For one, ever heard the joke: How many Frenchmen does it take to defend Paris?
In a time prior to satellite imagery and advanced intelligence, France positioned their forces along the strongest defence line in Europe, the Maginot Line. In the meantime, Nazi-Germany developed a tank faster and more powerful than any other tank in the world. But instead of attacking the Maginot line headon, they turned west into Belgium, then turned south and rapidly advanced through rough terrain towards Paris, bypassing the bulk of French forces.
France then had two options, either let German forces bomb Paris to rubble and pieces, killing waste amount of civilians before they entered the remains, or declare Parais an “Open City”. They chose the latter. If you didn’t know, “Open City” is a military term. German generals themselves declared several German cities an Open City at the end of the major (earning Hitler’s rage).
Anyway, with Paris indefensible, their slower forces at the Maginot line squeezed between German forces, and the remaining French forces in the south sqeezed between facist Italy and facist Spain, France was lost. The remaining French forces, as well as 100.000 British forces who were in France to support French forces, barely made it out before they were caught up with.
According to surveys, 90% of the population in France participated in resisting Nazi-Germany. USA didn’t declare war on Germany until after Pearl Harbor late in 1941. Canada declared war on Germany along with Britain and France in 1939.
You mentioned, the misconceptions, I’d suggest you list them instead.
No I am not.
Yes those totals include all WW2 losses for the US. The point I was making is that there may be some misconceptions about the US and WW2, and I would be happy to discuss them further. What is not a misconeption is the 290,000+ deaths that the US incurred in liberating much of the free world.
Please, list some of those misconceptions, I would like to see them.
You see, the perception I have is that the U.S. was the driving force behind the liberation of France. By driving force, I mean that it wouldn’t have happened without U.S. help.
I am also under the perception that the U.S. did a good job getting France back on its feet, unlike what the Soviet Union did for Eastern Europe.
Enlighten me please. Are you going to explain that France would have been liberated without U.S. help? That the U.S. helping France get back on his feet was just selfish interest?
I created a new thread to debate Americas Role in WWII, and Europeans perception of it. I encourage those of you making various claims to take them there as they aren’t really relevant to the OP here. Hope to see ya’ll there.
And I never said you did. What I did say is that one of the most common misconceptions that Europeans see from Americans is the Americans’ belief that they won WW2 and hence Europe owes them something.
You may not agree with it, but we see it a lot. So there you go, one misconception regarding WW2 for you, as requested.
Did you read the second updated article. The author says he doesn’t kniw if the flags were taken down or if they were there. He offers no explainations just the pictures.
But it is automatically assumed… “Hey them frogs took down our flag! Ingrateful bastards!” Until the truth is out I’d say don’t get pissed yet.
Absolutely not. Their forces (along with the british ones) were positioned west of the Maginot line, along the Belgian border. It was precisely the point. With the Maginot line blocking an offensive through eastern France, troops could be positionned elsewhere.
Nobody expect them to attack the Maginot line.
Nope, they didn’t, either. That’s what was expected from the allied command, and the troops were ready to rush into Belgium as soon as it would happen. The attack in Belgium was a diversion to let the allied believe that the main attack would take place there, in the hope that would actually rush in. Which they did.
The German tanks attacked between the Maginot line and the bulk of the allied armies which were entering Belgium, in the Ardennes area, which was considered as impassable quickly by any sizeable force, hence was only defended by french reservists without any reserve.
Sorry, that you’re also wrong on this one. They turned west, heading to the sea to cut the bulk of the french and british forces (in Belgium) from France and encircle them .
Though at first, after the german blitzkrieged their way through the french defenses in the Ardennes, the allied command didn’t know what to expect, not knowing whether the german intended to turn east and attack the maginot line from the rear, turn south toward paris, or turn west as they did. Allied forces began to evacuate Belgium, but couldn’t do so quickly enough (see Dunkirk).
You’re right on this one. But the attack toward south only happened after the bulk of the allied forces had been destroyed in Belgium and northern France.
Roughly correct though the Maginot line was essentially intact when France capitulated. But they were indeed surrounded too.
