Did the USA save France in 1918?

An analysis of France’s martial reputation in the 20th century and the French army’s performance in World War 1

The Phantom Reputation

What does the word "Maginot" mean in French?

"Speed bump ahead".

What does a French military alliance and a French romance have in common?

Both are brief, sordid, and completely meaningless.

What do you call a Frenchman killed defending his country?

No one knows, it’s never happened before!

These are three of the literally hundreds of jokes circulating the internet on the topic of French military valor, or lack thereof. Like most persisting feats of modern propaganda, they originate from Britain, before having gone viral and forever embedding a reputation of martial weakness into the French culture. The basis of the jokes is of course France’s quick defeat in the spring of 1940. In about 1.5 months, the German Wehrmacht destroyed the entirety of the French, Dutch, and Belgian armies, evicted the British Expeditionary Force from the continent and achieved complete victory, losing less than 50,000 dead and missing in the process. Such a rapid and utter defeat has never been inflicted by one Great Power on another before or since. It is mostly due to luck rather than anything else but let’s not go into that.

However, as the jokes spread, they deviated from their World War 2 origins and became a reflection of every French military failure since Waterloo. They paint a picture of a laughable, weakling nation that was (and still is), by some miracle, supremely more powerful than 90% of the world’s countries. Specifically, French performance in World War 1 came to be viewed in light of the reputation they gained in World War 2. Propagated by Americans and non-French Europeans alike rose the myth that World War 1 was won after the US came to save France in 1918. I celebrate the centenary of the end of the Great War by making a case against this assertion.

With that being said, I still think the jokes are still funny and always try to crack one at a party if I see someone from France. Call me a hypocrite.

The Attack of the Idiots

Critics of the baguette-eaters’ military performance in the Great War tend to make two main points: France’s outdated military doctrine and her proportionally higher casualty rates compared to other participants of the Western Front.

For the first one I think it is important to note that all belligerents had outdated military doctrine. Given that, it is true that French mistakes were some of the more tragic (and if you share my sense of dark humor, the more hilarious). As part of the first action of the Western front, the Battle of the Frontiers, French regiments marched into German machine gun and artillery fire in basically the same fashion as they did in the Napoleonic Wars, losing 140,000 men in four days. This masterpiece remained the unbroken record for casualties taken per day throughout the whole war.

However, I argue that even that was outshined by the Germans’ 1914 offensive. Their choice to execute the Schlieffen-plan, made in 1905-6 and designed based on the experience drawn from the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War, lacked any realistic grounds. Although it looked cool on the map, every assumption the Germans made that would have been necessary for the plan to work was wrong. Not only did Russia mobilize much faster than predicted (and waaay faster than the Austro-Hungarian Empire that was meant to delay them), the Belgians – obviously – refused to cooperate, offered as much resistance as they could, and when that failed they even sabotaged their own country’s transport infrastructure, which the Germans expected – and needed – to find intact. To complete the comic triple, the Germans expected the British to stay neutral despite their alliance to France and their guarantee of Belgian independence since 1836. As a result, the plan failed spectacularly, with German Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke famously declaring to the Kaiser “Your Majesty, the war is lost” 50 days into the war. It would take another 1500 days for that prediction to materialize.

Speaking of the British, they brought their own idiocies to the table, one that was decidedly less costly in human lives but nearly cost them the whole war. At the time of the great offensive of 1914, the Germans had 1.5 million men, while the French had about 1 million. The British Expeditionary Force was little over 100,000 strong, which they thought would sufficient to defend Belgium and turn the tide of the war. As the men on both sides died by the tens of thousands each week, this force – although exceptionally well-trained, to the point where Germans once mistook their rifle fire for machine-guns – nearly evaporated. At a time when France was fighting for its very survival, Britain’s reluctance to commit more men endangered Paris itself. It took the British until the Christmas of 1914 to send a meaningful force onto the continent – by which time the Germans’ attention was focused on the Eastern front – and until 1916 to issue conscription.

