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During the early days of the Second World War in Europe, as Germany was invading Poland, France was faced with a somewhat sparsely defended German border. On September the 7th, 6 days after the start of the war, the French army advanced into Germany. What's notable about this is that the French didn't advance very far? Not because of German resistance, but because the French weren't really feeling it. But given that most of Berlin's forces were occupied in Poland, why didn't the French take advantage and launch a major offensive into Germany proper? So, as you may know, during the inter war period, France had a very close military relationship with Poland. The French had sent military observers and advisers
there during the Polish Soviet war, and shortly afterwards, the two entered a formal alliance. This alliance was mostly on paper until Germany's new leader started to change the borders around his country, meaning that both of them now wanted to get serious. As a result of this, the two nations came up with a plan on how to defeat Germany in the event of war. They knew Germany wouldn't want to fight a two-front war again, and so assumed that it would try to concentrate on Poland first. And the French promised that so long as the Polish held out for three weeks, they would be able to launch a massive invasion of Germany to relieve Warsaw.
Sounds pretty good. But when the time came, the major offensive never materialized. So why? Well, there were several important reasons. The first was that whilst the French were able to cross the border within days of Germany's invasion of Poland, it wasn't able to build up its forces anywhere near quick enough to quickly launch an offensive at any meaningful scale. The French army that crossed into the Sland was only about a quarter of the size that the French military chiefs had promised the Polish. You see, conscription wasn't a very fast process, and transporting hundreds of thousands of soldiers and the equipment to go with them wasn't something that you could do within a week. Of course, there were many more troops manning the border at
the famous Majino line, but the French didn't want to move them. The reason being that France's military leadership believed that this war would be much like the last with static defenses reigning supreme and offensive action being far too costly to consider, which is why the troops within this small offensive were tasked with simply probing the German defenses and taking already abandoned towns and villages. There was a hope that the British would be able to move enough troops into France to relieve some of the French troops manning the border of Belgium, who would then be moved down south to help with the offensive. But that didn't
happen because Britain hadn't finished rearming yet and supplying the soldiers it was already drip feeding into France was difficult enough. The second reason that the invasion was halted was that French politicians were worried about selling the idea of a major offensive war on behalf of Poland to the French populace. France's governments were, to put it mildly, quite fragile during this period, and those in government were fearful that pushing too far too quickly would lead to panic and unrest across the country. If the French were to mostly stay put when Germany inevitably crossed the border into France or maybe that Belgian place it would help to unite the nation and quell political
descent. Also the French argued that the alliance with Poland said that France was simply obliged to invade Germany which of course it had just done and therefore it had kept its word. This is an assessment that the Polish would not agree on. The third reason was that the French had expected the Polish to be able to hold out for much longer. The initial plan was that Poland would resist Germany effectively for many months which would drain German resources and allow France the time to prepare. As you'll know, this didn't happen, and many French generals were genuinely shocked at how quickly Poland was being overrun. To them, this meant it wouldn't be long until the Germans could then move troops westward. And
then the French troops in Germany would be caught way beyond the safety of the literally invincible Majinino line. The speed of Poland's fall was compounded when the USSR joined Germany and invaded Poland from the east. As a result, some were worried that if France were to advance to the point of potentially knocking Germany out of the war, the Soviets would then get involved, fearing that their gains in Poland would be at risk. And since nobody wanted that, it was better to just look like you were doing something. And the fourth reason was simple. The French had no idea how much weaker the German army on the border was than their own. If the French had mounted the invasion of the size
that they had initially planned, they almost certainly would have overwhelmed the German border defenses. At which point, the French would have had access to open country and the unguarded industrial heartlands of Germany. But their own assessment was that German defenses were fierce and well-manned, believing that German leadership would never take such a foolish risk when in fact they had. And much of the army defending the border had been hollowed out to provide extra manpower to the offensive in the east. because Berlin was willing to gamble that the French didn't have the stomach for such an aggressive move which of course it turns out they did not. I hope you enjoyed
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