Customer Reviews

The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940 (Making of the Modern World)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Much has been written about various aspects of World War II, but books continue to come out. Some do re-evaluations using new information, some take a different look at old information and try to show it in a new light. Julian Jackson has written a very interesting book on the German invasion of France in 1940, called (simply enough) The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940. In it, Jackson attempts to show his version of why France fell, and whether or not it was inevitable. Were the Germans just too powerful? Was the new Blitzkrieg warfare just too much for the incompetent French soldiers? Jackson uses personal memoirs, eyewitness accounts, and diaries to provide this vivid account of six weeks of hell. Not only that, but he places the fall in historical context. Put all together, and it's a fascinating book.

First, Jackson tells the story of the invasion. He breaks this down into four narrative chapters that explore this from a different angle. The first one contains the military aspects of the defeat. The second looks at the relations between France and its allies, mainly Britain (though it does examine other countries, such as the support pact with Poland). This examines how the British and French looked at each other, along with how they cooperated in war (and how they fought amongst themselves as well). The third chapter looks at the political aspects of the defeat, while the fourth looks at the French people. Then Jackson brings them all together, looking at how they all relate to each other, and shows how each one can be seen as part of the defeat, but yet none of them can be singled out as the main cause. Finally, Jackson looks at the consequences of the defeat, including how it coloured French thinking for years to come, even reaching as far forward as today. Much of French foreign policy has referred back to this time in their history.

I was really impressed with the way Jackson told the story. His writing is very evocative and his use of sources from memoirs of generals and politicians to the common soldier is extremely well done. I have read a few books on this aspect of the war (or that have included it, anyway), but never have I heard from the soldier's point of view. This is becoming the norm in World War II history books recently (see An Army at Dawn), and I like it. I think it gives us a better picture of warfare and how it affects the soldiers who are fighting it, rather than just dry strategy and tactics. That's not the only thing that's good about it, though. Since Jackson is examining the defeat from multiple sides, it wouldn't have been surprising to see him tell the story of the invasion and then look at the other aspects of it, thus having some narrative repetition. Jackson avoids this, seamlessly linking the chapters so that they tell a continuous story, even as he looks at the different points.

The most interesting part of the book is when Jackson is looking at the different causes of the loss. The standard is to blame the horrible French military, calling them cowards and (as the stereotype goes) saying how easily the French surrender. Mosier's The Blitzkrieg Myth places a large portion of the blame on the British. Jackson shows, however, that the main reason was the bad intelligence that the French had, which caused them to send their best troops against a German feint. He takes pains to point out that there was no one specific cause, however. He agrees with Mosier that the British pulling back didn't help, and he mentions the refusal of the Belgians to coordinate defense strategy with the French and the British until after Germany invaded (they had declared neutrality). The coordination between British and French forces was not the best either. Thus, the situation was more complex then many claim. The French soldier fought with élan when he didn't feel abandoned by his superiors.

I also found the historical context fascinating. Jackson doesn't just tell the reader about what happened, but he examines the next 50 years as well, and how the Fall affected France. French historians still don't talk about it much, and when they do discuss it, it's more of a condemnation of the Third Republic government before the war than anything else. Jackson's book does much to alleviate that problem. To many, the Fall of France was an inevitable result based on the "decadence" of France in the pre-war era. Jackson refutes that brilliantly, saying that the war was actually quite winnable if executed properly.

It's hard to find any real faults with this book. While nothing is perfect, any problems I had with the book are so niggling as to be unmentionable. It is a very short book (only 249 pages, not including notes and bibliography), but it feels deep. I could have hoped for even a bit more depth, but Jackson uses the scale marvelously, packing a lot of information and evaluation into these 249 pages. There is no padding, and little extraneous information included. Between The Fall of France and The Blitzkrieg Myth, I've found some fascinating short history books, and as long as they don't read like summaries, I hope that this is a trend.

If you are at all interested in World War II, this is a book that you should pick up.

