1 – The french army’s defensive doctrine wasn’t entirely dictated by the intellectual leftovers from 14-18. As a matter of fact anyway, the end of 14-18 was pretty much an early version of the 44 + operations: coordinated attacks, using assault troops, tanks and planes.
Rather, the french high military command knew the army was lacking. It was lacking tanks, planes, radios. Hence why it was prefered to lay low, until France’s industrial power would start producing modern planes and tanks (probably some kind of BDR, standardized tank, or even the B1-ter) in numbers. While the effort started in 1936, with the Front Populaire, it wasn’t expected to give full results before 42 or so.

2 – France, as a whole wasn’t really willing to go to war and have its boys killed. WWI was still in everyone’s head, the “gueules cassées” and what not. A lot of leaders were terrified at the thought of repeating the “mistakes” of 1914.

PS ( the greek have sayed the same things about léo2 …For don’t have to pay the bill…)

http://ftr.wot-news.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/1amx50.jpg

Would like to see that little boxy TD brought into the game as well, A premium maybe? A Tier 6 premium would really shake things up. Teams would get outta this KV1s/ Hellcat only syndrome thats developed. This is really a badass Model guys!

http://ftr.wot-news.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/acl135t.jpg

One last Image, look at the background tank behind this French Pantha. See the Height comparisons. Our in game panther might be a little big…….

http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&docid=iE28kRiNxDLpYM&tbnid=ofTri67c-CgdiM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fforum.worldoftanks.eu%2Findex.php%3F%2Ftopic%2F173991-the-chieftains-hatch-french-panthers%2F&ei=4TBDU8OdGeX4yQGPvYGYAg&bvm=bv.64367178,d.aWc&psig=AFQjCNFw-nMwe5XGfCyKfiKnz2Uz3FEd0A&ust=1396998245783676

Which was actually the main clincher. The overall French doctrine was flawed but not *inherently* fatally so; it became that way after the supreme command failed to react to the German hook through the Ardennes in time to plug the weak point in the line and the resulting breakthrough forced battle under fluid conditions wildly favourable to the Germans.

Incidentally, IIRC what I’ve read there was a more fundamental reason than any doctrinal hang-ups for the relative dearth of radios in French tanks – namely the country’s electronics industry flatly lacking the production capacity to furnish enough sets. (The Soviets famously had similar problems early in the war.)
Reasons for this had a lot to with economic history, more specifically the British and German manufacturers having largely cornered the market before the latecomer French even got really started. And a parliamentary democracy attempting to keep national budgets viable in the long run could hardly engage in the kind of heavy-duty industrial subvention schemes that produced the Volksempfänger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksempf%C3%A4nger), arguably by far the most successful of the Nazis’ “People’s Whatever” projects in itself, which as a not wholly coincidential byproduct contributed a fair bit to laying the industrial groundwork for the later “enradioing” of the Wehrmacht.

Which brings me to the main reason of why France totally collapsed in 1940 : general retardness and incompetence of the leaders. To make it short, a bunch of old farts, living on their WW1 successes, and not understanding how new weapons, such as planes and tanks had totally changed warfare. Not that some guys had told them so. Once again, cf De Gaulle, and his 3 books (Le Fil de l’épée, Vers l’Armée de métier, La France et son Armée), or General Estienne.
Also, French WW2 tanks were more than badly employed. That is to say as Infantry Tanks (like they did during WW1), not as autonomous Cavalry Tanks, capable of piercing enemy lines and disrupting them, with the infantry taking care of securing the advance.

And agreed with you on the radio issue. While all the command tanks had radios, a good portion (~ 80% IIRC) of “normal” tanks had not and used signal flags … Because of this mindset of a slow, attrition war.

In short : good tanks (to a certain extent, there is definitively a basic design flaw, due to a bad French “meta” of how should a war be done), well-trained crews, but retarded leaders.