Several weeks ago I took up Arthur Koestler’s memoir, Scum of the Earth (1941), for reasons similar to those stated in your first essay. You’ve likely read Koestler, but if not, here in brief is what he has to say about reluctance in France at the time of the Danzig crisis:
“Across the mists of the Channel, London, the broad-shouldered big brother, said: I can take it. But Paris couldn’t. The people of Paris could fight on barricades built of paving-stones, mattresses and bird cages, as in the heroic days of 1848, as in the days of the Commune and in the days of Sacco and Vanzetti … If the heroic craziness got hold of them, they could live on grilled rats and charge the enemy with their bare nails and bite the nose off his face. If. But where was the heroic craziness?”
After a vivid account of Parisian confusion about reasons for the war, he concludes that
“If there had been a branch of the Mass Observation movement in France or of Gallup’s Institute of Public Opinion, and if they had established a cross-section of what French people thought of the war, they would have been led to the conclusion that France had morally lost the war long before the actual military collapse” (emphasis added). The importance of this concept extends to military canon and I don’t think that that it’s fully understood.
Koestler then expands on his assessment by offering three French archetypes, essentially: 1) Those who grumbled about the state of brokenness in France, declaring “The only salvation for France was an authoritarian regime, which would mercilessly clean the stable, like Hitler had done in Germany.” 2) Those who did not understand the magnitude of the threat and questioned the benefits of joining the fight. And 3) those who held simple worldviews and once influenced by “forces which were in control” of independent newspapers, became cynical and devoid of a “loftier conception of humanity’s aims.” These conclusions come within the first fifty pages of the book.
One of the great ironies is the French military command after 1945 and DeGaulle's self imposed exile to Colombey-les-Deux-Églises once AGAIN tried to rebuild the Maginot Line thinking it would have relevance then to the Cold War. It was only after DeGaulle's return in 1959 and France's first nuclear test that the Maginot Line was once and finally scrapped for good. Remember a lot of the French military command OTHER than DeGaulle from 1945 to 1960 collaborated under Vichy initially and did not follow DeGaulle in 1940.
There is a great documentary from France Television featuring Francois Heisbourg among others discussing the huge changes in French military NOT after 1945 but only after 1960 and the advent of French nuclear weapons and just how overwhelmingly they were compared to the past.
Superb stuff. And fertile grounds to further explore the strange defeat of the world's only hyperpower at a time of enviable economic growth and mass prosperity. Very partially defeated by its diminished basketcase of a rival, but in the main felled by its own neuroses. The buck stops with leadership - and the vain old Irish fool chosen to lead proved so unequal to the task that it remains an enduring embarrassment to all of us who supported him. Mediocrity is not exactly in short supply though.
"Nor can I really persuade myself that the effort (writing) will be wholly useless. A day will come, of that I am convinced, after no matter how long a delay, when this old and sacred soil of (America), from which. in the past, so many harvests have been lifted - harvests of free thought and judgement (truth) unrestrained - will once more burgeon into ripeness."
Back in 2008, I was part of a small team that wrote a 15 yr campaign plan for the US Army Field Artillery. The leader of the group and I had both been European FAOs. It was logical then, after consulting some long term intelligence assessments, for us to declare the second-most likely mid-intensity conflict potentially involving US forces would be Russia invading Ukraine (first was a major war between India and Pakistan). I can confidently assert that not ONE other human being who read our assessment showed a scintilla of care or interest. We could've written "Mars finally invades Earth" and gotten more resonance. Alas, we were still firmly in counterinsurgency/War on Terror mode, and the Army? Not imaginative thinkers, we. Of course, 7 months later, while I was in Iraq, Putin invaded Georgia (where I believe Molly McKew was). To me, this was a demarcation. I'd been suspicious of Putin for a couple years at that point (his gas dust-up when Merkel surreptitiously bent the knee), but this made it clear for me that Russia was a fully malevolent actor. Apparently few others noticed.