This is an excellent book by a distinguished scholar of French history. Relatively short at about 250 pages, the book provides a narrative of the fall of France, a thoughtful analysis of the pre-war French politics and society, a very nice concise history of the French Army leading up to the War, an insightful study of Franco-British relations, and a study of the response of the French populace to war. The book concludes with a short section on the consequences for post-war France of the conquest and some historiographic analysis. Jackson is a clear writer and the book is organized well. Jackson is concerned particularly with examining prior explanations for the Fall of France. One is that the Frence Army was overwhelmed by the superior Germans. Jackson provides an excellent analysis of the weaknesses of the French Army, which are shown to be more organizational and doctrinal than technological. It is clear also that the French Army suffered from poor leadership and spectacularly poor communications. The best French formations fought German units to a standstill. It was the French misfortune, a combination of luck for the Germans, bad judgement and intelligence on the part of the French, and excellent German leadership in the field, that the worst French units bore the brunt of the initial German assault. Jackson deals with the question of whether defeat was preordained by the strains and divisions experienced by French society in the 1930s. This is the so-called 'decadence' argument, a favorite of right wing ideologues, both during and after the war. Jackson shows that despite the considerable difficulties imposed by the Depression and an unfavorable international situation, successive French governments did fairly well in re-equiping the French Army. If the Germans had been stalemated in Belgium during the opening months of the war, which was the French plan, and which could have happened if the Germans hadn't altered their plans, French and British military production would have outstripped German armaments production. The fault lines in French society and politics really mattered after the collapse of the French Army, resulting in a collaborationist government composed of reactionaries bent on purging French society of undesirable elements. Jackson makes a series of interesting comparisons with the opening weeks of WWI and shows that, if anything, the government and military of pre-WWII France were better prepared for combat. A combination of poor leadership and the speed of events prevented the French government and military from recovering after the initital setbacks. If anything, Jackson is too- easy on the leadership of the French Army. Not only did the French High Command botch the war, but with defeat looming, General Weygand and his fellows took the line that the Army embodied the real heart of the French nation and put maintaining the Army in some form above the civilian republic. It is interesting to compare this book with Ernest May's Strange Victory, another recent book on this topic. This is a much superior book. May's book is longer, has less actual historical detail, and quite a bit of it is devoted to tendentious theorizing about decision making. Jackson's nuanced account and analysis gives a much better view of the events and their background.

Julian Jackson comes to an interesting thesis in that it was the strategic mistakes and flawed organization of the French army and not the corrupt Third Republic that was reponsible for the French defeat in 1940. Julian supports his point by stating that the British were just as passive as the French in the thirites and the Germans were reluntctant to go to war in 1939, and lacked trucks and ground support planes needed for an modern army. Jackson also compares the French nation's response to the Germans in 1914 with that in 1914, in which the French suffered from similiar poltical problems and had a flawed military strategy, but the French in 1914 were saved by Von Kluck's turn east. Jackson places overall blame on Gamelin's decision to position his forces far north into Holland in order to prevent the Britich from escaping to the sea, but this led to the Ardennes area being poorly manned by third rate divisions. While the French divisions in Holland fought valiantly,the doomed divisons around the Ardennes quickly crumbled. Jackson is also critical about the amount of training received within the French army. The French trained their conscripts for a only a year and that this made the French army loose cohesion and mental flexibality in battle. The only problem with Jackson's arguement is that it was the political divisions in France that prevented the French army from expanding the term of conscription and forming a more effecive army. Despite this flaw, I would reccomend this book to anyone interested in a new and interesting thesis about the fall of France.

This is an unusually good, short, very readable history of a difficult and contentious event, to which justice has not previously been done. I have read the usual accounts in the general histories (Churchill, Liddell Hart, Keegan and others) of the Second World War, as well as Shirer's "The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940", and none of them compare with Jackson's book. He has a very clear and precise writing style and tells the story in a well-organized manner. His citations of French, British, and German sources are very complete and to the point. His conclusions and the evidence he bases them on are very clear, leaving one free to agree or disagree as one wishes. He seems to have no agenda other than the desire to fulfill the historian's first obligation, which is to tell us WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED. He also gives a rather complete discussion, for such a short book, of previous accounts and interpretations of The Fall of France.

After carefully considering the various previous explanations that have been put forth, he in the end attributes the French defeat primarily to a miscalculation by the French High Command as to where the Germans would attack, namely through the Ardennes Forest. It should be noted that the Allied High Command - Eisenhower, Bradley, Montgomery - made the same mistake only four years later, in November, 1944. They also assumed that the Germans could not mount an armored attack through that same Ardennes Forest, with near disastrous results for the Allies. Such an attack had been predicted as early as 1933 by B.H. Liddell Hart. His warnings of course were ignored in both 1940 and 1944.

Even so, the key factor in the German victory, which surprised the Germans themselves, seems to have been the speed of the German attack. Guderian in fact was ordered to slow down and even halt after crossing the Meuse because the German High Command feared a French flanking attack from the south. Guderian offered his resignation to Kleist, who relented, and so the attack went on. The French in fact did finally attack the German flank, but too slowly and too late. They were just not prepared for the speed with which aggressive armored operations could be conducted. Jackson demonstrates clearly that the margin of German victory over France was much closer than it later seemed in retrospect, after the collapse of French morale and the ascendency of Vichy.

Jackson's analysis of the long-term political effects of 1940 on the subsequent course of events of the twentieth century in France, Europe, and the world is quite illuminating, one of the best sections of the book. He uses the quite different responses to 1940 of two men, Charles de Gaulle and Francois Mitterand, very effectively to illustrate his points.

The story of the Fall of France demonstrates, I believe, one unfortunate disadvantage of consensual, democratic government as opposed to tyranny, and that is that democracies are slow to mobilize for war and reluctant to throw the first punch. This gives the single-minded aggressor the opportunity to make that first punch a knock-out blow, which is what seems to have happened to France in 1940, from which France may not yet have fully recovered.

Related reading:

B.H. Liddell Hart - "History of the Second World War" (L.H. says
"I told you so" repeatedly.)
John Keegan - "Six Armies in Normandy" (How to stop a
blitzkrieg.)

