> Do you mean to blame politicians for the military's failure? The military organized, equipped, trained, planned, and commanded their short-lived WWII efforts.

> Do you mean to blame politicians for the military's failure? The military organized, equipped, trained, planned, and commanded their short-lived WWII efforts. Yes, because the military was: * not given enough to organise for what was coming, and as a result their whole strategy was centred on "keep the Germans at the border for a few years, and then when we have enough arms and people we'll attack in 2-3 years" * put under the command of an incredibly inept man, Gamelin. He was politically well connected and useful (republican values and loyal to democracy, unlikely to launch a coup), but was unprepared for anything more recent than WWI. Worst of all, he was incapable of taking any sort of feedback from his subordinates, and in fact sent off men who were questioning him to shitty posts away from him. Even worse, he was consulted on foreign policy, and had way too much sway in deciding French foreign agenda around appeasement of Hitler (e.g. Gamelin refused to support Czechoslovakia unless Poland also joined; Poland was way too short-sighted and opted to get some rail junction from Czechoslovakia instead of realising they're next and siding against Hitler. But this was irrelevant, French + Czechoslovak armies outnumbered the Germans by a good margin, had better industry and more arms manufacturing, would have had them on two fronts, and both had extensive defensive systems; and unknown to them, the German army probably would have couped Hitler if it had came to war in 1938).