Dreams From The Dark Years: Third Time Lucky
- cepmurphywrites
- 3 hours ago
- 12 min read
By Paul Hynes.
On the 2nd of May, the Battle of Berlin finally came to an end. The surviving residents of the German capital emerged from the ruins of their homes and attempted to piece their lives back together in the shadow of the victors. The whereabouts of their own leaders, those who dragged them into an unwinnable war in 1939 are nowhere to be found. From now on they must place their fates in the hands of the victorious Allies.
The most striking symbol of the Allied control over the city is the flag which flies over the Reichstag. It is a vivid red, alongside blue and white. It is the French tricolour for in this world the French army took Berlin in the Spring of 1942.
This is a different world to our own but the resemblance is uncanny. It is an extension of what began in ours, of plans unrealised. To many observers in our 1939, this is the world that was meant to be.
What was supposed to happen
Having examined what went wrong for France and missed opportunities let’s look at what the French plans for victory were at the start of the war. Dr Richard Shuster has outlined two main phases to the French strategy. The first was a period of strategic defence lasting two years. The intention was to prevent the Germans from reaching French territory if possible by halting them in Belgium, and three different French defensive plans all revolved around this basic concept with variations on where it was best to try and hold them. The Belgians weren’t thrilled about the notion of their country becoming a battlefield again either but had also concluded they wouldn’t be able to hold the Germans at the border before French help arrived.
In March 1940 Gamelin had authorised the ‘Dyle Plan’ where Allied forces would take position on the Dyle river in front of Brussels and attempt to halt the Germans there. Holding the Germans in Belgium would keep the industrial areas of Northern France intact and producing whilst holding on to the Channel coast would prevent any serious threat to British industry. With Anglo-French production secure, time was on their side. Both France and the UK with their large industrial bases, captive imperial market and access to American weapons via the Cash and Carry policy would continue to grow in strength whilst British blockade would strangle the Germans at the same time.
In actual history the UK was able to outproduce Germany in aircraft and tanks during 1941 and this was in the context of the Luftwaffe bombing British cities from French airfields and British shipping being raided from Channel ports. France alone was projected to have also outproduced Germany in numbers of tanks in 1941 and whilst aircraft production would have been smaller than either Germany or the UK, there were thousands of planes ordered from the United States scheduled to arrive over the course of 1940 – including the newest models such as the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk which would be used effectively by American, British and Commonwealth forces in the following years. At the same time an additional million men would have been mobilised from metropolitan France and the French Empire.
With this huge material and numerical advantage, the Anglo-French would have been ready to take the offensive in the Summer of 1941. The more mechanised and numerous French forces would have aimed to overwhelm the German West Wall (or Siegfried Line as it is commonly known in English) before advancing into the Rhineland and eventually the industrial Ruhr region where most of Germany’s armament production was located. Achieving this would effectively end the war although given Hitler’s apocalyptic sentiments the war may have dragged on to the last German bullet. Perhaps it would have taken until the Spring of 1942 for French troops to enter Berlin.
Thus the two stages of French planning can essentially be summed up as ‘Don’t lose’ and then ‘Win’.
This strategy has rightfully come under a lot of criticism. The defensive strategy was inherently reactive and gave the initiative to the Germans, while the fixation on an attack through Belgium distracted French command from other possibilities, such as a German attack via the Ardennes. Nonetheless there was an underlying logic to waiting until the odds are overwhelmingly in your favour. Similar concepts of strategic defence have been found prior in the theories of Carl von Clausewitz and subsequently in those of Mao Zedong. Both continue to be praised and taught by academics and military strategists.
It is also worth noting Gamelin did guess the basic German strategy correctly, at least to begin with.
The Original Case Yellow
In October 1939, fresh from a lightning victory in Poland, Hitler ordered plans to be drawn up for an immediate attack against France. Whilst the German dictator rambled about the need for peace from the Reichstag, his senior officers were working on his true ambitions. Few amongst them shared Hitler’s enthusiasm for a strike against France. It was commonly believed Germany would not be strong enough to strike a decisive blow against France until 1942. Many feared a search for an early lightning victory against France would only lead to a bloody stalemate as in the First World War.
The original iterations of the plans for Case Yellow were perhaps a projection of these fears. They were very similar to the Schlieffen Plan that the Germans had attempted in 1914 with both involving a large offensive going through Belgium and into Northern France. The Schlieffen Plan had optimistically predicted Paris could be captured in six weeks, but the 1939 plans were more conservative, envisioning an eight-week campaign which would push into Northern France and reach the Channel, with subsequent operations being required to take Paris and knock France out of the war.
This unimaginative repetition of 1914 was delayed by bad weather in November and eventually postponed over the Winter. In the meantime, Hitler would argue with his chief strategists such as Walther von Brauchitsch and Franz Halder over the plan's lack of ambition. Revisions would be undertaken but the same basic concept of a main attack via Belgium would remain central to the strategy.
