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Summary: "Revisionist history" at its finest: an important book
Review: At its best, what is known as "revisionist history" helps us look at an historical event from a different, stimulating, even important perspective. Unfortunately, "revisionist history" has developed something of a bad reputation in recent years, due mainly to some bizarre cases of people actually DENYING that an event, in particular the Nazi Holocaust, occurred at all. It's one thing to say that if Lee had won at Gettysburg, then the South would have won the Civil War, but it's another thing to deny that the Civil War ever happened! Fortunately, denial is not at all what "Strange Victory" is about. Instead, this is "revisionist history" at its best - brilliant, wise, troubling, even mind-boggling. If Ernest May is correct, than all of history could easily have turned out far differently, if only...Basically, what Ernest May does in "Strange Victory" is to present a well-argued case that the Nazi victory over France in 1940 not only was far from inevitable - in a Hegelian, Marxist, or any other sense -- but if anything that the ALLIES should have defeated the NAZIS - and fairly easily, at that! Personally, I think the interesting question with a lot of history is why do people so often take it as a given that just because something happened, that it was preordained to happen and/or could not have happened otherwise? And yet, we know that random events like weather (for instance, fog on the East River on the night of Aug. 29, 1776, which permitted Washington to escape unnoticed by the British and thus keep the Revolution alive to fight another day; or the terrible Russian winter of 1941/1942 helped prevent the Nazis from conquering the Soviet Union; the death of Alexander the Great; etc.) can have tremendous implications for the course of history. Basically, this comes down to two opposing views: 1) the Hegelian/Marxist view that history is "inevitable", or at least deterministic in the sense that it is driven by forces that humans have little control over; and 2) the view that there is little, if anything, preordained about history, and that the belief in inevitability really stems from things like "hindsight bias," which makes history appear far more pre-ordained than it really is. In "Strange Victory," Ernest May offers us an excellent example of the second category of analysis, helping us to, as Oxford scholar (and author of the controversial revisionist history, "The Pity of War") Niall Ferguson puts it, "recapture the chaotic nature of experience and see that there are no certain outcomes." The bottom line is that just because something happened a certain way doesn't mean it HAD to have happened that way, and the Nazi victory over France in 1940, as laid out in "Strange Victory," is one of those cases. So how, then, does May explain (as he puts it) the question: "if the Allies in May 1940 were in most respects militarily superior, were not badly led, and did not suffer from demoralization (not yet, at least), what then accounts for Germany's six-week triumph?" First, May persuasively discounts the three generally accepted explanations: 1) moral "laxness" and an unwillingness to fight on the Allied side (according to May, the French and British were confident, expected to win, fought well and courageously, won battles, and suffered many casualties); 2) a crushing German military superiority (the Allies actually were better equipped for war, according to May); and 3) far better German than allied leadership (May presents plenty of evidence of incompetence on both sides and at all levels). What then, led to the Nazis' swift victory? To quote May, "More than anything else, this happened because France and its allies misjudged what Germany planned to do. If leaders in the Allied governments had anticipated the German offensive through the Ardennes, even as a worrisome contingency, it is almost inconceivable that France would have been defeated when and as it was. It is more than conceivable that the outcome would have been not France's defeat but Germany's and, possibly, a French victory parade on the Unter den Linden in Berlin." Of course, this raises the next question: WHY did the Allies so badly misjudge the situation, even with excellent intelligence (including spies in the German government high up in the German intelligence apparatus) and May explains this as well, pretty much in one word: arrogance. Specifically, the Allies were overconfident, disbelieving that Hitler would dare launch a "reckless land offensive" against the more powerful Allies, and certainly not in the way that he did! Besides arrogance, May raises another interesting factor, namely the Allied concern with minimizing loss of life (largely in reaction to the carnage experienced only one generation earlier), and the related heavy reliance on technology (the "Maginot Line") as a substitute for manpower. Sound familiar? Well, if not, you might want to check out specifically the "Powell Doctrine" and in general the post-Vietnam War reluctance by the United States to risk casualties, plus the heavy U.S. reliance on technology - whether it be "stealth", "smart bombs", airpower, "Star Wars," or whatever. This was in great evidence during "Operation Desert Storm," as well as in the Kosovo campaign. Finally, May, in what I find to be his weakest point, cites the inherent nature of democracies, which generally have a more "cumbersome" (and time-consuming) decision making process than non-democracies. In sum, this is a fascinating, important book, with relevance for today's policymaking. Personally, I strongly recommend that our top military and political leaders read this book and absorb its lessons, or someday soon we too could become the victims of a "Strange Victory"...
