Thunderhawk wrote:As the French/Allied leadership didnt expect a blitzkrieg then the potential to destroy a large part of the German war industry would have been rather useful for the French from a long term military view.
What? Then why didn't they invade during the Polish campaign? The French expected an onslaught, and were aware that their forces, much like the italians, looked better on paper than they were in reality (although not up to the same point as the italians).
Their plan was to hold on to their defenses and to fight the fight of their lives as the UK and Commonwealth mobilized sufficient troops to make a successful offensive into Germany plausible.
There was also a hope that the German recognition of Belgium's neutralty and the Maginot line meant that the war would take place, at least on the ground, by proxy in the Scandinavia, Africa, and
especially Yugoslavia where the French Army had detailed plans for an intervention should Germany invade to get access to the med.
As in the Great War, they also thought the Naval Blockaide of Germany would compromise the Germany War Industry, which was a mistake belief considering Germany's Industrial and Financial Pacts with the Soviet Union and Italy's Neutrality.
Even if Germany was to be defeated in the end, a protracted war in Europe would mean the end of the Anglo-French ruling entente. And that is in fact what happened, as the war lead directly to the rapid collapse of the Western European colonial empires, their economic destruction, indebtedness, and military occupation by outside powers.
+1. Really, the Brits knew what the French had come to accept even before the Great War, that #1. their populations were losing the "temperment" to maintain an empire (i.e. the population increasingly had sympathies for the national yearnings of their colonies), #2. that their industrial strength was being increasingly outstripped by that of the United States, Germany, and the Soviet Union and they would not be able maintain a military that could go "one-to-one" with any of these powers, and #3. that the biggest threats to the "status quo" were internal, rather than external factors.
Despite their tactical victory, the French and British were only nominally on the winning side of the war. In reality, victory for them would have been if the war never happened.
But what a way for the British Empire to go out. At the dusk of their Empire, they didn't just disappear into nothingness like the Romans and Soviets, they fought the biggest war in the history of humankind and came out on the winning side, one last time, all against the odds. For one flash of a moment, you could be a subject of the crown and sing Rule Britannia without irony!
But of course, Hitler could also see this vulnerability of their position and therefore kept pressing them for concessions hoping that they would peacefully give way to a German supremacy in Europe.
Yes, it is clear to me that Hitler never believed #1. that the allies would declare war on him in the first place and #2. that once they did, a negotiated peace was a month around the corner. This last point he held onto until his final days.
But doing so would be too humiliating for the Entente powers who have defeated Germany at an enormous cost just 20 years ago, plus it would arguably place them in an even worse strategic position, so they chose resistance in the end.
Yes, but not entirely. I think come the setting up of Slovakia, the establishment in England realized what hitler's real aims were and that his word was meaningless. This was Hitler invading a country that did not have a sizeable german population, against his written word of just a few months prior.
Collectively the response of the british establishment was akin to: oohhhhhh $$$$$hhhh!!!tttt!
- WHD