Military history's blank spots

The other day, I was playing a tactical-level wargame, Combat Commander, with a friend. The new "Mediterranean" expansion was just published, which added three nationalities--French, Italian, and British--to the original set of Americans, Soviets, and Germans. I had the misfortune of playing the French. If you believe the way in which the rules depict the French Army, they had the worst infantry, bar none, of any European power in World War II. Since the designer uses the French to depict all the "Allied minors" (Greece, Yugoslavia, Poland, etc.), the same broad brush strokes tarred them as well.*

As you might guess, I don't agree with this depiction of the French in WWII. While the French military in 1939 and 1940 had its share of problems--for example, it had not finished the doctrinal and organizational changes needed for modern mechanized warfare--it's unfair for the game designer to extend the blame to the poor bloody French infantryman. By the admittedly few accounts I've read, the French soldier was not as abominably trained, equipped, or led as, say, the poor schmucks in the German Ost battalions. Though the Italians often get caricatured, too, I'd be hard pressed to say that Italian infantry units were markedly better than their French counterparts.

Of course, there's not a lot of information about the French army in WWII that's widely available in English. Sure, you can find plenty of accounts of the American, German, and British armed forces. Here in the US, there's even more information about the Soviet military than the French armed forces, including the Free French. (Again, the same statement applies to the Italians.)

Maybe I'm slightly less ignorant, or slightly more ignorant, about the French army in WWII than the game designer in question. However, both he and I have a hard time finding a lot of information on that topic, so the difference isn't likely to be substantial.

Most standard accounts of the Battle of France are largely written from the German point of view. You might find some very high-level information about French strategy in 1940, such as the interesting historical fuss that Ernest May kicked up in Strange Victory. (Was it more "strange" that the French lost, or that the Germans won?) However, in May and other widely available accounts, you won't find a lot about the organization several levels below Gamelin or other French military leaders.

It's important, therefore, to know what you don't know in military history--or any history, for that matter. For example, I used to joke that Liddell-Hart's history of WWII was originally titled, How the British Muddled Through and Were Really Responsible for the Allied Victory. No surprise, though, since Liddell-Hart was writing about what he knew, Great Britain's part in World War II, particularly in the European theater. Historians write and draw conclusions based on what they know. Whether the topic is the French army in World War II, or the Iraqi insurgent groups today, we have to be very, very careful about how our covert ignorance, even more than our overt biases, can distort our understanding.

 

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* For the wargamers reading this post, Combat Commander depicts command, control, leadership, and troop quality through the cards used to take actions. Just as important as having a big hand of cards, and therefore a lot of choices, is the discard rate, which can help you when all the choices fate has dealt to you are bad. The discard rate for the French and Allied Minors is one card, the lowest of all nationalities in the game.

Comments

[greg in ak]

hmm interesting post. i just read Armageddon by Max Hastings. He goes into detail about why he thinks american and brit troops weren't all that good, so i have been thinking about this sort of. I don't know why the French would have been poor troops, they were valiant and effective in 43-45. Nobody was that good except the germans at the start. It seems like the org factors you note and the lingering malaise of the phony war, the germans being a couple years ahead of everybody else on tactics, and terrible leadership in the french command are far more to blame then the french troops being poor. If anything the Italians deserve to be slagged given how they got whipped by the greeks and by an outnumbered british force in Africa. at least the french became good soldiers while the italians didn't seem to. In the end all discussions of troop quality seem to fouled by bias, knowledge and lack there of, ego, favoritism, general dislike of a people and the zillion factors that affect how well troops fight.

[Kingdaddy]

It's a common mistake to equate failure at one level of strategy with failure at others. For example, which was more to blame for the American defeat in Vietnam, the quality of the average American soldier, or the theater and operational strategies the US employed in Southeast Asia?

[Mojo]

Speaking of Liddell-Hart's history of WWII (which I really like and just re-read), can you help me fill in some of the gaps? There are no end of decent treatments of the war in the Pacific and Western Europe and even Africa. Is there a good account of the German war in the East from start to finish? I prefer military history by someone with some of Liddell-Hart's ability to analyze tactical and strategic decisions rather than just relating the facts. I'm also interested in specific accounts of German war production, the effects of enemy action (loss of access to raw materials, bombing, sabotage, etc.) and how they worked around it.
I can muddle through, slowly, in Russian if I have to but would prefer something in translation. (My German is hopeless for anything more than tourism.)

[Kingdaddy]

For the Russian Front, I'd start with When Titans Clashed. Not only is it a good military history, but it has some very important insights into why the Eastern Front played out the way it did (for example, the unfortunate timing, for the Soviets, of the German attack).

[Ian]

From what I've read, the French High Command started by trying to fight the last war, failed to adapt, then adopted an attitude of defeatism to a truly astonishing degree. That sort of thing filters down to morale at the tactical level, does it not? Why should the privates fight if the generals have given up?

Have you tried "squad leader?" Good fun for the obsessive.