Allied troops at Dunkirk do you think it would of been possible for the French Armed forces to fight on and hold the line or perhaps even push the Germans back?

If the RAF had tried to base out of France, they would have had the crap kicked out of them.  The reason RAF did well in the Battle of Britain is because Germany had relatively short ranged airpower, and were fighting over strictly hostile territory, plus the Battle of the Beams &c &c.  If the RAF was based out of France, all those advantages would be 100% gone.

“Fighting the Battle of Britain over France” is so contradictory, it’s . . . well, just no, really.

–

Churchhill could claim all the cr*p he wanted.  In June 1940, UK didn’t have power to project into France, and France knew it.  IF UK had that kind of power, withdrawal from Dunkirk would not have been necessary in the first place.  As it was, the Allies can’t even claim to have been able to withdraw from Dunkirk on their own power.  Germany LET them withdraw, which gives you a good idea of which side held the upper hand, regardless of whatever that dreamer Churchhill said.  At that point, the US had not entered the Allies side, even with their industrial base.  It really did not look good for UK for a good long time at all.

–

Could France THEORETICALLY have fought on?  Sure, THEORETICALLY, if in theory you mean you might strap on a dynamite bomb and set it off in the street to protest cruelty to bunnies.  It almost certainly wasn’t going to happen, and for very good reason.

–

You just woke up ten seconds ago, and now you’re standing in your underwear with a soldier aiming a gun at you and your wife and your kids.  You keep a gun in your bedroom dresser.  You have a nosy next door neighbor that you see lifting his curtain across the street.  You know your neighbor doesn’t really like trouble, and at most has a frying pan in his house for weaponry.

There aren’t any neighbors within call, and a recent storm has blown out power and phone lines.  You know your neighbor doesn’t have a cell phone.

The soldier tells you to drop on your knees and throws you a pair of handcuffs.

Do you

1.  Jump for the gun, and risk having your wife and kids get blown away?

2.  Try to scuffle with the armed intruder and hope your nosy neighbor has a fit of heroism and rushes to your aid with a frying pan (racing downstairs, running across the street, kicking in your door, smashing the intruder over the head)?  Note that the soldier looks very big and scary, and has knives and guns all over the place, while your neighbor looks rather like a dumpling left out to seed.

3.  Try to scuffle with the armed intruder and hope your nosy neighbor jumps on his bike and pedals the fifteen miles to the nearest constabulary?  Oh, and all the constables there typically respond to everything with “uh huh”.  Like “My house is burning down and my cat stepped on a land mine” “uh huh”

You have to make a decision, right now.  One possibility that has not yet been mentioned is -

4.  Pop on the handcuffs and nod attentively.

[Lazarus]

@Bunnies:

Lazarus, you’re going to ignore any evidence that contradicts your opinion, so what’s the point in pretending to have a discussion?

Could you  be more specific as I have no idea what point you are trying to make.

Show me this evidence that contradicts……

[newpaintbrush]

Show me this evidence that contradicts……

Lazarus, you’re going to ignore any evidence that contradicts your opinion, so what’s the point in pretending to have a discussion?

[Lazarus]

@Bunnies:

Show me this evidence that contradicts……

Lazarus, you’re going to ignore any evidence that contradicts your opinion, so what’s the point in pretending to have a discussion?

So you duck the issue-as expected.

Bye.

[KurtGodel7]

Good posts, Bunnies and Gargantua! :) I feel like my work is half done before I’ve input a single character. Now it’s time for the other half.

The single best book about WWII which I’ve encountered is The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze. The book received the Wolfson History Prize, and has been praised by The Times (London), The Boston Globe, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian. Adam Tooze is an historian who also knows economics; having received a PhD in economics from the London School of Economics. He teaches history at the University of Cambridge.

Below are quotes from The Wages of Destruction

---

Grain imports in the late 1930s had run at the rate of more than 7 million tons per annum. . . . These sources of supply were now closed off by the British blockade.

