Were the French Really Doomed to Defeat in 1940?

Great Read!!!!!! "This cultural resistance was not a nostalgic posture: it was also inspired by colonial warfare. In 1939, as in 1870 and 1914 (as well as 2018), the experience of many French officers was forged by overseas wars, not homeland defense. The young cadre were more attracted by the Foreign Legion or the Marines than by the boredom of training conscripts. The challenge of controlling vast territories with a handful of troops enhanced a culture of initiative and risk taking. Although efficient in Africa and the Levant, this philosophy of autonomy contributed to the disruption of the Army in 1940. The bottom-up fascination for audacity, converging with the top-down political drive to back the Belgians immediately, intoxicated the French General Staff. Generalissimo Maurice Gamelin’s eagerness to seize the initiative led him, against his own doctrine and basic principles of war, to commit all his strategic reserves into Belgium. This commitment was further than what the French government’s policy demanded, and far from what was actual German main effort in the Ardennes. Ironically, the Ardennes was not neglected: prior to the Dyle-Breda plan, the reserves were located in Mourmelon, at about a hundred kilometers from Sedan. This fatal miscalculation, as French Marshall Alphonse Juin later stated, was “a faute contre l’esprit” (a fault against the spirit), of the French plans and strategic design."