France Before
the Fall

An American Legion Weekly article by the noted war correspondent Frederick Palmer (1873 – 1958) who reported on the French and British armies as they attempted to hold-off the Nazi onslaught of 1940. In this article, Palmer referred often to walking this same ground with the American Army during the 1914 – 1918 war just twenty-one years earlier; he found the French to be confident of a decisive victory:

“They felt quite secure, as did all the people I met, – secure behind the wonderful Maginot Line. The door was fast locked against the ancient enemy…All the set guns in their fixed positions, all the fields of barbed wire and tank obstacles faced the Rhine to meet a frontal attack. Occasionally a skeptic whispered the question, ‘What if an invading army should get behind the Maginot Line?'”

“And this was to happen.”

This article is complemented by this 1940 article which reported on the wonders of Blitzkrieg and the fall of France.

Click here to read about the fall of Paris…

More primary source articles about W.W. II France can be read here…