There were not much of them, since it wasn’t exactly planned to defend southern France. An attempt was made to organize a defense line along the Loire river, 150 kms south of Paris, by the new commander-in-chief (the former having been sacked for obvious reasons) but due to the mobility of the German forces, they had already crossed the river before such a line could be established and even before all the bridges could be blown up. At this point , the german forces were rushing into both south-eastern and south-western France, and the head of staff stated that were wasn’t anything which could be done to stop them, from a military point of view (and refused to order the army to capitulate, IIRC, wanting the government to endorse this responsability)
Italy wasn’t really an issue. Italy only declared war when it became obvious that France was toast, and didn’t manage to cross the Alps which were defended by elite alpine troops. Anyway, they didn’t have much time left to do so, since, france capitulated some days later.
I said Italy wasn’t really an issue, since the Germans were already occupying most of France, were advancing essentially without opposition through the rest and there wasn’t anymore a french army to speak of.
Since Spain never was involved in WWII, that was even less of an issue than Italy.
They didn’t made out from the most part. A little part of the french army in northern france/ Belgium was evacuated from the port of Dunkirk, along with most of the british expeditionnary force. They were shipped back to southern France (the french, not the british) but were totally disorganized, had lost all their heavy equipment (tanks, guns, etc…) hence were of zero use from a military point of view. Essentially nobody “made it out”.
At this point, the french government was faced with two choice : either capitulation, as it happened, either forgetting about france proper and leaving to the french colonies or to Britain with whatever was left of the french airforce and more importantly the french fleet, and go on fighting (which would have been a bet on the will of the British to pursue the war rather than asking for acceptable peace terms with Germany, something which was an obviuos possibility) The parliament choose to commit suicide and gave full powers to the Marshall Petain who capitulated.
Churchill went as far as to propose to create a common franco-british government. Some french ministers (including De Gaulle) favored this solution, and apparently so did the french prime minister, but he resigned on the same day (to be replaced by Petain, as stated above).
The reproach made was that France could have refused to surrender, and, as I wrote above, evacuated the government and the fleet to the french colonies or to Britain. Not that they should have went on fighting in France proper, which was plain impossible.
Assuming that you actually read such a figure, it was most probably a joke targeted at french people pretending to have all been resistants. Not only 90% of the population certainly didn’t resist, but there even wasn’t 90% of people to pretend having resisted after the war.
However, De Gaulle and its government deliberatly choose a “national unity” policy, and roughly made a point to pretend that most people were opposed to the german rule, many of them resistants or at least supporting resistance, apart from some black sheeps, who were scapegoated and promptly tried (and either were executed briefly after or pardonned after some years in jail…not much of a middle-ground).
I’ll be glad to move this debate over to the other thread. However, can you honestly, seriously, consider the “speaking german” bit to be an inaccurate prophecy if the US would have stayed out of WW2? How long would Sweeden’s “neutrality” have lasted?
I am sure that you would not be speaking German, but can it not be argued that Europe, including Britain would have fallen eventually without US involvement?
Maybe, maybe not. No-one can say with any accuracy because it didn’t happen that way. What I do know is that a lot of thanks should go to the Russians (no matter what their reasons for entering the war were).
Not being a Swede I don’t see the relevance of this. Obviously, due to my location, you think I am Swedish and hence this has been added to try and antagonise me.
It can be argued but it can also be argued that it wouldn’t have happened. What annoys Europeans is the way Americans often state it as fact.
Enjoy your other thread as I doubt I will join it. I have argued this too many times and frankly it annoys me too much. I made the mistake of answering your request and have been dragge dinto a discussion I just don’t want. Sorry.
Sorry, but I overlooked this one which is uncorrect too. They didn’t develop a faster and more powerful tank than anyone else. The tank considered as the “most powerful” at the beginning of the war was the french B2 heavy tank.
What they did develop was a new doctrine of use : creating large tank units and use them to break through the defense lines quickly, with a massive air support. On the other hand the french doctrine (there was as much tanks, if not more, on the allied side) was that tanks were an infantry support weapon, hence they were scattered in little groups all over the place, accompanying the (non motorized for the most part) infantry.
