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Strange Victory: Hitler's Conquest of France

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Before the Nazis killed him for his work in the French Resistance, the great historian Marc Bloch wrote a famous short book, "Strange Defeat", about the treatment of his nation at the hands of an enemy the French had believed they could easily dispose of.

In Strange Victory, the distinguished American historian Ernest R. May asks the opposite question: How was it that Hitler and his generals managed this swift conquest, considering that France and its allies were superior in every measurable dimension and considering the Germans' own skepticism about their chances?

Strange Victory is a riveting narrative of those six crucial weeks in the spring of 1940, weaving together the decisions made by the high commands with the welter of confused responses from exhausted and ill-informed, or ill-advised, officers in the field.

Why did Hitler want to turn against France at just this moment, and why were his poor judgment and inadequate intelligence about the Allies nonetheless correct? Why didn't France take the offensive when it might have led to victory? What explains France's failure to detect and respond to Germany's attack plan? One will have to decide on their own answers. It is May's contention that in the future, nations might suffer strange defeats of their own if they do not learn from their predecessors' mistakes in judgment.

Thoroughly researched, Ernest May writes a dramatic narrative-and reinterpretation-of Germany's six-week campaign that swept the Wehrmacht to Paris in spring 1940. Besides his point of view to be read and pondered, several intriguing pictures and maps are included.

In this interesting book, Prof. May is concerned with determining why the Germans conquered France at the outset of WWII. He takes pains to rebut common misconceptions about the fall of France. The most important misconception is that the Germans were destined to win because of overwhelming technological and military superiority. While other authors have commented on this point, May shows well that the French and British Armies had superior manpower, were at least equivalent in the air, and had real advantages in armor capabilities and artillery. The Allies would also enjoy the tactical advantage of defending. May concentrates on how decisions were made and why decision making in Germany, France, and Britain was structured as it was. This results in an overlapping series of sections devoted to the crucial Allied and German decisions. The first section is devoted to why the Allies failed to confront Germany over the acquisitions of Austria and Czechoslovakia. Key issues here were the limitations imposed by domestic democratic politics and the inability of Allied leaders to understand that Hitler actually wanted war. This is an understandable failure. Chamberlain and Daladier, the latter a decorated veteran of the Western Front in WWI, thought that war would be catastrophic (they were correct,)and combat inconclusive (they were wrong), and couldn't imagine that any political leader with a shred of sense would choose war. Looking back over the 20th century, individuals like Hitler are depressingly familiar - Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, Saddam Hussein - the list is easy to compile. Prior to the 30s, however, there had been no one on the European scene like Hitler since the time of Napoleon. As May points out, moreover, the position of the Western leaders was not based on a perception of French and British weakness but rather on the understanding, shared by the German military, that France and Britain enjoyed superiority.

The next set of decisions examined by May are the failure of the French and British to attack Germany during the invasion of Poland. Here, May excoriates the French in particular for the their timidity and lack of imagination. Finally, there is a sustained and excellent series of chapters on German and Allied, particularly French, planning for the anticipated invasion of France. May details the numerous crucial differences between the behavior of decision makers on both sides. Particularly important to May is the comparison of decision making procedures between the two sides, a comparison which exposes the inferiority of Allied command. Poor intelligence gathering, poorer intelligence interpretation, lack of coordination between intelligence services and operational planning, mediocre leadership within the French Officer Corps, lack of interservice cooperation, and poor relations between political and military leaders were all features of the Allied effort. The Germans, in contrast, clearly made the most of their comparatively limited resources. May is careful also to stress that while the Germans were good, they were also incredibly lucky. A huge series of contingencies had to break their way and this is what happened. For example, if the Germans had attacked in the winter of 1939-1940, as Hitler wanted originally, their existing attack plan would probably have resulted in a stalemate in Belgium. A variety of fortunate events led them to postpone the invasion and reformulate their attack plan into the successful assault through the poorly defended Ardennes region.

