Talk:Order of battle for the Battle of France

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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)