Curious it is. But perhaps explained by the fact that WWI was the ultimate game changer; it ushered out the entire world order as it had existed and was understood in Britain and the Continent. An entire generation of men were all but wiped out in France which explains their inability to field an army of substance for WWII. It upended the British Empire; it changed everything and rent the fabric of the social contract as it had existed and was understood.
I’ve been studying this phenomenon for years now and having traveled extensively throughout Europe I’ve observed first hand the fact that the effects of WWI and WWII scarred the psyche of successive generations on both the Continent and in Britain. I have no answers but I speculate that it may well explain the near zero birth rates in Italy and Russia. The sense I’ve gotten of it is that this systemic shock has adversely affected the resilience of the societies involved.
I would have loved to been a fly, or several flies, on the wall back then. It’s almost like someone was pulling the strings to get everything in place, then light the match so they could bring about that complete change in the world order.
Basically after that all of the major monarchies fell and we started this dance toward the One World Govt thing. I really truly wonder sometimes if the whole thing wasn’t orchestrated for exactly that.
Not exactly. At least by itself.
German suffered very nearly the same percentage losses, and seems to have been able to field an army of substance quite nicely.
In 1939, France had a large and modern army - around 900,000 men and 5 million reservists with at least some military training. They, however, lacked the will to crush Hitler early.
I just finished a book about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich; in the book they claim that the Czech resistance obtained Hitler's plans for the invasion of France a month before it took place - including their plans to bypass the Maginot line through the Ardennes. They passed the intel on to the French, but the French disregarded it.
Excellent point. I once heard somebody use the example of a young man who entered the House of Lords in the last year of Queen Victoria’s reign. At that time he would have been among the 400 or so families who ruled England and by extension a quarter of the world’s population. By the time he passed on his title 50 years later he and his whole class were largely irrelevant. It was an amazing transfer of power, all the more so for being largely peaceful.