By far the worst offender of the whole war, however, was Austria-Hungary. The dual monarchy’s failings in the first months of the war were unmatched. They combined the outdated élan of the French, the overly optimistic and elaborate plans of the Germans, and the poor equipment of the Russians with their very own attribute: unrelenting stubbornness. Austrian Army Chief of Staff Conrad von Hötzendorf (who celebrates his birthday today) launched not one, not two, but three failed invasions of Serbia. This tiny nation just happened to be home to some of the best fighters and leaders in the early war thanks to their bloody experience fighting in the Balkan Wars. This resulted in a profound trashing for Austria. Conrad followed this up by another trio of unsuccessful assaults on the Russian positions in Galicia and Poland. Against a numerically superior foe, across the Carpathians, in the snowy, winter conditions. The Austrian army suffered 270,000 casualties against Serbia and a further 500,000 in Galicia, to literally no gain. All that in the first three months of the war.

Calling out France on its failings is fair, even hilarious, but I think I made my point that they weren’t exceptionally bad. And we didn’t even talk about Italy (11 failed offensives on the Isonzo river before getting Caporettoed deep into their homeland), the Ottomans (Battle of Sarikamish, it’s like Austria-Hungary’s attacks on Russia, but somehow worse), or the Great Bear (literally everything they did after the Brusilov Offensive).

The Return of the Frog-haters

Now let’s look at casualty numbers. The Western Front saw 1.3 million French, 0.5 million British, and about 1.5 million Germans killed. Ostensibly, this means that the Germans were able put up a more than decent fight against the Western Allies while also fighting Russia, Serbia, and Romania in the east, and Italy in the south. The French losses were proportionally higher than any combatant in the Western front, so the obvious naïve conclusion is that they were simply worse at warfare than the British or the Germans.

Now even if this were the case, I would like to point out that this fact alone certainly wouldn’t make them pussies as their reputation suggests. Britain and Germany were the two most powerful nations in the world at the time the Great War broke out, with Germany having a strong focus on both the material and tactical aspects of warfare. Being outperformed by the best does not make one a loser.

However, I would go on to argue that the high French casualties had nothing to do with their perceived inferiority. I list three points to explain their high casualties. The first is Lanchester’s square law. France spent some of the deadliest periods in the war being outnumbered by Germany. During all three major German offensives in the Western Front, the French could field fewer men, meaning that if we keep weapon technologies and geographical conditions equal between the two sides – which they were not – they simply took more fire than they were able to return. For the British, who held a much shorter section of the front with a higher concentration of manpower, this effect was negligible.

The second reason is geography itself. France’s richest provinces lie on its northeastern border. For most of the war, the frontlines went right through the French industrial heartland, with 64% of steel and 40% of coal production located there. This drastically impeded the production of heavy artillery pieces, causing a noticeable decrease in French firepower. British and German industries were not similarly affected. Finally, French military strategy was necessarily subordinate to the grand strategy of the Entente Powers. In 1915 and 1917, German attention was focused towards the Eastern Front to a) save the Austro-Hungarian Empire from collapse, and b) curb Russian advances to be able to focus on France. As a reponse France and Britain were compelled to take engagements they would not have taken otherwise to a) save the Russian Empire from collapse and b) put more pressure on the Central Powers in their ongoing war of attrition. On May 9, 1915, one week after the start of the successful German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive in the east, the Allies launched the Second Battle of Artois. When the Germans broke the Russian front for a second time in August, the Allies launched attacks at Champagne, Loos, and at Artois yet again. The 1915 offensives cost 250,000 French and 150,000 British casualties, for about 200,000 Germans with no ground gained. In 1917, after the February Revolution, the pattern repeated itself with the Nivelle Offensive: 190,000 lost for France, 160,000 for Britain, 190,000 for Germany for no gain at all. This led to a general mutiny and near collapse of the French army. All these reasons amounted to higher-than-proportionate French losses compared to Germany and Britain, none of them have to do with the French being sub-standard soldiers.

