Între doctrina liniei Maginot și Blitzkrieg: Charles de Gaulle și „Vers l’armée de métier”
Between the Maginot Line Doctrine and Blitzkrieg: Charles de Gaulle and „Vers l’armée de métier”

Summary/Abstract: This study examines the doctrinal rupture between the French interwar defensive paradigm – epitomised by the Maginot Line – and the emergent concept of mechanised, offensive warfare, later known as Blitzkrieg, situating Charles de Gaulle’s 1934 manifesto „Vers l’armee de metier” within this broader intellectual and strategic landscape. It also contextualises France’s 1940 defeat from both a geopolitical and doctrinal perspective, highlighting how the collapse of French military credibility enabled the Soviet Union’s territorial claims against Romania. It further contrasts the stagnant French strategic thinking of the 1920s-1930s with the dynamism of German theorists such as Guderian, von Manstein, and von Eimannsberger, whose ideas shaped an army capable of rapid penetration, combined-arms manoeuvre and air-armour cooperation. The author demonstrates that de Gaulle’s vision – though neither wholly original nor technically exhaustive – proposed the creation of a professional, mechanised shock force designed for rapid intervention, strategic surprise, and autonomous manoeuvre. His critique of French passivity, overreliance on fortifications, fragmented tank deployment and doctrinal conservatism stands in stark contrast with the German adoption and adaptation of mechanised warfare concepts. The article shows how Vers l’armee de metier gained significant attention abroad, especially in Germany and the Soviet Union, while being largely ignored, misinterpreted or rejected by French political and military elites. Ultimately, the study argues that de Gaulle’s work occupies a pivotal position at the intersection between two worlds: a France intellectually anchored in defensive warfare and a Germany preparing for mobile operations integrating armour and air power. By retracing the theoretical genealogies of mechanised warfare and the reception of de Gaulle’s ideas, the article illuminates why France entered the Second World War with an outdated strategic model, whereas Germany possessed the operational tools necessary for its spectacular victories of 1939-1940. „Vers l’armee de metier” thus emerges not merely as a military treatise, but as a prescient political warning, whose unrealised recommendations foreshadowed the catastrophic consequences of doctrinal inertia.

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