This book has some deficiencies. It is well written and very well researched. May succeeds in avoiding anachronistic judgements and gives a good sense of the perspectives of key decision makers uncontaminated by knowledge of what would follow. By covering a whole series of decisions, however, May dilutes the impact of the book. A good comparison is Richard Frank's Downfall, a book about the decision to use nuclear weapons to end WWII. Frank's concentration on a single decision gave his book dramatic focus without sacrificing the import of the book. May is very interested in the nature of executive decision making in the arena of international affairs. He would like readers to draw conclusions from this book. He does point out some similarities between France in the 30s and contemporary America; a military nervous of engagement without huge political support, a reluctance to risk casualties, and reliance on technology. But, he is careful to avoid facile historical generalizations. Indeed, one of his points is that historical generalization can be profoundly misleading. His final conclusion is that decision makers should be smart, critical, and embrace procedures that test their assumptions. Sensible, but I don't think you need a 400 page plus book to prove this point.

I was amazed to find this book so shabbily reviewed! This is a work of brilliant scholarship and well written. One of the reviewers commented that the book is not original and that the fall of France was not strange. Originality exists on different levels. That human failings were behind the fall of France was commented upon almost immediately, beginning virtually on day one with Churchill's "The battle of France is over; the Battle of Britain must now begin" speech. But to document these failings, to detail the mistakes made, to prove that it was human failings at the heights of command in the French Army and polity, rather than equipment failures or unusual brilliance of the German high command, are no mean feat. Moreover, May's research is exhaustive. So many scholars today have a theory and tailor the research to support that theory. To this they add footnotes and a lengthy bibliography to convince the reader that they have been scholarly. This is not what May has done. He has pieced together from thousands of sources a very complex story, which has enabled him to tell that story "the way it really happened." Anybody who does that, especially in this day of jet-set historians, deserves the highest accolades. I doubt that any of the reviews given here are by people with May's expertize on the subject; yet they have the temerity of to dump on him. With a work like this, the only justifiable criticism is to find factual discrepancies, citing source and page. Noticeably, there are none in the reviews submitted.
Professor May has written an excellent book and he is to be praised and congratulated on his achievement.

Harvard historian Ernest May has written an excellent, detailed account of why France fell, and fell so quickly, in May of 1940. He takes the title of his book, Strange Victory, from Marc Bloch's book, Strange Defeat. Bloch was a French historian and soldier who wrote his account shortly after the French debacle. Bloch stressed the defeatism of the French soldiers and the disorganization of the French Army command, which he saw personally. His book strongly reinforced the idea, common after the shockingly quick defeat, that France was a rotten apple waiting to be plucked from the tree.

May disputes Bloch's account. He notes that French aircraft and armor were equal to or sometimes superior to that of the Germans. France held a slight edge in the number of first line troops. Morale was generally good among French soldiers (and not so good among the Germans, including the Generals, who mistrusted Hitler.) May posits that Germany succeeded because Hitler had superior strategic insight, including a better understanding than did his generals of the passivity and ineptitude of the British and French military command. Germany outwitted France on the battlefield by sending its main thrust through the Ardennes, a move that surprised the French and to which they were slow, fatally slow, to react. French troops often fought bravely, but their commanders did not have them in the right position, especially their first line units. Germany had a crucial advantage in military intelligence, particularly in their ability to interpret various bits of evidence and to weave a coherent pattern from it to inform their front-line commanders. The French intelligence service, by contrast, attracted lesser-grade officers who often transmitted undigested information, without analysis, to the French command.

In short, May thinks that it was possible for France to defeat Germany. The French Army was considered the best in the world. Far from being defeatist, May cites contemporary sources expressing great confidence in any clash of arms with the Germans. Churchill said, in a House of Commons debate, "Thank God for the French Army." Specifically, May feels France missed a golden opportunity by failing to attack Germany in the Fall of 1939 while German troops were crushing Poland. But at no time did any senior French or British official propose such an operation.

