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Nat's Reviews > Strange Defeat
Strange Defeat
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A shattering assessment of why the French were so easily defeated in 1940, written in the bleak moment immediately after the capitulation:
"We find ourselves today in this appalling situation--that the fate of France no longer depends on the French, Since that moment when the weapons which we held with too indeterminate a grasp fell from our hands, the future of our country and of our civilization has become the stake in a struggle of which we, for the most part, are only the rather humiliated spectators" (p.174).
It's full of further unflinching judgments like this one: "Our soldiers were defeated and, to some extent, let themselves be too easily defeated, principally because their minds functioned far too sluggishly" (p.48).
The book could also be used as a primer in management, because it catalogues failures in the French military administration that lead to the "sluggishness" that the Germans successfully exploit on the battlefield. One of the failures of the military bureaucracy reminded me of the super-French "Place that Sends You Mad" chapter in The Twelve Tasks of Asterix:
"Dragged from one's bed in the middle of the night by a telegram which might read, for instance, 'Measure 81 to come into force immediately', one would rush to the code-card which was always kept handy, only to find that 'Measure 81' involved the implementation of all clauses contained in 'Measure 49' with the exception of such of them as might have been already set in motion by the application of 'Measure 93'---should the latter happen to have come into force earlier than its numerical place in the series seemed to warrant, and that, in any case, the two first paragraphs of 'Measure 57' must also be acted upon" (p.62).
"We find ourselves today in this appalling situation--that the fate of France no longer depends on the French, Since that moment when the weapons which we held with too indeterminate a grasp fell from our hands, the future of our country and of our civilization has become the stake in a struggle of which we, for the most part, are only the rather humiliated spectators" (p.174).
It's full of further unflinching judgments like this one: "Our soldiers were defeated and, to some extent, let themselves be too easily defeated, principally because their minds functioned far too sluggishly" (p.48).
The book could also be used as a primer in management, because it catalogues failures in the French military administration that lead to the "sluggishness" that the Germans successfully exploit on the battlefield. One of the failures of the military bureaucracy reminded me of the super-French "Place that Sends You Mad" chapter in The Twelve Tasks of Asterix:
"Dragged from one's bed in the middle of the night by a telegram which might read, for instance, 'Measure 81 to come into force immediately', one would rush to the code-card which was always kept handy, only to find that 'Measure 81' involved the implementation of all clauses contained in 'Measure 49' with the exception of such of them as might have been already set in motion by the application of 'Measure 93'---should the latter happen to have come into force earlier than its numerical place in the series seemed to warrant, and that, in any case, the two first paragraphs of 'Measure 57' must also be acted upon" (p.62).
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
May 10, 2015
–
Finished Reading
June 3, 2015
– Shelved
