| By 1925 French military officers had described the tactics, equipment, and organization for fast-moving mechanized warfare supported by ground-attack aviation. By 1940, in spite of having superior numbers of modern tanks and aircraft, the French army and air force were unable to use their own aviation and armor effectively, and could not cope with German use of these forces. To understand these developments in the intellectual history of the French army, a psychological and institutional analysis of the French officer corps is necessary.;These psychological trends were associated with public rejection of military values, governmental and legislative repudiation, political manipulation, and incipient technological changes in warfare. Concurrently there were inter-branch struggles provoked by changes during 1914-1918 in the relative influence of the branches. To protect themselves psychologically from uncertainties that threatened their competence, their identities, and their careers, officers progressively elaborated the bureaucratic structure of the army. The resulting closing of communication destroyed trust between echelons and cooperation between branches. Rigid adherance to the doctrine and regulations that defined and governed the military bureaucracies led to divorce from reality. Resistance to new ideas that could compromise the reassuring certainties of the regulations produced maladaptive behavior on the battlefield. Dependency on the institution focussed officers' attention on corporate interests rather than on the defense of France.;A scale of psychological autonomy-dependency derived from an integration of psychoanalytic theory with military concepts makes it possible to evaluate the psychological states reflected in articles written between 1920 and 1940 in military journals. Two sets of trends emerged--one by branch and the other across time. Infantry officers displayed dependency throughout the inter-war years, with the degree of dependency increasing as war drew closer. Artillerymen were autonomous after the war, then plunged into dependency during the period of disarmament. Cavalry officers showed autonomous thinking throughout--imaginative conceptualizations first, then practical improvisations and experimentation, and finally organization and practice of modern techniques. Aviators were confused just after the war, then exploded into autonomous creativity during the disarmament era only to sag into dependency after 1933. |