May's book devotes its first 380 pages to explaining the state of France and the French Army in the pre-war period. This is the best part of the book. He is especially good in comparing Hitler's bold thinking and decisive strokes with the paralysis that gripped French (and British) politicians. He is perhaps less thorough in describing the "Battle of France" itself, which he does in about 80 pages. If his thesis, that the issue was decided on the battlefield, is to be proved, in my view he needed to develop that thesis more carefully by examining closely the battlefield action. He certainly does remind us that, when well led, some French troops fought bravely. But overall, Marc Bloch is more convincing in showing us dispirited French soldiers, confused, despairing, ready to surrender. This attitude was demonstrated by the French political leadership. Reynaud, the French Premier, telephoned Churchill at night after learning of the Germany breakthrough at Sedan, saying: "We have been defeated!" And May cites Bloch's description of French General Blanchard: "During all that time, he sat in tragic immobility, saying nothing, doing nothing, but just gazing at the map spread on the table between us, as though hoping to find on it the decision which he was incapable of taking."

May has given us a fine description of pre-war France, its political tensions, and its inefficient military set up. He does a nice job of drawing morals from the French experience, the most important of which probably is, if you're successful at doing something, you're likely to be blindsided from a completely unexpected direction (read Trade Towers and Anthrax.) But he probably gives too little credence to how sick French society was in the 1930's and how this affected their willingness to fight. Read Eugene Weber's The Hollow Years for more on this. Marc Bloch captures this defeatism in Strange Defeat, which should be read together with Professor May's fine book to get a more balanced view of the French defeat.

Something potential readers of this book should be aware of is that May devotes much of his work to analysis and description of the lead-up to the Battle of France, and his treatment of the battle gets more and more condensed as we approach its end: Dunkirk gets all of half of one page, and the period after Dunkirk which saw some of the best fighting by the French against long odds gets a mere half-paragraph. In fact, the author himself writes that after the Ardennes breakthrough, "the rest of the story of the Battle of France can be abbreviated." (pg. 434) I found the hasty ending to the book to be quite disappointing, and those looking for any in-depth writing on that half of the battle should look elsewhere - I recommend Phillip Warner's book "The Battle of France" as an alternative.

At its best, what is known as "revisionist history" helps us look at an historical event from a different, stimulating, even important perspective. Unfortunately, "revisionist history" has developed something of a bad reputation in recent years, due mainly to some bizarre cases of people actually DENYING that an event, in particular the Nazi Holocaust, occurred at all. It's one thing to say that if Lee had won at Gettysburg, then the South would have won the Civil War, but it's another thing to deny that the Civil War ever happened! Fortunately, denial is not at all what "Strange Victory" is about. Instead, this is "revisionist history" at its best - brilliant, wise, troubling, even mind-boggling. If Ernest May is correct, than all of history could easily have turned out far differently, if only...

Basically, what Ernest May does in "Strange Victory" is to present a well-argued case that the Nazi victory over France in 1940 not only was far from inevitable - in a Hegelian, Marxist, or any other sense -- but if anything that the ALLIES should have defeated the NAZIS - and fairly easily, at that!

Personally, I think the interesting question with a lot of history is why do people so often take it as a given that just because something happened, that it was preordained to happen and/or could not have happened otherwise? And yet, we know that random events like weather (for instance, fog on the East River on the night of Aug. 29, 1776, which permitted Washington to escape unnoticed by the British and thus keep the Revolution alive to fight another day; or the terrible Russian winter of 1941/1942 helped prevent the Nazis from conquering the Soviet Union; the death of Alexander the Great; etc.) can have tremendous implications for the course of history.

Basically, this comes down to two opposing views: 1) the Hegelian/Marxist view that history is "inevitable", or at least deterministic in the sense that it is driven by forces that humans have little control over; and 2) the view that there is little, if anything, preordained about history, and that the belief in inevitability really stems from things like "hindsight bias," which makes history appear far more pre-ordained than it really is. In "Strange Victory," Ernest May offers us an excellent example of the second category of analysis, helping us to, as Oxford scholar (and author of the controversial revisionist history, "The Pity of War") Niall Ferguson puts it, "recapture the chaotic nature of experience and see that there are no certain outcomes." The bottom line is that just because something happened a certain way doesn't mean it HAD to have happened that way, and the Nazi victory over France in 1940, as laid out in "Strange Victory," is one of those cases.

