<< Why wasn’t the “Great French Republic” defended to the bitter end and then some by it’s citizens? >:(>>
Lessee....
*The specter of four years of bloodshed over twenty years earlier—a good bit of it for nothing—loomed heavily over France’s politics and culture for decades. They began rearming in 1938-39, but unlike the US they had not spent years preparing their industries for the job, and it was a classic case of too little, too late.
*Communists...lots of Communists. Seriously. At the time of the invasion, Stalin and Hitler were still buddies. So guess who the French Communists tacitly backed via industrial sabotage?
*The people as a whole thought France’s “democratic” government was a tad weak.
*The merchant class feared Bolshevism more than the Germans.
*The French officer corps was so conservative (Old World speaking) as to be almost monarchic in their leanings. They weren’t too thrilled about the existing government either. And the top generals were still stuck on the previous war, both in terms of tactics and refusing to recognize that time and technology had moved on from 1918.
All that said, the French sustained casualties of well over 100,000 in the weeks from invasion to surrender. That’s not cutting and running, that’s standing and dying while being out-thought and out-fought.
Worth watching...politics aside, this is really good television:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Un_village_fran%C3%A7ais
France defaults on their WWI war debt with the US in 1932. Hitler comes to power in 1933.
They then fall under the Johnson Act prohibiting them from selling war bonds in the US. There are also some Neutrality Acts keeping them from buying armaments.
By the time this is all untangled (The French trade bases in the Caribbean to be able to sell bonds) and the American factories are tooled, the Germans are on the march.
Much of the material they bought ended up going to the Brits.