The Reich Strikes Back

When it comes to the USA’s impact on the war, the real discussion is, of course, on the events of 1918. Russia’s collapse and subsequent exit made it possible for Germany to focus all its energy (except the 1 million men still tied up on the other fronts of the war) on France and finally deliver the knock-out blow to the French. The myth is that this was thwarted by the Americans’ timely arrival who then went on to crush the German army, secure its surrender, then plant the Star-Spangled Banner on the corpses of the German dead.

There are two parts of this myth to deconstruct. One is the American’s impact on the Kaiserschlacht, Germany’s 1918 Spring Offensive. The other is their impact on the Hundred Days Offensive, the Allies’ final push that finally broke the German army and ended the war.

The 1918 Spring Offensive kicked off on March 21 with Operation Michael. The Germans used special shock troops, called Stormtroopers to infiltrate the Entente’s trenches and break the frontline. These troops fought not with rifles and bayonets, but with automatic and semi-automatic weapons, grenades, and spades in very close quarters, something the Entente never had to deal with before. This was the tactic that broke the backbone of the Italian army at Caporetto at the end of 1917. Having perfected the art of offensive warfare in Russia and Italy, the Germans were able to make massive initial gains – in World War 1 terms that is. Despite their deadliness, the Stormtroopers had two major drawbacks: they were very hard to train, and they expired quickly. Their gains notwithstanding, the Germans took over 200,000 casualties in Operation Michael, much of which came from the ranks of their irreplaceable Stormtroopers. As they died, the Spring Offensive began to falter.

With the Entente’s frontline broken but the German offensive power blunted, the fate of the battle hanged on the two sides’ logistical capabilities. The further the Germans advanced, the less they could rely on their excellent railway system to carry troops into the breach. As for the French, the 1916 Battle of Verdun taught them a valuable lesson: trucks were more flexible than trains. By 1918 they developed the best logistical system of the whole war, giving them the ability to resupply, reinforce, or reposition their units much faster than their enemies. After two months of advance, the Spring Offensive finally stalled out. With their stormtroopers depleted and their enemies swiftly reinforcing key areas, the Germans had no means to continue. As Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff, the man who basically ran Germany from 1917, put it: “The Entente victory of 1918 was the triumph of French trucks over the German railway.”

Where were the Americans during all of this? Well, mostly in America. The Germans timed their offensive carefully and were able to move before significant US help could materialize. It may be argued that the Americans’ imminent arrival forced the Germans to act ahead of schedule, but in reality the Germans were on the clock since day one. They had no means to break the Allied blockade with or without the Americans’ participation, and by 1918 their people were on the brink of starvation. Neither the urgency, nor the failure of the Spring Offensive can be attributed to American participation.

The Revanche of the Republic

Almost four years have passed since the first Battle of the Marne, where the French stopped the Germans’ greatest offensive and took away their biggest chance to win the war on the west. Four years of carnage, the likes of which the world has never seen before. In the middle of July 1918, at the same spot, the war on the west, a senseless, costly stalemate is finally decided. Ludendorff orders a last-ditch attack on Paris, but the offensive never takes place. On the Germans’ right flank, a great mass of French tanks smash through the line. These are not the unwieldly heavy tanks the British were experimenting with, they are French Renault FT17s, the first ever light tank design, and “the tank that won the war”.

The Second Battle of the Marne begins, and it is resounding Allied victory. The French counterattack sweeps away the Germans and achieves a massive breakthrough. Instead of stalling out, like the German offensive, the Entente push is only getting stronger. By August 8, the Germans were in a full rout, with intact units surrendering en masse. Ludendorff would later call it “the black day of the German army”. It is the day that marks the beginning of the Hundred Days Offensive.

There are many reasons why this push turned out to be the unstoppable force that ended the war. The Germans’ loss of morale is sure to be among them, but what really made this offensive stand out of all the others was the successful use of armored units and motorized infantry by the French. Unlike the German stormtroopers, French tanks were very hard to kill, and their production line only got smoother after their July debut, meaning that the Allied offensive power necessary to achieve breakthroughs never diminished. Once the German defenses were broken the French trucks ferried soldiers to exploit the breaches and the attack kept going and going in this fashion until Germany finally cried uncle in November.

