The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940

by Julian T. Jackson

Book Overview

The Fall of France in 1940 is one of the pivotal moments of the twentieth century. If the German invasion of France had failed, it is arguable that the war might have ended right there. But the French suffered instead a dramatic and humiliating defeat, a loss that ultimately drew the whole world into war.

This exciting new book by Julian Jackson, a leading historian of twentieth-century France, charts the breathtakingly rapid events that led...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0192805509
• ISBN13: 9780192805508
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 0.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

EXCELLENT ANALYSIS

I won't attempt to repeat information outlined in the exceptional previous reviews. This book provides a good companion to Ernest R. May's STANGE VICTORY Hill & Wang 2000. Although of the two, I find this book more interesting in that the author covers all aspects of French society as well as the impact of the defeat and how it was handled. He points out both the French and the British anticipated a long war, but they expected to have two years to complete gearing up for it. Part of the German success he attributes to a handfull of aggressive tactical commanders who outran the conservative wishes of the German senior command. He highlights the abysmal command and control problems of the French. Where properly led and handled, he believes the French infantry were formidible although there was a desperate shortage of artillary and especially antitank weapons. Except for the poor management of the aircraft situation, French industry by May 1940 was producing weapons at a respectable rate. This original work provides considerable insight into the factors leading to the German dramatic victory. He also points out there were significant people around the leadership who didn't want a war with Germany, although none of them had the levers of power in their hands at that time. I believe this work makes an important contribution to understanding that time and its legacy. Its purchase is recommended to anyone interested in history or France as well as those who follow military affairs.

First-rate history, exceptionally clear analysis.

This is an unusually good, short, very readable history of a difficult and contentious event, to which justice has not previously been done. I have read the usual accounts in the general histories (Churchill, Liddell Hart, Keegan and others) of the Second World War, as well as Shirer's "The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940", and none of them compare with Jackson's book. He has a very clear and precise writing style and tells the story in a well-organized manner. His citations of French, British, and German sources are very complete and to the point. His conclusions and the evidence he bases them on are very clear, leaving one free to agree or disagree as one wishes. He seems to have no agenda other than the desire to fulfill the historian's first obligation, which is to tell us WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED. He also gives a rather complete discussion, for such a short book, of previous accounts and interpretations of The Fall of France. After carefully considering the various previous explanations that have been put forth, he in the end attributes the French defeat primarily to a miscalculation by the French High Command as to where the Germans would attack, namely through the Ardennes Forest. It should be noted that the Allied High Command - Eisenhower, Bradley, Montgomery - made the same mistake only four years later, in November, 1944. They also assumed that the Germans could not mount an armored attack through that same Ardennes Forest, with near disastrous results for the Allies. Such an attack had been predicted as early as 1933 by B.H. Liddell Hart. His warnings of course were ignored in both 1940 and 1944. Even so, the key factor in the German victory, which surprised the Germans themselves, seems to have been the speed of the German attack. Guderian in fact was ordered to slow down and even halt after crossing the Meuse because the German High Command feared a French flanking attack from the south. Guderian offered his resignation to Kleist, who relented, and so the attack went on. The French in fact did finally attack the German flank, but too slowly and too late. They were just not prepared for the speed with which aggressive armored operations could be conducted. Jackson demonstrates clearly that the margin of German victory over France was much closer than it later seemed in retrospect, after the collapse of French morale and the ascendency of Vichy. Jackson's analysis of the long-term political effects of 1940 on the subsequent course of events of the twentieth century in France, Europe, and the world is quite illuminating, one of the best sections of the book. He uses the quite different responses to 1940 of two men, Charles de Gaulle and Francois Mitterand, very effectively to illustrate his points. The story of the Fall of France demonstrates, I believe, one unfortunate disadvantage of consensual, democratic government as opposed to tyranny, and that is that democracies ar

Buy this book. It is very very good.

It is difficult to better the comments in the other five-star reviews of this book, but I'll try: This is how historical accounts should be written: with care, attention to detail, faithfulness to sources, originality of ideas and an exciting writing style. I've read quite a lot about this period and these events but I was delighted by the many new things I learned. All theses are balanced and fair, and the author has a non-intrusive way of dealing with large moral issues.

Do the French really surrender regularly?

Much has been written about various aspects of World War II, but books continue to come out. Some do re-evaluations using new information, some take a different look at old information and try to show it in a new light. Julian Jackson has written a very interesting book on the German invasion of France in 1940, called (simply enough) The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940. In it, Jackson attempts to show his version of why France fell, and whether or not it was inevitable. Were the Germans just too powerful? Was the new Blitzkrieg warfare just too much for the incompetent French soldiers? Jackson uses personal memoirs, eyewitness accounts, and diaries to provide this vivid account of six weeks of hell. Not only that, but he places the fall in historical context. Put all together, and it's a fascinating book.First, Jackson tells the story of the invasion. He breaks this down into four narrative chapters that explore this from a different angle. The first one contains the military aspects of the defeat. The second looks at the relations between France and its allies, mainly Britain (though it does examine other countries, such as the support pact with Poland). This examines how the British and French looked at each other, along with how they cooperated in war (and how they fought amongst themselves as well). The third chapter looks at the political aspects of the defeat, while the fourth looks at the French people. Then Jackson brings them all together, looking at how they all relate to each other, and shows how each one can be seen as part of the defeat, but yet none of them can be singled out as the main cause. Finally, Jackson looks at the consequences of the defeat, including how it coloured French thinking for years to come, even reaching as far forward as today. Much of French foreign policy has referred back to this time in their history.I was really impressed with the way Jackson told the story. His writing is very evocative and his use of sources from memoirs of generals and politicians to the common soldier is extremely well done. I have read a few books on this aspect of the war (or that have included it, anyway), but never have I heard from the soldier's point of view. This is becoming the norm in World War II history books recently (see An Army at Dawn), and I like it. I think it gives us a better picture of warfare and how it affects the soldiers who are fighting it, rather than just dry strategy and tactics. That's not the only thing that's good about it, though. Since Jackson is examining the defeat from multiple sides, it wouldn't have been surprising to see him tell the story of the invasion and then look at the other aspects of it, thus having some narrative repetition. Jackson avoids this, seamlessly linking the chapters so that they tell a continuous story, even as he looks at the different points.The most interesting part of the book is when Jackson is looking at the different causes of the loss.

An interesting thesis

Julian Jackson comes to an interesting thesis in that it was the strategic mistakes and flawed organization of the French army and not the corrupt Third Republic that was reponsible for the French defeat in 1940. Julian supports his point by stating that the British were just as passive as the French in the thirites and the Germans were reluntctant to go to war in 1939, and lacked trucks and ground support planes needed for an modern army. Jackson also compares the French nation's response to the Germans in 1914 with that in 1914, in which the French suffered from similiar poltical problems and had a flawed military strategy, but the French in 1914 were saved by Von Kluck's turn east. Jackson places overall blame on Gamelin's decision to position his forces far north into Holland in order to prevent the Britich from escaping to the sea, but this led to the Ardennes area being poorly manned by third rate divisions. While the French divisions in Holland fought valiantly,the doomed divisons around the Ardennes quickly crumbled. Jackson is also critical about the amount of training received within the French army. The French trained their conscripts for a only a year and that this made the French army loose cohesion and mental flexibality in battle. The only problem with Jackson's arguement is that it was the political divisions in France that prevented the French army from expanding the term of conscription and forming a more effecive army. Despite this flaw, I would reccomend this book to anyone interested in a new and interesting thesis about the fall of France.