Strange Defeat

Abstract

On 3 September 1939 France declared war on Germany, and after ten months of ‘phoney war’ Germany invaded France. The French army was routed and the government of marshal Pétain sought an armistice after only six weeks of fighting. The nation of Napoleon held out against Hitler’s armies for less time than the island of Crete. Explanations for this defeat had important implications for France’s subsequent politics. Marshal Pétain’s Vichy government that ruled France from 1940 to 1944 was concerned to demonstrate that the defeat should not be blamed on the army. It argued that the defeat could be attributed to the general weakness of French society, and to the particular mistakes of Popular Front politicians. It put this latter group, and the soldier most closely linked to them (general Gamelin), on trial at Riom in 1941. The post-war government also established its own enquiry into ‘events in France between 1933 and 1945’. Some of the witnesses called by this enquiry presented the defeat as the product of a conspiracy by a group of politicians who deliberately took advantage of France’s crisis to install themselves in power.