1. R. MacLeod and D. Kelly, eds., The Ironside Diaries (1962), 204.
2. L. Werth, Trente jours (1992 edn.), 30.
3. A. Shennan, The Fall of France, 1940 (2000), 165–6.
4. R. West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), ii. 510.
5. Khrushchev Remembers, i (1977 edn.), 191.
6. Fullness of Days (1957), 215.
7. Flight to Arras (Eng. trans. 1942).
8. L. Tolstoy, War and Peace (OUP, 1983 edn.), 1069.
1. J. Chauvel, Commentaire: De Vienne à Alger (1971), 95–7.
2. W. S. Churchill, The Second World War, ii. Their Finest Hour (1949), 40–4.
3. F. Delpla, Les Papiers secrets du général Doumenc (1939–1940), (1991), 206.
4. P. le Goyet, Le Mystère Gamelin (1976).
5. The Bibis was a modified version with heavier protection—60mm instead of 40mm and weighing 31.5 tons instead of 25 tons.
6. It was called Plan V because there had been two abortive Plans, III and IV.
7. Les Événements survenus en France de 1933 à 1945 (1951–2), i; 67.
8. Indeed the adjective ‘light’ was now a misnomer, and if they were still called DLM it was to distinguish them from the divisions marocaines (Moroccan Divisions), designated as DMs, and from the divisions motorisées (Motorized Infantry Divisions), designated as DIMs.
9. Because there were not enough SOMUA tanks the DLMs were equipped half with these and half with another medium tank, the Hotchkiss 39 (H39).
10. G. Saint-Martin, L’Armée blindée française. Mai–juin 1940 (1998), 18, 35. E. Kiesling, Arming against Hitler: France and the Limits of Military Planning (1996), 162.
11. R. Doughty, The Breaking Point: Sedan and the Fall of France, 1940 (Hamdon, Conn. 1990), 132.
12. The Halder Diaries, iii (Washington, 1950), 75; E. May, Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France (2000), 284.
13. M. Gamelin, Servir (1946), ii. 128.
14. M. Alexander, ‘Prophet Without Honour? The French High Command and Pierre Taittinger’s Report on the Ardennes Defences, March 1940’, War and Society, 4:1 (1986), 53–77.
15. Le Goyet, Le Mystère, 250.
16. XVI Panzer Corps (3rd and 4th Panzer Divisions) of General Erich Hoepner.
17. 1st, 2nd, and 10th.
18. 6th division of General Kempf and 8th of General Kuntzen.
19. 5th and 7th (Rommel).
20. May, Strange Victory, 419.
21. B. H. Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill (1951), 169. The general was Blumentritt.
22. Doughty, Breaking Point, 100.
23. Ibid. 155–6.
24. A. Beaufre, The Fall of France (1967), 189.
25. D. Richards and H. Saunders, The Royal Air Force, 1939–1945, i. The Fight at Odds (1953), 120.
26. For an example of this, see the fate of the 61DI on page 177 below.
27. A. Horne, To Lose a Battle (1969), 301.
28. J. Minart, P. C. Vincennes: Secteur 4, ii (1945), 148.
29. Beaufre, The Fall, 188. The exact details of this occasion are much disputed, and some authors dismiss Beaufre’s account, claiming even that Gamelin had left before lunch. But a careful cross-referencing of all available sources does seem to suggest he was present, even if in its detail Beaufre’s account is somewhat too exuberant.
30. M. Gamelin, Servir iii, La Guerre (September 1939–19 Mai 1940), iii. (1947), 435.
1. See above, p. 56.
2. M. Weygand, Recalled to Service (1952), 59.
3. R. van Overstraeten, Albert I–Léopold III: Vingt ans de politique militaire belge, 1920–1940 (1948), 655–6.
4. R. Young, ‘The Aftermath of Munich: The Course of French Diplomacy’, French Historical Studies, (1973), 305–22, 308.
5. Quotations in this paragraph from: J. C. Cairns, ‘A Nation of Shopkeepers in Search of a Suitable France, 1919–1940’, American Historical Review, 79 (1974), 710–43, 711, 713, 718, 722; B. Bond, Britain, France and Belgium, 1939–1940 (1990), 8; P. M. H. Bell, France and Britain, 1900–1940: Entente and Estrangement (1996), 130.
