The German advance to the English Channel between 16 May and 21 May of 1940, History Department of the US Military Academy, public domain image

(6) FRANCO-GERMAN WAR / THIRD FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR

(1 SEPTEMBER 1939 – 25 JUNE 1940)

This was the big one – until it suddenly and surprisingly wasn’t.

The war that was the focus of everyone’s attention at the outset – the war at the start and the heart of the Second World War in Europe, set to replay the Western Front of the First World War and synonymous with the Battle of France…until France fell and signed an armistice with Germany on 25 June 1940.

After then, it was replaced in western Europe, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean by the Anglo-German war, which ultimately became the Anglo-American war with Germany.

Of course, the Anglo-German war commenced at the same time as the Franco-German war – with the German invasion of Poland – and both were fought side by side, literally with Britain and France as allies in western Europe against Germany. However, the Franco-German war predominated over the Anglo-German war, as France did the heavy lifting in terms of both being the Allied front line in western Europe and fielding the overwhelming majority of the Allied armies against Germany. While Britain did field an expeditionary force to France, its main strength was its navy, as had always historically been the case, as well as the newer addition of its air force.

The Franco-German war effectively ended with German victory and French defeat in the Battle of France, such that the primary contest was no longer between French and German armies but the Anglo-German war until 1941. Britain’s strategic hope relied on the substitution of another power for France as ally that could contribute similar large forces on land against Germany. That hope was understandably focused on the United States, which ultimately did replace France as larger army allied with Britain on the Western Front, but the Soviet Union played the role of France for both Britain and the United States as primary or supreme allied combatant on land, except substituting that role on the Eastern Front for France on the Western Front.

While some French forces fought on against Germany mostly from France’s colonies as the Free French, they effectively did so as a subordinate part of the Anglo-German war or Anglo-American war against Germany – as did the revived French forces after the Anglo-American liberation of France, the core of which were Free French forces in any event. As such, the Franco-German war very much ended with French defeat in the Battle of France.

The Franco-German war was more than just the Battle of France, albeit not much more as indicated by the title of Phoney War, or Sitzkrieg in German as an amusing contrast to blitzkrieg, from about September 1939 to May 1940. This title is a slight misnomer. Britain and France may not have conducted major military operations on the Western Front but they did implement economic warfare and waged naval warfare, including their naval blockade of Germany and targeting German surface raiders. They also planned operations, although the only one that saw any action was in Norway – when they came up against the German plans to invade and occupy that country and Denmark from April 1940.

The biggest lost opportunity by France was at the outset of the Franco-German war with the failure to launch a more robust and potentially decisive offensive against Germany while the latter only had weak forces in the west during its campaign in Poland – that is, other than the abortive Saar Offensive. Had France pursued or expanded that offensive more vigorously, it may well have won the Franco-German war and ended the Second World War right there.

For that matter, the Saar Offensive was simply the last in a long line of French inaction where even the most minimal action against Germany mght have won the war before it started, most notably with Germany’s remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936.

However, it remains that the Franco-German war is defined by the Battle of France from 10 May 1940 to 25 June 1940 – and the French defeat in it. The reasons for the latter, as well as those for German victory, are perhaps best considered in a closer look at the Battle of France, but at least part of those reasons is from the same pusillanimity as shown by the French leadership in their Saar Offensive or any of their other failures to take more effective action against Germany when they held the advantage.

Although I feel obliged to point out that critique of pusillanimity and psychological defeatism should not extend to French military performance as a whole, unfairly the subject of caricature as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”.

The Franco-German war was the third such war in seventy years, such that it should be considered the Third Franco-Prussian War, after the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-1871 and the First World War in 1914-1918, albeit the latter involved a Germany that been unified under Prussia and its monarchy after the former. The Prussian monarchy may have been forced to abdicate after the First World War, but Germany and even more so the German military or Wehrmacht effectively remained unified under a Prussian state. The Allies in the Second World War certainly thought so as they abolished the Prussian state after the war, identifying it with the German militarism of both world wars.

Although perhaps the Franco-German war of the Second World War should be considered the Second Franco-Prussian War – as the Germans managed to replay the same quick victory they had won in the Franco-Prussian War, achieving in only six weeks what they could not against France on the Western Front throughout the entire First World War.

That of itself, as well as the repetition of three Franco-German wars in effectively as many generations, is worthy of the Franco-German war being considered as its own separate war within the Second World War

RATING: 4 STARS****

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