So how, then, does May explain (as he puts it) the question: "if the Allies in May 1940 were in most respects militarily superior, were not badly led, and did not suffer from demoralization (not yet, at least), what then accounts for Germany's six-week triumph?" First, May persuasively discounts the three generally accepted explanations: 1) moral "laxness" and an unwillingness to fight on the Allied side (according to May, the French and British were confident, expected to win, fought well and courageously, won battles, and suffered many casualties); 2) a crushing German military superiority (the Allies actually were better equipped for war, according to May); and 3) far better German than allied leadership (May presents plenty of evidence of incompetence on both sides and at all levels).

What then, led to the Nazis' swift victory? To quote May, "More than anything else, this happened because France and its allies misjudged what Germany planned to do. If leaders in the Allied governments had anticipated the German offensive through the Ardennes, even as a worrisome contingency, it is almost inconceivable that France would have been defeated when and as it was. It is more than conceivable that the outcome would have been not France's defeat but Germany's and, possibly, a French victory parade on the Unter den Linden in Berlin."

Of course, this raises the next question: WHY did the Allies so badly misjudge the situation, even with excellent intelligence (including spies in the German government high up in the German intelligence apparatus) and May explains this as well, pretty much in one word: arrogance. Specifically, the Allies were overconfident, disbelieving that Hitler would dare launch a "reckless land offensive" against the more powerful Allies, and certainly not in the way that he did! Besides arrogance, May raises another interesting factor, namely the Allied concern with minimizing loss of life (largely in reaction to the carnage experienced only one generation earlier), and the related heavy reliance on technology (the "Maginot Line") as a substitute for manpower. Sound familiar? Well, if not, you might want to check out specifically the "Powell Doctrine" and in general the post-Vietnam War reluctance by the United States to risk casualties, plus the heavy U.S. reliance on technology - whether it be "stealth", "smart bombs", airpower, "Star Wars," or whatever. This was in great evidence during "Operation Desert Storm," as well as in the Kosovo campaign. Finally, May, in what I find to be his weakest point, cites the inherent nature of democracies, which generally have a more "cumbersome" (and time-consuming) decision making process than non-democracies.

In sum, this is a fascinating, important book, with relevance for today's policymaking. Personally, I strongly recommend that our top military and political leaders read this book and absorb its lessons, or someday soon we too could become the victims of a "Strange Victory"...

Much of what Harvard historian Ernest May presents in this fascinating and well written book detailing the amazing circumstances surrounding the inexplicably quick defeat of the Allied forces in France at the hands of the Wehrmacht in May and June 0f 1940 is beyond dispute; numerically and technologically the combined forces of the French, British and other forces outgunned and overshadowed their Nazi opponents. Yet in terms of leadership, military philosophy, and a resident willingness to face the true nature of the threat that faced them, they were miserably much more deficient. In this masterfully argued book, Professor May chooses to place most of the stress for this stunning reversal of fortune on the shoulders of the admittedly inept leadership and lack of imagination of the Allied leaders, both military and political.

While such an interpretation is indeed hard to argue with, stressing it so prominently tends to belie a welter of complex interacting factors that the author gives short shrift to. For example, anyone familiar with other excellent books detailing the quick defeat and capitulation of the Allied forces such as William Shirer's "The Fall Of The Third Republic" or Phillipe Burrin's "France Under The Germans" understands the massive effect of other salient factors in the collapse of the third republic and the allied forces, factors including reluctance to produce war materials in the midst of the Depression's deprivations, the deeply painful and heartfelt memories associated with the possibility of repeating another bloodbath like that of the "Great War", and the sheer fact that most of the civilized intelligentsia throughout Europe, including those in Germany itself, believed that only a madman would start another such holocaust. Indeed, William Shirer actually lived in both Paris and Berlin during the period in question, and his own explanation of what happened and why is much more complex than is Professor May's. By the way, the fact that Hitler was indeed such a psychopath was not as clear then as it is in retrospect. Therefore, in my opinion, simply laying the blame on the Allies' admittedly execrable failures in leadership and amazing lack of imagination is a reductionistic exercise in describing some quite necessary but certainly not sufficient conditions to explain the stunning reversal the quick Nazi victory represented.

