Book on French AF 1939-40?

[FalkeEins]

..I wondered whether you'd quote from Kirkland and his 'work' - most sensible French commentators wouldn't of course...and while British authors haven't written extensively on the air battle for France, the events that led to Dunkirk have been thoroughly researched - try Sebag-Montefiore's recent large tome for an account of the (French) mismanagement and indecision that led to their Allies bailing out...let's face it, they had even acquired the German war plans, yet failed to take any counter- action! We agree about Jackson's book, but it is about time that more up-to-date research was exploited in English, including Gillet's - which is where Peter's work comes in..

The only reason why I mentioned Kirkland is that his article is in ENGLISH as demanded by him who started this thread. Contrary to what you seem to think a lot of what Kirkland wrote does make a lot of sense. It is true, for example, that after an incredible defeat ON THE GROUND (a scandalous army defeat) the French Air Force was used, by the army generals who were the main culprits but were appointed by Pétain as top commanders of all French forces (except Gamelin), as a scapegoat to get rid of any responsibility in the defeat. Virtually everything was the Armée de l'Air's fault.

It is interesting to know that from 1933 (when Hitler came to power) through 1940 the French army and navy commanders were incensed at every single centime spent on the Air Force, on these glamorous fancy "acrobats". They fought bitterly to prevent the Armée de l'Air from receiving any money at all, if possible - or only for recce. Only their own recce and close recce aircraft and a few fighters for their protection interested them. Accordingly French bombers were precious few in May 1940 (but this changed rapidly) and there were not enough fighters to face approx. 3,500 aircraft actually engaged by Germany. Together, the Allies could engage about as many fighters as Germany so they were about even BUT Germany deployed 1,120 twin-engined bombers plus 342 "Stukas" which suffered appalling losses at the hands of Allied fighters, mainly French, and Allied AAA, but there were simply too many - not Stukas but twin-engined ones.

I wouldn't simply discard Kirkland and I have been working on this very subject for 30-40 years (which admittedly doesn't make me unfallible). We should read his contribution, and many others, carefully.

A very true remark has been made often by historians : in the 1940 French Campaign (only) the Germans had got a very big, very "unfair" advantage : according to Hitler's and Göring's nazi methods and habits they risked everything at once, no matter the cost, in an effort to force a quick and definitive decision. The Allies never had the stomach to do such a thing, they always wanted reserve forces, thought of a "long war" and husbanded with their air forces, especially the UK. Germany won (this time only) - at a high cost for the Luftwaffe but to them this didn't matter. What did was the result. They all were convinced that after their incredible success the war was over, that they had won ; most people all over the world believed this too.

It should not be forgotten that the key to the 1940 German success was the big breakthrough at Sedan, across a rather big and wide river (the Meuse) mainly with 7 of the 10 German armoured divisions! This operation was incredibly risky : it was simply madness. No reasonable C-i-C would have accepted these terrible hazards but Adolf Hitler was not reasonable, he was a fanatic and a lunatic. Nonetheless he had foreseen that the French would be too slow and not react properly in time. So to speak, the French moved on foot when the Germans attacked with fast vehicles at 30 mph or so. Too bad Hitler was so right. If the French generals, mainly Huntziger and Georges, had reacted simply in a normal way (without needing to be military geniuses) the German forces would have been stopped in their tracks BEFORE crossing the Meuse and they would have suffered appalling losses, their offensive would have been dead by 14 May... This same Huntziger became the French C-i-C after the defeat!

To sum up, this unique German victory was the result of a madman's gambling. It worked fine this time, afterwards it didn't... All discussions about the respective air forces etc. are very interesting but the German victory was won on the ground, mainly with ten armourded divisions deploying about 1,000 real tanks plus 2,000 small, vulnerable tankettes (the French alone had got 3,300 real tanks, all with a good armour and most of them with a good gun). The German air force supported the army and made their victory quicker and easier but it didn't win the French Campaign : the German army did, mainly thanks to a crazy attack plan which worked.

May I repeat once more that even 1944-45, in spite of their fantastic air superiority and - as a whole - good strategy and tactics, the western allies and the USSR still needed millions of men on the ground and tens of thousands of tanks etc. to win the war in Europe. They would not have achieved this with their aircraft alone.

[Ruy Horta]

Grozibou

On a side note, have you read The Republic in Danger - General Maurice Gamelin and the politics of French Defence, 1933-1940, by Martin Alexander? Curious about your thoughts if you did. Have a copy, but unfortunately still unread.

No I haven't but I can try very hard!

PS : nice to have you back and TOCH working again! Hundreds of guys were gasping for air and close to fainting.

[The_Catman]

Thanks for the further info and discussion......

Of course I understand that many excellent books are written in languages other than English, however they are not much relevance to me as I only speak English, maybe a bit of French but not enough to make reading satisfactory.

If I had wanted a book in French, I would have put the request in French on a French aviation forum...........

Merci

Alex

[Brian]

Here we go again!

