ROTFL that's probably true. 
The only defence I can think off, is that the top leadership (Gamelin, Georges, Billote - in that order for the Ardennes region, with Corap and Huntziger) truly paralyzed any initiative by the lower echelons...
Not only was the top leadership pretty bad, but it paralyzed / discouraged any improvement from lower.
Some examples
- Gamelin acrimonious relationship with Georges
- nobody listening Billote
- Corap being ignored for Huntziger
- at lower levels: D.C.R commanders (De Gaulle, but also its three colleagues much less known: Bruneau, Bruché, Brocard...) being handled stupid decisions, orders, counter-orders, making their DCR scattered, or without fuel, or send into suicidal missions.
Fundamentally: Georges, Billote and Corap were lucid enough to see the disaster in the making. Yet Gamelin and Huntziger, all by themselves, managed to "cancel" them just with their political influence and sheer stupidity and complacency.
Georges was appalled by Gamelin leadership but could do nothing about it.
Billotte (before his car wreck and death at the worst possible moment, May 21) had clearly seen the Gaulier poontoon bridge was the one and only feeding the German breakthrough, and correctly send whatever bombers that could be scrounged, trying to destroy it.
Corap was all too painfully aware of his Army miseries, but he was trapped between Gamelin and Huntziger and could do nothing either.
That's what infuriates me: there were some valuable people but the Simpsons prevailed.
