June 22nd, The day the French surrendered.

Friday 23 May 2014

The 22nd of June. A significant date in history for two events that occurred on it, in two successive years.

On this date in 1940 the Republic of France surrendered to Nazi Germany at Compiégne. And on this day in 1941 the Germans invaded the Soviet Union beginning Operation Barbarossa.

It's interesting that Hitler's greatest success fell on the same date as his most fatal mistake. But perhaps, like Napoleon, he believed certain dates to be propitious.

Another interesting bit is the contrast between the two campaigns. Everyone had expected the French to win, but they were defeated. On the other hand, everybody expected the Soviets to lose, and they won.

I find these predictions fascinating. After France's fall everybody naturally concluded that Germany must have been in greatly superior strength, as that appeared axiomatic.

But Germany was not. In fact Germany was in greatly inferior strength to the French. The Germans did not beat the French by outfighting them, they beat them by outmanuevering them. Yet this success even they did not anticipate. Rundstedt and Hitler called several halts on the advance as they assumed the French would be counterattacking them at any moment. It took them some time to realise that France did not have anything to counterattack them with.

This was not because the French had no soldiers and no weapons. It was because France's armies were in shambles, they had been completely disorganised and were in no shape to reform anywhere. They had no time as the Germans were right behind them. Yet French resistance was not non-existent, the French resisted fiercely and in several places checked the Germans.

But in the United States and the United Kingdom all of this was not known. All they knew was that the French collapsed quickly, and the French themselves were keen to exaggerate the strength of the Germans in order to explain to themselves how they had been defeated. They largely created the myth that the Germans had been "overwhelming" and blamed the British for not sending enough soldiers to help. In reality the French had more than enough to beat the Germans by themselves, if they had only covered the Ardennes.

Having underestimated German strength in 1940, the losers now hugely overestimated it. The Germans themselves fell into their own success, imagining themselves capable of anything. A more sober reflexion would reveal that Germany had beaten France mostly by luck. The French had not covered the Ardennes and had exposed their left wing, which was encircled and destroyed as a fighting force. It was unlikely this success would ever be repeated.

Later the Germans had forgotten why they had won. They became arrogant. They fancied that they had won by their own brilliance and not as a result of France's mistakes. They thereupon assumed they could beat the Russians in a similar manner, and their subsequent rapid victories over Yugoslavia and Greece strengthened this idea.

By the time the Germans struck the Soviet Union it was taken for granted that the Germans were immeasurably strong. They had won everywhere else, had they not? So American and British officers assumed the Soviets would lose too.

But conditions were different. There was no swift knock out blow possible. The Soviet Union was the opposite of France.

France was extremely defensible, its frontiers were solid and easily defended. But it had no depth. If the French line were broken, if it were not reformed rapidly then France would be quickly occupied and Paris would be taken.

Russia was extremely indefensible. Its borders were fluid, the great length of their western border made it impossible to prevent an enemy from crossing. Yet the Soviet Union had so much depth that its line could be broken again and again, but still find room to reform. The German knock-out blow so fortunately delivered to France was impossible to deliver to Russia. The Soviet generals made more mistakes than the French could ever dream of making. Millions of soldiers encircled and defeated. Yet despite these successes Germany found none of these blows was sufficient to knock the Soviets out.

So on this date, when it arrives, we should remember that enemies are not always as powerful as we imagine them to be. Or as powerful as they fancy themselves to be. For on the 22nd of June, 1940, it seemed all hope had gone. On the same day the following year the future looked even more bleak, but little did the world know, Germany had just sealed her own doom in her arrogance.

Pictured is Adolf Hitler's arrival in Compiégne to accept the surrender of the French in the person of Marshal Philippe Pétain

- James