Hi Grozibou - nice name but why are you hiding behind this nickname when you call other 'historians' whose names are not revealed, "cowardly, disgusting, dirty and inaccurate?" You appear to be extremely self opinionated - or is this just my impression? And some of your language is extremely childish and insulting - "flew back to mummy" for example. Implying that because some RAF squadrom commanders did not lead their squadrons into battle meant they were "chicken" comes out of comic books.

Are you a professional historian?

Perhaps you are. I am certainly not, and I doubt whether many of those who have contributed are. But we are all keen amateur historians (I have been fortunate in having some of my work published) - interested in the air war for various reasons - and if we didn't make our contribution, we would have to accept the opinions of others - perhaps even yours!

You mention my TDIM - OK, it's not 100% accurate in the light of more recent research, but it was researched and written in the late 1980s/early 1990s, and did offer an insight to how the RAF Hurricane pilots fared in the fighting during those fatal/vital twelve days. Probably the first English language book to achieve this, but that's all. That's what I set out to do, with the help of my contributors. It was not an account of the Battle of France and wasn't intended to be.

The latest offerings have access to material that was not available to me - that's called prgress. Personal opinons expressed were not mine, but of those who were involved. They were contemporary feelings and sentiments. Why delete them? Political correctness?

I anticipate a broadside from a proud Frenchman (?) but I am always up for a fight, being a proud Englishman!

Cheers
Brian

Originally Posted by Brian

Here we go again!

Hi Grozibou - nice name but why are you hiding behind this nickname when you call other 'historians' whose names are not revealed, "cowardly, disgusting, dirty and inaccurate?"

Sorry but I really can't give you a full reply now. Perhaps later (?). I hope you'll admit that my contributions to this thread ar fairly long and voluminous already - some people certainly are going to add "awfully long and boring, terrible".

To answer the above question I can tell you :

(1. about myself and my nickname) that virtually everybody here, except perhaps the most recent "members", knew at once that my real name is Yves Michelet. A few short remarks or "smileys" added by some other guys show this fairly clearly. I could have replied that Grozibou, "Big Owl" or even "Fat Owl", is the most dignified and accurate name I could find. A lot of people here use far less transparent nicknames including such monsters as "dr9dong" or some. Why not ABC or XYZ. Nobody ever protested this anonymity. Once more I am unique (I am used to this) insofar as in some people's eyes I am the only person not authorised (at least by you) to use a nickname instead of his own one. "Brian" is not that clear either, Mr. Brian Cull. There are lots of Brians so you could be anybody. I saw one in (I think) the first "Police Academy" film, a young schoolboy who refuses to go to school and a horrible brat : Brian too. Luckily police officer Tuckleberry (?) knew how to deal with him and he went to school all right. You ought to do the same thing : you'd learn a lot of useful stuff.

(2. about << other 'historians' whose names are not revealed, "cowardly, disgusting, dirty and inaccurate?" >> ) Firstly, it was ONE historian not "historians". Let us be exact please. Yes I confirm my opinion entirely. I criticised ONE such filthy fellow, only ONE, whose anonymous statement was printed in your book "Twelve Days in May". He who insults a whole category of soldiers from a certain country - here French fighter pilots - in a hypocritical, cowardly way ("It seems...") - without having the guts to sign his own statement is a coward. He who reproduces this in a "historical", serious-looking book (I don't know who it was, there are 3 names on the dust-jacket) is unserious and dirty himself because it is dirty to wholesale insult other people anonymously. Everybody who is even just a little aware of history knows perfectly well that such wholesale judgements and insults ALWAYS are totally wrong, including "All Germans are Nazis". A few real cases, IF ANY, are not a rule and don't justify such dirty statements, which meant even the 195 or so French fighter pilots (Paul Martin's figure of 186 in his 2nd edition, plus a few others from local "chimney flights" etc.) who lost their lives fighting nazi Germany. With the exception of the Poles they were the very first to do so - but the Poles had been attacked so they fought back (gallantly), whereas the French, who were not involved in the Polish war, declared war on Germany because it had attacked Poland : there is a difference. Almost all of them (about 160) were killed within 5 weeks of fighting during the French Campaign in May-June 1940. At this rate they all would have been dead by September. Had RAF Fighter Command been exterminated by September 1940 yet? I never heard such a terrible thing (thanks God, Dowding and Park!). We already had a similar discussion, here at TOCH, on unclever and inaccurate wholesale insults aimed at a certain category or nationality, like (in the preceding thread) Italian soldiers, who "were the bravest I had under my command", or something of this kind (general Erwin Rommel's opinion).

Besides, the mentioned, dirty, anonymous statement - "... it seems that French fighter pilots did not press home their attacks with every ounce of energy" is particularly stupid and it was a serious error to print it except, of course, if it expressed your own opinion but in this case you ought not to have hidden behind "an historian" (Mr. X). It is stupid because, as I underlined often already, including in this very thread, RAF pilots had exactly the same number of people killed during the BoB, taking the different duration into account. Nevertheless RAF fighter pilots were twice as numerous as their French colleagues and brothers in arms, so that the French KIA-rate was twice as high as the RAF one. So : who was not brave enough? Who was not eager to fight? Certainly not the French! Not the Britishers either : they fought for their country too, they obeyed orders too and they often lost their lives.