6. Cairns, ‘A Nation’, 741; H. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters 1939–1945 (1967), 298–9; Bond, Britain, France, 14.
7. O. Bullitt, For the President: Personal and Secret Correspondence between Franklin D. Roosevelt and William C. Bullitt (1973), 310 (6 Feb. 1939).
8. J. Zay, Carnets secrets (1942), 53–4. The minister was Mandel.
9. M. Carley, The Alliance that Never Was and the Coming of World War II (1999), 169.
10. G. Bonnet, Défense de la paix, ii. Fin d’une Europe (1948), 277.
11. J. Haslam, The Soviet Union and the Struggle for Collective Security in Europe 1933–1939 (1984), 228.
12. M. Alexander, The Republic in Danger: General Maurice Gamelin and the Politics of French Defence 1935–1940 (1993), 303.
13. Ibid. 311.
14. The Diplomatic Diaries of Oliver Harvey, 1937–1940, ed. J. Harvey (1970), 329–30 (13 Nov. 1939).
15. N. Jordan, The Popular Front and Central Europe: The Dilemmas of French Impotence, 1918–1940 (1992), 297.
16. Chief of Staff: The Diaries of Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Pownall, ed. B. Bond (1972), 178 (hereinafter Pownall Diaries).
17. J. R. Colville, Man of Valour: Field-Marshal Lord Gort (1972), 177–8.
18. Pownall Diaries, 244 (12 Oct. 1939).
19. There were three TA divisions, which were still incomplete and remained behind the lines.
20. Ironside Diaries, 77.
21. Colville, Man of Valour, 137–8; War Diaries of Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, ed. A. Danchev and D. Todman (2001), 7; Pownall Diaries, 249.
22. Ironside Diaries, 200; Pownall Diaries, 243; War Diaries of Alanbrooke, 4.
23. Cairns, ‘A Nation’, 739; D. Johnson, ‘Britain and France in 1940’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (1972), 141–57, 148–9.
24. Bullitt, For the President, 370 (3 Sept. 1939).
25. The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, O.M., 1938–1945, ed. D. Dilks (1971), 218.
26. Ironside Diaries, 173 (20 Dec. 1939).
27. Ironside Diaries, 215, 226; Cadogan Diaries, 262.
28. Letter to Hilda, 30/3/40; PRO/FO 800/312, Campbell to Halifax, 12 Feb. 1940; Ironside Diaries, 234–5.
29. P. Baudouin, Private Diaries: March 1940-Jan. 1941 (1948), 41.
30. PRO/FO 800/312, Campbell to Halifax, 29 Apr. 1940; F. F. Bédarida, La Stratégie secràte de la drôle de guerre: Le Conseil suprême interallié, septembre 1939–avril 1940 (1979), 526.
31. Bond, Britain, France, 67; Pownall Diaries, 323.
32. Ironside Diaries, 321; Pownall Diaries, 323–4.
33. G. Chapman, Why France Collapsed (1968), 186.
34. E. L. Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe (1954), i. 184.
35. Pownall Diaries, 333.
36. P. de Villelume, Journal d’une défaite, 23 août 1939–16 juin 1940 (1976), 350.
37. J. Vanwelkenhuyzen, Pleins feux sur le désastre (1995), 304–5.
38. Bond, Britain, France, 92.
39. Delpla, Papiers de Doumenc, 278; Bond, Britain, France, 97 n. 28.
40. Baudouin, Private Diaries, 76; Villelume, Journal, 370; J. Cairns, ‘The French View of Dunkirk’ in B. Bond and M. Taylor (eds.), The Battle of France and Flanders 1940: Sixty Years on (2001), 87–109, 90.
