France and the Nazi Threat: The Collapse of French Diplomacy 1932-1939 (42 page)

The air force chief of staff wanted to convince the Army High Command of the “fundamental nature of the “air battle.” If it’s lost and the enemy dominates the skies, then he may freely support his ground troops and win the battle. “The ground army troop command must do its utmost to help the air force during that initial battle.”
²⁰
The air force therefore stops being an auxiliary arm of the army.

At the time the air force was attempting to secure its independence,
²¹
but it would succeed only in part. Budget cuts meant cost reductions, so the army and air force agreed to spare the fighter units. But the army was ready to reduce the bomber units (in case of war, civilian aircraft were to be requisitioned as transport planes!). The air force, on the contrary, proposed to reduce reconnaissance units, something the army wanted no part of.

The end result was the worst imaginable compromise: the BCR or air force cruiser, a multiseater plane used as a bomber on combat missions and reconnaissance, that could be engaged either as part of the “general reserve” under the control of the air force or as part of the “cooperative air force” that the army wanted. From a technical point of view, the solution
was awful;
²²
the aircraft was rated under more specialized planes for each one of its three missions. It should be pointed out that plan 1
²³
of air force rearmament calling for building 1,023 planes was limited to prototypes of the years 1928-1930. It planned for 480 fighter planes, 471 bombers (310 of which were BCRs) and 411 reconnaissance planes. It was a victory of sorts for the air force, while the army general staff was very displeased and wanted to create its own air force. In 1937 the ministries of war and the navy requested that air force units be “permanently attributed” to their branch of the military.

Oddly enough, the Navy’s doctrine in 1936 was much more “defensive.” As Philippe Masson wrote, “At the time of the remilitarization of the Rhineland, the navy’s position, even though in a coordinated reaction it enjoyed in principle, the overwhelming superiority of the combined naval forces of France, England and Italy, it was not…any different from that of the army.”
²⁴

The navy’s doctrine came from the naval statute of 1924 based on a potential conflict with secondary European navies—namely with Italy as an ally of Germany. It must “ensure the protection of the coast lines, the security of naval communications overseas and with the Empire regarding commercial activity representing two thirds of the trade and amounting to some 32 million tons. The navy was also to protect communications between France and North Africa that in case of war could provide 300,000 troops and as many workers.”
²⁵
It was therefore not surprising that Admiral Durand-Viel, navy chief of staff, refused any offensive action in March 1936 such as the blockade of Bremen or Hamburg, the occupation of Heligoland or the capture of German ships. He would rather defend the North Sea and the Channel since the bulk of the British navy was located in the Eastern Mediterranean at the time. This situation, as we shall see, would change greatly in later years.

2.

T
HE
C
ONDITIONS OF
F
RANCE
’
S
A
RMED
F
ORCES IN
1936

Regarding ground forces, Plan
D bis
provides an accurate picture of their conditions.
²⁶
The regular army in France included twenty infantry divisions and five cavalry divisions with the fortress troops (equivalent to
nine or ten divisions) plus one white colonial division, one North African division stationed in France, and four North African divisions stationed in North Africa.

General mobilization in France, besides the reinforcement of the regular army, would provide “units in formation”: seventeen category A divisions; ten category B divisions of “battle worthy class”; eight category B divisions for “secondary missions.” The mobile force would produce two white colonial divisions; four North African divisions; and four Senegalese divisions for a total of seventy infantry divisions, five cavalry divisions and the fortress troops. These numbers should be compared to those on November 11, 1918: 109 infantry divisions and eight cavalry divisions. These fortress troops actually absorbed a good portion of troops that could have been maneuvering in the field.

Facing such numbers, according to the
Deuxième Bureau
, Germany at the beginning of 1935 had twenty-one infantry divisions and three cavalry divisions. But since reestablishing conscription on March 16, 1935, it practically reached thirty-six regular army divisions. The kind of troop strength that could be added to the regular army by the paramilitary units used as reservists was not known.

What were the main characteristics of the French army? First of all, it enjoyed unblemished prestige and an unchanged attitude. “New ideas not subjected to the test of fire found only a limited audience.”
²⁷
In 1935 the French infantry was still the
queen of battles
, the main weapon that other specialties were meant to support.”
²⁸
The main difference with 1914 was the extreme care found in every military school curriculum to spare human lives. Everything seemed to encourage slowness in the infantry. Regulations called for cautious advances, approaching marches, engagement, attack, organization of captured territory, setting up forward positions, resistance positions, secondary positions; nothing had changed since 1918.

“The doctrine requires that we not be seduced by the mirage of generalized motorization.” Besides very few motorized units, infantry regiments had no trucks of their own. That was considered “wasteful.” They were to be convoyed by regular troop transport units or by requisitioned civilian vehicles. The best option was to proceed on foot, getting everywhere without needing fuel. They were less vulnerable while columns of trucks were so cumbersome. France had many horses and fodder to spare.
²⁹

The tanks were a natural subdivision of the infantry and there were many light FT-type tanks from…1918, slow and practically blind. The
regular tanks being built were the midsize DI model (under 20 tons) that traveled at eight kilometers per hour. Tanks were not part of divisions and were kept as general reserves, given to the divisions as required. It should be pointed out that radios were beginning to be used but they were still heavy and cumbersome in 1940; the infantry preferred the telephone and dispatch riders.

