Book: The Army of the Future

Overview
Charles de Gaulle’s 1934 book The Army of the Future (Vers l’armée de métier) argues that modern war would be decided not by sheer numbers or static defenses but by mobility, concentration of force, and professional expertise. He proposes a shift from France’s reliance on a mass conscript army and fortified lines toward a smaller, permanent, highly mechanized force capable of rapid offensive action, coordinated with air power. The book is both a diagnosis of interwar strategic realities and a blueprint for reorganizing the French Army to meet them.

Historical Context
France emerged from World War I traumatized by attrition and committed to defensive doctrines embodied in the Maginot Line. Facing a resurgent and more populous Germany, with domestic political divisions and economic strain from the Great Depression, France leaned on conscription and fortifications as cheaper, safer insurance. De Gaulle counters that demographics and technology have tilted the field: numerical inferiority cannot be offset by walls, and the battlefield has been transformed by engines, radio, and air.

Core Thesis
De Gaulle’s central claim is that only a professional, mechanized army can exploit the speed and complexity of modern combat. Tanks, motorized infantry, and aircraft must be concentrated and maneuvered as a single instrument, striking deep to rupture enemy cohesion rather than grinding forward methodically. He insists that dispersing tanks in small packets to support infantry wastes their decisive potential; they must be massed in armored divisions with their own logistics, engineers, artillery, and communications.

The Professional Mechanized Force
He proposes creating a standing corps of roughly a hundred thousand career soldiers organized into fully mechanized divisions. This cadre would serve as the nation’s spearhead, ready to strike quickly, to parry enemy breakthroughs, and to carry the fight onto hostile ground. Professional status is not a social end in itself but a technical necessity: operating and maintaining modern machines, and coordinating rapid combined-arms action, require long training, discipline, and habitual cohesion that short-service conscription cannot provide.

Air Power and Combined Arms
Air power, in his design, is inseparable from ground maneuver. Reconnaissance guides the armored thrust; close air support suppresses resistance at the point of attack; fighters protect the spearhead and contest the enemy’s sky. He respects strategic bombing’s potential but places priority on air-ground cooperation to achieve operational breakthroughs. Radio links and shared planning are emphasized as the nervous system binding the force.

Command, Tempo, and Training
De Gaulle stresses command philosophy: clear intent, centralized direction at the operational level, and initiative at the tactical level. Speed is both physical and psychological, aimed at dislocating the adversary’s decision cycle. Intensive peacetime training, standardized equipment, robust maintenance, and mobile logistics are treated as combat multipliers no less vital than armor thickness.

Critique of French Doctrine
He challenges the interwar French idea of the “methodical battle,” which synchronized stepwise advances under heavy artillery but ceded initiative and tempo. Fortifications are admitted as useful obstacles, not as a strategy. Dispersed armor tied to infantry, and a fragmented command structure, invite defeat by an enemy who concentrates swiftly and penetrates deeply.

Society, Economy, and Cost
The professional mechanized army is presented as economically and socially feasible. Mechanization aligns with France’s industrial capacity, stimulates employment, and conserves manpower in a country with a lower birthrate than Germany. Concentrating investment in quality reduces the hidden costs of mobilizing vast, poorly trained masses.

Reception and Legacy
The book met skepticism in France across the political and military spectrum, seen as provocative, expensive, or dangerously offensive-minded. Yet its logic was borne out in 1939–1940 when German armored and air forces, organized and employed along similar lines, shattered methodical defenses. Though the Germans developed their doctrine independently, events vindicated de Gaulle’s emphasis on concentration, mobility, and professionalization. The Army of the Future stands as a prescient manifesto for the mechanized, combined-arms warfare that would define the mid-twentieth century.