They weren’t even trained to fight in large units, except for some few regiments which were more of an experiment than anything else (one of them being commanded by De Gaulle, who was essentially known at this time as a military theoricist who had advocated for the use of tanks in the same way the germans did).
The German rightly relied on a “movement war” while the french expected a “position war”, like in WWI. They expected it to such a point that they choose not to equip the military units with radios (the communications could be intercepted) but relied on buried phone lines for communication. Which the result that of course, communication were cut off as soon as the german troops had bypassed the french defense lines, or as soon as a french unit moved. Which meant that the headquarters had no clue about what was happening on the front lines, and the fighting units didn’t receive any orders or informations from the headquarters. This was apparently blatant during the German offensive in the Ardennes, during which seemingly nobody on the french side knew exactly what exactly was happening.
Even the tanks weren’t equipped with radios. During one of the rare tank battles fought by the french (hastily gathered from various units, and as I said before not trained to fight together), the officers had to rely on people running from one tank to another to send orders.
Apart from the tanks, the german air superiority was also massive. Once agin, not necessarily in numbers, but in quality and/or training. A significant part of the french airforce was plainly bombed on the airfields, and most of the rest was sacrified at the very beginning of the offensive to try to stop the Germans in the Ardennes (with apparently not much success…they were handed their asses by the german pilots).
Better food: I prefer french food (because of it’s quality) but as a vegetarian I have a tough time to find it here in France. So all in all actually I prefer to eat in the US.
Better clothes: depends on your style. I don’t like the french style because to me it always suggests “high maintenance”
Better culture: uncomparable. If you like big sized things then go the US. If you prefer the subtility in things, go for France.
Better art: What kind of art? I prefer american music to french music. In movies I prefer french movies to american hollywood movies but if you compare independant “intellectual” movies then I do tend to prefer the american ones.
Clairo has it right about German tanks at the start of the war. They were fast but they were not armored well and had less powerful main guns. heck, many of them just had a machine gun as their main gun.
The way the Germans used them is why they did well, like Clairo has pointed out.
“Better,” like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
I like French food; some people don’t. I also like good Turkish and Indian and Thai food.
I don’t like French-syle clothing; some people do.
I like the culture (however you define that) in both countries. It’s silly to debate which is better, the Metropolitan Opera or the Louvre. It’s like trying to argue that blue is a prettier color than orange.
I just finished reading the first page and I am very grateful for all the posts.
I’ve noticed two things:
people are more or less interested to discuss my first question, concerning the reasons for US people’s animosity toward the French, present and past, but hardly pay any attention to a second question, concerning the possible impact of the present squabble, which fact can be also taken as an answer, of course.
many posts lead back to WWII very quickly; that period seems to be very important to the discussion of the whole issue.
I will continue reading to the second page now. I ask future posters to spare time and answer my second question, however briefly.
This topic has been dealt with several times in the last few months, and people here may feel tired of the topic. Check out the search feature (And welcome to the SDMB).
However briefly?? Great!!! Then if I don’t have to back or justify my opinion, here it is :
France and the US share many interests. In the long (not that long, actually) run, though the Iraki issue will still remembered, it won’t matter that much in the diplomatic field. Diplomats are pragmatists. And also, governments change, and so does their views and policies. Beside, both governments are still cooperating on many issues, though it doesn’t make the headlines (an example coming to my mind : the evacuation of westerners in both Ivory Coast and Liberia were organized jointly by the US and France).
Finally, though the US government might have mispresented the french position to the US population in order to find a convenient scapegoat, they aren’t idiots, and knew perfectly well what was the real position.
However, I don’t see the french policy of trying to break the US hegemony changing any time soon. Nor I can see the US changing their mind about trying to keep as much influence as possible in as much areas and domains as possible and this not coming across the french interests and objectives (i’m thinking about the “european army” issue, or to the “access to oil reserves” issues, for instance). So I guess there will still be a lot of skirmishing, but nothing which will forever alienate both countries.
However, a larger and more interesting issue would be the possible drift between Europe as a whole and the US. But, as another poster mentionned, this has been recently debatted here.
