DonL
Banned
Quite a lot. A true war is not a Risiko as the real Finance is not Monopoly.....
Once an Army moves in a direction it not easy to redeploy it, expecially in extremely narrow and winding hilly lanes, with all the consequent traffic jams and with an enemy that is capable to keep an eye on you. One thing is an enemy that arrives unespected and unsuspected, another one is when arrives expected: the Germans lost the First Battle of Marne for this very reason, and fortunately there were all the Paris taxis to bring the "poilus" to the front.....
The French and British H.Q. were in 1940, IMHO, criminal in this respect, or put it as you want, they were not so lucky like in the WWI...
But this is the whole concept of mobility to strike through unexpected. How often had the Wehrmacht the problem of very good defended stratical points at Barbarossa and how often they were searching a weak spot next to this point in the front, regroup and break through absolutely unexpected 30-60 miles away to drive in the back of the very good defended frontline.
All officers were trained for this and as Siegfried mentioned it was part of their military education.
I don't want to deny that the French Army could stop the Wehrmacht perhaps for one or two weeks but after that, the Wehrmacht had found the one, two, three weak points in the frontline to strike through unexpected!
The whole problem of the French Army was their untrained Soldiers to tank attacks. Most of the units had the "tank scare" and they were unable to built a coordinated frontline, if tanks were in the back of the major frontline.