Six years later, I was stationed at the NRDC in Istanbul when Russia invaded Crimea. A few things stood out. First, was the self-reassurance by intelligence folks in NATO that we could predict things (Crimea was "unpredictable" because no one expected Yanukovych to bolt. As if this were the only reason Putin invaded). I may or may not have told a room of 100 intel officers we were a collective group of idiots in response (okay, I did). Second was an unwillingness to see this was only the beginning. This was from the military level, upward. I happened to meet and converse with the Russian military super-scholar, Roger McDermott, while in Istanbul. He informed me he was traveling to DC on a grant, and was trying to talk to folks in the Obama Administration (I recommended he talk to Hillary, seeing as she might be president in another two years). After one month, he wrote to tell me he was returning to UK, disillusioned. Not ONE person in our FP apparatus, anywhere in government, was willing to talk to him about Russia (the Obama Administration--starting with the president who declared on minute 5 that US troops wouldn't get involved in Ukraine "no matter what"--was myopically focused on the Iran Deal at that time--no diversions allowed). I wrote to the Colonel who'd written that old estimate with me--at that time working in J5 in the Pentagon--telling him we should have made a bigger deal about our estimate. "It wouldn't have mattered," he replied.
Ironically, I when I was commissioned in 1991, right as the Cold War ended, the Army spent nearly another decade still largely fighting the Soviets--at our NTC at least. The excuse was "half the world was supported and trained with Soviet weapons and trained in their tactics." It was a cop-out and excuse to keep doing what we were comfy in (and remember what I said about imagination. No clear #1 threat? Keep fighting the old one!).
My take, overall, is that Trump is just a super-manifestation of and reckoning for our overall unwillingness to look at Russia clearly and soberly for at least the past 11 years; truthfully, even longer. Of course, that's on the FP side. Then there's the whole "we invented fascism" side of things, domestically, that we've never been close to honest about as well. For another time....
There’s a strain of evil from the Dreyfus scandal to Petain and Vichy. In fact, wasn’t Petain a player in the Dreyfus Affair? And how might a comparison with the U.S. look?
I feel most qualified to comment on the military dimension of France’s 1940 debacle, around which certain misconceptions swirl. One of these is that the construction of the “Great Wall of France,” the much-maligned Maginot Line, was a great strategic mistake. Given the strategic dilemma that French military leaders foresaw in the 1920s it was, on the contrary, a reasonable measure of defense. But perhaps instead of confining my observations to a comment, I’ll write an article on the subject and provide a link to it here for those of Claire’s readers who may be interested.
Several weeks ago I took up Arthur Koestler’s memoir, Scum of the Earth (1941), for reasons similar to those stated in your first essay. You’ve likely read Koestler, but if not, here in brief is what he has to say about reluctance in France at the time of the Danzig crisis:
“Across the mists of the Channel, London, the broad-shouldered big brother, said: I can take it. But Paris couldn’t. The people of Paris could fight on barricades built of paving-stones, mattresses and bird cages, as in the heroic days of 1848, as in the days of the Commune and in the days of Sacco and Vanzetti … If the heroic craziness got hold of them, they could live on grilled rats and charge the enemy with their bare nails and bite the nose off his face. If. But where was the heroic craziness?”
After a vivid account of Parisian confusion about reasons for the war, he concludes that
“If there had been a branch of the Mass Observation movement in France or of Gallup’s Institute of Public Opinion, and if they had established a cross-section of what French people thought of the war, they would have been led to the conclusion that France had morally lost the war long before the actual military collapse” (emphasis added). The importance of this concept extends to military canon and I don’t think that that it’s fully understood.
Koestler then expands on his assessment by offering three French archetypes, essentially: 1) Those who grumbled about the state of brokenness in France, declaring “The only salvation for France was an authoritarian regime, which would mercilessly clean the stable, like Hitler had done in Germany.” 2) Those who did not understand the magnitude of the threat and questioned the benefits of joining the fight. And 3) those who held simple worldviews and once influenced by “forces which were in control” of independent newspapers, became cynical and devoid of a “loftier conception of humanity’s aims.” These conclusions come within the first fifty pages of the book.
One of the great ironies is the French military command after 1945 and DeGaulle's self imposed exile to Colombey-les-Deux-Églises once AGAIN tried to rebuild the Maginot Line thinking it would have relevance then to the Cold War. It was only after DeGaulle's return in 1959 and France's first nuclear test that the Maginot Line was once and finally scrapped for good. Remember a lot of the French military command OTHER than DeGaulle from 1945 to 1960 collaborated under Vichy initially and did not follow DeGaulle in 1940.
There is a great documentary from France Television featuring Francois Heisbourg among others discussing the huge changes in French military NOT after 1945 but only after 1960 and the advent of French nuclear weapons and just how overwhelmingly they were compared to the past.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcOT9pLSeUs
Superb stuff. And fertile grounds to further explore the strange defeat of the world's only hyperpower at a time of enviable economic growth and mass prosperity. Very partially defeated by its diminished basketcase of a rival, but in the main felled by its own neuroses. The buck stops with leadership - and the vain old Irish fool chosen to lead proved so unequal to the task that it remains an enduring embarrassment to all of us who supported him. Mediocrity is not exactly in short supply though.