As the Hundred Days progressed, American participation increased pretty much linearly. In July they had around 120,000 men and took part in the Second Battle of Marne, though their small numbers meant that they had very little impact, while their lack of fighting experience resulted in high casualties. By the end of the war, however, they were a real force to be reckoned with, standing at 2 million strong, well-supplied, well-armed, and beaming of confidence.

It is abundantly clear, that France did not win the war on its own, nor could it have without foreign support. However, it was mainly the French fighting spirit that stopped the German offensives of 1914, 1916, and 1918, and it was the French advances in logistics and motorization that gave the Allies the means of breaking the German army, much of which was achieved even before the American presence could be felt. The Germans had no hope of victory in a war of attrition due to the British naval superiority, and the Americans’ huge financial and material support that kept the French war economy going. But on the battlefield France contributed more than anyone else in the coalition. By the end of the war the French army consisted of 3.5 million soldiers, armed with over 2000 tanks, 4000 airplanes, and 10,000 pieces of artillery. It was by far the strongest army in the world and the one with the highest level of motorization. Had the Germans fought on until the bitter end as they would do in World War 2, it would have gained a similar fearsome reputation as the Soviet Red Army (ideally, minus the war crimes).

A New Joke

The French army’s defeat in 1940 tainted the evaluation of their performance in 1914-18. While the victory was that of a coalition, the argument that French army was a lesser fighting force than the British, Germans, or the Americans, is total nonsense. In fact, it was the French advances in logistics, motorization, and combined arms tactics that gave birth to modern war.

While the US didn’t save France militarily, its contribution sustained the French war economy, while its soldiers on the battlefields made the difference between “extremely dire” and “utterly hopeless” for the Germans.

If there were any lessons drawn from the Great War, the Germans learned them better than anyone else (well… some of them). They took the French method of warfare in 1918 and developed it to perfection. It was the French doctrines of 1918, coupled with the Germans’ own idea of specialized shock troops that formed the foundations of the Blitzkrieg. Maybe if the French never invented modern mechanized war, maybe if the USA indeed did save France in 1918, Germany could not have beaten them in 1940.

For me, therefore, the joke isn’t that the French are pussies. The real joke is that if they had been pussies in World War 1, they may never have developed their reputation of being pussies.

November 11, 2018.

Remarks:

1. All casualty numbers (except when I explicitly write “dead" or "killed”) mean dead, wounded, and missing. Each belligerent kept track of their wounded differently, which causes the numbers to be somewhat unreliable. As a rough estimate about at least 80% of the wounded were able to return to the battlefield after recovery. At the end of the war, the permanently maimed outnumbered the ones killed in action about 2 to 1.

2. The Battle of Caporetto was a resounding Central Powers offensive victory on the Italian Front. It broke the stalemate at the Isonzo river which had persisted for two years. The Italians would have their revenge at the very end of the war in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, which resulted in the complete break-up of the Austro-Hungarian army, as well as that of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

3. Despite my assertion that the Americans did not save France, the impact of their troops probably did affect the terms of the armistice. It is not impossible that the Allies would have accepted peace terms with Germany rather than unconditional surrender, had the Americans stayed out of the war. We will never know for sure, but the revolutions of 1918-19 and the general state of the army even before the Hundred Days make even this seem highly unlikely.

4. One of the reasons the Germans were unable to match the French in logistical capability was their shortage of rubber. Since 1914 they have been cut off from the world’s rubber supply, which meant that by the end of the war, their trucks had to run on iron wheels, which was exactly as durable, flexible, and comfortable as it sounds.

Link to The Great War's Youtube channel:

• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUcyEsEjhPEDf69RRVhRh4A

Comments should be addressed at peter.bayer7@gmail.com.