ABSTRACT
French strategic planning in the late 1930s centred on a long war, une guerre de longue durée. The broad outlines of this strategy are well known. With the Great War of 1914-18 in mind, French planners expected the next war to be a total war in which victory would go to the side best able to mobilise its resourcesmilitary, economic, demographic and political. Two principles followed from this basic assumption. First, France needed allies to redress the imbalance of power caused by Germany’s far greater industrial and demographic strength. Here France looked mainly to Britain and its vast empire for help. Indeed, French foreign policy from 1933, if not before, has often been described in terms of the pursuit of a British alliance. Second, France needed to gain time. By allowing France (and Britain) to mobilise its latent strength and to win additional allies, time would gradually overturn the short-term advantage which Germany had gained by its head start in rearmament.1
