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That's the Explorers Podcast. Hello, everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War, episode 180, the fall of France, French war plans.

This week, a big thank you goes out to J-Cut for purchasing me some coffees on Buy Mea Coffee, a completely commitment-free way to support the podcast. You can find a link in the show notes, and J-Cut, just so you know, I'm drinking one of those coffees while writing this right now. I would also like to thank Steele and Sarah for choosing to support the podcast by becoming members.

You can find out more over at History of the Second World War.com slash members.

While there were many root causes for the defeat of France in 1940, political, economical,

geographical, there was also, of course, at least some blame to be shared by the military.

Even with all the challenges that France faced during the interwar years, and the problems caused by the actions of

Germany up to May 1940, in the weeks before the invasion, the balance of forces on the ground

was roughly similar. When all the militaries of Western Europe were combined, there were

about 135 divisions on both sides.

On the Allied side, they were not always coordinated with Belgium and the Netherlands,

insisting on continuing their neutrality until the last moments,

but the troops in those nations were a distraction, I guess, for a number of German divisions

during the May 1940 campaign.

The problem for France was not necessarily manpower, or even quality of that manpower,

but instead the plans for how those men should be used in case of a German invasion.

In 1940, France was in its Second World War, in which it would begin the war with a bad plan,

...