Historiography of the Battle of France facts for kids
The historiography of the Battle of France describes how the German victory over French and British forces in the Battle of France had been explained by historians and others. Many people in 1940 found the fall of France unexpected and earth shaking. Alexander notes that Belgium and the Netherlands fell to the German army in a matter of days and the British were soon driven back to the British Isles,
But it was France's downfall that stunned the watching world. The shock was all the greater because the trauma was not limited to a catastrophic and deeply embarrassing defeat of her military forces – it also involved the unleashing of a conservative political revolution that, on 10 July 1940, interred the Third Republic and replaced it with the authoritarian, collaborationist Etat Français of Vichy. All this was so deeply disorienting because France had been regarded as a great power....The collapse of France, however, was a different case (a 'strange defeat' as it was dubbed in the haunting phrase of the Sorbonne's great medieval historian and Resistance martyr, Marc Bloch).
—Alexander
Contents
Contemporary comment
While the French armies were being defeated, the government turned to elderly warriors from the First World War. At a time many civilians felt there must be a wicked conspiracy afoot, these new leaders blamed a leftist culture inculcated by the schools for the failure, a theme that has repeatedly appeared in conservative commentary since 1940. General Maxime Weygand said as he took over in May 1940, "What we are paying for is twenty years of blunders and neglect. It is out of the question to punish the generals and not the teachers who have refused to develop in the children the sense of patriotism and sacrifice." He also claimed that reserve officers who abandoned their units were the products of "teachers who were Socialists and not patriots". The new national dictator of Vichy France, Marshal Philippe Pétain, had his explanation: "Our defeat is punishment for our moral failures. The mood of sensual pleasure destroyed what the spirit of sacrifice had built up".
Early studies
From Lemberg to Bordeaux (1941)
From Lemberg to Bordeaux: A German War Correspondent’s Account of Battle in Poland, the Low Countries and France, 1939–40 was written by Leo Leixner, a journalist and war correspondent. The book is a witness account of the battles that led to the fall of Poland and France. In August 1939, Leixner joined the Wehrmacht as a war reporter, was promoted to sergeant and in 1941 published his recollections. The book was originally issued by Franz Eher Nachfolger, the central publishing house of the Nazi Party.
Tanks Break Through! (1940)
Tanks Break Through! (Panzerjäger Brechen Durch!), written by Alfred-Ingemar Berndt, a journalist and close associate of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, is a witness account of the battles that led to the fall of France. When the 1940 attack was in the offing, Berndt joined the Wehrmacht, was sergeant in an anti-tank division and afterwards published his recollections. The book was originally issued by Franz Eher Nachfolger, the central publishing house of the Nazi Party, in 1940.
Strange Defeat (1940)
L'Etrange Defaite temoignage ecrit en 1940 (Strange Defeat: A Statement of Evidence Written in 1940) was an account written by the Medieval historian Marc Bloch and published posthumously in 1946. Bloch raised most of the issues historians have debated since and he blamed French leadership,
What drove our armies to disaster was the cumulative effect of a great number of different mistakes. One glaring characteristic is, however, common to all of them. Our leaders...were incapable of thinking in terms of a new war.
—Bloch
Guilt was widespread; Carole Fink wrote that Bloch
...blamed the ruling class, the military and the politicians, the press and the teachers, for a flawed national policy and a weak defense against the Nazi menace, for betraying the real France and abandoning its children. Germany had won because its leaders had better understood the methods and psychology of modern combat.
—Fink
