Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Introduction

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Fall of France in the Second World War

  • 403 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter poses the central question of the book: Why did France fall in 1940? Writers and historians have usually replied in one or more of four different ways: that France was decadent and defeat was inevitable; that France was burdened by numerous constraints that made the country vulnerable to collapse; that France’s policy-makers failed collectively and individually to prepare the country for war; and, lastly, that the fall was first and foremost a military defeat in which contingent factors played a deciding role. The book suggests that, nowadays, the academic consensus favours this last explanation. Yet this consensus has still to percolate into the French collective memory of 1940. The memory of the military defeat remains conflated with that of the demise of the Third Republic.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Victor Davis Hanson (2017) The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won (New York: Basic Books), 248.

  2. 2.

    Alistair Horne (1969) To Lose a Battle: France 1940 (London: Macmillan), 672.

  3. 3.

    Jonathan Fenby (2015) The History of Modern France: From the Revolution to the War with Terror (London: Simon & Schuster), 272–277.

  4. 4.

    David Reynolds (2004) In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (London: Penguin), 164.

  5. 5.

    Alexander Werth (1940) The Last Days of Paris: A Journalist’s Diary (London: Hamish Hamilton), 9.

  6. 6.

    Heinz Magenheimer (1998) Hitler’s War: German Military Strategy 1940–1945 (London: Cassell Arms and Armour), 21.

  7. 7.

    P. M. H. Bell (2011) Twelve Turning Points of the Second World War (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), 20.

  8. 8.

    Gerhard L. Weinberg (2005) A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (Cambridge University Press), 186.

  9. 9.

    Robert Frank (2015) ‘Juin 1940: la Défaite de la France ou le Sens de Vichy’, in Alya Aglan and Robert Frank (eds.), 1937–1947 La Guerre-Monde 1 (Paris: Gallimard), 247.

  10. 10.

    David Reynolds (2006) From World War to Cold War: Churchill, Roosevelt and the International History of the 1940s (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 26.

  11. 11.

    Pierre Grosser (1999) Pourquoi la Seconde Guerre Mondiale? (Brussels: Editions Complexe), 193–204; Patrick Finney (2011) Remembering the Road to World War Two: International History, National Identity, Collective Memory (London: Routledge), 149–187.

  12. 12.

    John Lukacs (1976) The Last European War September 1939–December 1941 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), 419.

  13. 13.

    Robert J. Young (1996) France and the Origins of the Second World War (London: Macmillan), 55.

  14. 14.

    Robert Frank (2013) ‘The Second World War Through French and British Eyes’, in Robert Tombs and Emile Chabal (eds.), Britain and France in Two World Wars: Truth, Myth and Memory (London: Bloomsbury), 182.

  15. 15.

    Major-General Sir Edward L. Spears (1954) Assignment to Catastrophe Volume I: Prelude to Dunkirk July 1939–May 1940 (London: William Heinemann), 257.

  16. 16.

    Peter Jackson (2006) ‘Post-war Politics and the Historiography of French Strategy and Diplomacy Before the Second World War’, History Compass, 4:5, 872.

  17. 17.

    Julian Jackson (2003) The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 3.

  18. 18.

    Stanley Hoffmann (1998) ‘The Trauma of 1940: A Disaster and Its Traces’, in Joel Blatt (ed.), The French Defeat of 1940: Reassessments (Providence and Oxford: Berghahn), 354–370.

  19. 19.

    Jacques Benoist-Méchin (1956) Soixante jours qui ébranlèrent l’Occident (Paris: Albin Michel); Claude Paillat (1985) Le Désastre de 1940: La Guerre éclair 10 mai–24 juin 1940 (Paris: Laffont); Henri Amouroux (1976) La grande histoire des Français sous l’occupation 1: Le peuple du désastre 1939–1940 (Paris: Robert Laffont); Marc Bloch (1990) L’étrange défaite: témoignage écrit en 1940 (Paris: Gallimard); Léon Blum (1945) A l’échelle humaine (Paris: Gallimard); Charles de Gaulle (1954) Mémoires de guerre: L’appel 1940–1942 (Paris: Plon); Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac (1990) Les Français de l’An 40 (2 vols.) (Paris: Gallimard); and Ladislas Mysyrowicz (1973) Autopsie d’une défaite: origines de l’effondrement militaire français de 1940 (Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme).

  20. 20.

    Gilles Vergnon and Yves Santamaria (eds.) (2015) Le syndrome de 1940: Un trou noir mémoriel? (Paris: Riveneuve), 7–11.

  21. 21.

    Jean-Pierre Azéma (2002) De Munich à la Libération 1938–1944 (Paris: Seuil); Jean-Pierre Azéma and François Bédarida (eds.) (1993) La France des Années Noires (2 vols.) (Paris: Seuil); Jean-Pierre Azéma (2010) 1940 L’année noire (Paris: Fayard); and Jackson, The Fall of France.