Rating: 
Summary: Dramatic Reinterpretation
Review: Before the Nazis killed him for his work in the French Resistance, the great historian Marc Bloch wrote a famous short book, "Strange Defeat", about the treatment of his nation at the hands of an enemy the French had believed they could easily dispose of. In Strange Victory, the distinguished American historian Ernest R. May asks the opposite question: How was it that Hitler and his generals managed this swift conquest, considering that France and its allies were superior in every measurable dimension and considering the Germans' own skepticism about their chances? Strange Victory is a riveting narrative of those six crucial weeks in the spring of 1940, weaving together the decisions made by the high commands with the welter of confused responses from exhausted and ill-informed, or ill-advised, officers in the field. Why did Hitler want to turn against France at just this moment, and why were his poor judgment and inadequate intelligence about the Allies nonetheless correct? Why didn't France take the offensive when it might have led to victory? What explains France's failure to detect and respond to Germany's attack plan? One will have to decide on their own answers. It is May's contention that in the future, nations might suffer strange defeats of their own if they do not learn from their predecessors' mistakes in judgment. Thoroughly researched, Ernest May writes a dramatic narrative-and reinterpretation-of Germany's six-week campaign that swept the Wehrmacht to Paris in spring 1940. Besides his point of view to be read and pondered, several intriguing pictures and maps are included.
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Summary: A detailed account of how France blew it in WWII
Review: Before the start of WWII, France outclassed the Germans militarily with a larger Army, a better Air Force, bigger and better tanks, and the Maginot Line. The French also had spies telling them the Germans were preparing to attack them. So how did Germany beat them so easily in a few weeks? If you want to know what happened, read this book. The French soldier in WWI was as good as any soldier in the world. The same can be said of WWII. But, they had a lack of leadership. The various branches of the services did not communicate of coordinate. This lack of leadership and coordination was a recipe for disaster! This book includes interesting tables and excellent statistics as well as a comprehensive bibliography. Also included are maps and fine descriptions of major engagements.
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Summary: Yes and no
Review: Ernest May makes the case that the French army was not worse than the German army; its generals were just incompetent. This is an interesting (and probably accurate) distinction to make, but the difference between being a badly led army and a bad army is not an obvious one. No modern historian claims that the French had poor equipment or insufficient numbers, but only that French organization and doctrine were ineffective against the Germans. Is this all that different from what May is saying? Not really. Where May becomes most interesting is in his analysis of the course of events in May 1940, where he makes a persuasive case that the French generals were both unlucky and foolish. Whether he has attacked the conventional wisdom is unclear, but the book is a lucid exposition of the conflict.