On the 10th of January, a plane transporting two German officers crash landed at Mechelen in Belgium. One had been carrying the full details of Case Yellow with him, leaking German intentions to the Belgians and the Allies. Although the Belgians attempted to conceal their discovery, German commanders took it for granted the plans would soon be in French hands and would have to be redrawn once more.
While Halder bemoaned the intelligence disaster in his diary there were others within the Heer who saw it as an opportunity, particularly General Erich von Manstein. Manstein argued the draft plans lacked a decisive victory against the enemy and as such weren’t fit for purpose. Instead, he suggested a major strike through the Ardennes using the majority of the newly created Panzer divisions. Following the Mechelen Incident, Manstein would campaign for this new approach and conducted wargames in an attempt to prove their viability.
Manstein’s proposals were not warmly received by those above him and he was dismissed in January, allegedly following a bitter argument with Brauchitsch. He was relocated to a posting in Stettin on the Baltic coast. It is likely this was intended to put him out of the way though it may ultimately have worked in his favour. Stettin was much closer to Berlin than his previous headquarters and Manstein did not hesitate to make his case to Hitler directly on the17th of February, with the dictator warmly embracing the ambitious plans for sweeping across France towards the coast in order to trap the Allied armies. By the beginning of March, the ‘Sickle Cut’ iteration of Case Yellow was adopted and being planned.
It is worth noting that an attack through the Ardennes had been envisaged in the original plans, though it was intended to be an infantry attack. Calls to prioritise and reinforce the attack through this sector had grown over the winter. Both Halder and Hitler would claim after the Fall of France that the idea of the armoured breakthrough had been theirs, success having many fathers, but there was a growing consensus for such a strategy before Manstein met with Hitler. As noted, Hitler’s distaste for the original incarnation of Case Yellow was something he had made clear. As early as November, prior to the Mechelen incident, he advocated for a breakthrough at Sedan should it appear more promising than the attack through central Belgium.
Nonetheless it is hard to avoid the fact that the Mechelen incident invalidated the original plans in a way which wouldn’t have occurred otherwise. Would Case Yellow have come to resemble its eventual shape regardless of Major Haupmann’s screw-up? Potentially but as a potential hinge point in history it is tantalising.
There is a good chance the original Fall Gelb plan would have met its intended aims of reaching the Channel coast. This would likely knock Belgium out of the war and get Gamelin the sack but ruling out a major disaster, Allied forces would be relatively intact and preparing to mount another formidable defence, either on the Scheldt or Somme rivers. The battlefields of the First World War would become the graves of another generation of British, French and German youth in attritional battles for the rest of 1940 and 1941 until Anglo-French strength with American support reached a critical mass.
By early 1942 Allied forces may well have been over the Rhine with the Germans in full retreat. Facing disaster, Hitler may well have raged about the pedestrian plans his officers had forced on him in 1940 whilst those same officers would complain they had warned him that any invasion of the west would be bound to end the same way it had in 1918. This might well have become the established consensus with novel ways of defeating France in 1940 becoming a popular debate for wargamers.
A world in which the Mechelen incident never happens and Manstein’s proposals are never adopted makes it much more likely France would have survived in 1940 and gone on to lead the Allies to an earlier victory. However, presuming the Sickle Cut proposal would inevitably have been embraced by the Wehrmacht, is there any hope for France to survive?
A Blunted Sickle?
There were many within German High Command who had severe misgivings about the new plan. The commander of Army Group B, General Fedor von Bock, now relegated to a secondary role, complained of the risks of throwing the best German forces across 200 kilometres with the large French forces based around the Maginot Line ready to cut them off.
As noted in previous articles there have been mathematical studies done which show how the German plans for the invasion of France should have failed on the basis of both sides acting rationally. The lack of rationality on the Allied side can perhaps be covered by their chronic communication issues and the French command’s unwillingness to consider the Ardennes as a potential target for a German offensive despite evidence to the contrary.
Given the risks involved with the German plan, better French use of communications, more willingness to accept the threat from the Ardenne,s or even less ambitious plans for Belgium could have derailed the German invasion. When the German offensive began some French generals were quick to realise what their intentions were. Only a day into the offensive General Prioux had reported that the heavy German attacks into Belgium hadn't materialised and recommended withdrawing into France, even whilst the strongest French forces continued to advance deep into Belgium. Afterwards the former Prime Minister and then Minister for War Eduoard Daladier would insist that disaster could have been averted had this alert been better communicated.
The Turtledove Award winning A Blunted Sickle by the writer who goes by pdf27 is a heavily detailed alternate history timeline based on this premise. A slightly more effective French response to the original Manstein plan leads to it becoming derailed and ultimately the majority of the panzers of Army Group A are encircled and destroyed.
It is perhaps a particularly optimistic scenario but it does emphasise how with only a few changes the French could have weathered the storm in the Spring of 1940 and gone on to defeat Germany. A decision to defend on the river Scheldt rather than the Dyle, which the French had considered and the British had supported, would have placed the bulk of the British and French armies much closer to where the Germans reached the coast, allowing them to block the overstretched Panzers or at least withdraw behind the Somme largely intact.