41. Cairns, ‘The French View’, 95.
42. Baudouin, Private Diaries, 73.
43. Spears, Assignment, ii. 19, 171; Churchill, Finest Hour, 97.
1. A. Werth, The Last Days of Paris (1940), 144–5.
2. P. Reynaud, La France a sauvé l’Europe (1947), ii., 315.
3. Baudouin, Private Diaries, 47.
4. P. Reynaud, In the Thick of the Fight 1930–1945 (1955), 504.
5. R. Aron, Histoire de Vichy 1940–1944 (1954), 21.
6. P. Lazareff, De Munich à Vichy (1944), 32–3.
7. C. Micaud, The French Right and Nazi Germany 1933–39 (1943), 120.
8. Zay, Carnets secrets, 58.
9. Harvey, Diplomatic Diaries, 223, 250.
10. Villelume, Journal, 42, 70, 74; J. Jeanneney, Journal Politique: Septembre 1939–juillet 1942 (1972), 23; Bullitt, For the President, 373 (16 Sept. 1939).
11. H. Nicolson, Diaries and Letters 1939–1945 (1967), 42.
12. PRO/FO 371/22913, Phipps to Halifax, 23 Oct. 1940.
13. P. Reynaud, Finances de guerre (1940).
14. Harvey, Diplomatic Diaries, 342.
15. The Ciano Diaries 1939–1943 (1945/6), 238.
16. Villelume, Journal, 248 (24 Mar. 1940).
17. P. Reynaud, Carnets de captivité, 1941–1945 (1997), 72.
18. M. Alexander, ‘The Fall of France’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 13/1 (1990), 10–44, 26.
19. H. Queuille, Journal de guerre: 7 septembre 1939–8 juin 1940 (1993), 281; A. de Monzie, Ci-devant (1941), 214.
20. See above, p. 83.
21. Harvey, Diplomatic Diaries, 347 (7 Apr. 1940), 349 (14 Apr. 1940).
22. Villelume, Journal, 43 (25 Sept. 1939).
23. Baudouin, Private Diaries, 17.
24. See above, p. 86.
25. ‘Le Journal’ du général Weygand, 1929–1935, ed. F. Guelton (1998), 233, 303.
26. E. Gates, The End of the Affair: The Collapse of the Anglo-French Alliance, 1939–1940 (1981), 139.
27. Baudouin, Private Diaries, 57–8.
28. Bullitt, For the President, 434, 441.
29. A. Fabre Luce, Journal de France, mars 1939–juillet 1940 (1940), 313.
30. J. C. Cairns, ‘Great Britain and the Fall of France: A Study in Allied Disunity’, Journal of Modern History, 27/4 (1955), 365–409, 382.
31. Villelume, Journal, 403–4 (11 June 1940).
32. PRO/F0371/24310 C7125/65/17.
33. Baudouin, Private Diaries, 57, 79.
34. Spears, Assignment, ii., 148.
35. Spears, Assignment, ii., 229.
36. Ibid., ii. 222; Baudouin, Private Diaries, 108–9.
37. PRO/PREM 188/6, Spears to Churchill, 27 May 1940.
38. Bullitt, For the President, 452–4.
39. W. Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940 (1969), 813; A. Maurois, Why France Fell (1940), 69.
1. P. Pétain, Discours aux Français (1989), 57–8.
2. G. Friedmann, Journal de guerre 1939–1940 (1987), 273, 305.
3. G. Sadoul, Journal de guerre (2 septembre 1939–20 juillet 1940) (1994 edn.), 352.
4. Gamelin, Servir, iii. 425.
5. Bullitt, For the President, 368 (8 Sept. 1940); Sadoul, Journal, 44.
6. G. Folcher, Marching to Captivity: The War Diaries of a French Peasant, 1939–1945 (1996), 12, 36.
7. Friedmann, Journal, 40, 76–7.
8. H. Clout, After the Ruins: Restoring the Countryside of Northern France after the Great War (1996), 3, 19.
9. J.-L. Crémieux-Brilhac, Les Français de l’an 40, i. La Guerre oui ou non? (1990), 59; Bullitt, For the President, 368; PRO/F0371 22918, 2 Nov. 1939.
