From Phoney Peace to Phoney War, 1938–1940

Abstract

From 1938, French policy suddenly pivoted from a policy of appeasement to one of confrontation with Nazi Germany. But once war was declared on 3 September 1939, Anglo-French governments seemed unable to articulate a strategy to win it. Gamelin’s strategy was to build up an impregnable defense of the Hexagon, mount an economic blockade of Germany, and fight a war on the periphery – la guerre ailleurs – until the enemy was enfeebled and the Allies had amassed enough military power take the offensive. But without a Soviet alliance, this strategy failed to pressure Germany and was vulnerable to preemption. The frenzy of mobilization followed by the serenity of Sitzkrieg hollowed out civil resolve and basically neutered the “primordial violence, hatred, and enmity” of the population which Clausewitz argued was essential to the successful waging of war. The drôle de guerre seemed to offer evidence of the drift of Allied policy that portended a lack of national resolve. Daladier stood as a bulwark against military reform and the removal of Gamelin, and encouraged wishful thinking about the ability of Poland to defend itself and the unpopularity in Germany of Hitler’s aggressive policies, which would restrain German aggression. While it appeared on the surface that France had recovered its nerve, the spirit of appeasement in the guise of “victory without combat” hovered over the French declaration of war and lingered in the form of an absence of urgency that affected morale in the long winter of 1939–1940. It also encouraged a flirtation with peripheral operations that culminated in the Narvik fiasco in May 1940, which offered a curtain raiser for the Fall of France.