Artillery
was strong and very technical. The 75 mm cannon had not yet been replaced by the 105 mm. General Maurin, the great artillery man, had invented a new method to set the range no longer at the battery level but by entire groups called the “central firing position” (later adopted by NATO). It was more reliable, faster and easier to use. But the artillery was still slow with few motorized units, relying mostly on horses to get everywhere. Horses did the job but at a speed of four kilometers per hour.

Thanks to General Weygand who was a cavalryman at heart, there were still 5 cavalry divisions. In 1932 these included one motorized brigade and two brigades on horseback. The first light mechanized division, the D.I.M., was formed in 1935 and motorization increased after that.

This mass of men—some 400,000 in peacetime, 3 million at mobilization—was very precisely organized. It was still meant to handle “the integrity of the territory.” It was slow. General Beaufre compared “the young German army” to the “French military machine.” The former had felt “the stimulating effects of defeats,” while the other suffered from the “extreme stiffness of the state.” The Germans were “free from any ties to the past.” “Our system of making war was heavy, with large concentrations, seeking the security of a continuous front did not seem attractive to them despite our prestige.” They didn’t suffer the disadvantages of “our intellectual security.”
³⁰

France still had an advantage of sorts with the
air force
. The estimate by General Christienne and by Buffotot
³¹
provides the following numbers at the beginning of 1936:

Fighter plane performance was about the same with the faster French Dewoitine 500-501 going at 360 k. per hour against the Heinkel 51 at 330 k. per hour. But while the best French bomber had a top speed of 310 k. per hour and a range of 1200 k. the new Junkers 86 went 360 k. per hour with a range of 2,000 kilometers. The balance was therefore about to shift.

France’s slight superiority was going to disappear but, unfortunately, the persistent blind faith in that advantage would linger until 1937.
³²
Specialized publications were disseminating the myth. “Today France has an excellent front line air force despite the contrary opinion of some incompetent and negative critics,” wrote
L’Aérophile
in March 1936. In April 1936
L’Aérophile
felt that the Luftwaffe was clearly inferior (lack of mid-level personnel, quality of the equipment, etc.). In December 1936 the same magazine declared that by the spring of 1938 France would have “the most powerful air force in Europe.” For the time being, “it’s reassuring to have a magnificent front line air force that was unparalleled in Europe.” “Our technology isn’t at all behind, far from it,” wrote General X in
L’Air’
s December 1, 1937, issue. Pierre Cot said that
L’Aéronautique
, edited by Henri Bouché, was “the only scientific aircraft magazine in France,” and that Bouché was the best French specialist in the field of aviation.”
³³
In 1937 Bouché was critical of “alarmism” regarding our “purported weakness.”

Yet on August 20 and 21, 1937, an unfortunate event worried public opinion: the French had been defeated in the Istres-Damascus-Paris race. The worst was that the Savoia 79 bombers of the Italian army were as fast as the French fighter planes.

This didn’t stop Pierre Dignac, a member of Parliament who was thought of as a respected specialist, to declare in a speech on December 12, 1937: “The French air force is the best in the world after Russia…the aircraft equipment is worthy of its personnel.”
³⁴
What was more serious was that the air ministers fed the illusion. This was understandable coming from Marcel Déat in March 1936.
³⁵
It’s much more surprising with Pierre Cot at the December 11, 1937, session of the Chamber
³⁶
(and in his book published in 1939), where one reads statements such as, “according to every expert the French air force has the best crews and military leadership. What’s more, the French air force is the only one to have trained and well-instructed reserves.”

We shall conclude with Friedenson and Lecuit
³⁷
: “This thinking by the bulk of public opinion until the end of 1937 can be attributed to the
chauvinism typical of French nationalism, the memory of France’s military air force superiority from 1914 to 1930, the pressure from the aircraft manufacturing industry “lobby,” the part played by propaganda to brainwash people’s thinking drummed up by a segment of the newspapers since 1914 and the very deep pacifism that encouraged French experts and leaders to reassure public opinion.”

No further illusions were possible by 1938. General Armengaud sounded the alarm in a May article in the publication
La Revue militaire générale
.
³⁸
Yet the dispute between the army and the air force continued.

Finally, concerning the
navy
, the French remained far superior to Germany while the Italian navy was just about as large. In early 1936 the French navy included three older refurbished battleships with the
Dunkerque
, whose budget was approved in 1931 and was completed in 1937, and the
Strasbourg
, which was completed in 1939. It had no real aircraft carriers (the
Béarn
was “an experimental ship.”) The French 2,500-ton destroyers outclassed the Italian models but were inferior to the German (
Nürnberg
class) and Italian (
Condottiere
class) in light cruisers. The French battleships of the
Lorraine
class were better armed than the three German “pocket battleships” of the
Deutschland
class (14,000 tons) but slower.

The following chart from the article by Philippe Masson
³⁹
illustrates the number of forces in 1936: