At the outbreak of war, the French army consisted of about 5 million men grouped into three broad bodies:

The Armee Metropolitaine, a conscript force, was raised to defend metropolitan France.

The Armee d’Afrique, garrisoned in Algeria, Tunisia, and French Morocco, consisted of segregated white European units: the French Foreign Legion and the Zouaves. Additionally, it incorporated native conscripts serving in the Spahis and Tirailleurs. Finally, the Armee d’Afrique also had command control over irregular native units, including the Goums and the Compagnies Sahariennes (camel companies). The Troupes Coloniales, responsible for defending French colonies other than Algeria, Tunisia, and French Morocco, consisted of white-only colonial infantry and colonial artillery formations, mostly volunteer, as well as Tirailleurs, consisting mostly of conscripted natives.

Despite this tripartite division, units of the Armee Metropolitaine were sometimes used in Africa and the other colonies, and the colonial forces were sometimes brought to France. At the outbreak of World War II, in September 1939, 38 percent of the French infantry in France were Tirailleurs from North Africa. French Foreign Legion units fought in the Battle of France, and the Free French Forces that fought in the North African Campaigns and in the Italian Campaign, as well as some of the fighting in France during 1944, included a large proportion of colonial troops.

Because of its impressive numbers, the French Army was widely regarded as the finest in the world. Despite the defeatism that prevailed in France at the outbreak of World War II, this belief was widespread in France itself, and it also bolstered the confidence of France’s closest ally, Great Britain. What was not apparent in this optimistic assessment was the lack of modern armor and field artillery. Even worse, the French high command was afflicted with the same defeatism rampant in the general population and among many politicians. French war-fighting doctrine at the time relied almost exclusively on a defensive strategy, which was given literally concrete expression in the Maginot Line. French military planners had closed their eyes to the lessons of the Spanish civil war, which dramatically demonstrated both the efficacy and ascendency of mobile warfare. Instead, the prevailing doctrinal assumption remained rooted in the static trenches of World War I’s western front. Charles de Gaulle, a mere colonel at the time, had written widely against this hidebound notion but was vigorously shunned for his efforts and criticized for his failure of military orthodoxy. Another problem was that between 1928 and 1935, the length of French conscripted military service was reduced to a single year. It was again raised to two years early in 1935, but most of the reserve that was mobilized at the outbreak of World War II belonged to the one-year group and so had little combat training, having served briefly and, at that, perhaps as much as a full decade earlier. . .

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