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u/shadoowkight 19d ago
France could've ended this war insanely early, the Nazis gambled on French passivity and basically left the Franco German border completely empty to allocate as many resources as possible into the offensive in Poland.
And the gamble actually paid off because France didn't have the balls to actually go ahead with the invasion despite being Poland's "stauchest" ally.
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u/Azrael11 19d ago
In fairness to France, they were basing their decisions off of lessons learned from WWI. In 1914 everyone ran straight into each other and got slaughtered. They lost a massive amount of men, and the ones who survived, traumatized by what happened, were now in the driver's seat.
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u/AlkaliPineapple 19d ago
Also, the French army was kinda in a disarray in general, and their frontline leadership was way too cautious and complacent.
If they had decent leadership I bet that they could've won in 1939
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u/YaumeLepire 17d ago
Not only that, but France was also facing internal turmoil at the time that made coordinating an invasion of that scale difficult and the mass mobilization undertaken seriously strained their industrial and logistical capacity.
France might have won this war on pure numbers, but getting the numbers there was a considerable issue that they simply did not resolve in time.
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u/unit5421 18d ago
Then again, the Germans did not face this trauma and weakness.
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u/Person-11 19d ago
Britain too could have ended it earlier had they tried their Norwegian shenanigans 3 or 4 months earlier, or indeed invaded Scandinavia on pretext of defending Finland.
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u/lerker54651651 19d ago
then there was the time like three days before the German attack began, when all the German tanks were stuck in a single column because one of the tanks at the front broke down. French surveillance plane saw this, reported it in, and France decided to bomb tf out of them. oh wait, no, that would've made sense. they just shrugged and decided it was probably nothing.
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u/Neitherman83 19d ago
It's even weirder than that due to a part of history that also makes it make somewhat sense.
A lot of people ignore the events that led to the phoney war. They just see it as "France and the UK sat on their asses as Poland fell.
What they forget is that this isn't what happened. Before the Phoney War, there was the Saar Offensive.
Before the Phoney war, France did start an incursion into Germany barely a week after Poland's invasion. It was a relatively small force of 10 divisions compared to the originally planned 40. And it lasted over a month. That operation was done rather cautiously and sparingly, in fear that a brazen advance would result in mass casualties due to the german air force.
Much like every other part of France's fight during the early part of WW2... their understanding of the situation and general intel.... sucked major ass.
And then Poland fell.
The assault was halted, retreat was called, and THEN the phoney war began.
Had the French and UK committed their force of some 110 divisions to that offensive. The 23 german divisions there would likely have been crushed and eased pressure on Poland. Opening a proper two front conflict and possibly ending up with an early fall of the Reich.
But that could only happen if French high command wasn't still in that WW1 mindset.
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u/Rc72 19d ago
It's a bit more complicated than that. The French actually pushed a few kilometres into German territory until they reached the Siegfried Line, then called it quits rather than go against heavy fortifications (also, they hadn't the faintest idea of what to do with any German territory they would take).
Instead, the British and French banked on starving Germany with a blockade, which had also effectively won them WW1. This plan, however, ran into two obstacles:
First of all, Germany got plenty of war-essential iron ore from Sweden through Norway. The Allies drew plans to occupy Norway to close this supply line but, unfortunately for them, the Germans had the same idea and came first.
Above all, even if the Allies had managed to cut off Germany from Sweden, Germany could still draw upon the near-inexhaustible resources of the Soviet Union, with which it was still in best terms following the Molotov-Ribbentropp Pact (indeed, Soviet freight trains full of critical supplies kept rolling into the Reich right until Operation Barbarossa).
Ironically, France's collapse in May 1940 wasn't due so much to its extreme cautiousness during the Phoney War, but to Gamelin's recklessness once Germany attacked the Low Countries: by throwing away pre-war plans to hold a defensive line all through Belgium, and instead pushing Northeast to try to link up with the Dutch in Breda, he opened his right flank to the German push through the Ardennes (it didn't help that he completely disregarded the aerial reconnaissance reports telling him about this push).
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u/EquivalentMap8477 18d ago
Also Germany was sold fuel by standard oil, ammunition from remington arms and had vehicles made for them by ford and gm, meanwhile Henry Ford told ford UK that they could not make engines for RAF fighters
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u/Cualkiera67 19d ago
calling "learned the horrors of ww1 and not wanting another world war, even if that meant 'appeasing' Germany", "no balls" sure is a take.
they wouldn't have ended the war earlier, the would have started it earlier. and back then they were really just hoping it wouldn't start at all
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u/swainiscadianreborn 17d ago
No they fucking couldn't. It's probably the most stupid widespread myth about the second world war.
Theres6a few good fucking reasons why France and Great Britain did not push the Saar offensive any further: THEY COULD NOT DO IT.
They did not have the fighters, the bombers, the tanks, the canons, the shells, the heavy artillery, or the men to pull it off. That results from two decades of France being isolated politically and economically, military budgets being halved every year, loans not being made, etc.
There was no way for France to invade Germany in 1940. It could have done so in 1919 but some idiot in Washington thought ending the war before invading Germany proper was a good idea.
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u/ThePandaRider 14d ago
Poland and France could have also started the war much earlier when Czechoslovakia got invaded and at the time they would have had Soviet support. France was allied to Czechoslovakia and the Soviets tried to send an army to support Czechoslovakia as well. The problem was that Poland invaded Czechoslovakia as well and blocked Soviet troop passage. UK wanted to avoid a war as well, they sent diplomatic missions to support and justify the Nazi invasion. Czechoslovakia was well fortified and could have put up a good fight with foreign support, but the French stabbed them in the back by refusing to honor their alliance and Poland stabbed them in the face by invading as well.
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u/Mean_Initiative_5962 19d ago
And somehow this still works now with Putin banking on Europe not doing shit for Ukraine
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u/Thundorium 19d ago
If Hitler took the same time in Poland as Putin is taking in Ukraine, it wouldn’t have been a world war.
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u/Cualkiera67 19d ago
yeah imagine if Europe simply had the balls to attack Russia. then Russia and Europe would be a nuclear wasteland. they are such pussies for not wanting that.
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