As promised, here are my thoughts on the Battle of France 1940:
https://unwokeindianaag.substack.com/p/debacle-1940
You had me at...
"Nor can I really persuade myself that the effort (writing) will be wholly useless. A day will come, of that I am convinced, after no matter how long a delay, when this old and sacred soil of (America), from which. in the past, so many harvests have been lifted - harvests of free thought and judgement (truth) unrestrained - will once more burgeon into ripeness."
An upgrade to the zeitgeist...great post!
This sounds a lot like expecting Ukraine to use US tactics without giving them US weapons.
I certainly hope we're taking better notes this time than the French did.
I've had many unusual yoga instructors, but that footnote sounds like a nightmare I'd be glad to never experience.
Super, enlightening piece. Bloch's book looks like a must read, especially refracted through the lens of contemporary events.
I've just bought it on Kindle for £0.83p...
Back in 2008, I was part of a small team that wrote a 15 yr campaign plan for the US Army Field Artillery. The leader of the group and I had both been European FAOs. It was logical then, after consulting some long term intelligence assessments, for us to declare the second-most likely mid-intensity conflict potentially involving US forces would be Russia invading Ukraine (first was a major war between India and Pakistan). I can confidently assert that not ONE other human being who read our assessment showed a scintilla of care or interest. We could've written "Mars finally invades Earth" and gotten more resonance. Alas, we were still firmly in counterinsurgency/War on Terror mode, and the Army? Not imaginative thinkers, we. Of course, 7 months later, while I was in Iraq, Putin invaded Georgia (where I believe Molly McKew was). To me, this was a demarcation. I'd been suspicious of Putin for a couple years at that point (his gas dust-up when Merkel surreptitiously bent the knee), but this made it clear for me that Russia was a fully malevolent actor. Apparently few others noticed.
Six years later, I was stationed at the NRDC in Istanbul when Russia invaded Crimea. A few things stood out. First, was the self-reassurance by intelligence folks in NATO that we could predict things (Crimea was "unpredictable" because no one expected Yanukovych to bolt. As if this were the only reason Putin invaded). I may or may not have told a room of 100 intel officers we were a collective group of idiots in response (okay, I did). Second was an unwillingness to see this was only the beginning. This was from the military level, upward. I happened to meet and converse with the Russian military super-scholar, Roger McDermott, while in Istanbul. He informed me he was traveling to DC on a grant, and was trying to talk to folks in the Obama Administration (I recommended he talk to Hillary, seeing as she might be president in another two years). After one month, he wrote to tell me he was returning to UK, disillusioned. Not ONE person in our FP apparatus, anywhere in government, was willing to talk to him about Russia (the Obama Administration--starting with the president who declared on minute 5 that US troops wouldn't get involved in Ukraine "no matter what"--was myopically focused on the Iran Deal at that time--no diversions allowed). I wrote to the Colonel who'd written that old estimate with me--at that time working in J5 in the Pentagon--telling him we should have made a bigger deal about our estimate. "It wouldn't have mattered," he replied.
Ironically, I when I was commissioned in 1991, right as the Cold War ended, the Army spent nearly another decade still largely fighting the Soviets--at our NTC at least. The excuse was "half the world was supported and trained with Soviet weapons and trained in their tactics." It was a cop-out and excuse to keep doing what we were comfy in (and remember what I said about imagination. No clear #1 threat? Keep fighting the old one!).
My take, overall, is that Trump is just a super-manifestation of and reckoning for our overall unwillingness to look at Russia clearly and soberly for at least the past 11 years; truthfully, even longer. Of course, that's on the FP side. Then there's the whole "we invented fascism" side of things, domestically, that we've never been close to honest about as well. For another time....
There’s a strain of evil from the Dreyfus scandal to Petain and Vichy. In fact, wasn’t Petain a player in the Dreyfus Affair? And how might a comparison with the U.S. look?
I feel most qualified to comment on the military dimension of France’s 1940 debacle, around which certain misconceptions swirl. One of these is that the construction of the “Great Wall of France,” the much-maligned Maginot Line, was a great strategic mistake. Given the strategic dilemma that French military leaders foresaw in the 1920s it was, on the contrary, a reasonable measure of defense. But perhaps instead of confining my observations to a comment, I’ll write an article on the subject and provide a link to it here for those of Claire’s readers who may be interested.