All of these factors as well as a general failure of nerve and a shameful moral cowardice on the part of the leaders led to a general discounting of the horrific possibility of another war. This isn't to quibble with the accuracy of the extensive research in the book, nor to take issue with its entertaining and edifying narrative. Rather, it is to contest the author's unnecessarily narrow attribution of cause to the obvious aspects of failures in both civic and military leadership. One need not go far from the case at hand to demonstrate how important factors other than leadership are in determining the outcome of military confrontation. For example, the debacle in Russia during the first year of Operation Barbarossa is largely attributable to a massive failure of imaginative leadership. In many ways one can persuasively argue that the failure of Soviet leadership from Stalin down were far more catastrophic in terms of the defeats and loss of life (given conservative estimates of 6 to 8 million men lost the first year alone) than those in France. Yet the Soviets persevered, often in spite of the terribly inept leadership of the purge-ravaged officer corps of the Soviet military.

Clearly, then, there is more to such terrible defeats than a question of leadership. None of this is intended to minimize the value of the book, but rather to pre-warn the reader that the author appears to have an ulterior motive in mind when drawing out his quite persuasive argument. This becomes apparent as he draws some quite stunning parallels between the mindset of the Allied leaders and our own increasingly complacent military trends of our times; for example, the reliance on technological edges, our curious aversion to recognizing casualties are an integral aspect of military operations (a la Kosovo), and the stupefying delays and deferrals contemporary politicians make while searching desperately for easy political solutions to obvious military situations. In this I agree with his conclusions concerning the lessons to be drawn from the fall of France.

Indeed, if we are to learn anything from history, it is that the single best way to forestall massive military engagements one must be willing to act quickly and decisively to convince potential foes the risk isn't worth the possible gains. As the late George Santayana said, "those who do not learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them". To think otherwise is to court the same kinds of disastrous delusions and wishful thinking that led to the "strange victory" described in the book. Still, Professor May argues (unnecessarily in my opinion) on behalf of an overly simplistic interpretation of the circumstances surrounding the fall of France. Surely any student of the Allies'disastrously consistent acts of appeasement of Chancellor Hitler action in the late 1930s understands the dangers inherent in such a policy. As the good professor contends, it would be even more dangerous for us to not take heed of the lessons he has laid out so clearly for our considerable edification. Enjoy!

Ernest May makes the case that the French army was not worse than the German army; its generals were just incompetent. This is an interesting (and probably accurate) distinction to make, but the difference between being a badly led army and a bad army is not an obvious one. No modern historian claims that the French had poor equipment or insufficient numbers, but only that French organization and doctrine were ineffective against the Germans.

Is this all that different from what May is saying? Not really. Where May becomes most interesting is in his analysis of the course of events in May 1940, where he makes a persuasive case that the French generals were both unlucky and foolish. Whether he has attacked the conventional wisdom is unclear, but the book is a lucid exposition of the conflict.

In Strange Victory, Harvard professor Ernest R. May delivers a revisionist hypothesis about the German conquest of France in May 1940: the French were not doomed to defeat and the result could have gone the other way. May argues that incredible luck and faulty Allied intelligence were two of the main ingredients of this "strange victory" of the weaker over the stronger. Actually, May presents two related counter-factual hypotheses: first, that if France had launched a serious offensive in September 1939 that Nazi Germany might have "imploded" and second, that with better intelligence the French would have expected the panzer thrust through the Ardennes Forrest and moved to block it. While May has put a great deal of research into building his hypotheses, it is camouflage for a fundamentally dishonest intellectual approach. In order for a hypothesis to be credible, it should be tested against alternative evidence, but May eschews this methodology. In short, May only provides information that supports his hypotheses, but ignores information that does not.

The hypothesis that France could have launched an offensive to reach the Ruhr in September 1939 and thereby end the war at the outset is attractive but fanciful. France entered the war without an offensive doctrine or plan. When the French did attempt minor probes in the Saar on 7-11 September, they were stopped dead by the German introduction of deadly anti-personnel mines - which May fails to mention. Even if the French had possessed more offensive spirit in 1939, the odds were distinctly against success. The French armored divisions (DCRs) did not yet exist and the bulk of any offensive would rely on traditional infantry divisions, supported by a few motorized and cavalry units. May suggests that it would have been easy for the French to reach the Ruhr after only a few days of fighting against second-rate German Landwehr units. He fails to mention that it was 230 kilometers to the Ruhr and that the Rhine River would have to be crossed first - no small matter. The French 3rd and 4th Armies could have attacked with 8-13 divisions against 5-8 German divisions in prepared positions, representing odds of only 3:2 and without the benefit of surprise or air superiority. May completely ignores the ability of the Germans to redeploy units from the Polish front to blunt any French breakthrough. Worse still, May completely ignores the possibility that a premature French offensive in 1939 might have caused excessive casualties among the best French units, just as happened with Plan XVII in 1914.