10. Zouaves were a colonial regiment, but made up of white conscripts only.
11 Roger Escarpit, Carnets d’outre siècle, (1989), 232; J.-P. Sartre, War Diaries: Notebooks from a Phoney War, November 1939–March 1940 (1984), 222; Friedmann, Journal, 46, talks of living in a ‘petit milieu replié’ (a small, inward-looking world).
12. Crémieux-Brilhac, Les Français de l’an 40, ii. Ouvriers et soldats (1990), 527.
13. Friedmann, Journal, 173 (16 Feb. 1940).
14. Sartre, War Diaries, 46, 224–5; F. Grenier, Journal de la drôle de guerre (septembre 1939–juillet 1940) (1969), 85–8; Sadoul, Journal, 84–7, 121.
15. Crémieux-Brilhac, Ouvriers et soldats, 433.
16. Facon, 135–6.
17. J.-P. Sartre, Carnets de la drôle de guerre: Septembre 1939–mars 1940 (1995), 50–1 (24 Sept. 1939) (Sartre’s Phoney War diaries for September and October are not available in English); Folcher, Marching, 286; Sadoul, Journal, 101, 123, 139.
18. H.-J. Heimsoeth, Der Zusammenbruch der Dritten Französischen Republik: Frankreich während der ‘Drôle de guerre’ (1990), 339.
19. Sartre, War Diaries, 356; Crémieux-Brilhac, Ouvriers et soldats, 518–21.
20. The analysis here and in the next six paragraphs draws heavily on E. Kiesling, Arming against Hitler.
21. The longer service was introduced as a result of the ‘hollow years’ in which, owing to the effects of the First World War, there was a demographic shortfall.
22. Kiesling, Arming against Hitler, 114.
23. See above, p. 48; and below, p. 171 ff.
24. Paul-André Lesort, Quelques jours de mai–juin 40: Mémoire, témoignage, histoire (1992), 105–6, 111.
25. C. Paillat, Le Désastre de 1940, ii. La Guerre immodile (1984), 40, 327.
26. A. Bryant, The Turn of the Tide 1939–1943 (1957), 71.
27. Crémieux-Brilhac, Ouvriers et soldats, 545–6.
28. M. Alexander, ‘“No Taste for the Fight?”: French Combat Performance in 1940 and the Politics of the Fall of France’, in P. Addison and A. Calder (eds.), Time to Kill: The Soldiers’ Experience of War in the West, 1939–1945 (1997), 167–76, 166.
29. See above, p. 50.
30. Horne, To Lose a Battle, 248–9.
31. R. Balbaud, Cette drôle de guerre: Alsace–Lorraine–Belgique–Dunkerque (1941), 49.
32. Horne, To Lose a Battle, 247.
33. Ibid. 250.
34. E. Ruby, Sedan, terre d’épreuve (1948), 38.
35. Crémieux-Brilhac, Ouvriers et soldats, 585.
36. See above, pp. 47–48.
37. Lesort, Quelques jours, 64, 84, 160–1.
38. Folcher, Marching, 82, 84, 73, 75.
39. See above, p. 38.
40. Balbaud, Cette drôle de guerre, 98.
41. Ibid. 48.
42. Folcher, Marching, 99, 101.
43. A. Shennan, The Fall of France 1940 (2000), 8.
44. N. Dombrowski, ‘Beyond The Battlefield: The Civilian Exodus of 1940’, Ph.D. thesis (New York, 1995), 166.
45. On memories of atrocities in 1914, J. Horne and A. Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914 (2001), 375–410.
