Choose a side: Al Qaida declares war on France

Or certain streets in Montreal, where they're actually much more French-like than the actual French.

 

Yes, but Paris isn't France, anymore than New York is the USA.

And Parisiens aren't smug--they're just fucking rude. But they're equal opportunity --they're rude to everybody. It's part of their charm.

 

JR, this is an excellent post and your points are well taken, but criticism about France's military "prowess" is well justified -- especially concerning WW II.

In the spring of 1940, France surrendered to the Germans in six weeks. Yeah, the blitzkrieg tactics and France's insane dependence on the Maginot Line had plenty to do with that. But let me put this in some kind of perspective.

Three years later, the Germans were trying to flush the remaining Jews out of the Warsaw Ghetto, shipping the few remaining to the death camps of Auschwitz and Treblinka.

Yet a rag-tag band of Jews, fighting with little more than Molotov Cocktails and scrounged weapons they either paid exorbitant amounts of cash for to the gentile Poles or stole off dead Germans held off the tanks and armored battalions of the Waffen SS for more than two months.

Doesn't speak well about France's martial abilities.

 

Did anybody see when Triumph went to Quebec and made fun of the French? Fucking priceless.

When I was 11, I stepped on a Frenchie's foot at Disney World while trying to get out of the way of a giant parade marching down the street. It was purely accidental and I apologized to the man. Like a typical French asshole, he cursed and yelled at me in French and my dad nearly kicked the shit out of him. I should have poked fun of his sister, then moved out of the way for his ensuing headbutt.

 

Another SportsJournalists.com member with a room temperature IQ.

Frenchie? God help us.

 

Well, no offense Ragu, but asking someone in Paris whether they speak English is your mistake, not theirs.

Just try to speak French first, they'll figure out you can't, and they'll speak English to you. Worked for me when I was there and not one person was rude, even though my French is awesomely bad, incoherent and flat-out wrong most of the time.

And on the point of the French rolling over, that's a bit of an oversimplification. Their strategy was very flawed, the Germans took advantage, and as JR pointed out, France did not have the stomach for another generation-killing war after THEY took the brunt of the casualties in World War I.

Every one seems to forget that it was the French that held it together back then, the involvement of America in 1917 being similar to the impact of French involvement in the Revolutionary War -- they tipped the balance. French deaths in WWI were appaling. The German offensive at Verdun was specifically designed to "bleed the French white". While the offensive didn't succeed, it's aim very nearly did.

And it's funny, but none of my history books list a French evacuation at Dunkirk (though its true that there were French among the evacuees). When defeat became certain -- with British soldiers on the ground -- the Brits hi-tailed it out of there en masse as willingly as the French did. It was their good fortune they had a country to go back to.

And Birdscribe, that's an interesting point, but a flawed one. The Warsaw Jews were not at any time facing the brunt of the German army as the French were, they were facing a small part of the German army, which was part of a greater whole which was predisposed in the greater fight with the advancing Soviets.

Not only that, but as we all know now, the Warsaw Jews were literally fighting a life or death battle. That was never a dynamic in the German-French war and that changes everything.

None of that diminshes the Warsaw Ghetto's bravery (made even more heroic by the fact that the Soviets lied to them when they promised support, allowing the Germans to annhilate them with Soviet guns within range of being able to help), but there's still a big distinction between the two.

French collaboration was deplorable, but it happened in every occupied nation and nations that were allied with Germany at the point of an economic or a literal gun. Read up on the Croatian Ustashe, the Romanian and Hungarian Iron Guards, and others. Collaborators in nearly every German-occupied nation had just as much complicency in the Holocaust as their French counterparts did. It gave rise to a new word — quisling — the name of the Norwegian collaborator who ran Norway for the Nazis in WWII.

And no, I'm not French!

 

Tell us, JR, what was WW I like?

Remember, statistics say you're two days closer to death than Spnited.

 

I'm not defending France's military prowess. After Napoleon, they were pretty much minor league players. The Maginot line was one of the most idiotic defense strategies of the century.

And I'm not sure the Warsaw ghetto comparable is entirely comparable. But I take your point.

All I'm saying is that WW1 had, for obvious reasons, a devastating impact.

They were hopelessly outgunned and outmanned by the Germans in WW2.

I'm not justifying it, simply trying to explain it.

 

Bubbler, good post.

As always.

 

JR - all you French KIA and WIA stats prove is that the French were poor fighters. Their generals actually thought they could win battles on elan alone. Machine guns and heavy artillery taught them a lesson that the other nations learned quicker (which also helps explain the lower mortality rates).

Oh - and your screed also does not explain how the French got their asses kicked by the Germans in 1870. Your explanation for why the French failed in WWII is beyond foolish.

No offense but go sell condescention elsewhere. We're full up here.

 

Only if you believe the idiots in talk radio. Ask anybody who stormed the Normandy beaches if the French were useless.

 

Bubbler - good post but it if you are going to mention Dunkirk you should also mention how the French comepletely left the Belgians out to dry in WWI.