  22. 22.

    Robert J. Young (1978) In Command of France: French Foreign Policy and Military Planning 1933–1940 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press); Robert A. Doughty (1985) The Seeds of Disaster: The Development of French Army Doctrine (Hamden, CT: Archon); Robert A. Doughty (1990) The Breaking Point: Sedan and the Fall of France 1940 (Hamden, CT: Archon); Ernest R. May (2000) Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France (London and New York: I.B. Tauris); and Karl-Heinz Frieser with John T. Greenwood (2005) The Blitzkrieg Legend: The 1940 Campaign in the West (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute).

  23. 23.

    Jackson, The Fall of France, 219–224.

  24. 24.

    Alya Aglan and Robert Frank (eds.) (2015) 1937–47 La Guerre-Monde (2 vols.) (Paris: Gallimard); John Ferris and Evan Mawdsley (eds.) (2015) The Cambridge History of the Second World War (3 vols.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

  25. 25.

    Eleanor M. Gates (1981) End of the Affair: The Collapse of the Anglo-French Alliance 1939–40 (Berkeley: University of California Press); P. M. H. Bell (1974) A Certain Eventuality: Britain and the Fall of France (Farnborough: Saxon House).

  26. 26.

    Robert and Isabelle Tombs (2006) That Sweet Enemy: The French and the British from the Sun King to the Present (London: Heinemann); Peter Mangold (2012) Britain and the Defeated French: From Occupation to Liberation 1940–1944 (London and New York: I.B. Tauris).

  27. 27.

    Philip Nord (2015) France 1940: Defending the Republic (New Haven and London: Yale University Press).

  28. 28.

    Lloyd Clark (2016) Blitzkrieg: Myth, Reality and Hitler’s Lightning War: France 1940 (London: Atlantic); Robert Forczyk (2017) Case Red: The Collapse of France (Oxford: Osprey).

  29. 29.

    Daniel Barlone (1942) A French Officer’s Diary 23 August 1939–1 October 1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); Jacques Benoist-Méchin (1941) La Moisson de quarante: Journal d’un prisonnier de guerre (Paris: Albin Michel); Jean Chauvel (1971) Commentaire: De Vienne à Alger 1938–1944 (Paris: Fayard); Alfred Fabre-Luce (1969) Journal de la France 1939–1944 (Paris: Fayard); Georges Friedmann (1987) Journal de guerre 1939–1940 (Paris: Gallimard); James Lansdale Hodson (1941) Through the Dark Night (London: Gollancz); Claude Jamet (1942) Carnets de déroute (Paris: Fernand Sorlot); Edward Spears (1954) Assignment to Catastrophe (2 vols.) (London: Heinemann); Paul de Villelume (1976) Journal d’une défaite (Paris: Fayard); Alexander Werth (1940) The Last Days of Paris: A Journalist’s Diary (London: Hamish Hamilton); and Léon Werth (1992) 33 jours (Paris: Viviane Hamy).

  30. 30.

    Pierre-Frédéric Charpentier ‘Mai-Juin 1940 dans la littérature française: expositions et occultations’, in Vergnon and Santamaria , Le syndrome de 1940, 195–208.

  31. 31.

    Laurent Quinton (2014) Digérer la défaite: Récits de captivité des prisonniers de guerre français de la Seconde Guerre mondiale (1940–1955) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes).

  32. 32.

    Margaret Atack and Christopher Lloyd (eds.) (2012) Framing Narratives of the Second World War and the Occupation in France 1939–2009 (Manchester: Manchester University Press).

  33. 33.

    Robert Frank (1993) ‘La mémoire empoisonnée’, in Azéma and Bédarida , La France des Années Noires 2: De l’Occupation à la Libération, 502–503.

  34. 34.

    Andrew Shennan (2000) The Fall of France 1940 (London: Routledge), ix.

  35. 35.

    Eberhard Jäckel (1966) Frankreich in Hitlers Europa: Die Deutsche Frankreichpolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Suttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt); Robert O. Paxton (1972) Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order 1940–1944 (New York: Columbia University Press).

  36. 36.

    Henry Rousso (1991) The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France Since 1944 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press); Eric Conan and Henry Rousso (1998) Vichy: An Ever-Present Past (Hanover and London: University Press of New England). See also Sarah Fishman and Ioannis Sinanoglou (eds.) (2000) France at War: Vichy and the Historians (Oxford: Berg).

  37. 37.

    Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1941) Les Beaux Draps (Paris: Nouvelles Editions Françaises). Quoted in Vergnon and Santamaria , Le syndrome de 1940, 9.

