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GAULLE Charles de (1890-1970) général, Président de la République
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GAULLE Charles de (1890-1970) général, Président de la République
TAPUSCRIT, Memorandum addressed by Colonel Charles de Gaulle to Generals Gamelin, Weygand and Georges, and to Messrs. Daladier and Reynaud on January 26, 1940| 6 pages and a half in-fol. mimeographed.
Prophetic call for the reform of the army and its mechanical means, a few months before the invasion.
The inertia of "the war in progress" is very similar to what we saw in the last war: an army based on numbers, with men fighting on foot, vulnerable as soon as they move, giving a "kind of impotence of the system of the masses". The Tank, the Plane, the Battleship have changed the situation. "In modern warfare, there is no longer any active enterprise, except by means and measure of mechanical force." In two weeks, Germany struck Poland. A little better equipped, it would have crushed France, so attached to "ancient designs" and the fortification of its borders...
Only mechanical force would make it possible to guard against attacks, and today the leaders and the nation seem to be suffering from an "obscure feeling of powerlessness", while the need for technicians and manpower is pressing. "In the past, the war of armed nations required the mass in battle. Today, total war requires the mass to work"... De Gaulle pleads for the multiplication and autonomy of powerful machines, and warns against a new form of war, based on the power of weapons. "Make no mistake about it! The conflict that has begun may well be the most extensive, the most complex, the most violent of all that ravaged the earth. The political, economic, social and moral crisis from which it has arisen is so deep and ubiquitous that it will inevitably lead to a complete upheaval in the situation of peoples and the structure of States. Yet the obscure harmony of things provides this revolution with a military instrument - the army of machines - that is exactly proportionate to its colossal dimensions.
It is high time that France drew the conclusion. As always, it is from the cruci
TAPUSCRIT, Memorandum addressed by Colonel Charles de Gaulle to Generals Gamelin, Weygand and Georges, and to Messrs. Daladier and Reynaud on January 26, 1940| 6 pages and a half in-fol. mimeographed.
Prophetic call for the reform of the army and its mechanical means, a few months before the invasion.
The inertia of "the war in progress" is very similar to what we saw in the last war: an army based on numbers, with men fighting on foot, vulnerable as soon as they move, giving a "kind of impotence of the system of the masses". The Tank, the Plane, the Battleship have changed the situation. "In modern warfare, there is no longer any active enterprise, except by means and measure of mechanical force." In two weeks, Germany struck Poland. A little better equipped, it would have crushed France, so attached to "ancient designs" and the fortification of its borders...
Only mechanical force would make it possible to guard against attacks, and today the leaders and the nation seem to be suffering from an "obscure feeling of powerlessness", while the need for technicians and manpower is pressing. "In the past, the war of armed nations required the mass in battle. Today, total war requires the mass to work"... De Gaulle pleads for the multiplication and autonomy of powerful machines, and warns against a new form of war, based on the power of weapons. "Make no mistake about it! The conflict that has begun may well be the most extensive, the most complex, the most violent of all that ravaged the earth. The political, economic, social and moral crisis from which it has arisen is so deep and ubiquitous that it will inevitably lead to a complete upheaval in the situation of peoples and the structure of States. Yet the obscure harmony of things provides this revolution with a military instrument - the army of machines - that is exactly proportionate to its colossal dimensions.
It is high time that France drew the conclusion. As always, it is from the cruci