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Summary: WHY FRANCE FELL
Review: Harvard historian Ernest May has written an excellent, detailed account of why France fell, and fell so quickly, in May of 1940. He takes the title of his book, Strange Victory, from Marc Bloch's book, Strange Defeat. Bloch was a French historian and soldier who wrote his account shortly after the French debacle. Bloch stressed the defeatism of the French soldiers and the disorganization of the French Army command, which he saw personally. His book strongly reinforced the idea, common after the shockingly quick defeat, that France was a rotten apple waiting to be plucked from the tree. May disputes Bloch's account. He notes that French aircraft and armor were equal to or sometimes superior to that of the Germans. France held a slight edge in the number of first line troops. Morale was generally good among French soldiers (and not so good among the Germans, including the Generals, who mistrusted Hitler.) May posits that Germany succeeded because Hitler had superior strategic insight, including a better understanding than did his generals of the passivity and ineptitude of the British and French military command. Germany outwitted France on the battlefield by sending its main thrust through the Ardennes, a move that surprised the French and to which they were slow, fatally slow, to react. French troops often fought bravely, but their commanders did not have them in the right position, especially their first line units. Germany had a crucial advantage in military intelligence, particularly in their ability to interpret various bits of evidence and to weave a coherent pattern from it to inform their front-line commanders. The French intelligence service, by contrast, attracted lesser-grade officers who often transmitted undigested information, without analysis, to the French command. In short, May thinks that it was possible for France to defeat Germany. The French Army was considered the best in the world. Far from being defeatist, May cites contemporary sources expressing great confidence in any clash of arms with the Germans. Churchill said, in a House of Commons debate, "Thank God for the French Army." Specifically, May feels France missed a golden opportunity by failing to attack Germany in the Fall of 1939 while German troops were crushing Poland. But at no time did any senior French or British official propose such an operation. May's book devotes its first 380 pages to explaining the state of France and the French Army in the pre-war period. This is the best part of the book. He is especially good in comparing Hitler's bold thinking and decisive strokes with the paralysis that gripped French (and British) politicians. He is perhaps less thorough in describing the "Battle of France" itself, which he does in about 80 pages. If his thesis, that the issue was decided on the battlefield, is to be proved, in my view he needed to develop that thesis more carefully by examining closely the battlefield action. He certainly does remind us that, when well led, some French troops fought bravely. But overall, Marc Bloch is more convincing in showing us dispirited French soldiers, confused, despairing, ready to surrender. This attitude was demonstrated by the French political leadership. Reynaud, the French Premier, telephoned Churchill at night after learning of the Germany breakthrough at Sedan, saying: "We have been defeated!" And May cites Bloch's description of French General Blanchard: "During all that time, he sat in tragic immobility, saying nothing, doing nothing, but just gazing at the map spread on the table between us, as though hoping to find on it the decision which he was incapable of taking." May has given us a fine description of pre-war France, its political tensions, and its inefficient military set up. He does a nice job of drawing morals from the French experience, the most important of which probably is, if you're successful at doing something, you're likely to be blindsided from a completely unexpected direction (read Trade Towers and Anthrax.) But he probably gives too little credence to how sick French society was in the 1930's and how this affected their willingness to fight. Read Eugene Weber's The Hollow Years for more on this. Marc Bloch captures this defeatism in Strange Defeat, which should be read together with Professor May's fine book to get a more balanced view of the French defeat.
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Summary: WHY FRANCE FELL
Review: Harvard historian Ernest May has written an excellent, detailed account of why France fell, and fell so quickly, in May of 1940. He takes the title of his book, Strange Victory, from Marc Bloch's book, Strange Defeat. Bloch was a French historian and soldier who wrote his account shortly after the French debacle. Bloch stressed the defeatism of the French soldiers and the disorganization of the French Army command, which he saw personally. His book strongly reinforced the idea, common after the shockingly quick defeat, that France was a rotten apple waiting to be plucked from the tree. May disputes Bloch's account. He notes that French aircraft and armor were equal to or sometimes superior to that of the Germans. France held a slight edge in the number of first line troops. Morale was generally good among French soldiers (and not so good among the Germans, including the Generals, who mistrusted Hitler.) May posits that Germany succeeded because Hitler had superior strategic insight, including a better understanding than did his generals of the passivity and ineptitude of the British and French military command. Germany outwitted France on the battlefield by sending its main thrust through the Ardennes, a move that surprised the French and to which they were slow, fatally slow, to react. French troops often fought bravely, but their commanders did not have them in the right position, especially their first line units. Germany had a crucial advantage in military intelligence, particularly