Playing as France

[wobbleguts]

Started a new game and playing as France.

Playing as France because my last game went on for ages. Figured a French game would end pretty quick unless I was able to re-write history.

My plan was to invade Germany after the declaration of war. I know they did a small invasion and stopped after a few miles (don't remember where) and always wondered what would have happened if they kept going and invaded elsewhere while the Germans were still battling Poland (rather then sitting behind the Maginot line).

France had a powerful army in 1939. They had about 1M regular soldiers and 5M trained men ready for call up. But when I started the game, the French forces are pathetically weak. There are only a few units and all but one is under strength. I could only re-enforce 3 of them. German units on the other side of the border outnumber the French.

Is this historically correct? I know the French didn't form armored divisions until 1940 so understand why they don't have any at the beginning of the game, but why don't they have more/stronger infantry units?

[Marcinos1985]

In wargames France is usually very weak, weaker in reality, because of balance reasons. If GER can't take France, it's doomed from the start. So usually developers make French push-overs, and game may proceed beyond 1940.

[wobbleguts]

If that is the case the game is not fair or realistic.

[Platoonist]

In the so-called Saar Offensive of 1939 the French advanced five miles into Germany, taking a few towns and villages. The Germans had evacuated this territory, pulling back to the prepared defenses of the Siegfried Line. They left behind minefields and booby-trapped houses to slow down and damage the advancing French. The French came unprepared, lacking mine detectors.

Part of the problem was the French mobilization plan. They had been expecting to face an attack by Germany and were prepared for this. But despite their commitment to the Poles, they lacked an adequate plan for taking the war to Germany. Even for the plans they had in mind, the French mobilization system was antiquated. They lacked the capacity and the will to swiftly mobilize a large army and put it to effective use. The first steps towards mobilization had only started on August 26th , and full mobilization wasn't actually declared until September 1st following the German invasion of Poland. However, mobilization is a process and a lot of units were still assembling two weeks later.

As the French army prodded itself into action, its advancing formations came within artillery range of the Siegfried Line. Here they got skittish about the effectiveness of the German defenses and the ineffectiveness of the guns they had brought. They dawdled for a time and then retreated back to the Maginot Line. I think the Maginot line mentality was a big part of the problem. Aggressiveness was not a trait of many French commanders in 1939.

[wobbleguts]

Hi Platoonist,

As usual I agree with what you are saying ie, yes, that it what actually happened. However, my point is that France had 1M regular soldiers in 1939, but this isn't reflected in the game. They have hardly any units and they are are all under strength.

France was considered the most powerful army in Europe. Why are they so weak in the start of the game?

[FOARP]

ORIGINAL: wobbleguts

Hi Platoonist,

As usual I agree with what you are saying ie, yes, that it what actually happened. However, my point is that France had 1M regular soldiers in 1939, but this isn't reflected in the game. They have hardly any units and they are are all under strength.

France was considered the most powerful army in Europe. Why are they so weak in the start of the game?

As was said above: WW2 games typically make France ahistorically weak. This is because France in 1940 was defeated primarily due to poor leadership and bad luck. If France doesn’t lose in 1940, however, most games would end with Germany being crushed under a combined USSR/Western Allies attack once the USSR entered the field. Therefore games normally make France weak to guarantee that Germany beats them.

[Platoonist]

ORIGINAL: wobbleguts

Hi Platoonist,

As usual I agree with what you are saying ie, yes, that it what actually happened. However, my point is that France had 1M regular soldiers in 1939, but this isn't reflected in the game. They have hardly any units and they are are all under strength.

France was considered the most powerful army in Europe. Why are they so weak in the start of the game?

Numbers don't always tell the full story. If numbers were everything the Soviet Union would have crushed Finland in a matter of days instead of months. Certainly, France had one of the world's largest armies. A army with a proud military tradition which had arguably the most powerful artillery arm in the world and a large tank force which the Germans would have envied. It was also plagued with a lot of issues.

Like I said earlier, French mobilization was slow and took weeks to complete, and so even with mobilization starting at the beginning of the fourth week of August, they still had a long time to finish mobilizing by the time the Saar Offensive started on the 7/8th of September. This is the reason I assume that you have to spend replacement points to bring units up to full strength at the beginning of the game. The French army, after mobilization, with all of its divisions taken into account, could probably put around 80 divisions into the field. But some of these were screening Italy, and many were low quality reserve divisions with insufficient equipment.

Another problem was that French infantry divisions were mobilized on a basis where the standing troops were used to form the cadre (leadership) of the new mobilized forces. This did however, require that the cadre used for this mobilization stay intact, or the troops which mobilized afterwards would be without any experienced soldiers. Thus, the French army, until it was fully mobilized, had to carefully guard its trained cadre.
So, until the French army, was fully mobilized it had to carefully hoard its existing cadre. Therefore a defensive strategy was necessary, since an attempt to utilize these trained soldiers early on would mean that they would risk being destroyed, and the mobilization of a larger army delayed. A major French offensive early in the war in the war risked doing both, and so was an extremely risky project.

