By 1939 a fully mechanized force could move faster than the armies of the Hundred Days, and the British Army was more completely motorized than the horse-dependent German force. Allied formations nevertheless dug in because leaders remembered the years of trench stalemate more readily than the final advance of 1918. Their plan assumed that they could hold an expected German attack and then deliver a counterstroke. The Germans attacked in a different place, while inadequate French radio communications slowed recognition and response. The result shows the cost of selecting the wrong historical memory while the enemy retains freedom of action.
Chapter · 42:32-45:13
Forgetting the Hundred Days encouraged a static response
Mechanization could accelerate the mobile warfare seen in 1918, but the memory of trench stalemate shaped slower and more static Allied expectations in 1940.