James Holland: evaluation

Transcript context

…By World War. It’s fought on their land, it’s fought in their industrial heartland. They lose three times the amount of people killed that Britain does. Britain’s traumatized by it, but not to the same degree that France is. There is just no stomach to do that again. So that makes them risk averse. And by being risk averse, you’re actually taking a far greater risk. That’s the irony of it. And the truth is also there isn’t the political will. And a successful military can only be successful if there is a political will at the top. And the problem with France in the 1930s is it’s very politically divided. It’s a time of multiple governments, multiple prime ministers, coalition governments, really very extreme coalition governments from the sort of drawn from the left and the right as well as the center. And this is not a coalition of two parties. This is a coalition of multiple parties. No one can ever agree anything. I mean, that’s the problem. It’s amazing that the Maginot Line has even agreed, this incredibly strong defensive position down the western side of France border with Germany, which is kind of largely impregnable. But the problem is the bit that’s not impregnable, which is the hinge where the Maginot Line ends, and it sort of basically starts turning towards in a northerly direction and the border with Belgium. And what they should have done is built border defenses all along the northern coast of Belgium, because Belgium refused to allow any allied troops into its territory. It was neutral. And France should have said, “Okay, fine. Well, then we’ll defend. We’re not going to come to your rescue if you get invaded. That’s the payoff. And the consequence of that, we are going to stop [inaudible 00:40:50] that, and we’re not going to be drawn into the neutral territory should Germany invade from the west.” But they don’t do that because of the psychological damage of having fought a war in exactly that area a generation earlier. And that’s the problem. Germany is so weakened by the invasion of Poland. There is literally nothing left. The back door into Western Germany is completely open. And so they do what they call the Saar offensive, but it’s not. It’s a kind of reconnaissance in force where they go across the border, pick their noses for a few days, and then trundle back again. And it’s embarrassing. And what you’re seeing there is a nation which is just not ready for this, which is scared, which is politically divided, which is then having a knock on effect on the decision-making process, and which is just consumed by military complacency. And that’s the big problem. There is this, the commanders at the very top of the French regime are complacent. They haven’t bought into modern ways. They haven’t looked at how contemporary technology could help them. ig problem. There is this, the commanders at the very top of the French regime are complacent. They haven’t bought into modern ways. They haven’t looked at how contemporary technology could help them. I mean, it is absurd, for example, that there isn’t a single radio in the Chateau de Vincennes, which, it’s the headquarters of the commander in chief of the French armed forces to General Maurice Gamelin. I mean, it’s just unbelievable. But that is the case. And there’s no getting away from that. And it is all the more ironic when you consider that France is actually the most automotive society in Europe. It’s the second most automotive society in the world after the United States, by some margin, it has to be said as well. It has a fantastic transportation system. Railway network is superb. There are eight people for every motorized vehicle in France, which is way above Germany, which is in 1949, that figure is 47, for example.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.