Rather than a knockout blow, the Manstein plan would merely have achieved the original aims of the first drafts of Fall Gelb and Germany would be stuck in a repeat of the First World War with a similar outcome.
The Postwar Third Republic
The failure of either the originally planned or actual Fall Gelb offered a potential path for the French Third Republic and their British ally to emerge victorious over Germany much more quickly than in our time. A victory of this sort was perhaps not as simple as the one French planners had hoped for but it was possible. There was nothing innate to the economics, politics or society of the Third Republic which guaranteed defeat in 1940.
Had French troops marched into Berlin victoriously in 1942 there would undoubtedly have been an outpouring of patriotic pride at home which would have galvanised the Third Republic in the short term. The centrist coalitions of Eduoard Daladier and then Paul Reynaud might have provided a blueprint for a period of postwar political stability.
The Communist Party had been banned following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and in such a scenario may have remained so for many years. With its leadership activities forced into exile or underground, those Communists who had opposed the pact may have formed their own party to emphasise their split with Moscow. Some on the French far-right may have been similarly discredited with their admiration for Hitler and Mussolini; however the largest movement on the French right, the French Social Party, had already been keen to emphasise its aversion to Fascism and Nazism prior to the war and may have continued to grow. Whether the republican establishment would have managed to bring them into the fold or might once more have turned left to defend against them would remain to be seen.
A French defeat of Germany might be seen as a somewhat delayed validation of the interwar system of French guarantees to the smaller states surrounding Germany. With Fascist Italy and the Soviet Union likely intact in such a scenario there would be many nations looking to revitalise this network. Perhaps it would be twinned with the commercial networks those such as George Monnet would have been able to experiment with in greater detail, thanks to Monnet’s role coordinating the British and French war economies, although whether the UK would have chosen to embrace any early European Union would be up for debate. Whether Germany deserved a role in such a community would likely continue to plague French diplomats.
The Third Republic might still have to contend with threats from the homegrown far-right and a resurgent Germany had it defeated Nazism, but it would also have to face the colonial wars which brought down the Fourth Republic historically. In this scenario Japan might not be able to coerce the French into allowing their occupation of Indochina but their imperial ambitions would remain a threat. Italy would continue to agitate amongst the Arabic peoples of the Mediterranean that they would be a better patron than the British and French. The Soviet Union would continue to help local Communists organise for independence across the colonised world.
Who would France have as allies to maintain their colonies? The United Kingdom would be a likely ally, perhaps Portugal and Spain as well and even Italy should Mussolini or a more rational successor seek to improve relations with London and Paris. The United States likely wouldn’t feature for some time.
A world without America
In a world where France never fell in 1940 it is quite possible the United States doesn’t become the superpower that it has been since 1945. Whilst it had been the dominant power in the Western Hemisphere for over a century the United States had little interest in being a global policeman in 1939 when most Americans hadn’t wanted to become entangled in another European conflict. The United States Army was little more than a glorified police force, smaller in size than the Portuguese army with few vehicles and mostly obsolete equipment.
The Fall of France changed all that. It placed a pro-German government in charge of most French colonies, including those in the Western Hemisphere. In September 1940 the Japanese would begin their occupation of French Indochina signalling what might happen to other French colonies the Axis could make use of. It appeared the UK might also soon fall to Nazi invasion, with its fleet and colonies potentially ending up in German hands.
The decision was made to send the modest rearmament underway into overdrive. By the following year the US Navy was in the process of doubling in size and the US Army had become eight times bigger. The first peacetime draft had been declared and new equipment, personnel and tactics were under development. The Lend Lease bill had provided massive support to the United Kingdom on credit and American ships were escorting Allied convoys in the Atlantic.
By 1945 this military build-up had finally allowed the United States to escape the lingering effects of the Great Depression, unemployment had virtually vanished and the United States represented almost half of the overall global economy. This gave rise to the economic and military superpower which would become the global hegemon of our time. This was the world created by the way France fell in 1940.
In recent times American decline and the increased assertiveness of other global powers has led some analysts to speculate our world is once again entering a phase of multipolarity. In a world where France never fell, multipolarity may well have remained the norm. Doing so would mean a much earlier end to the war and potentially tens of millions of lives spared with the world changed almost beyond recognition.
Facing Reality
In this article we have investigated the tendency towards entrenched forms of thinking by both the French and the Germans over the Winter of 1939/40. How one incident forced the Germans to think outside the box and offered the French the chance to do so as well, only for it to be rejected. The failure to take this opportunity and others offered in the Spring would set off a chain of events which would change global history forever.
Next time we will investigate another event which for many had an air of inevitability. One which for either side of the emergency seemed to offer a choice between chaos or redemption. Next time we will see what happened when France did fall.
Paul Hynes is the author of the Decisive Darkness series and the Red Fuhrer series.
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