That’s so retarded to say. In WWI they l.3 million compared to the Brits who lost 800k. They fought the Germans in an absolute hellscape and held the Germans hard back for years until the armistice.
WWII you say? In the 6 week Battle for France they lost 85,000 dead and killed 49,000 Germans, and the Germans lost 1200 aircraft and about 800 tanks.
The Brits fled the battlefield back across the channel but we never hear tea drinking surrender monkey jokes for some reason.
Even better, the Brits surrendered Singapore to a Japanese force a third their size.
Very unfounded to slander the French military.
DeGaulle of him to slander the Fwench....
Found some different numbers elsewhere:
Germans 156,000 casualties, 27,000 killed
France 200,000 wounded, 90,000 killed, 1.2 million captured
Britain 68,000 casualties
Belgium 23,000 casualties
http://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=32
Another site shows
Germans
Killed 27,074
Missing 18,384
Wounded 111,034 Officers, non-commissioned officers, and men.
Total Casualties 156,492 Officers, non-commissioned officers and men.
Are you sure that you aren't pulling the number from the 1914 invasion for the Germans? 85k looks about right for 1914, but way too high for 1940.
Your comments are very true but omit one important detail: the 40,000 French soldiers taken prisoner by the Germans after successfully defending the Dunkirk beachhead so the about 240,000 British troops and 100,000 French troops could be evacuated to England.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkirk_evacuation
What I don’t understand is the treatment by the French people of the 1 million+ 1940 French POWs after they were freed from German camps at the end of the war.
From accounts I have read, France denied them recognition as POWs unless the soldier had escaped and returned to France during the war. It also took until the 1950s for the 1940 POWs to be granted veterans benefits.
Reading of it gives a sense for spiteful pettiness on the part of the French public. A sort of “Yes, the country’s pre-war leadership and preparation for war was ill-conceived, even incompetent, we suffered. The generalship once the fighting started was poor, we suffered. You were ordered to surrender, we suffered. The occupation was hard on us, we suffered. You got to work as a POW in German industry and agriculture for five years but we suffered. So now you have returned and you are going to suffer because we suffered.”
I'm finishing up reading a book about the Malaysian and Singapore campaign. You have a point. Poor planning, poor strategy, poor tactics, and generally poor leadership of frequently poor troops. Of course, it didn't help that early on they lost a chunk of their outdated planes due to the actions of a British officer who turned out to be working for the Nips.