I always loved “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” by William Shirer and had always meant to read something else by the author. Oddly he doesn’t seem to have published much else in that vain with one exception: “The Collapse of the Third Republic”. It concerns the history of the French third republic from it’s inception following the defeat of France in 1870 to it’s final death after again being defeated by Germany. Just like Rise and Fall, this thing was a freaking door stop so it’s going to be really hard for me to summarize but for anyone interested here ya go:
TL;DR
1. Not as fun as Rise and Fall but still pretty readable and very informative. Some good lessons for modern politics as well.
2. The collapse of the third republic was largely due to a failure of political and military leadership, not “decadence”, raw combat power, or technology.
One quick caveat, I’m not French and I’m sure a Frenchman (or woman) would have a ton of different impressions on this period of history. I can only go by what was in the book and I profusely apologize in advance for any faux pas I may commit. All that said here are my impressions from the book:
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1. This thing was absolutely enormous and honestly wasn’t quite as much of a page-turner as Rise and Fall was. Simply put, the characters aren’t as interesting. The villians of the story: Laval, Petain, Weygand, and Gamelin don’t pack the same punch as Hitler, Goering, and company. However, it is still very well-written and informative and possibly more relevant since it goes into some depth analyzing what weakened and eventually overthrew a long-running fully functional democracy.
2. You could divide the many reasons France fell into three buckets:
1. Domestic politics: The French republic was fatally weakened by internal dissension for years before the war. The inception for this was the famous Dreyfuss affair in which a Jewish army officer was falsely accused of spying for Germany and found guilty. The entire country became polarized over this issue and the breach was never really healed. The Great Depression exacerbated matters and even when a large left-socialist governing coalition was assembled the machinations of the right largely foiled overdue labor reform. In the end France was not able to muster a united front against the enemy when war broke out and Parliament couldn’t even assemble a unity government. By the time disaster had struck the Republic itself was used as the scapegoat the right used to explain the defeat and wasted no time in eliminating it.
2. Military Policy: Contrary to (my) amateur impression, France was not woefully unprepared for the war. Creaky domestic politics had sabotaged some of the obvious preparation that was necessary but at the outset France was in a relatively strong military position. Over the whole western front it had numbers nearly equal to the Germans and it’s tanks were in fact far superior. It’s airplanes were inferior to Germany’s but this was partially offset by their British allies. The failure militarily was based on a few very bad decisions prior to and during the war. Most egregiously they did not concentrate their tanks into discrete divisions as the Germans had but distributed them among the infantry for support as in the first war. Their communications were abysmal which meant that any tactical decision was horrendously delayed. These and other problems within the French military were important but I assume in any armed conflict both sides will bring a mix of advantages and disadvantages. Contrary to popular myth, the French army performed well at the opening of the offensive. The French 1st army, for example, held it’s ground effectively until it’s flank was turned. What really made the difference was…
3. Leadership: Both at the political and military level the French were abysmally underserved by the men who led them. The militarization of the Rhineland, the annexation of Austria, and of course Munich were all grotesque acts of cowardice on behalf of the French political leadership. Obviously, Britain deserves a helping of the blame but Shirer’s line on this is that great nations do not allow their security to be dictated (or compromised) by an ally. At any rate, the French foreign policy all the way up to and after the outbreak of war was, at it’s most generous, naive. Unfortunately, it’s miliary leadership was if anything worse. France relied too heavily on victorious WWI generals who were preoccupied or perhaps traumatized by their experience in the last war. For example they assumed that after the piercing of their line in the arden forest that the German tanks would simply run out of gasoline and would be ripe for counterattack. They utterly failed to appreciate the lightening tempo of modern warfare or employ modern technology especially the airplane. In fact, they had more planes after the start of the war than at the beginning simply because they had failed to use them effectively.
by divemastermatt