This cultural resistance was not a nostalgic posture: it was also inspired by colonial warfare. In 1939, as in 1870 and 1914 (as well as 2018), the experience of many French officers was forged by overseas wars, not homeland defense. The young cadre were more attracted by the Foreign Legion or the Marines than by the boredom of training conscripts. The challenge of controlling vast territories with a handful of troops enhanced a culture of initiative and risk taking. Although efficient in Africa and the Levant, this philosophy of autonomy contributed to the disruption of the Army in 1940. The bottom-up fascination for audacity, converging with the top-down political drive to back the Belgians immediately, intoxicated the French General Staff. Generalissimo Maurice Gamelin’s eagerness to seize the initiative led him, against his own doctrine and basic principles of war, to commit all his strategic reserves into Belgium. This commitment was further than what the French government’s policy demanded, and far from what was actual German main effort in the Ardennes. Ironically, the Ardennes was not neglected: prior to the Dyle-Breda plan, the reserves were located in Mourmelon, at about a hundred kilometers from Sedan. This fatal miscalculation, as French Marshall Alphonse Juin later stated, was “a faute contre l’esprit” (a fault against the spirit), of the French plans and strategic design.[5]

Significance for Today: What Happened in 1940 Could Happen Again, and Not Only to the French

Mass, time, and space matter. As in the 1930s, new strategic domains nourish the belief that technology will condition resilience. But the fall of France and the survival of Great Britain or the Soviet Union have shown that geography matters as much if not more than capabilities. The Meuse River is not the Channel, and even less the Atlantic or the Pacific Oceans. The Americans, contrary to the French, have a maritime depth, one far greater than that of Great Britain. While both had the ability to prioritize their force development on a cost-effective wait and see approach. They enhanced their thalassocracy while not particularly innovating in land power, even losing the advances they had gained: the British Army did not perform well in 1940. But by 1942, this approach had saved enough time to challenge the Wehrmacht again in Africa.

Facing a different geographical situation, pre-war France stove to compensate for their lack of mass and depth with sophisticated equipment. Today, tightened by budgets and demographic limitations, western armies have entered a similar technological race, with the same assumption that firepower and quality will balance quantity, as if assets like nuclear weapons, cyber or special forces would allow downsizing conventional forces. This remains a gamble.

...in today’s context of hyper-information and social media, political levels are more likely to micromanage their strategic corporals than offer them blank-checks.

Modern avatars of Auftragstaktik may provide adaptability in combat but do not always translate to success in war.[6] Western militaries have concluded from the German example that success relied upon empowered execution rather than centralized control. Not surprisingly, Auftragstaktik is praised among Western officers, for it combines rational and romantic answers to friction, paying tribute to a commander’s intuition and the staff’s science. Moreover, the experience of decades of expeditionary wars has promoted the concept to a leadership philosophy within U.S. Army doctrine. Yet, nothing is more relative: Auftragstaktik led the Germans to success in 1940, but also to defeat on the Marne in 1914 and at Kursk in 1943. Moreover, in today’s context of hyper-information and social media, political levels are more likely to micromanage their strategic corporals than offer them blank-checks. Hence, praising a culture of initiative in tactical organizations might again dig a gap between the way warfare is envisioned and the way it will actually be led.