West European Studies

German had 136 divisions by 10th May 1940 and of the 136 division, ten were armored, seven motorized one cavalry and one airborne. Combined, the French and the British had a total of 104 divisions of which 94 were for French and the remaining 10 for the British. To the 104 division, 22 Belgian divisions were added totaling to 126 divisions. On the other hand, the French had a total of 3 armored divisions, 5 cavalry divisions and 3 light-mechanized divisions.

Comparatively, the French had higher tank strength on the western front than the Germans with the French and the Germans having 3,254 and 2,574 tanks respectively. However, the French tanks seemed to be of a low quality with a limited action radius and often slower speeds. The French were even more inferior when it came to air force despite getting good backup supplement from the British contribution. The German air forces were smarter in organization for the war and the general quality. Why 43 days As a result of this inferiority, the French military had already become hopeless even before the second phase of the Germans offensive on 5th June.

The leaders of the French military were talking of salvaging their honor and compromise their victory. To them, honor was more important than winning the war. There was eventually a call for a ceasefire to prevent France from further losing and on the 22nd June, 43 days after the conquest began, the unconditional surrender was accepted at Compiegne bringing the end of the war between France and German.

Why the easy defeat The main reason of the defeat of France has been debated despite enough evidence of the France low morale and the outright defeatism. However, the main concern settling in most peoples argument is the reason which led the possibly 5th or 6th most powerful state on Earth was so quickly dispatched. In pursuit to answer this question, there are two different approaches but rather related factors. the first reason why France got defeated is that the French generals assisted by the British, did not fully understand how the improvement of the tanks and the airplanes had changed since the world war I. German on the other side had mastered so well the techniques in airplanes and the tanks hence got it so easy to dispatch French. Following the First World War, the improvements of airplane and tanks had equipped German armies with capabilities to easily defeat their counterparts, France. The second reason why France was easily defeated was because of the defeatism which exposed among the French government the people of France and the military leadership-all had lost hopes in the fight and could not fight on. The World War I left France utterly traumatized that they were very much willing to do their best to avoid any incident of another similar war. When they heard of the Second World War, they had already surrendered in their minds and were ready to give up hence the easy defeat. By giving up so quickly, most people in France felt that fewer people were to be killed than enter the war for a long time. Therefore, France surrendered and the war was stopped on the 22nd of June 1940.