I would particularly like to draw your attention on the fact, an INDISPUTABLE fact,

that I often wrote on these questions, including in two books I published on WW II : "Les premiers et les derniers", by Adolf Galland (I translated it and added 100 pages of annexes, explanations and comments), in English "The First and the Last" (a very poor English translation, by the way), and "Invisibles vainqueurs" on the French Air Force 1939-40, by Paul Martin and myself; being the publisher I didn't mention my name as a co-author (50 % of the contents plus obviously the flamboyant title!) too,

BUT I never retaliated in kind - in fact I never even THOUGHT of doing so - after all the criticism and the incredible insults hurled at the French for nearly 70 years by mainly British, or rather English, people, like world-star Peter Townsend, a princess' dream, who had become a real cover-boy in France, where he lived (Paris-Match, Historia and many more popular magazines-covers). So I never even suggested that RAF fighter pilots or other aircrew, or other British soldiers including infantrymen, were chicken, were cowards etc. even though they took to their heels at Dunkerque and elsewhere, all along the French coast down to the Spanish border in the South (and the dumb French helped them as best they could and always were the rearguard making these reembarkments possible in the first place, including at Dunkerque). Never ever. Quite on the contrary I underlined at every opportunity that they were "brave" and "as brave as any" and I am still of this opinion.

This is one of the few things which make the difference between myself and an average English author (some are perfectly all right). According to Peter Townsend in his modest book "Duel of Eagles", published in France (in Paris I think) there were no brave Frenchmen 1940 (only roughly 90,000 were killed in 6 weeks, three times the WW I-rate, as compared to approx. 3,000 British soldiers, 30 times less) . Townsend certainly knew what he was talking about : he never took part in the fighting over "the continent" in May-June 1940 so he obviously was an expert at French fighter pilots (whom he libelled very heavily) in particular! He had been spending these months -as a fighter pilot - at a safe place, far beyond the sea, in England, and never heard or saw any Me 109-cannon fired in anger - and never experienced any Flak-fire - before the BoB so he was the most competent man in the world to write on what happened in and around France in May-June 1940 and hurl wholesale insults at the whole French nation and population. Many French people dislike or even hate the British, yes (there are ALWAYS such problems between neighbours, like Mexico and the USA, Germany and Poland, Italy and France, England and Scotland, Poland and Russia etc.), but I never read or heard one single French statement on the British as insulting as millions of British statements on the French. Clearly the British "race" (!) is vastly superior, which gives its members a special right to insult others.

Originally Posted by Brian

You mention my TDIM - (...) It was not an account of the Battle of France and wasn't intended to be.

Well, even though I am a brain-amputated French fool I was aware of this fact, I had noticed. My copy of TDIM, like dozens of other German, English and French books on WW II*, especially on the 1940 French Campaign, is on the shelf close to me and I only need to stretch out my arm to grab it, which I quite often do - a horrifying experience but I, too, am a brave man (it's easy to be when you've got no brain). This explains that I am able to give very exact quotations from it.

* The only way to be well-informed - and not one-sidedly like most British authors - is to read them all if possible (all which have been published), or as many as possible. This means having an excellent command of three languages (4 if we include Dutch) : Fench (after all it was the French Campaign...), German (the most important language for it is hardly disputable that Germany played a major part in this campaign) and English, last and least for the British part in the 1940 French Campaign was a sideshow : they came and they left! (Can you imagine : those naughty German soldiers shot at them! This was outrageous!). This is confirmed by the respective losses in combat (excluding losses aboard ships sailing back to England) suffered by all waring parties. So English in fact really is the least important language (about the BoB it's exactly the reverse) but obviously virtually all British authors are unable, and they wouldn't dream of, reading even one single page of a French book on military operations, which does not prevent them from knowing everything better, being aware of everything and writing great, sweeping, resounding historical statements like "The Luftwaffe swept the French Air Force from the sky at once" (the truth is very exactly the contrary of this nonsense : "The Luftwaffe FAILED to...") and of course the famous "French fighter pilots were not eager to fight... had no guts... ate lunch instead of taking off to fight... drank their vermouth in elegant bars whereas German bombers destroyed the nearby city... didn't press home their attacks*..." and on and on, all this being to be found in highly scientific, historical English books).

Those who allow themselves to publish judgements on 1940 French soldiers without having read at least 20 books in French (not translated) on this subject are quite simply crooks for they commit a fraud. They get paid for a book containing nonsense. All right - some other people do this too.

* Well, at least (quote) "it seems that" they did attack and "even" possibly opened fire at the German aircraft- that was better than nothing.

[Ruy Horta]

ORDER....ORDER

Gentlemen, lets not pursue this debate on a personal level. As I've asked before, and repeated more than once, this debate is too interesting too be spoiled by insult. Passion should not stand in the way of constructive and I'd like to add friendly debate.



I hope that it is possible for the participants to shake hands and continue in a constructive manner.