---

P. 418

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Backe was in an impossible position. The Fuehrer had demanded more workers. Gauleiter Sauckel was dedicated to delivering them. Hitler and Sauckel now demanded that they be fed, which was clearly a necessity if they were to be productive. And yet, given the level of grain stocks, Backe was unable to meet this demand. What was called for was a reduction in consumption, not additional provisions for millions of new workers. The seriousness of the situation became apparent to the wider public in the spring of 1942 when the Food Ministry announced cuts to the food rations of the German population. Given the regime’s mortal fear of damaging morale, the ration cuts of April 1942 are incontrovertible evidence that the food crisis was real. Lowering the rations was a political step of the first order, which Backe would never have suggested if the situation had not absolutely required it. . . . When the reduction in civilian rations was announced it produced a response which justified every anxiety on the part of the Nazi leadership. [News of the cuts was] ‘devastating,’ like ‘virtually no other event during the war’. Studies by nutritional experts added to the regime’s concerns. . . .

Against this backdrop, there was no hope of pushing through any improvement in the rations for Sauckel’s newly arrived Ostarbeitter. . . . Whilst Sauckel’s office vainly issued memorandums calling for adequate treatment of the Ostarbeiter, hundreds of thousands of underfed and underclothed workers arrived from the Eastern territories, to find themselves penned in barbed wire encampments and facing a diet of slow starvation. . . .

At a meeting with DAF officials in early September, Sauckel stamped his foot. The Fuehrer himself had made it clear that it was completely unacceptable for anybody to be starving on the territory of Germany, when the Wehrmacht had full control of the Ukraine.

---

pp. 541 - 543

The result of all this was that Germany became even more aggressive about extracting food from its eastern territories; thereby increasing the number of famine deaths in the east. Doing so allowed Germany to avoid widespread malnutrition among its civilian populace. But its food supply was not sufficient to both achieve that and avoid widespread starvation among the millions of Soviet POWs.

Lazarus wrote, “I make no distinction between those Soviets murdered on capture or slowly strarved to death in the following weeks. To me they are both inhuman acts of savages.” He has presented us with a half truth. It is correct to state that millions of Soviet POWs starved to death in German captivity. It is wildly inaccurate to imply (as he has) that the reason for the starvation was because Hitler or other Nazi leaders were suddenly seized with the savage desire to exterminate their own labor force during the middle of a war! Millions of POWs starved to death because the British food blockade achieved its intended task: it created famine conditions within Germany.

If Lazarus’s comments about Soviet POWs are half truths, his remarks about postwar occupation policy are entirely untrue, and bear no connection to reality. Nothing he’s written on that point is credible.

[Lazarus]

Yes in the Kingdom of the one eyed all the actions of Hitler are excusable.
You should read up  more on the experience  Allied troops crossing from Holland into Germany when pursuing fleeing Germans. They  were amazed at the contrast between the food available once the border was crossed.
The Germans were found to have meat and preserved food in abundance whilst the rest of Europe was strictly rationed.
Simply put they had looted the whole of the continent to make sure their own population was well fed and they cared nothing that  everyone else starved.
One can picture poor Adolf weeping at the news Soviet POW’s were dying. He was probably as shocked at this news as he was to learn someone had been murdering the Jews without his authority!
An unreconstructed Nazi apologist is always going to try and find ways to shift the blame. Unfortunately outside of Stormfront he is peeing into the wind.

[newpaintbrush]

@Lazarus:

So you duck the issue-as expected.

Lazarus, you’re going to ignore any evidence that contradicts your opinion, so what’s the point in pretending to have a discussion?

[Lazarus]

@Bunnies:

Lazarus, you’re going to ignore any evidence that contradicts your opinion, so what’s the point in pretending to have a discussion?

So you duck the issue-as expected.

[Lazarus]

One only need to look at the way the Germans allowed food into Leningrad during the seige or how they fed the starving  civilians in the Warsaw Ghetto to confirm that they would never let anyone starve if they could help it……

[newpaintbrush]

@Lazarus:

@Bunnies:

Lazarus, you’re going to ignore any evidence that contradicts your opinion, so what’s the point in pretending to have a discussion?

So you duck the issue-as expected.

So you duck the issue-as expected.