French Foreign Policy and the Coming of War

French Foreign Policy and the Coming of War

During this critical time not much attention was turned to France, as

the entire spotlight was on Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement and

Hitler’s aims. The Orthodox view of France was described as of a

deeply divided and politically unstable country, which was obsessed

with security and defense. France was definitely not ready for war,

and therefore eagerly agreed to the policy of appeasement. It

preferred negotiating with Germany at this stage rather than fighting

it. The other reason for why France was standing up behind Britain so

much and tried to never argue with it was because France was scared of

losing British support if war with Germany would arise.

J-B. Duroselle argued that all the instability and weakness in France

comes from the indecisiveness of its foreign policy. For example

during years of 1932-1940 there were no less than 16 different

coalition governments in power. The other argument was also made by

René Girault, who said the other problem that made French policy so

weak was the fact that the French were not preparing for war, but for

inevitable defeat. Their morale was completely down.

However there was a major difference in the views of France and

Britain towards appeasement policy and that was that Chamberlain saw

appeasement as a bold and positive policy, born of military weakness,

but sympathetic to German grievances, while the French saw appeasement

as a negative and stoical policy, illustrating that all their effort

own efforts to prevent a German revival had failed. It was at this

point that the French realized all of their failures, and therefore

obviously felt little or no sympathy towards German problems. Their

main aim was to prevent war as long as possible and not to make

Germany feel better. The thought of another war was unbearable for

them and therefore the French officials based its strategy on defense

and diplomacy. Different historians have different views about the

French actions, e.g.

- Adamthwaite thinks that if only they were more energetic, the French