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Arming Against Hitler: France and the Limits of Military Planning

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Many authors have written on the fall of France in 1940 but Keisling is the first to actually examine how French military structure and policy played perhaps the most significant role in the defeat. A one year conscript army and a totally untrained reserve would have made any doctrine unusable and thus made defeat likely. With an army such as that prepared by France in 1940 it is unlikely they could have made even their own version of mechanized warfare effective. This book will put paid to the arguments that the French officers paid little or no attention to mechanization, modern doctrine or were simply negligent.

In a closely argued and meticulously researched monograph, Eugenia Kiesling argues that French military preparations prior to WWII were deficient not because of bad doctrine or slovenly preparation, but because of basic political and economic constraints that made it difficult (if not impossi- ble) to keep up with their much more numerous German neighbors. For a close study of exactly what went wrong in France in 1940 and why, this is essential reading for the student of the Second World War.

One of the main arguments of the book is that the French believed they had an effective, thorough, and well thought out doctrine. The fact that they did not was illustrated by the events of 1940 and the speed with which the country was overwhelmed.

Kiesling does and excellent job of presenting reasons why French doctrine was flawed, and also addresses why it was inadequately tested before the war. Numerous obstacles to the process are presented and explained in this well-researched account.

The implications of Kiesling's argument are profound. They suggest that no matter how thorough the planning and evaluation of a military doctrine, it can still be fundamentally flawed unless the assumptions underlying it are also tested.

Kiesling is an impressive historian and author who has substantially increased our understanding of the nature of national security planning and warfare. She convincingly argues that France's defeat in 1940 was not inevitable. Her careful and thorough use of primary source material on the evolution of French military thought and security policy demolishes many of the most prominent myths perpetuated for over two generations on the reasons for the French defeat. Her chapters on doctrine, training, and the tyranny of the mundane should be required reading for military officers and public officials working in the US NSC, Intelligence Community, and the Department of Defense.

Kiesling main thesis is that the lack of trianing of reservist and regular officers led to an overly cautious military doctrine. The beginnning of the book describes some of the crisis facing the French military. Consrcipts were poorly trained since they only had two years worth of training. The same also applied to reservist. The French army was overly strained as to whether to devote resources to the reservists or the conscripts. The schooling that French officers received was limited to their particular branch of the armed forces and lacked any geopolitics or any overview of current military operations. To make matters worse the French army lacked any cohesion. Men in the reserves would be originally in their regional unit than transferred to an new unit based on their technical skills. As a result of this policy men lacked any time to become well adjusted to their unit. The end result of these above mentioned factors was that the French developed a doctrine that was highly centralized and overly cautious. I worked reccomend this book to read alongside James Corum's "The Roots of Blitzkrieg," in order to understand the French defeat in 1940.

Without much exaggeration it could be claimed that France begin preparing for its next confrontation with Germany before the ink had dried on the signatures to the Treaty of Versailles. This made France's rapid and complete defeat at the hands of the Germans twenty years later all the more puzzling. This book provides an absolutely indispensable and detailed history of why French military planning for that event from 1919 to 1940 proved so futile.

Keisling has amassed a great deal of material not only the strategic aspect of French planning, but more remarkably on the tactical side as well. She provides a devastating and clearly accurate account of broken reserve and training systems that the French army relied on in preparation for the next war. She also provides original and significant information on French Army mechanization and motorization programs prior to 1940.

As she and other historians have pointed out the French Army of 1940 was numerically superior and better equipped than the invading German Army. But the French Army was fatally handicapped by flawed strategic and tactical doctrines as well as a lack of effective training. All this was the bitter fruits of a disastrous military system that was exacerbated by poor strategic and tactical planning and doctrines.

There is little doubt that Keisling has complete mastery of her material and has presented a unique and important aspect to the history of France and WWII.

In 1940 using a plan designed by General Manstien Germany attacked France. The campaign cut off the French from their Belgian and English Allies who were forced to retreate or surrender. Germany was then left to conquer a much reduced opposition.

At the time it was thought that Germany outnumbered the allies and had vastly superior weapons. After the war it was found that the allies in fact outnumbered the Germans and that most German weapons were either inferior to or at most equal to the allied.

This book tries to argue that the preparations made by France were a factor in the French defeat. It is hard to show that this was the case. The book parallels a debate which took place in German conentration camps during the war. The French Military tried to put the government on trial for betraying the nation and letting France be defeated. Blum the prime minister of France was able to show how he had given the army everything that it wanted.

France lost the war not because of the size of its armies or the weapons it had but because of the stupidity of its military leaders.

The book simply fails to look at France in the context of German rearmament. If it did it would show that the French program was ratinal and adequate.

All in all not worth the money.