in their ability to interpret various bits of evidence and to weave a coherent pattern from it to inform their front-line commanders. The French intelligence service, by contrast, attracted lesser-grade officers who often transmitted undigested information, without analysis, to the French command. In short, May thinks that it was possible for France to defeat Germany. The French Army was considered the best in the world. Far from being defeatist, May cites contemporary sources expressing great confidence in any clash of arms with the Germans. Churchill said, in a House of Commons debate, "Thank God for the French Army." Specifically, May feels France missed a golden opportunity by failing to attack Germany in the Fall of 1939 while German troops were crushing Poland. But at no time did any senior French or British official propose such an operation. May's book devotes its first 380 pages to explaining the state of France and the French Army in the pre-war period. This is the best part of the book. He is especially good in comparing Hitler's bold thinking and decisive strokes with the paralysis that gripped French (and British) politicians. He is perhaps less thorough in describing the "Battle of France" itself, which he does in about 80 pages. If his thesis, that the issue was decided on the battlefield, is to be proved, in my view he needed to develop that thesis more carefully by examining closely the battlefield action. He certainly does remind us that, when well led, some French troops fought bravely. But overall, Marc Bloch is more convincing in showing us dispirited French soldiers, confused, despairing, ready to surrender. This attitude was demonstrated by the French political leadership. Reynaud, the French Premier, telephoned Churchill at night after learning of the Germany breakthrough at Sedan, saying: "We have been defeated!" And May cites Bloch's description of French General Blanchard: "During all that time, he sat in tragic immobility, saying nothing, doing nothing, but just gazing at the map spread on the table between us, as though hoping to find on it the decision which he was incapable of taking." May has given us a fine description of pre-war France, its political tensions, and its inefficient military set up. He does a nice job of drawing morals from the French experience, the most important of which probably is, if you're successful at doing something, you're likely to be blindsided from a completely unexpected direction (read Trade Towers and Anthrax.) But he probably gives too little credence to how sick French society was in the 1930's and how this affected their willingness to fight. Read Eugene Weber's The Hollow Years for more on this. Marc Bloch captures this defeatism in Strange Defeat, which should be read together with Professor May's fine book to get a more balanced view of the French defeat.
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Summary: A Wholly Credible Account
Review: I greatly enjoyed Ernest May's "Strange Victory." The close attention given to the weaknesses in the French and British command and intelligence structures in the critical days leading up to the German attack through the Ardennes in May, 1940, makes an excellent contribution to the now copious literature on the subject. Mr. May's observations arise from a depth of scholarship which is most impressive. The case for the importance of placing adequate emphasis on the intentions of the opponent and not merely on his capabilities could not be made more persuasively. If there is any negative criticism to be leveled at this work, it is not of Mr. May but of his publisher. The physical qualities of the binding, paper, type face, and maps are far below the levels which this excellent work deserves.
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Summary: Brilliant Scholarship
Review: I was amazed to find this book so shabbily reviewed! This is a work of brilliant scholarship and well written. One of the reviewers commented that the book is not original and that the fall of France was not strange. Originality exists on different levels. That human failings were behind the fall of France was commented upon almost immediately, beginning virtually on day one with Churchill's "The battle of France is over; the Battle of Britain must now begin" speech. But to document these failings, to detail the mistakes made, to prove that it was human failings at the heights of command in the French Army and polity, rather than equipment failures or unusual brilliance of the German high command, are no mean feat. Moreover, May's research is exhaustive. So many scholars today have a theory and tailor the research to support that theory. To this they add footnotes and a lengthy bibliography to convince the reader that they have been scholarly. This is not what May has done. He has pieced together from thousands of sources a very complex story, which has enabled him to tell that story "the way it really happened." Anybody who does that, especially in this day of jet-set historians, deserves the highest accolades. I doubt that any of the reviews given here are by people with May's expertize on the subject; yet they have the temerity of to dump on him. With a work like this, the only justifiable criticism is to find factual discrepancies, citing source and page. Noticeably, there are none in the reviews submitted.
Professor May has written an excellent book and he is to be praised and congratulated on his achievement.
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Summary: what were they thinking????
Review: If the French had been on the ball the war might have been a little different. May's Stange Victory is an eye-opening view of the complete breakdown on the Allied side prior to the German invasion of France and the low countries. It offers both a look at how the large French army managed to beat itself and how an unsure German army managed to do it. ANYONE interested in the fall of the Third Republic should add this book to their must read list!
