It was an irony, and even more so, a tragedy. Recalling World War I’s traumatic trench warfare, Charles de Gaulle argued that the future war will be decided by mobility. The French army, he wrote, should be arranged around mechanized divisions that could be moved 80 km. in one day (Toward the Professional Army, 1934). The irony was that this thinking resembled the strategy with which the German army would soon overrun France. The tragedy was that France’s generals rejected de Gaulle’s vision.