Posted on 07/22/2017 9:06:51 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Around 30,000 French troops held back Nazi divisions near the city of Lille to protect their allies during the evacuation code-named Operation Dynamo.
Renowned French film critic Jacques Mandelbaum called Nolan "witheringly impolite" and slammed the director's "deplorable indifference" towards his country's contribution to the epic evacuation.
"Where in the film are the 120,000 French soldiers who were also evacuated from Dunkirk? Where are the 40,000 who sacrificed themselves to defend the city against a superior enemy in weaponry and numbers?" he asked in his review in French newspaper Le Monde.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibtimes.co.uk ...
There was a good French movie from a few years ago, called “Diplomacy” about Hitler’s orders to blow up Paris.
>General Patton gave the French credit for enabling his successful advances in France and Eisenhower gave the French credit for the Allies successful invasion of Normandy. But of course Eisenhower and Patton didn’t know what they were talking about according to most on this board!!!
The French didn’t land at Normandy. What are you talking about?
Ever heard of Ouistreham?
“Kursk made it official”.
You’re right.
>The only French port Rommels 7th Panzer took, that I know of, was St. Valery, where the British were unable to evacuate. The 51st Highland Division was surrounded and forced to surrender.
I’ll look it up. It was an incident mentioned in the book Inside the Nazi War Machine by Bevin Alexander which was about the battle of France.
I've actually seen them and I remember that!
>Ever heard of Ouistreham?
Can’t say that I have. Did french women service German troops there?
Heard one that went something like “for sale: 1 French machine gun-only dropped once”.
German infantry divisions went from 9 battalions to 6.
Their reduced numbers were supposed to be made up by more automatic weapons but those too were in short supply.
German Army Group Center during Bagration in 44’ had 640,000 men and about 500 tanks and assault guns. They faced Soviets with 1.7 million men and over 8000 tanks and assault guns.
Soviets suffered heavy losses throughout the war but were able to fill out formations with ‘volunteers’ from ‘liberated’ territory for the final push 44’-45’.
Patton was a Francophone who was fluent in French.
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He also thought Eisenhower was too much of an Anglophone. He was right.
He especially thought he was soft towards the Russians.
>75% of French Jews survived the war, one of the highest rates for an occupied country. Most of the Jews that were handed over were not French citizens, but alien Jews who had fled Germany and other parts of Europe. The Nazis convinced the Vichy authorities, that they would take these alien Jews off of their hands and send them to “Family Camps” in the East. Now what’s open for question is what did the Vichy Authorities really know about what their ultimate fate would be.
The German authorities hadn’t settled on killing all the Jews off until late 1942 when victory no longer appeared to be likely. Before that they seem earnest in their desire to deport them to Palestine or Madagascar. Of course it’s likely that the Holocaust still would have happened if the Germans had won the war given the way the Nazi’s thought about the Jews.
That was “their finest hour.” And there were I believe seven Americans who flew with them, some Poles too.
Eisenhower had a tough job. The Brits had vetoed an invasion of France in 43'.
They were able to since an invasion at that time would have involved mostly Commonwealth formations.
They went into France in 44' reluctantly. Churchill wanted a landing in the Balkans or Greece instead.
George Marshall had one of his few meltdowns over that and so there was Normandy.
But the Brits weren't happy about it.
I do not mean the Poles. The polish made the first discoveries, passed the information and an Enigma machine to the French who in turn passed it along to the English when war broke out. I credit all three with the advancement with the final work being done at Bletchly Park, just outside London, by Allen Turin and his group of geniuses.
>German infantry divisions went from 9 battalions to 6.
And they doubled the number of divisions. Again they were trying to expand the Germany army to fight a 3 front war but without enough weapons to do so.
>German Army Group Center during Bagration in 44’ had 640,000 men and about 500 tanks and assault guns. They faced Soviets with 1.7 million men and over 8000 tanks and assault guns.
Being outnumber 3 to 1 was normal for the Germans on the eastern front. Again the problem was the lack of weapons, not manpower. Their armor and guns had been stripped to fight elsewhere.
Sounds like Churchill came around
‘So far the Commanders who are engaged report that everything is proceeding according to plan. And what a plan! This vast operation is undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that has ever occurred. It involves tides, wind, waves, visibility, both from the air and the sea standpoint, and the combined employment of land, air and sea forces in the highest degree of intimacy and in contact with conditions which could not and cannot be fully foreseen.’ (Winston Churchill to the House of Commons, 6 June 1944)
If it had been the Brits landing at Omaha and Utah, it could have gone differently...
Roosevelt was thge great admirer of “uncle Joe.” We are still paying the price.
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