Historical Kalisz-type Scenarios

[ChalkLine]

And the real reason France fell was airpower. The Germans had massive superiority coupled with hordes of ground attack aircraft. Britain didn't commit enough aircraft initially (or troops either) and the French air force didn't have the gear to compete.

If there was parity in air power, you can bet Rommel wouldn't have charged off to the channel like cavalry subaltern, and if he had he would have been surrounded and annihilated.

[Mohoender]

Originally Posted by ChalkLine

Huh?
This wasn't aimed at anyone in particular, especially you.
It's a common assumption that France rolled over when the Germans attacked, and nasty slurs such as 'cheese-eating surrender monkeys' - happily, not by people around here - have been flung against French people because of the capitulation in 1940*. As a historian, it's one of the things I can't stand. The actions around Stonne show just how bravely the French fighting man fought for his country, and how idiots like Gamelin, Georges, Gort, Barret, Dowding, the Dutch government (who could be said to have betrayed their own troops) and others let the opportunity to stop the Germans in 1940 pass. If those men had shown half as much courage as the men in fighting in France from four nations, then World War Two may well have been over in 1941.

(*Don't get me started on Agincourt.)

This time I was the one to take you wrong. As an Historian myself I entirely share your point on France. However, France (its governments) is largely responsible for this common belief. When France was freed, the provisional government under de Gaulle (who perfectly knew it was false) and all following governments up to about 1990 accepted the idea that the defeat in 1940 was due to the French not wanting to fight (archives open today prove that wrong). This was done because they were seeing it as a good excuse as France is always fast to blame its soldiers when it hardly recognizes the responsibility of its leaders (simply cultural)

Something else. I would say that you report the critic made on the French on the others and on that you are wrong. The Dutch couldn't stand and they had been warned that the allies would not come to help them. They fought more than bravely in the West Indies between 1941-1942 and after. The Dutch resistance was one of the most active in western europe (with Norway).

My Grand Father was a staff sergeant in the Belgian Army. He was wounded as he and his platoon refused to withdraw, covering the retreat of French and British elements until they were overrun. When Belgium capitulated after 3 weeks (France will fight 5 weeks), the British and the French were already retreating from Belgium. They asked Leopold III to continue the fight from France and he refused (something the French will do two weeks later when they were asked to continue the fight from their own soil). Despite this, Leopold III ordered the Belgian army to fight two more days, giving all available trucks to the French to help in their retreat.

Where you are absolutly right is about the lack of proper command (political and military alike). British and French alike failed to come up with a common plan much like the Austrians and Russians at Austerlitz.

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by ChalkLine

And the real reason France fell was airpower.

It didn't help that the tanks of the day were a joke (the Matillda II for example had very heavy armour for the period, but woeful speed and a popgun for main weapon). Anti-armour weapons were also barely adequate - antitank rifles and old artillery guns firing (mainly) HE rounds.

Mind you, the Germans in the opening stages of the war weren't all that much better equipped being forced to use machinegun armed PzKpfw I's (particularly in the invasion of Poland) due to a serious shortage of proper tanks (which I believe was never made up).

[Mohoender]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

Nobody can doubt there were acts of bravery on both individual and unit level.
Where the issues laid, and basically why they were trounced so quickly, is really due to the lack of understanding of how tanks and modern equipment should be used. The Germans got it fairly right, intergrating their forces, making breakthroughs and exploiting them (blitzkrieg).

Sorry Leg but this is false. Modern tank use was theorized by the General Jean-Baptiste Eugène Estienne. This time a Frenchman, colonel at the time, father of the french aviation, of the modernization of our artillery and of the tanks. He was read and taken into account by Liddle Hart (UK), Heinz Guderian (Germany), Toukhatchevsky (Soviet Union) and probably Patton (US, who had met him in 1917). However, these theories were refused by most high commands (except Soviet Union until the Stalin's purges) including Germany (Hitler ruled over the Generals on that matter, including the Blitzkrieg into a much wider classical plan)

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

Unfortunately pretty much the rest of the world saw things differently and used their vehicles etc in a completely different, and ultimately ineffective (for the most part) way, technicques etc which would change and develop over the next few years.

In 1940, the British Army was the only army in the world to be entirely motorized. British matildas were excellent and couldn't be stopped by anything in the German's army except for the fame 88mm anti-air gun. On the down side they lacked the guns to destroy the German tanks (Leg, you just pointed that out ). Else, this is pretty much right. To cite French General Gamelin "They had three columns of 1000 tanks each, we had 1000 columns of 3 tanks each".

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

The same happened in the first world war. NOBODY understood the true lethality of the "modern" battlefield, something shown time and time again with the bayonet "charges" (at a walk) against dig in machineguns....

Right but that mistake dates back to the US Civil War and Russo-Japanese War.

[Mohoender]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

Mind you, the Germans in the opening stages of the war weren't all that much better equipped being forced to use machinegun armed PzKpfw I's (particularly in the invasion of Poland) due to a serious shortage of proper tanks (which I believe was never made up).

Right, but they were still using them in France and later in the early stages of Barbarossa. Pz II were not much better. Most Pz III were still equipped with 37mm gun and their armor was insufficient. The reason the 7 Pz.Div of Rommel was spearheading the attack was because it was equipped with Pz.38(t) taken over from Czecoslovakia.

[Mohoender]

Originally Posted by ChalkLine

And the real reason France fell was airpower.

Attack aircrafts and bombers only were in short supply. When it comes to fighters, the French were as good as the Germans. Actually, the losses of the Luftwaffe at the hand of "L'Armée de l'air" were high and they had to postpone operation Sea Lion as a result of it.

[ChalkLine]

Originally Posted by Mohoender

Attack aircrafts and bombers only were in short supply. When it comes to fighters, the French were as good as the Germans. Actually, the losses of the Luftwaffe at the hand of "L'Armée de l'air" were high and they had to postpone operation Sea Lion as a result of it.

Yep, but the Me109 was 50mph faster than the fastest French aircraft, and the Me110 was just as fast as the fastest. No one had anything comparable to the Ju87 Stuka in any number, and nothing like the Ju52 transport plane that was to play such an important part.

One of the most important contributions to WW2 by the USA was the unsung heroes flying vast amounts of DC-3 'biscuit bombers' that did so much for the war effort. These planes simply made victory possible.

As you said earlier, victory in WW2 is an aggregate of many, many contributors.

[boogiedowndonovan]

lol, where's Kato when you need him to split out a thread. here are some historical Kalisz type scenarios.

I'm surprised no one mentioned Xenophon and the Ten Thousand. Greek mercenaries who accompanied the army of Cyrus the Younger in his attempt to seize the Persian Empire from his brother Artaxerxes II. Cyrus was killed at the Battle of Cunaxa and the army was defeated. The Greeks were then betrayed by their former allies. Stranded, with the Persian army behind them and hostile Kurds, Armenians and other tribes in front of them, they made their way from modern day Iraq, Syria and Turkey to the port of Trabzon.

Also the basis of a few novels and the move The Warriors.

or how about the Chinese Communist Long March, the Communist Chinese armies broke out of Nationalist encirclements and fled from eastern China to northern and western China.