  38. 38.

    Martin S. Alexander (2001) ‘Repercussions: The Battle of France in History and Historiography: The French View’, in Brian Bond and Michael D. Taylor (eds.), The Battle for France and Flanders 1940: Sixty Years On (Barnsley: Leo Cooper), 181–205.

  39. 39.

    Dominique Lormier (2005) Comme des lions: mai-juin 1940, l’héroïque sacrifice de l’armée française (Paris: Calmann-Lévy).

  40. 40.

    For a digestible overview of this discussion, see Finney, Remembering the Road to World War, 1–36.

  41. 41.

    Kevin Passmore (2003) ‘Poststructuralism and History’, in Stefan Berger, Heiko Feldner, and Kevin Passmore (eds.), Writing History: Theory and Practice (London: Hodder Arnold), 133.

Bibliography

  • Aglan A. and R. Frank (eds.) (2015) 1937–1947 La Guerre-Monde (2 vols.) (Paris: Gallimard).

    Google Scholar 

  • Amouroux H. (1976) La grande histoire des Français sous l’occupation 1: Le peuple du désastre 1939–1940 (Paris: Robert Laffont).

    Google Scholar 

  • Atack M. and C. Lloyd (eds.) (2012) Framing Narratives of the Second World War and the Occupation in France 1939–2009 (Manchester University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Azéma J.-P. (2002) De Munich à la Libération 1938–1944 (Paris: Seuil).

    Google Scholar 

  • Azéma J.-P. (2010) 1940 L’année noire (Paris: Fayard).

    Google Scholar 

  • Azéma J.–P. and F. Bédarida (eds.) (1993) La France des Années Noires (2 vols.) (Paris: Seuil).

    Google Scholar 

  • Barlone D. (1942) A French Officer’s Diary 23 August 1939–1 October 1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Bell P. (1974) A Certain Eventuality: Britain and the Fall of France (Farnborough: Saxon House).

    Google Scholar 

  • Bell P. (2011) Twelve Turning Points of the Second World War (New Haven and London: Yale University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Benoist-Méchin J. (1941) La Moisson de quarante: Journal d’un prisonnier de guerre (Paris: Albin Michel).

    Google Scholar 

  • Benoist-Méchin J. (1956) Soixante jours qui ébranlèrent l’Occident (Paris: Albin Michel).

    Google Scholar 

  • Berger S., H. Feldner, and K. Passmore (eds.) (2003) Writing History: Theory and Practice (London: Hodder Arnold).

    Google Scholar 

  • Blatt J. (ed.) (1998) The French Defeat of 1940: Reassessments (Providence and Oxford: Berghahn).

    Google Scholar 

  • Bloch M. (1990) L’étrange défaite: témoignage écrit en 1940 (Paris: Gallimard).

    Google Scholar 

  • Blum L. (1945) A l’échelle humaine (Paris: Gallimard).

    Google Scholar 

  • Bond B. and M. Taylor (eds.) (2001) The Battle for France and Flanders 1940: Sixty Years On (Barnsley: Leo Cooper).

    Google Scholar 

  • Céline L.-F. (1941) Les Beaux Draps (Paris: Nouvelles Editions Françaises).

    Google Scholar 

  • Chauvel J. (1971) Commentaire: De Vienne à Alger 1938–1944 (Paris: Fayard).

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark L. (2016) Blitzkrieg: Myth, Reality and Hitler’s Lightning War: France 1940 (London: Atlantic).

    Google Scholar 

  • Conan E. and H. Rousso (1998) Vichy: An Ever-Present Past (Hanover and London: University Press of New England).

    Google Scholar 

  • Crémieux-Brilhac J.-L. (1990) Les Français de l’An 40 (2 vols.) (Paris: Gallimard).

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis V. (2017) The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won (New York: Basic Books).

    Google Scholar 

  • De Gaulle C. (1954) Mémoires de guerre: L’appel 1940–1942 (Paris: Plon).

    Google Scholar 

  • De Villelume P. (1976) Journal d’une défaite (Paris: Fayard).

    Google Scholar 

  • Doughty R. (1985) The Seeds of Disaster: The Development of French Army Doctrine (Hamden, CT: Archon).

    Google Scholar 

  • Doughty R. (1990) The Breaking Point: Sedan and the Fall of France 1940 (Hamden, CT: Archon).

    Google Scholar 

  • Fabre-Luce A. (1969) Journal de la France 1939–1944 (Paris: Fayard).

    Google Scholar 

  • Fenby J. (2015) The History of Modern France: From the Revolution to the War with Terror (London: Simon & Schuster).