Highly recommended.

It is difficult to better the comments in the other five-star reviews of this book, but I'll try: This is how historical accounts should be written: with care, attention to detail, faithfulness to sources, originality of ideas and an exciting writing style. I've read quite a lot about this period and these events but I was delighted by the many new things I learned. All theses are balanced and fair, and the author has a non-intrusive way of dealing with large moral issues.

I won't attempt to repeat information outlined in the exceptional previous reviews. This book provides a good companion to Ernest R. May's STANGE VICTORY Hill & Wang 2000. Although of the two, I find this book more interesting in that the author covers all aspects of French society as well as the impact of the defeat and how it was handled. He points out both the French and the British anticipated a long war, but they expected to have two years to complete gearing up for it.
Part of the German success he attributes to a handfull of aggressive tactical commanders who outran the conservative wishes of the German senior command. He highlights the abysmal command and control problems of the French. Where properly led and handled, he believes the French infantry were formidible although there was a desperate shortage of artillary and especially antitank weapons. Except for the poor management of the aircraft situation, French industry by May 1940 was producing weapons at a respectable rate.
This original work provides considerable insight into the factors leading to the German dramatic victory. He also points out there were significant people around the leadership who didn't want a war with Germany, although none of them had the levers of power in their hands at that time. I believe this work makes an important contribution to understanding that time and its legacy. Its purchase is recommended to anyone interested in history or France as well as those who follow military affairs.

It's strange how this event, which unfolded now almost 70 years ago and a continent away, continues to hold a certain place in the American mind. It's a story learned at an early age. In truth, it deserves this place. 1940 was the worst disaster, the furthest the West has gone towards defeat.

All these books stretching back to Bloch's "Strange Defeat" aim to answer the question--how did it come to this? There's a familiar litany if you have read the topic before, e.g.:

Decadence,demography,economics,pacifism,communism,the trauma of WWI,the French infantryman,the Maginot line,the British,the Blitzkrieg,the Panzers,outdated doctrine,failure of leadership,failure of strategy,failure of intelligence, and simple defeat on the battlefield.

Jackson leans towards the the last, but his final thesis is not closed to more predetermined causes. Jackson's method is to engage the historiography as he tells the story of the campaign. He posits the various catastrophe narratives (inevitable demography), and asks what evidence exists for them (well, France's army was larger than Germany's in 1940).

I applaud this method, which is superior to the polemics this subject seems to attract. But this book is too short; there isn't enough space to really evaluate the claims. One finishes the book unconvinced. To really demonstrate that the Battle of France was a military contingency, that if only divisions X,Y,Z were in the Ardennes instead of Belgium everything would be different, would require a truly detailed military history. I suspect there would be no lack of material if you devoted your life to 1940, and you might still fail to come up with a satisfying answer. Still, this subject is waiting for its door-stopper, its version of Richard Evans. Someone needs to write the 1000 page opus that tells plainly what happened on those clear days in May.

Professor Jackson's study of the various factors that contributed to the seemingly easy German victory leaves the reader with the distinct impression that none of this was inevitable and that France fell victim to a series of military, political and international missteps that left it's army and ultimately the entire country completely vulnerable.

Focusing on the military aspects, Jackson makes it clear that leading up to the war the French army was evenly matched and in some respects had technological advantages. It's demise was related to strategic errors and disagreements among leadership that hindered the army's ability to coordinate.

The country was haunted by recent memories of the First World War, which was largely fought on French soil and the strategy of deploying the armies in Belgium at the outbreak of hostilities to avoid a repeat of this played right into the German plan.

Domestic politics were equally culpable with the left and the right taking very different views of how France should react to the crisis.

This book is a well researched, scholarly account of all these historically significant threads. It weaves the factors together brilliantly, revealing the characters and personalities of the major players while relating the major events leading up to the collapse in clear fashion.

Certainly enhanced my understanding of these events.

It is an excellent background to why France fell so cheaply.
Details clearly the confusion after 1918, the pacifism, communism, rising prices, boredom, spineless politicians (Gamelin is a politician).

Both scholarly and entertaining, this is one really really fun read.

The final chapter alone is worth the price of the book. As though in answer to the questions, "Why is the collapse of France in 1940 important, and why do we keep reading and writing about it?", Jackson weaves a fascinating tale of the aftereffects of June 1940. He argues convincingly that the fall of France began a chain-reaction that turned a rather circumscribed European conflict into a world war. (Briefly: France's collapse brought Italy into the war; which meant Britain had to focus on the Mediterranean at the expense of the Far East; thus Japan was able to see its advantage in Singapore, etc.) Even better, Jackson delineates the long-term ramifications of 1940 on French outlook and politics for the next four or five decades.

Postscript: The only bad thing about the book is its subtitle, which was probably added by the publisher. The 'Nazis' did not invade France in 1940. The German army did, as it had twice before in the previous seventy years. Had the 'Nazis' been fighting the French army, France would not have fallen.