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Summary: Intellectually Dishonest
Review: In Strange Victory, Harvard professor Ernest R. May delivers a revisionist hypothesis about the German conquest of France in May 1940: the French were not doomed to defeat and the result could have gone the other way. May argues that incredible luck and faulty Allied intelligence were two of the main ingredients of this "strange victory" of the weaker over the stronger. Actually, May presents two related counter-factual hypotheses: first, that if France had launched a serious offensive in September 1939 that Nazi Germany might have "imploded" and second, that with better intelligence the French would have expected the panzer thrust through the Ardennes Forrest and moved to block it. While May has put a great deal of research into building his hypotheses, it is camouflage for a fundamentally dishonest intellectual approach. In order for a hypothesis to be credible, it should be tested against alternative evidence, but May eschews this methodology. In short, May only provides information that supports his hypotheses, but ignores information that does not. The hypothesis that France could have launched an offensive to reach the Ruhr in September 1939 and thereby end the war at the outset is attractive but fanciful. France entered the war without an offensive doctrine or plan. When the French did attempt minor probes in the Saar on 7-11 September, they were stopped dead by the German introduction of deadly anti-personnel mines - which May fails to mention. Even if the French had possessed more offensive spirit in 1939, the odds were distinctly against success. The French armored divisions (DCRs) did not yet exist and the bulk of any offensive would rely on traditional infantry divisions, supported by a few motorized and cavalry units. May suggests that it would have been easy for the French to reach the Ruhr after only a few days of fighting against second-rate German Landwehr units. He fails to mention that it was 230 kilometers to the Ruhr and that the Rhine River would have to be crossed first - no small matter. The French 3rd and 4th Armies could have attacked with 8-13 divisions against 5-8 German divisions in prepared positions, representing odds of only 3:2 and without the benefit of surprise or air superiority. May completely ignores the ability of the Germans to redeploy units from the Polish front to blunt any French breakthrough. Worse still, May completely ignores the possibility that a premature French offensive in 1939 might have caused excessive casualties among the best French units, just as happened with Plan XVII in 1914. Certainly the most critical element of May's hypothesis about May 1940 is his attribution of German surprise to French non-predictive intelligence methods. However, even if French intelligence had anticipated the German main effort at Sedan, May's assertion that the French response would definitely have resulted in a German defeat is absurd. This hypothesis is flawed on many levels. If the French had reinforced Sedan they might have block Guderian, but the French line would have been weakened in Belgium; the German timetable might have been upset, but they would probably have broken through elsewhere. May ignores the fact that German panzer forces outfought the Allies in Greece in North Africa in 1941-2 where luck and surprise were less important. Better intelligence would not have altered the torpid pace of Allied decision-making, their lack of air superiority or their faulty doctrine. Given the author's apparent meticulous research, the number of obvious factual errors is rather disturbing. Since much of this information is available in secondary sources, I suspect that the errors were intentional distortions by the author to twist facts to support his hypotheses. In order to bolster the perception of French tactical prowess, the author exaggerates French tactical success in order to suggest that the French could have won. Actually, the Luftwaffe fighters clearly out-performed French fighters during the Phoney War period and the author's repeated use of a single incident on 6 November 1939 where the Germans lost 4 fighters to 1 French fighter is a fraudulent use of statistics (why not mention the action on 31 March 1940 where the Germans shot down 6 French fighters for no loss). The author's assertion that the tank battle at Gembloux was a "clear-cut French victory" is a flat-out lie, which no other account supports. At Fort Eben Emael, May claims that 55 out of 85 German glider troops were killed in the assault, but the actual number was 6 (a 900% exaggeration). May claims that the British counterattack at Arras "temporarily routed" Rommel's 7th Panzer but this is clearly false; the 7th Panzer was surprised and suffered losses but the attempt to compare a few German anti-tank gunners running away under fire with entire French units surrendering is dishonest. May fails to note that the British lost 30 tanks at Arras - 10 more than the "routed" Germans - and failed to stop the German march to the coast. Finally, the author's description of Erwin Rommel's First World War experience as, "primarily a behind-the-lines commando" is absurd and intended to denigrate his ability to lead armor.
While the author's comments on the French failure to use predictive intelligence are interesting, there is no evidence that this failure was unique. Certainly, if the Americans had anticipated the Pearl Harbor or World Trade Center attacks, history would have turned out differently, but we don't need a Harvard professor to tell us the obvious. Predictive intelligence is necessary but far more difficult than the author implies and it is a common failing of many intelligence agencies. It is also very odd that the author makes no attempt to compare the May 1940 Campaign with Desert Storm in 1991, which had many similarities. Might Iraq have done better if it had launched a hasty attack into Saudi Arabia in 1990? Might Iraq have defeated the American "left hook" with predictive intelligence? The omission appears deliberate. May's hypotheses are not substantiated and his methods are deceptive.
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