Генерал Морис Гамелен и французское военное строительство накануне Второй мировой войны

Abstract

The article is devoted to one of the pressing issues in the background of the Second World War - military development in France. Having won the First World War, the country faced the problem of ensuring national security in the new conditions. Germany was weakened, but not deprived of opportunities to make a rematch. The problem had become ever more acute after the Nazis came to power. The absence of an immediate threat to the country’s territory in the 1920s contributed to the “consensus of silence” between the French military and politicians, but after 1933 they started diverging in their vision of the situation in defense policy. General M. Gamelin was one of those who realised the danger of such a situation. In 1936 he managed to establish cooperation with the Minister of War E. Daladier, who headed the government in 1938. Their tandem was able to solve the problem of re-arming the French army, but the systemic shortcomings of the political model of the late Third Republic, the degradation of its elites raised difficulties in creating a stably functioning mechanism of interaction between the military and politicians that would ensure unity of the national security strategy. The consequences of this fully manifested themselves after the start of the Second World War and became a cause of the defeat of France.