Talk:Order of battle for the Battle of France

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Contents 1 Old talk 2 er 3 German OOB question 4 wikilinks to generic Divisions? 5 Polish units and other musings

[edit] Old talk

First my congratulations! An excellent article! And an awful lot of work to create it...

I see you've taken over the usual translation of Division Légère Mécanique with "Light Mechanised Division". This translation is very common. It is also quite wrong, violating both the meaning of the words and French language in general. "Light" here doesn't mean "lightly equipped", it's a synonym of "mobile". So any mechanised division is "light". But not every light division is mechanised. True, the French would allow for a reversed order, but normally, a Division Légère being a "Light Division" (the adjective behind the noun goes to the front), adding Mécanique, "Mechanised" must again (the same rule applies) be put in front of "Light", resulting in the translation "Mechanised Light Division". A "Light Mechanised Division" would normally translate as a Division Mécanique Légère. The same way DIC is correctly given by you as "Colonial Infantry Division", not as "Infantry Colonial Division". For the DLC the full name makes it much clearer: the Division is obviously not Légère de Cavalerie, but this Division Légère is de Cavalerie and thus a "Cavalry Light Division" (and not a division consisting of light cavalry — although in fact mounted troops were present :o). Of course many French sources, suffering from a lack of knowledge of both military jargon and indeed English, make the same mistakes...

It might seem a very minor point, but the incorrect translation has in the past deceived many into assuming that these divisions, being after all merely "light", were not true armoured divisions or somehow of low fighting value, whereas they were in fact by far the most powerful units the Allies could deploy.

--MWAK 08:11, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

what country is the "Army of the ALps" from? it would seem to be French, but is under the dutch. Also it migh make sense to place all French forces together under one subheading, instead of having the dutch in the middle.

It's indeed a French army; but it's justified to give it at the end, because it didn't take part in the operations against the Germans. An order of battle preferably isn't divided according to nationality but according to deployment disposition. It's after all an "order of battle"! :o)--MWAK 12:29, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] er

I believe that you may have some incorrect data regarding the German military forces (I haven't checked the French forces). At any rate, only one Panzer group is shown to have existed for the German forces when in face there were at least a dozen present, dispersed among the three armies, and more than likely more than that number.

Perhaps you have been confused by the terminology: there were ten armoured divisions, nine of which were combined into four armoured corps, again two of which were combined into Panzergruppe Kleist, which, being a sui generis unit, is mentioned here separately. There were not three armies but three Army Groups. It takes some time getting used to. :o)--MWAK 13:13, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] German OOB question

Could you please cite your resources for the German OOB? While doing some research on the May 1940 dispositions, I came across this orbit site that differs in many respects to the OOB provided here. If citations were provided, the readers could then evaluate which ones are correct.

Thanks, Dd84 18:36, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] wikilinks to generic Divisions?

Should we keep all those wikilinks leading to generic units like for instance 8th Infantry Division? If not, should we replace them by correct national ones even if that results in red links (I don't have the material to write stub articles on French or Belgian units), or instead leave them linkless until an article about them is written. Personally I'd prefer red links to the generic links. (Note that even some of the generic links end up as red links).--Caranorn 12:26, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Polish units and other musings

Having just written Sikorski's Army (on Polish army in France, 1940), I have several comments and questions:

• is the difference between 'French IV Corps' and 'French 6th Corp' a result of sloppy naming? If so, this should be standarized.
• we need OOB for 'Army of the Alps' and the 'French reserves'
• I am having troubles with OOB of various Polish fromations. the article states that 1st Grenadiers Division (Poland) 'directly reported' to French 4th Army. But I have a ref that it was part of the 20th/XX Corps ([1]).
• Second Infantry Fusiliers Division - I have sources stating it was part of the reserves ([2]) but also part of the 45th/XXXXV Corps ([3]) - that would put it in the French 8th Army, but our article does not mention this Polish formation (see article for alternative names) at all
• 10th Armoured Cavalry Brigade (Poland) was also attached to the 4th Army according to my sources, but there is no mention of this formation in the OOB
• Polish Independent Highland Brigade fought in Brittany in the last days of the battle, I have completely no idea under whose command

I hope you'll be able to help me.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  19:06, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Have you checked France 1940 and ATF40 yet for those questions? They obviously mainly deal with the French forces, but also include information about the Polish ones. I wish I knew what date the current OOB is based on, the date is probably the reason why some information is confusing. Maybe we'd do better to rebuild the entire Allied OOB from scratch using the France 1940 and ATF 40 websites as sources.--Caranorn 19:55, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I was not familiar with those sites, thanks. I do agree that the OOB should be verified and rebuild if needed, I'll help with Polish units if needed.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  20:06, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, ATF40 has very poor and partly incorrect information about the Dutch forces, so I wouldn't use it to rewrite the section about The Netherlands :o).--MWAK 09:50, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I meant both sources mainly for any forces under French command (including the Poles).--Caranorn 11:08, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Just took another look at ATF40, the pages seem to be in a major overhaul with completely different structure from the last time I viewed them. The material I was refering to can largely be found accessing the indivual links at the bottom of this page ATF40.--Caranorn 11:12, 2 August 2007 (UTC)