46. J.-J. Becker, 1914: Comment les Français sont entrés dans la guerre (1977), 554.
47. Crémieux-Brilhac, Ouvriers et soldats, 635–43.
48. J.-J. Arzalier, ‘La Campagne de mai–juin 1940: Les Pertes?’, in C. Levisse-Touzé (ed.), La Campagne de 1940 (2001), 427–47. He deducts, for example, about 15,000 civilian deaths and 30,000–40,000 deaths of POWs in captivity—though presumably many of these might have died as a result of wounds incurred during the fighting.
49. Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918–1945, D, IX (1956), No.317. Conversely, Hitler did also remark to General Juan Vigon on 16 June that the French and British soldiers were worse in 1940 than in 1914. Note also the positive contemporary German comments on the fighting qualities of the French soldier in Heimsoeth, Der Zusammenbruch, 11 n. 6.
50. PRO/FO371/24311 C7451/65/17.
1. B. Lyon, ‘Marc Bloch: Did He Repudiate Annales History?’, Journal of Medieval History, 11 (1985), 181–91, 187–9.
2. R. de Aylana and P. Braudel, Les Ambitions de l’histoire (1997), 12; F. Braudel, ‘Personal Testimony’, Journal of Modern History, 44/4 (1972), 448–67, 454.
3. M. Alexander, ‘The French View’, in Bond and Taylor, The Battle of France, 181–205, 194.
4. Horne, To Lose a Battle, 29, 59.
5. J. C. Cairns, ‘Some Recent Historians and the “Strange Defeat” of 1940’, Journal of Modern History, 46 (1974), 60–85, 81.
6. Saint-Martin, L’Armée blindée, p. xviii.
7. S. Berstein, La France des années 30 (1993), 169.
8. G.-H. Soutou, ‘Introduction’, in Levisse-Touzé (ed.), La Campagne, 21–37, 21.
9. P. Vidal-Naquet, Les Juifs, la mémoire et le présent (1991), 87.
10. Becker, 1914.
11. J. B. Duroselle, L’Abîme, 1939–1945 (1982), 51.
12. On Gort and Lanrezac, see E. L. Spears, Liaison 1914: A Narrative of the Great Retreat (1930).
13. War Begins at Home by Mass Observation, edited and arranged by Tom Harrison and Charles Madge (1940), 80–100.
14. S. Nicholas, The Echo of War: Home Front Propaganda and the Wartime BBC 1939–1945 (1996), 31–54.
15. I. McLaine, Ministry of Morale: Home Front Morale and the Ministry of Information in World War II (1972), 42.
16. War Begins at Home, 177, 183; The Diary of Beatrice Webb, iv. 1924–1943 (1985), 443.
17. R. Griffiths, Patriotism Perverted: Captain Ramsay, the Right Club and British Antisemitism 1939–1940 (1998), 34–65.
18. Cadogan Diaries, 220.
19. C. King, With Malice Towards None. A War Diary (1970); J. Mearsheimer, Liddell Hart and the Weight of History (1988), 154–6.
20 Nicolson, Diaries 1939–1945, 44–5.
21. King, With Malice Towards None, 14.
22. M. Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill 1939–1941 (1983), 190.
23. ‘Édouard Daladier: La Conduite de la guerre et les prémices de la défaite’, Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques, 22/1 (1996), 91–115, 102.
24 D. Thorpe, Alec Douglas Home (1996), 102; Chips: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon, ed. R. Rhodes James (1967), 249–50; J. Colville, The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries (1985), 141; K. Jefferys, The Churchill Coalition and Wartime Politics 1940–1945 (1991), 48.
25. Cadogan Diaries, 287.
26. The most perceptive discussions of this debate are D. Reynolds, ‘Churchill and the British Decision to Fight on in 1940: Right Policy Wrong Reasons’, in R. Langhorne, Diplomacy and Intelligence during the Second World War (1985), 147–67; and Reynolds, ‘Churchill the Appeaser? Between Hitler, Roosevelt and Stalin in World War Two’ in M. Dockrill and B. McKercher (eds.), Diplomacy and World Power: Studies in British Foreign Policy, 1890–1950 (1996), 197–220.
