Jon Kimche

This book illustrates the strength and weaknesses of alternate history. The author speculates that, had the French and British attacked in force from the outset of the war, they would surely have triumphed. Well, maybe. The progress of the Allies in the same area in 1944-45 would suggest that a triumphant march over the dead bodies of Wehrmacht soldiers wouldn’t necessarily have been easy. In addition, the Allies in 1944 had an advantage that the French and British in 1939 did not, the route through Belgium and Holland. Unless they were prepared to violate the neutrality of those states, the offensive would have been channeled into the relatively narrow territory between the Rhine and the Luxembourg border (neither the Germans nor the French seemed to have placed much hope in a decision along the Upper Rhine). A “decisive victory” for the French in such a case would seem to have amounted to, at most, overrunning the Rhine-Moselle triangle. That was not enough to have defeated the Germans unless they took it upon themselves to overthrow Hitler, which was far from guaranteed.

Kimche states that “the French and British combined had 934 serviceable fighter planes; the Germans had virtually none on the western front.” First, it is not clear that British air power could have been combined with the French from the outset. Second, modern sources indicate that the Germans retained almost 550 Bf-109’s in the west, a number almost equal to the number that the French alone could have fielded. Therefore, any French offensive would likely not have obtained air superiority, let alone air supremacy. This lowers the probability of the French “decisive victory” to something less that a sure thing.… (meer)