Chapter 30: War Breaks Out Again — The French Get Their Asses Handed to Them

"Allies, my ass. The only ally France has ever had is the French Army and the French Navy!"

Even after getting shot down by Britain and America, the French weren’t about to give up.

They decided to team up with the Italians and hit the Germans from two directions at once — grab the Germans by the throat and force them to sign the Treaty of Versailles!

The Treaty of Versailles had to be signed. Otherwise, what the hell was all this fighting even for?

On January 22nd, the French finished their initial mobilization.

They pulled together 9 army groups — about 2.2 million men — tore up the armistice agreement, and stormed across the ceasefire line straight at the German positions.

The first to attack was the French Fifth Army, positioned near Verdun.

That sector had the Germans sitting closest to French soil. Back in the day, the Germans had launched multiple offensives from that direction, dragging the war onto French territory — a few times even reaching the gates of Paris and threatening the capital itself.

The French had never gotten over that. They’d been itching to pull that thorn out for years.

On January 23rd, the French massed over 2,000 artillery pieces and pounded the German positions for five straight hours — until the trenches were completely swallowed by smoke and they couldn’t even see their targets anymore.

Then, under the cover of 400+ tanks, over 300,000 men of the Fifth Army launched their assault across a 240-kilometer front.

Compared to the Americans, who were short on tanks, the French had plenty to go around.

By the end of World War I, the French had over 3,500 tanks in their arsenal — more than 2,800 Renault FTs alone.

With that kind of armor backing them up, they weren’t scared of German machine guns the way the other Entente troops were. It meant way fewer infantry casualties on the advance.

Sure, they still couldn’t dodge enemy artillery. But if they could just push through the enemy’s fire zone, victory was there for the taking!

At least, that’s what the Fifth Army’s commander, Bastien Hébrant, was thinking when he gave the order to advance.

But the American military observer behind him wasn’t so optimistic. Something felt off. This scene was way too familiar — where the hell had he seen this before?

Before he could figure it out, the German artillery opened up.

The moment they spotted French ground forces moving in, the Germans unloaded with everything they had — saturation bombardment, no mercy.

Tanks might stop bullets. But they sure as hell don’t stop artillery shells!

Under that kind of heavy fire, the French tank units got torn apart — and the infantry following behind them got shredded too.

Artillery isn’t like machine guns. Machine guns only shoot from the front — as long as the tank’s in the way, you’re safe.

But shells come down from above. You never know if one’s gonna land in front of the tank or behind it.

If it lands in front, the tank’s armor’s got your back — it’ll eat the blast wave and most of the shrapnel.

But if it goes off behind or to the side of the tank? The tank might as well not even be there.

After just one barrage, the French infantry was getting slaughtered, bodies piling up all over the field.

But this was where the French showed they had some real pedigree as an old-school army. They performed way better than the Americans had.

Despite taking that kind of punishment, they didn’t fall back. They kept pushing forward through the casualties.

These were the guys who’d marched across Europe with Napoleon, after all. The French Army of WWI still had some real fight in them.

As for why they looked so pathetic by WWII — well, that’s a whole different story.

Seeing that regular shelling wasn’t stopping the advance, the German artillery commander switched tactics on the fly.

"Switch to shrapnel shells!"

Unlike the high-explosive shells everyone else was using, shrapnel shells were purpose-built to kill soft targets — infantry, that kind of thing.

Compared to regular shells, shrapnel shells have thinner walls and more internal space — room for explosives plus thousands of steel balls and steel darts packed inside.

And the fuse is different too. Instead of a contact fuse, it uses a timed fuse — calculated to the second so the shell detonates in mid-air at a preset height above the target, raining down that hail of balls and darts directly onto the enemy’s heads.

The Russians used these things during the Russo-Japanese War and got some solid results.

The Japanese infantry, bunched up and charging uphill at Russian positions, caught hell from Russian artillery.

One shrapnel shell goes off and that dense cloud of steel balls comes down like death rain — blanketing a huge area and wiping out Japanese troops by the hundreds.

Japanese commander Nogi Maresuke had hoped to use sheer numbers to take the Russian forts fast.

Instead, he watched his men get shredded by barbed wire, machine gun nests, and shrapnel shells. It cost him tens of thousands of casualties just to take Hill 203.

Now the Germans were planning to give the French a taste of what the Japanese went through.

"Loaded!"

"Fused!"

"Ready!"

"FIRE!"

The German heavy guns roared again — but this time, no high-explosive. Just pure, targeted shrapnel.

BOOM BOOM BOOM!

The explosions came down in waves — every shell bursting like rain over the battlefield.

Dense clouds of steel balls came screaming down at terminal velocity, mowing down entire swaths of French infantry.

In the blink of an eye, the battlefield was carpeted with corpses — dead French soldiers everywhere, plus the wounded ones still alive, screaming in agony.

That said, because shrapnel bursts in the air, it’s nowhere near as effective against armored targets as high-explosive.

The tank crews charging forward heard the explosions above their heads and figured they were done for.

But aside from the initial blast wave, they didn’t feel a thing.

One commander got curious, popped the hatch, and stuck his head out to check.

One quick look and he was stunned — bodies of his own infantry lying everywhere around the tank, while the tank itself was completely unharmed.

Well, "unharmed" isn’t quite right. The top of the tank was covered in shallow dents from steel balls bouncing off — they just hadn’t penetrated the armor.

If those balls had been moving any faster, or had better armor-piercing power, they’d be just as dead as the infantry outside.

Compared to the high-explosive shells from before, the shrapnel was a massive upgrade in killing power.

But more importantly — the visual impact was absolutely brutal.

Countless French soldiers watched enemy shells detonate right above their buddies’ heads, spraying down a storm of steel, and watched their comrades drop like wheat in a hurricane — whole swaths of them hitting the dirt at once.

The heavy casualties, combined with the psychological terror of those airburst shells, finally broke the French morale.

Before any commander could even order a retreat, they were already flooding back.

This French army might’ve carried some of the old traditions of the French military, but they weren’t Napoleon’s Old Guard — the invincible, undefeated veterans who’d conquered Europe.

They couldn’t charge into death without flinching like the Old Guard did.

Once the infantry ran, the tanks were screwed.

Every anti-tank weapon the Germans had opened up on them — a dozen tanks knocked out in minutes.

The rest saw the writing on the wall and pulled back. France’s first wave of attacks was a total failure.

The same story played out on every other front. Against a prepared German defense, the French attacks didn’t just fail to get the results they wanted — they smashed their own heads against the wall.

Except for the Lille sector, where the First Army made some progress, every other French offensive came up empty.

The Eighth Army, tasked with attacking the Alsace direction, even caught a German counterattack.

The Germans knew the terrain better — after beating back the French assault, they sent troops around behind them and torched a huge stockpile of French supplies and ammunition. The Eighth Army couldn’t launch another attack for two weeks straight after that.

When the reports from every front hit his desk, French Commander-in-Chief Marshal Pétain’s face went pale.

He’d expected a hard fight. But nobody told him it was gonna be THIS hard.

Back when the war was still going, the Germans never felt this strong. How the hell did they get scarier after LOSING the war?

What the hell was going on here?