Certainly the most critical element of May's hypothesis about May 1940 is his attribution of German surprise to French non-predictive intelligence methods. However, even if French intelligence had anticipated the German main effort at Sedan, May's assertion that the French response would definitely have resulted in a German defeat is absurd. This hypothesis is flawed on many levels. If the French had reinforced Sedan they might have block Guderian, but the French line would have been weakened in Belgium; the German timetable might have been upset, but they would probably have broken through elsewhere. May ignores the fact that German panzer forces outfought the Allies in Greece in North Africa in 1941-2 where luck and surprise were less important. Better intelligence would not have altered the torpid pace of Allied decision-making, their lack of air superiority or their faulty doctrine.

Given the author's apparent meticulous research, the number of obvious factual errors is rather disturbing. Since much of this information is available in secondary sources, I suspect that the errors were intentional distortions by the author to twist facts to support his hypotheses. In order to bolster the perception of French tactical prowess, the author exaggerates French tactical success in order to suggest that the French could have won. Actually, the Luftwaffe fighters clearly out-performed French fighters during the Phoney War period and the author's repeated use of a single incident on 6 November 1939 where the Germans lost 4 fighters to 1 French fighter is a fraudulent use of statistics (why not mention the action on 31 March 1940 where the Germans shot down 6 French fighters for no loss). The author's assertion that the tank battle at Gembloux was a "clear-cut French victory" is a flat-out lie, which no other account supports. At Fort Eben Emael, May claims that 55 out of 85 German glider troops were killed in the assault, but the actual number was 6 (a 900% exaggeration). May claims that the British counterattack at Arras "temporarily routed" Rommel's 7th Panzer but this is clearly false; the 7th Panzer was surprised and suffered losses but the attempt to compare a few German anti-tank gunners running away under fire with entire French units surrendering is dishonest. May fails to note that the British lost 30 tanks at Arras - 10 more than the "routed" Germans - and failed to stop the German march to the coast. Finally, the author's description of Erwin Rommel's First World War experience as, "primarily a behind-the-lines commando" is absurd and intended to denigrate his ability to lead armor.
While the author's comments on the French failure to use predictive intelligence are interesting, there is no evidence that this failure was unique. Certainly, if the Americans had anticipated the Pearl Harbor or World Trade Center attacks, history would have turned out differently, but we don't need a Harvard professor to tell us the obvious. Predictive intelligence is necessary but far more difficult than the author implies and it is a common failing of many intelligence agencies.

It is also very odd that the author makes no attempt to compare the May 1940 Campaign with Desert Storm in 1991, which had many similarities. Might Iraq have done better if it had launched a hasty attack into Saudi Arabia in 1990? Might Iraq have defeated the American "left hook" with predictive intelligence? The omission appears deliberate. May's hypotheses are not substantiated and his methods are deceptive.

Since I had read Ernest May's great The World War and American Isolation, 1914-1917, I decided to read this book, tho the subject is one I have read about before: The Ides of May: The Defeat of France May-June 1940, by John Williams, and The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry Into the Fall of France in 1940, by William L. Shirer. Neither of those books can hold a candle to this well-researched and well-written study. May brings new insights into the momentous events of 1938 to 1940, and they provide thought-provoking and well-reasoned answers to questions which have been the subject of study ever since the fall of France. I think May supports well his thesis that with a few different happenings Hitler could have been defeated in 1939 and even in 1940, with a result changing our whole subsequent history. (Incidentally, I question the indication that the book has 384 pages. It has 484 pages of text, 48 pages of footnotes, and a 50 page bibliography.) This is a book you will find well worth reading if the events of the time are of interest to you, and especially if you lived thru them as did I.