Gallic discrimination almost seems acceptable.
Considering 1.7M French out of a 40M population in France died in WWI you can see how they wouldn’t be as excited about WWII, right? Right?
Also the part where their entire strategy vs. Germany involved the Maginot line, which the Germans just went around. At that point they had no coherent plan for facing Germany.
Part of it is the conventional wisdom before the war was that France would be able to hold it’s own against Germany. It’s mostly that and the speed of the fall of France that gives them a bad rep.
I’m sure some here have read it, but there’s an interesting old Time article written before the war that rates all the major powers and tries to guess at how a war would go.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,762392,00.html
The French army, 800,000 men (with a trained reserve of 5,500,000) for a total male population of 20,000,000, was the big armed force of Europe from 1919 to 1935. Last September General Marie Gustave Gamelin, France’s Chief of Staff, assured his Government that he could roll his men through the unfinished German Siegfried (or Limes) Line like marmalade. Both the German army and the Limes are stronger now, but as of June 1939 the French army is still the strongest all-around fighting machine in Europe.
Not so much as it turns out…
Huh huh huh.
He said, “cock-of-the-walk.”
You know who else invented cool shit? Oh… wait…
I prefer googling for “find chuck norris” and hitting I’m feeling lucky…
My favorite incarntion was an ebay listing I saw once for a “Wold War II era French Military Rifle: never fired, dropped once.”
That wasn’t their entire strategy.
But hey, sometimes enemies surprise you. If American aircraft carriers had been in Pearl Harbor on 12/7/41, the history of Japan’s victory would read “the entire American strategy vs. Japan involved the fleet at Pearl Harbor, which the Japanese just bombed.” We were rescued from disaster by dumb luck, not superior military thinking.
At that point they had no coherent plan for facing Germany.
They had a plan. Their plan was based on experience in previous wars, which was not applicable to the changes in warfare. Their plan failed.
I’m trying to think of a 21st century example in which a superpower’s plan failed to recognize a new means of warfare, resulting in a catastrophic outcome… hmmm… wait, wait don’t tell me…
I always did wonder why they didn’t expand the Line to protect the Belgian border as well, and just say fuck you to all those Easterlings.
From what I remember from a documentary, they did intend to as war was becoming more and more likely, but they couldn’t be constructed quickly enough. They didn’t prior to that since, as you hinted, that would have pissed off the Belgians a lot.
This Halftrack smells like volksgrenadiers