L'Inexorable Défaite.

November 11, 1918. The unfinished victory ... France believes it has won the war, it has won only a precarious  peace. This dramatic observation is the starting point of a long Stations of the Cross which will lead the country  inexorably towards the outcome of June 1940. Over the stations of this Stations of the Cross, France, in  total contradiction between its foreign policy and its defense policy will go from disillusionment to  resignation, without ever realizing that it did not have or did not give itself the means to achieve its  ambitions. The disappointment of the Treaty of Versailles, the arrogance of the years of occupation in the Rhineland,  the illusion of the Locarno Pact, the choice of the defensive when it has granted its guarantee to many  countries with which it has no common border, passivity in the face of the rise of German power, the lack  of reaction following Belgian neutrality, the resignation of Munich, all of this could only lead to an  ill-prepared and badly managed entry into the war. When on May 10, 1940, Germany kicked off operations in the West, the French army was to accumulate  clumsiness, despite itself amplifying the German successes. Caught in the whirlwind of the dazzling German  breakthrough, the command will at no time be able to turn the tide of events and the calamitous news will  follow one another like a Greek tragedy.