I doubt one in ten of you know the importance of the Battle of the Marne? Quite simple, had the French plus a smallish-medium but crucial contigent of soldiers from the UK, not halted the invading Germans at the Marne, the 20th century would have looked very different. Sure, von Moltke the Younger lost his nerve and pulled two corps from his right flank, shipped East to help fend off the Russian hordes. But, the French were glorious at the Marne and each and every one of us owe a debt a gratitude to France for the elan and courage.
As Holger Herwig writes in The Marne, 1914, “At dawn on 6 September, 980,000 French and 100,000 British soldiers with 3,000 guns assaulted the German line of 750,000 men and 3,300 guns [across a front stretching from] Verdun and Paris.” The Miracle of the Marne had begun. By the 9th the Germans were in full retreat. For the next three days they were battered by and bloodied by the French and English. Most historians of World War One agree that the Miracle on the Marne was the most important battle the 20th century.
What followed were two giant armies trying to outflank each other in a race to the sea. Then, they settled down into four years of siege warfare. Now, all the European observers who came to watch our Civil War–von Molke the Elder was one of them–all took away the wrong lesson. They were more interested in the use of railroads for logistics–not unimportant. But, had they really paid attention to just how much proto-siege warfare was conducted during our Civil War, they might have. Fredericksburg anyone?
So, we got four years of muck. And in that four years for France, the flower of her youth perished. Cheese-eating surrender monkeys is the most common and ugly perjorative I can think of at present. It refers to the French collapse in six weeks and one day in the face of the German Invasion. But no one asks the question why? There is a one word answer: demographics.
One of every six young men in France’s Lost Generation died. Not wounded, or maimed. Dead. Add in the cost of the maimed and disfigured, the skewed ration between men and women? Twenty years later when their children had too serve the nation was simply unwilling to endure the sacrifices of the previous war. Not in the face of all the odious crimes of the Nazis.
So, any time I hear about cheese eating surrender monkeys someone gets an unsolicited history lesson.
Oakchair
But, the French were glorious at the Marne and each and every one of us owe a debt a gratitude to France for the elan and courage.
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I can see the sci-fi time travel trilogy.
Book 1: A group goes back in time to stop Hitler by having Germany win ww1.
Book 2: In the 30’s the French Nazi’s take power and you know how that all goes.
Book 3: In the timeline with the French Nazi regime a group goes back in time to stop them by having Germany lose ww1.
Tallifer
The American journalist who wrote the deservedly famous Rise and Fall of the Third Reich also wrote a book about The Fall of France. The political divisions which tore apart the republic were very similar to those in the United States now, especially the treasonous right wing.
bruce wilder
The whole “[fill-in-the-blank] changed history” meme suffers from the reality-has-no-plural thing.
Human language appears to need to use counterfactuals to bring theoretical analysis to bear on understanding how elements embedded in that one reality come together to manifest that singular reality. That history only happens one way does not justify pre-determinism, but it does not excise the need to develop cause and consequence in human understanding of political affairs.
The French had already lost one war to Germany 40-odd years earlier and experienced the effects on society of a shared defeat, loss and the spirit of revanchism. The Dreyfus Affair, centered on an Alsatian Jew and a Catholic determination to coverup incompetence and betrayal, was a process in which France’s bitterly divided society tried partially and incompletely to purge that poison. The failure to complete that purge contributed to the failure of 1940 and the years of Vichy, where the French did dishonor themselves.
different clue
Colonel Lang used to make the same point about France at his blog, but referring to a different French military achievement.
He noted that it was very much French naval bombardment of British troops and positions co-ordinated with Washinton’s advance on land which allowed the American forces to win the Battle of Yorktown, forcing Cornwallis’s surrender and winning the war. He tried to keep it not forgotten by his readers.