For eight months after declaring war on Germany, France sat across the border with twice the troops and didn't attack once — and German commanders said they could have been beaten.
When Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, most expected immediate catastrophic fighting. Instead, the Western Front fell nearly silent for eight months in what became known as the Phoney War — a period so strange the Germans called it Sitzkrieg, the sitting war.
France had deployed over 110 divisions along the German border, backed by the Maginot Line's fortifications. Germany had only 23 divisions facing them at the time, with its main forces still finishing the conquest of Poland — leaving its western flank dangerously exposed.
Senior German commanders later admitted they were terrified during this period. General Alfred Jodl wrote that France could have crushed Germany with an offensive in the fall of 1939 — the Wehrmacht simply wasn't strong enough to fight on two fronts simultaneously.
Both sides engaged in propaganda rather than warfare. The RAF dropped millions of leaflets over Germany urging the population to turn against Hitler. German troops mounted signs along the front saying they wouldn't fire if the Allies wouldn't. Soldiers in some sectors reportedly waved to each other across no-man's land.
The inaction was psychologically driven by the memory of WWI. France had lost 1.4 million men in that war and had no appetite for another offensive. Both governments hoped that an economic blockade would slowly strangle Germany's war economy without the cost of a ground campaign.
The Phoney War ended on May 10, 1940, when Germany launched its invasion of France and the Low Countries. The quiet had not been peace — it had been the calm before a storm that would collapse France in six weeks and fundamentally alter the course of the war.