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferris J. and E. Mawdsley (eds.) (2015) The Cambridge History of the Second World War (3 vols.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Finney P. (2011) Remembering the Road to World War Two: International History, National Identity, Collective Memory (London: Routledge).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Fishman S. and I. Sinanoglou (eds.) (2000) France at War: Vichy and the Historians (Oxford: Berg).

    Google Scholar 

  • Forcyzk R. (2017) Case Red: The Collapse of France (Oxford: Osprey).

    Google Scholar 

  • Friedmann G. (1987) Journal de guerre 1939–1940 (Paris: Gallimard).

    Google Scholar 

  • Frieser K.-H. (2005) The Blitzkrieg Legend: The 1940 Campaign in the West (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute).

    Google Scholar 

  • Gates E. (1981) End of the Affair: The Collapse of the Anglo-French Alliance 1939–40 (Berkeley: University of California Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Grosser P. (1999) Pourquoi la Seconde Guerre Mondiale? (Brussels: Editions Complexe).

    Google Scholar 

  • Hodson J. (1941) Through the Dark Night: Being Some Account of a War Correspondent’s Journeys, Meetings and What Was Said to Him in France, Britain and Flanders 1939–1940 (London: Gollancz).

    Google Scholar 

  • Horne A. (1969) To Lose a Battle: France 1940 (London: Macmillan).

    Google Scholar 

  • Jäckel E. (1966) Frankreich in Hitlers Europa: Die Deutsche Frankreichpolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Suttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt).

    Google Scholar 

  • Jackson J. (2003) The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Jackson P. (2006) ‘Post-war Politics and the Historiography of French Strategy and Diplomacy Before the Second World War’. History Compass, 4:5, 87–905.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jamet C. (1942) Carnets de déroute (Paris: Fernand Sorlot).

    Google Scholar 

  • Lormier D. (2005) Comme des lions: mai-juin 1940, l’héroïque sacrifice de l’armée francaise (Paris: Calmann-Lévy).

    Google Scholar 

  • Lukacs J. (1976) The Last European War September 1939–December 1941 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Magenheimer H. (1998) Hitler’s War: German Military Strategy 1940–1945 (London: Cassell).

    Google Scholar 

  • Mangold P. (2012) Britain and the Defeated French: From Occupation to Liberation 1940–1944 (London and New York: I.B. Tauris).

    Google Scholar 

  • May E. (2000) Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France (London and New York: I.B. Tauris).

    Google Scholar 

  • Mysyrowicz L. (1973) Autopsie d’une défaite: origines de l’effondrement militaire français de 1940 (Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme).

    Google Scholar 

  • Nord P. (2015) France 1940: Defending the Republic (New Haven and London: Yale University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Paillat C. (1985) Le Désastre de 1940: La Guerre éclair 10 mai–24 juin 1940 (Paris: Laffont).

    Google Scholar 

  • Paxton R. (1972) Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order 1940–1944 (New York: Columbia University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Pertinax (1944) The Gravediggers of France (New York: Doubleday Doran).

    Google Scholar 

  • Quinton L. (2014) Digérer la défaite: Récits de captivité des prisonniers de guerre français de la Seconde Guerre mondiale (1940–1955) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes).

    Google Scholar 

  • Reynolds D. (2004) In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (London: Penguin).

    Google Scholar 

  • Reynolds D. (2007) From World War to Cold War: Churchill, Roosevelt and the International History of the 1940s (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Rousso H. (1991) The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France Since 1944 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Shennan A. (2000) The Fall of France 1940 (London: Routledge).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Spears E. (1954) Assignment to Catastrophe (2 vols.) (London: Heinemann).

    Google Scholar 

  • Tombs R. and E. Chabal (eds.) (2013) Britain and France in Two World Wars: Truth, Myth and Memory (London: Bloomsbury).

    Google Scholar 

  • Tombs R. and I. Tombs (2006) That Sweet Enemy: The French and the British from the Sun King to the Present (London: Heinemann).

    Google Scholar 

  • Vergnon G. and Y. Santamaria (eds.) (2015) Le syndrome de 1940: Un trou noir mémoriel? (Paris: Riveneuve).

    Google Scholar 

  • Weinberg G. (2005) A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Werth A. (1940) The Last Days of Paris: A Journalist’s Diary (London: Hamish Hamilton).

    Google Scholar 

  • Werth L. (1992) 33 jours (Paris: Viviane Hamy).

    Google Scholar 

  • Young R. (1978) In Command of France: French Foreign Policy and Military Planning 1933–1940 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Young R. (1996) France and the Origins of the Second World War (London: Macmillan).

    Book  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Richmond, UK

    Richard Carswell

Authors
  1. Richard Carswell
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Richard Carswell .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Carswell, R. (2019). Introduction. In: The Fall of France in the Second World War. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03955-4_1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03955-4_1

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-03954-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-03955-4

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation