strategybyai

Strategy by AI · Ongoing Wargame № 1

France against Germany, 1935–1940

A country that held the resources to prevail and lost on strategy, not on the battlefield. We replay it — not to relive 1940, but to discover what France could have done, turn by turn, with only the knowledge it had at the time.

Registration opens September 2026 · play November–December

▶ How the wargame works — the interactive exhibition ↗

France in 1940 is the clearest case in modern history of a failure at the level of strategy, not of force. France had the divisions, the tanks and the industry; what it lacked was a strategy equal to its situation, and the will to execute one. That is precisely the level Strategy by AI models — and precisely the level ordinary wargames cannot reach.

We chose it for three reasons. It is self-validating: everyone knows what actually happened, so the alternative strategy the methodology recommends can be judged against real history. It is counterfactual: the interest is not in replaying the defeat but in discovering the France that could have been. And it showcases the one thing no other system offers — a Germany that behaves from its own 1935 structure, not from a script written with hindsight.

Red — Germany — is played by the methodology, from its own dossier. Blue — France — is played by you, with only the intelligence France itself possessed at each date. The fog is the fog of the time.

Who plays — the hybrid gallery

The Blue Cell

France’s strategic leadership

A 6–8 seat cell that makes France’s decisions at each fork — the seats reproduce the Third Republic’s real leadership (premier, General Staff, Quai d’Orsay, War, Finance, and more), assigned at onboarding once Documents 1–4 reveal them. A Président-du-Conseil chair holds the final decision.

The Public Gallery

Follow, question, vote

Open to all, organised into factions behind each seat. The gallery reads each published document and figure, argues the forks in the open, and votes its own preferred move alongside the cell’s — the audience and the pressure-test.

The Facilitation Team

Strategy by AI

Builds and plays Germany from its dossier, runs the turn engine, adjudicates each move under the rule of disciplined play, and sets the fog the cell receives.

The Sponsor

A professional wargaming board

Convenes the players and hosts the game. The board sets the pace, the decision windows, and the density of the fog.

Why play — the value you gain

A wargame is a real commitment of time. Here is what each kind of participant carries away from it — knowledge, skills, and an experience you cannot get from a book or a lecture.

If you take a seat · the Blue cell

Take France’s chair in 1936, decide under the fog they actually had, and find out whether you could have changed 1940.

KnowledgeStrategy at the strategy-of-war level, learned by wielding the methodology rather than reading about it — and France 1935–40 as a system, not a caricature: coalition dependence on Britain, the rearmament budget, doctrinal reflexes, unstable cabinets, and the machinery linking Khalkhin-Gol, the Pact and Poland.
SkillsDecision under fog and a clock; reading an adversary from its own structure rather than your assumptions; and working inside a divided command — negotiating across Finance, the General Staff and the Quai d’Orsay. Directly transferable to any real strategic role.
ExperienceThe weight of command, the anxiety of acting on partial signals, the sting of a returned move, the thrill of the counterfactual — and the humility of discovering how hard France’s hand really was.
If you join the gallery

Follow history’s most consequential strategic failure, replayed with the ending left open — and help decide it.

KnowledgeThe same strategic education, serialised and visual — the published dossiers and figures make culmination, centre of gravity and fog concrete through a gripping case, episode by episode.
SkillsForm and argue a strategic judgment inside your faction and vote it — low-stakes repetitions of the very reasoning the cell performs under pressure, plus the pattern-sense that comes from watching branches unfold.
ExperienceSerial-drama suspense, a side to belong to, real agency — your faction feeds a seat — and the quiet pleasure of understanding a story few others can read.
What everyone walks away with
The closing seminar — the reckoningA shared discussion that opens the full tree of outcomes, cell and gallery together — weighing France’s alternative history against the real one, hearing every seat and faction defend its choices, and drawing the lessons out in the open. The culmination of the game, and the best of its learning.
The strategic dossiersThe complete France and Germany strategic dossiers — identity, enemies, situation and strategy, with their figures — yours to keep as a reference and a model of how a strategic actor is built.
The bookFrance Replayed, 1935–1940 — Learning Strategy from Disaster. Produced within a month of the finish and sent free to every Blue-cell and gallery participant — the whole game, its branches and its lessons, in one volume you keep.
Glass-box AI literacyYou watch an AI model an adversary in the open, interrogate it, and see exactly what structured AI can and cannot do in strategy — plus a community that outlasts the game.
For a sponsor or institutionA live, public demonstration of a strategic-analysis capability; a content engine that runs for weeks; and a talent funnel — the gallery is where the next game’s commanders are found.

Rules of play

  1. Asymmetric build. The Blue cell builds France through Modules Two–Four by the internal-executive workflow; the facilitation builds Germany by the external-investigator workflow. Each side’s opening dossier may be shown to the other; nothing after it is.
  2. Blue goes dark. Once competitive play begins, the France cell no longer receives Germany’s documents. Its only knowledge of German action is the methodology’s situation analysis — which it may question and correct through the workflow. The fog descends.
  3. The fork mechanism. At each decision point the methodology computes Germany’s most probable move and issues a deliberately limited set of figures — France’s perception, not the truth. The cell reads them, verifies against what it holds, and decides within the sponsor’s time limit. Germany’s decisions at its own forks are made by the methodology, building the tree of outcomes.
  4. The product is the tree. The game’s deliverable is not who “won” but the turn-by-turn tree of outcomes — the map of decisions, divergences and their consequences — read back in the closing seminar.

The hindsight gate — how we keep it honest

Because everyone knows Germany attacks in 1940, the game’s rigour depends on one gate. It converts the question from a moral one (“did you use hindsight?”) into an evidentiary one (“can you justify this from your 1937 picture, and is it within France’s capacity?”). Every Blue decision is submitted with a short rationale and checked on two counts:

  • Information support — the rationale may cite only the intelligence France holds at that date. A move whose only justification is knowing the outcome has no evidence behind it.
  • Structural feasibility — the move must lie within France’s own capacity as its dossier defines it. A choice that requires transforming French institutions faster than 1935–40 allowed is infeasible, not clever.

A move that fails either check is returned for revision — and the return is published to the gallery as part of the lesson. Bold, forward-leaning moves that are both supported and feasible are welcomed: that divergence from history is the entire point, and each turn carries a short historian’s note on where France departed from its real conduct.

The module-outcome map — this game, module by module

This is the engine’s universal spine instantiated on the 1935 case. It is a living map: each row’s documents and figures are published as we produce them through the analytical phase (late October), so the audience can watch the actors take shape before competitive play begins.

Module TwoFrance’s Strategic IdentityAt onboarding
The game challengeWho is the Third Republic in 1935 — and what can it not become?
What we expect to surfaceA defensive-continuous doctrine (the Maginot mind), dependence on the British and Belgian coalition, and chronic political instability — the boundaries inside which any French strategy must fit, and the seats the cell will take.
Documents 1–4 · pre-produced · distributed at onboarding
Module ThreeFrance’s Enemy-MakingBuild wk 1
The game challengeDoes France rank Germany correctly among its confrontations — and can it resource the answer?
What we expect to surfaceThe confrontation hierarchy and a resource-allocation picture across Germany, Italy, the domestic front and the empire — and the indicators that will later drive event injection.
Documents 5–13 · analytical phase
Module FourFrance’s Strategic Situation, 1935Build wk 2
The game challengeWhat scene does France read — and misread?
What we expect to surfaceThe actors and factors — Rhineland, Locarno, the USSR, the Little Entente — the governing vector, and the dated knowledge baseline that fixes the contemporaneous fog.
Documents 14–20 · analytical phase · closes the shared knowledge baseline
Module FiveFrance’s Strategy · Germany’s YardstickPlay opens
The game challengeWhat strategy could France actually have formulated in 1935–38?
What happens hereThe France cell formulates its own strategy; the facilitation builds Germany’s yardstick and its actual behaviour. This is the departure from analysis into the game.
Documents 21–24 · the point of departure into competitive play
Module SixExecution, 1936–1940In play
The game challengeDoes France execute under the pressure of the Rhineland, Munich, Prague, and May 1940?
What happens hereThe turn engine runs. At each historical fork the methodology computes Germany’s most probable move; the France cell decides under fog; the tree of outcomes grows.
Documents 25–34 · turn-by-turn competitive play
Warning SystemThe 1935–40 clockThroughout
The game challengeHow does Europe change between turns — and how much can France see?
What happens hereReal events — Rhineland remilitarisation, the Anschluss, Munich, Prague, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the invasion — are injected as they were known at the time, at the sponsor’s fog density.
The game clock and the fog dial · contemporaneous only

Sequence of play — 1936 to May 1940

The competitive game runs from the Rhineland trigger to the fall of France. Five decision points are Module Six turns, where the France cell must decide and each activates only the execution sub-assessments the juncture stresses. Between them, warning activations inject the changing scene — light to run, and the raw material of every decision. The game terminates at the May 1940 culmination; the full Module Six synthesis then reads France’s alternative history against the real one.