27. The Second World War Diary of Hugh Dalton, ed. B. Pimlott (1986).
28. Reynolds, ‘Churchill and the Decision to Fight on’, 149.
29. King, With Malice Towards None, 55.
30. A. J. Sylvester, Life with Lloyd George: The Diary of A. J. Sylvester (1975), 281; T. Munch-Petersen, ‘“Common Sense not Bravado”: The Butler–Prytz Interview of 17 June 1940’, Scandia, 52/1 (1986), 73–114.
31. Cadogan Diaries, 80 (2 July 1940); C. Ponting, 1940: Myth and Reality (1990), 116–17; A. Roberts, The Holy Fox: A Biography of Lord Halifax (1991), 250.
32. Roberts, The Holy Fox, 186.
33. D. French, Raising Churchill’s Army: The British Army and the War against Germany, 1919–1945 (2000), 122, 126, 177.
34. PRO/FO 371 24310/C5767 (15 Apr.); PRO/FO 800/312 (1 May).
35. Jordan, The Popular Front, 5.
36. P. Jackson, ‘Intelligence and the End of Appeasement’, in R. Boyce (ed.), French Foreign and Defence Policy, 1918–1940 (1998), 234–60, 252.
37. Ironside Diaries, 313.
38. K.-H. Frieser, Blitzkrieg-Legende: Der Westfeldzug 1940, 2 vols. (1996). His thesis is summarized by him in ‘La Légende de la “Blitzkrieg”’, in M. Vaïsse (ed.), Mai–juin 1940 Défaite française, victoire allemande, sous l’oeil des historiens étrangers (2000), 75–86.
39 W. Shirer, Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934–1941 (1941), 152, 162; R. Overy and A. Wheatcroft, The Road to War (1989), 60; W. Diest et al., Germany and the Second World War, i (1990), 120–1.
40. May, Strange Victory, 368.
41. Vanwelkenhuyzen, Pleins feux, 87.
42. Balbaud, Drôle de guerre, 96.
43. French, Raising Churchill’s Army, 178.
44. R. Prioux, Souvenirs de guerre (1947), 86–96.
45. Alan Brooke, War Diaries, 68.
46. M. Howard, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 1870–1871 (1961), 1.
47. H. Dutailly, Les Problàmes de l’armée de terre française (1980), 180.
48. ‘Le Journal’ du Général Weygand, 65.
49. R. Aron, Memoirs: Fifty Years of Political Reflection (1990), 106–7.
1. P. Péan, Une Jeunesse française, François Mitterrand, 1934–1947 (1994), 113.
2. F. Mitterrand, L’Abeille et l’architecte (1978), 281.
3. S. Hoffmann, ‘The Trauma of 1940’ in J. Blatt (ed.), The French Defeat of 1940: Reassessments (1998), 354–70, 356.
4. C. Lewin, Le Retour des prisonniers de guerre français, naissance et développement de la FNPG (1997), 91, 295 n. 126, n. 129.
5. C. Rist, Une Saison gâtée: Journal de guerre et de l’Occupation (1983), 165.
6. Heimsoeth, Der Zusammenbruch, 19 n. 32.
7. L. Blum, For all Mankind (1946), 24–5.
8. D. Reynolds, ‘Fulcrum of the Twentieth Century?’, International Affairs, 66/2 (1990), 325–50. This section owes much to Reynolds’s analysis.
9. Overy and Wheatcroft, Road to War, 179.
10. See A. Best, Britain, Japan and Pearl Harbor: Avoiding War in East Asia (1995).
11. M. Dockrill, British Establishment Perspectives on France 1936–1940 (1999), 157.
12. Reynolds, ‘Fulcrum’, 22; D. Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance 1937–1941 (1981), 101.
13. Shennan, Fall of France, 78.
14. Ibid. 165.
15. E. Roussel, Charles de Gaulle (2002), 364–5.
16. M. Borden, Journey Down a Blind Alley (1946), 113–15.
17. Quoted in G. Hecht, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after 1945 (1998), 232.
18. Shennan, Fall of France, 166.