Julian Jackson's France: The Dark Years

The Armistice of June 23, 1940 was the end to a long summer between the German forces and the French military. After breaking through French lines in Belgium and pushing back the defense, the French officials knew that the war was finally over and that they needed to find alternative options to survive as a nation. The cause for this defeat is a debated question today, as historians attempt to understand the failure of the French to stop the invasion and protect themselves. In Julian Jackson’s book France: The Dark Years, the defeat is only briefly discusses, but points all of the blame for the failure on the military planning. This is somewhat similar to Marc Bloch’s Strange Defeat, which examines a firsthand account of the High Command that
Jackson states that the worst decision made by the military was to move the top troops to the front line in Belgium in order to stop the German advancement. The book argues that the troops themselves were not to blame because they fought bravely, but that the military was not equipped nor prepared for the amount of force that the Germans were using to cut across Europe. Jackson’s book only briefly discusses the defeat and this point of soldier moral, while the Strange Defeat book covers more information on the topic. By analyzing the moral and mindsets of the High Command, Bloch’s book can add to Jackson’s ideas about how the defeat was impacted by moral. The leaders in charge of planning “entertained doubts of their own competence” Bloch writes. “In their hearts, they were only too ready to despair of the country they had been called upon to defend.” The low moral and doubt among the leaders, similar to that of politicians who were defeatists, was a major cause in the defeat of France. In order to get out of danger, France needed strong and heroic leaders like Pétain once was in