TriggerModule Six turnWarningEmergencyCulmination
7 Mar 1936

Rhineland remilitarised

Trigger

Closes the strategic-situation analysis and opens strategy formulation. France’s response to the fait accompli is the opening move of competitive play.

Jul–Oct 1936

Spain: war and Non-Intervention

Warning

A threat opens on France’s rear — the Pyrenees and North Africa. France chooses non-intervention; the Rome–Berlin Axis begins to form. Scene & actors.

1937

Spain: the dress rehearsal

Warning

Condor Legion, Guernica, Italian divisions — enemy air and armour tested in the open. Italy drifts from the Stresa Front into the Axis; France reads capability and loses a counterweight. Power technologies; actor realignment.

Mar 1938

Anschluss

Module Six turn

Activates: Commitment · Command & Control · Tempo. Does France act on Austria, and can its command decide at all?

Sep 1938

Munich / Sudeten crisis

Module Six turn

The central fork — France’s Czechoslovak alliance and the choice to stand or fold. Activates: Centre of Gravity · Cohesion–Collision · Culmination.

Mar 1939

Occupation of Prague

Module Six turn

Appeasement collapses; the guarantee pivot. Activates: Adaptation–Change — the strategy-change trigger.

Mar–Apr 1939

Spain: Franco’s victory

Warning

An Axis-aligned but cautious Spain fixed on the Pyrenees; the Retirada refugee wave. The southern flank is settled adverse. Spatial expanse; strategic risk realised.

May–Sep 1939

Khalkhin-Gol

Emergency

Germany’s global-strategy gambit via Japan fails: the Soviet victory keeps the USSR active in Europe and turns Japan toward the Pacific. The Soviet Factor is set. Strategic risk × variability; the Soviet & Japan factors.

23 Aug 1939

Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact — the concession

Emergency

The Soviet counterweight France never secured is conceded to Germany. Hitler manages the Soviet risk “in another way.” Actor realignment; power-pole shift.

Sep 1939

Invasion of Poland — and the Pact in operation

Module Six turn

Poland’s army destroyed; the USSR takes eastern Poland; the partition holds without clash — the concession proven real. Activates: Commitment · Tempo & Friction — France’s Saar decision and the Phoney War.

Nov 1939 – Mar 1940

Winter War — Finland

Warning

Soviet westward pressure under the secret protocol; the Red Army’s weaknesses exposed and re-read by all sides. Actor capability re-assessed.

Winter 1939–40

Oil and ore

Warning

The scramble for Romanian oil and Scandinavian iron ore — France’s economic-strategic periphery, and the road to Norway. Power technologies & resources.

Apr 1940

Invasion of Norway

Emergency

Tempo and fog rise across the northern theatre on the eve of the decisive blow. Feeds the culmination turn.

May 1940

Invasion of France

Culmination · game end

The decisive engagement. Activates: Centre of Gravity · Culmination & Reversal · Strategic Termination. The game closes; the full Module Six synthesis reads France’s alternative history against the real one.

Calendar

15–19 Oct

Cell onboarding & seating

The Blue cell is onboarded and the 6–8 seats are assigned once Documents 1–4 reveal France’s leadership structure.

20–31 Oct

Analytical phase — public

Modules Two–Four published over the build: France and Germany take shape in the open, document by document, figure by figure. The learning phase, and the shared knowledge baseline.

2 Nov

Formulation — competitive play opens

Module Five. The France cell formulates its strategy; Germany’s yardstick and behaviour are set. Blue goes dark.

9 Nov – 11 Dec

Execution — turn by turn

Module Six. History is injected as it broke; the cell decides at each fork under fog; the tree of outcomes is built to the May 1940 culmination.

15–18 Dec

Assessment & seminar

The tree of outcomes is read back — France’s alternative history measured against the real one, and the lessons drawn.

Take part

Join the public gallery to follow the analytical phase, argue the forks, and vote your own moves.

Apply to the France cell if you want to make the decisions. Seats are limited and named.

Follow the game on LinkedIn and X · convened with a professional wargaming board.

▶ How the wargame works — the interactive exhibition ↗

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