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By Root 971 0

of the tank between the wars, they took an essentially conservative view of it. It would not be much more than it had been in 1918. This idea was challenged by a whole series of theoretical writers. In Britain, B. H. Liddell Hart and J. F. C. Fuller were developing the ideas that would make the linear trench systems of 1914-18 obsolete. Instead of distributing tanks to the infantry, they ought to be used en masse, as armored spearheads. Like the cavalry of old, they could break the enemy’s line and then go on the rampage in his rear areas, disrupting communications and the passage of reserves. This was Liddell Hart’s theory of “the expanding torrent.” The tank would become the dominant weapon, and the infantry would just move in and occupy ground after the tanks had taken it. These ideas were picked up by some German students, notably Guderian and Manstein, and they were also paralleled by those of French thinkers, especially General Estienne, the father of the French tank force. In the thirties, they were adopted by a Colonel Charles de Gaulle, who wrote a book called Vers l’armée du metier. The book had little influence and was largely a rehashing of Fuller and Liddell Hart. What de Gaulle advocated was a small, mobile, professional army. Ironically, he was asking for the kind of army that Versailles had forced on the Germans.

What the French high command wanted, and got, was the large, slow, mass army of World War I. With their fixation on linear defense-systems, they were not disposed to listen favorably to ideas of armored spearheads that could break lines. They stuck to tanks as an infantry-support weapon. This in turn led them to neglect speed, maneuverability, and especially tank-to-tank communication. Therefore, even when they did finally organize fully armored formations, their tanks, the best in the world for infantry cooperation, were deficient for armored combinations.

The worth of the airplane was recognized, but since both sides had it, it had achieved nothing decisive either. It was useful for artillery spotting and reconnaissance and for shooting down the other side’s artillery spotters and reconnaissance. A few people, British officers in the Royal Flying Corps, conceived the idea that airplanes could do more, that they might be capable of long-distance bombing and some strategic results. What little they accomplished was enough to convince the visionaries of the value of their vision; most observers remained skeptical.

Unfortunately, by the time either the tank or the airplane did anything of real note, the Germans were cracking anyway. Professional military minds were therefore able to reassure themselves that, while these new inventions might be valuable adjuncts to warfare, they were not and never would be anything more than that. Until 1939, an officer could still make his career in the horse cavalry. The French, having won the war by conventional methods, were not disposed to introduce unconventional ones.

What they did produce during the interwar years was a very respectable navy. It had new and modern units that were certainly able to dominate the Mediterranean in a potential conflict with the other Mediterranean power, Italy. The spirit and the equipment of the French navy in the thirties was probably higher than it had been since the days of Choiseul in the mid-eighteenth century. The navy had a notable place in the French imperial scheme of things. Unhappily, it would not be of much immediate value in another Franco-German war.

The upshot of the whole thing was that France, wracked by internal crisis and the strain of maintaining its image as a great power, staggered uncertainly into the decade of the Depression. Her military forces were basically strong, but the doctrines that infused them were inconsistent at best and faulty at worst. The weapons technology that flowed from those doctrines was partially flawed. By the time she needed it, her strength was already crippled by self-inflicted wounds.

Though they were reluctant to admit it, the French believed their security ultimately