Reddit reviews To Lose a Battle: France 1940

The answer is one of doctrine

through most of the second world war, the primary combat weapon for an infantry soldier in almost all armies was a bolt action rifle, in most cases supplemented by a squad/platoon level machine gun section (this varied drastically from formation to formation of course)

the idea was to have the "squad" MG as a suppression weapon to allow for the infantry to maneuver from a fixed anchor point (or two, for example german schewere panzergrenadier formations sometimes had two MG42s at the squad level), this doctrine was largely common to the European combatants, and i believe the french followed along, as they used the Lebel in conjunction with the FM 24/29 (and Brens, and chauchats, and anything they could dig up towards the end..)

for the soviets it was the the Mosin–Nagant 91/30 with a DP mg

for the british it was the Lee-Enfield MK4 with the Bren

for the germans it was the Kar 98k with the MG42 (the GW43 not being issued until 43, and never eclipsing the Kar98 except in mountain and as i recall falshimjaeger units)

for the italians it was largely the Carcano M91/41 with a number of Breda Mgs

only the americans used an "automatic rifle" doctrine, where the Garand was a standard rifle, and the BAR supplemented it (the BAR most definitely not being a full MG), only Armored rifle and Airborne platoons tended to have incorporated light 30cal Mgs. the automatic rifles provided each infantry soldier more individual firepower, and a better individual capability to offer suppression fire, at the cost of not having a lynch-pin squad level MG. (it mostly worked... but like most ww2 american doctrine, it had its major drawbacks... See tank destroyers....)

the automatic rifle was the anomaly, not the standard.

the other side to it is production, as the war dragged on, most combatants started to add more and more automatic rifles into the mix, the SVT rifle became more common, the gw43, etc, but these weapons were in general more complicated to produce, and in most cases, a greater number of bolt-action rifles were preferable, except in the US where production of Garands was sufficient as to not require "dropping down" to a bolt action rifle.

and last, well, frankly, the french military establishment after ww1 was a clusterfuck.. between the maginot line, balkanized weapons production, and scandal after scandal, modernization programs were a very stop and go affair, with semi- automatic rifles inevitably being a victim here.. i still really like "to lose a battle" by Alistair Horne for insightinto the french military pre-ww2

http://www.amazon.com/To-Lose-Battle-France-1940/dp/0141030658

Edits: formatting and spelling

What actually happened was quite disastrous, but I do wonder if the French would have even been able to hold back the Germans if they hadn't made the mistakes they did. Sure, they could have responded to reports of troops in the Ardennes, and fought at the French border instead of in Belgium (assuming a total rework of French strategy from top to bottom), but I think there's room for debate as to whether a properly-led French army could have taken on the Wehrmacht. It was superior on paper, but there were sure a lot of force multipliers going for the Germans. French morale was pretty bad at the time, and most of the troops were relatively poorly-trained conscripts, as opposed to the Germans just coming out of Poland. The French generals, with the possible exception of Weygand and de Gaulle, were completely inferior to their German counterparts. Naturally, the French people weren't nearly as enthusiastic about being at war as they had been at the beginning of WWI. Back then, they could look forward to reclaiming Alsace-Lorraine, but at the beginning of WWII, they found themselves at war for the sake of another country, and they still remembered the huge casualties from 20 years back.

The biggest problem, I think, would still have been the complete inferiority of French air assets compared to the Luftwaffe. Their planes were relatively modern, but there were very few of them. They realized by the late 30s that they really needed to start building up, but they just couldn't keep up with German production, and they especially couldn't compensate for things like the combat experience of units that fought in Spain and Poland.

The other thing is the French armor strategy. They dispersed their tanks for infantry support, instead of making schwerpunkt type armored breakthroughs. It's a failure in strategy, of course, but one that you don't really learn without being in combat and figuring it out for yourself.

All that having been said, you can identify several points where French command made mistakes that should have been obvious even at the time. They might not have been able to completely stop the Germans, but they at least could have significantly delayed them. It really is pretty astonishing that they allowed themselves to be defeated so quickly.

To Lose a Battle is a pretty good book about all this, for anyone who might be interested.

As a mild addendum, the German tank lines moved faster than even the Germans were prepared for, at the direct urging of master Blitzkrieg and armored warfare strategist Heinz Guderian. Guderian's concern for the speed of the assault was paramount to the rapid success of Germany's invasion, including at one point fighting his direct superior, von Kleist (verbally, von Kleist conceded to Guderian's reasoning in pragmatic German fashion), in order to attack at poorly defended Sedan, which kept German armor out of the range of French artillery and allowed them to continue pushing forward before the French could regroup. If I recall correctly, both Rommel and Guderian's Panzercorps ended their initial push into French territory nearly 100 kilometers past the initial plan had hoped, which was already far more than the French could have imagined. (Unfortunately I can't seem to find my copy of Sir Alistair Hornes To Lose a Battle: France 1940 which gives an excellent portrayal of the events at hand - which I believe to include Guderian's personal orders to push forward until fuel supply became critical) Point being - while the French units were certainly underwhelming it is impossible to overstate exactly how unprepared their leaders had left them. Greater point being, Guderian was a magnificent bastard and it's probably shameful that the only German general most people can name is Rommel.

A good (if maybe dated) overview - Alistair Horne - To Lose a Battle (France 1940)

certainly very complex as the other person posted, but yeah- the French had a vacuum in leadership, as well as manpower - something like 25% of France's male population had died in WWI. Plus their tactics of static defense had not kept up to the German tactics. The German army I've heard described as a prize fighter- can hit knockout blows, but is not built for a long slog of a fight. The French also didn't believe the Ardennes could be passable to German tanks, and the French employed their tanks widely dispersed, rather than concentrating them en masse.