Another problems was communications. French units tended to distrust the usage of radios due to their possibility of being intercepted by enemy intelligence. As a result, they wanted to utilize methods which could be more secure like telephones, and couriers. Well, telephone lines take a long time to set up. Couriers meanwhile, had even greater drawbacks. A courier naturally took a long time to arrive at a destination, and there was the possibility that they might be killed, injured, or otherwise prevented from delivering their message. Until the courier got back you couldn't even know if the message got through or not.

French doctrine also stressed a slow, methodical battlefield, dominated by artillery, and where the defense was paramount. That's great if you are on the defensive, but doesn't exactly instill an offensive spirit. Methodical battle, combined with awkward and slow communications meant that the French army tended to plod into battle unable to respond to a rapidly changing events. Therefore in the minds of the leadership, it was easier to play it safe, especially when they witnessed the speed with which Germany overran Poland.

I think an effective French offensive into Germany probably would have required building a more agile and mobile French Army in the 1930s. Back then, Charles de Gaulle famously suggested building a corp of some 100,000 men who would be long-service volunteers and could function as a rapid response force in armored and mechanized formations, but this was rejected for various reasons, politically because it ran the risk of a coup in Paris by having such a force existing, and militarily because it would be extremely expensive and draw down the rest of the army's capacity.

[ThunderLizard11]

Against AI you might be able to hold out until early '41. Depends on the weather as a bunch of rainy turns for Axis will slow them down. As far as attacking - French units will not deal enough damage to make much headway. One possibility is to attack Belgium but that will have diplo impact and not sure what AI would do in response.

[Bo Rearguard]

I think the old convention that German forces manning the border with France in 1939 were weak and could have easily been compelled to retreat is a myth. Many of the German divisions in the West were low quality, but they were fighting defensively and so they have a much less of a handicap and the Germans have a lot of those divisions, people suggest only tiny numbers like 10 or 22, but the actual figures were 33, and the Germans had central reserves which they could easily send to bolster troop numbers. These troops were dug in and defending fortified lines, and the Siegfried Line had evolved into being a good defensive line by 1939, after being mostly hypothetical in 1938. The line was heavily buffed with anti-tank mines, bunkers and mines in particular, of which the French were ill-prepared to face due to insufficient integration of anti-mine warfare units with their combat formations.

Even without the Siegfried line, the terrain along the Rhine and in the Saarland is difficult, with many hills, forests, and rivers. All good defensive terrain and not conducive to large scale offensives. The US Army discovered this in 1944 when it took weeks to plow through the same terrain with far more assets and the Free French Army to help.

[amandkm]

Also keep in mind the scale of the game, the French have several armies (which represent ~150,000 men each) and corps (~50,000), as well as five corps (about 250,000 more) in Africa, Syria, Marseilles, and Lyon. Adding it up, you are at your Million under arms, and the rest are able to be called to arms (reinforce understrength units).

I actually think the French have a pretty good and fair representation in this game, as compared with others I have played, dating back to 3rd Reich. Somewhere in the forums are links to a set of youtubes a player did showing how they defended France. It *can* be done, to a point. The game is all about choices. If the allies put all of their effort into holding France, they might well be able to last into Fall or Winter 1940/41.

[Aussiematto]

Agree. France is defendable but you need to know how, and where, and get the BEF in operation properly. And, of course, depends on the other player. I've held France until October - and I've lost it in March! Other player's choices affect your choices - Italians get aggressive in Africa, there's no real pressure from the south so France can hold longer; OTOH, Italy can strengthen up there requiring Brits to do something else, later.

On questions of French weakness - the morale question really was significant in 1940. Large sections of French society were, if not pro-German, then definitely anti-communist (and anti-semitic). I would not say they welcomed Hitler but, well, Vichy France did happen.

French can do some damage early on but as their morale saps bit by bit, things become a procession for the Germans. It's one of the things I think the game does brilliantly - little creeping loss of morale which rewards care with attacking units, and punishes poor defensive play.

[wobbleguts]

Thanks for all the feedback.

amandkm makes the point that if you include the troops in N Africa it is closer to the 1M mark for serving French Troop numbers I was talking about. I'm guessing that because of all the morale/training/tactical/strategic/leadership issues etc. (plus the fact that the game weakens France anyway to make the outcome more historically realistic), France has ZERO chance of turning the tables.

As stated in my original post, I chose to play as France because I wanted a shorter game. Looks like I'm going to get it! I think France surrendered in June 1940. If I can hold out for longer then that I will consider it a success.

Off topic, I've always found good war games to be educational. I got a request in this game to form engineer units from Spanish refugee camps. Clicked 'notes' and this actually happened. I knew there were Spanish refugees who fled to France during the civil war, but I didn't know there were so many they had special camps. I also didn't know these people (presumably communists) fought alongside France against the Germans. Learnt something new.