Posted on 05/18/2006 11:52:13 AM PDT by George W. Bush
Sarkozy's reform bill will "stiffen the rules for immigrants in France, establish a sort of quota system and let authorities cherry-pick who gets in - such as doctors, computer whizzes or sports stars." (Independent Online, South Africa) "The bill, which also makes it difficult for immigrants already in France to have their families join them, is expected to go to the [French] Senate for final approval in June." (BBC)
Sarkozy himself is the son of a Hungarian immigrant. Promoting his reform proposal, Sarkozy had earlier said that "We can't keep welcoming to France everyone who wants to come and to whom we can offer neither housing nor employment." (Le Figaro)
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
The US spent the first week consolidating the beachhead, the next 2 cutting the Cotentin penisula (west) and capturing Cherbourg (north). 3 US divisions made the main drive there against twice their own numbers and won completely. Supplies coming ashore over open beaches did not suffice for 2 prongs at the same time in the US zone, so they defended toward the south in this period (second half of June).
A month after the invasion, the US was reoriented south and attacked toward St. Lo. That offensive opened on 7 July and led to breakthrough in less than 3 weeks (by 25 July). German counterattacks were defeated in the first week. Then they simply ground their way through the German defenders. That was expensive certainly, but it did not take long. The method was continuous infantry probes backed by massive fire superiority, both air and artillery. The Germans ran out of infantry at the front line.
When the US broke out before the end of July and unleashed its still basically untouched armor, the Germans threw in their remaining reserves in the theater, first trying to plug the hole and then trying to cut through to the sea to isolate those already through it. They got their heads handed to them and lost France.
As for how the Brits managed to stuff everything up on their portion of the front, initially they faced more of the German armor - though by the end the US defeated just as much. But basically they just weren't as good, were less ably led (meaning Monty) and employed less sensible tactics (mass armor in Goodwood predictably failing, etc).
I agree the Americans outperformed the British in Normandy. I suspect the Brits had had enough of war by that time and were just looking to get home alive.
But the German army was in a class by itself throughout the war. Time and time again German troops performed better than one would have expected given the relative forces. They chased the British around North Africa for a couple of years with only a few German divisions even though Africa was the main British war effort and it was a minor sideshow for the Germans compared to the Russian front.
Even when American troops were involved such as at Salerno, Anzio, Monte Cassino, Normandy, Brest, Huertgen Forest, etc the Allies were frustrated by just how difficult it was to defeat the Germans. They pretty much always fought hard even when the situation was hopeless as at Brest.
Probably the best example of the uniform excellence of the German troops during the war was at the Seelow Heights in 1945 when the Germans basically cobbled together a bunch of stragglers and Luftwaffe ground crews and stopped a massive red army thrust cold for a period of time. Zhukov couldn't believe what he was witnessing.
You obviously know a lot about WW II, so I have a hard time seeing how you could disagree with this point. It's not surprising that a modern day Sparta (which is essentially what Nazi Germany's culture was like) would produce fine soldiers.
It does boggle the mind.
The Germans outperformed per man or per unit of military capital, did not outperform the western allies overall, did outperform the Russians overall. Mostly because of doctrinal weaknesses in the latter case, and mostly because of smarter tactics and a professional officer corps.
They also had lousy strategic direction, were completely outplayed by the Russians in operational "big chess" terms, threw away their armor reserves recklessly in hopeless counterattacks, nailed their infantry positions to the ground and needlessly lost forces by doing so, etc, etc.
And no, the Nazis weren't better at it because they were more Sparta like or more tyrannical or cared less about human life. They lost. They performed well tactically in exactly the same manner the Germans of 1914 had, and the Germans of 1870, and the Germans of 1866. That's the result of a tradition that runs from Frederick through Gneisenau to Moltke the elder and von Schlieffen. Nazis didn't make it, they executed not a few of the men who actually did, and they thoroughly wrecked it, leaving ashes.
We need to remember the strategic disadvantage France had against Germany in 1914. The German economy was much larger than the French. The German population was 50% larger than France's. Germany very clearly had the advantage, and they pressed it, hard, with the Schlieffen Plan. The French were certainly pressed to their wits' end: the stories of reserve troops being ferried to the front in Paris taxicabs is not a legend.
But the French won the Battle of 1914, at the Marne.
Head to head, Germany on France, with Germany the more populous, more powerful country by far, in a direct duel in the field between Germany and France, France won and Germany lost.
Of course France did not have the industry or the manpower to be able to do it again and again and again: Germany was certain to win a war of attrition against France alone, because Germany was so much more powerful.
Nevertheless, if we focus in on comparative militaries, one on one, in a head to head duel, the French defeated the Germans at the Marne, and not the other way around.
This needs to be said, because it presents a truth that 1940 obscures. The most dangerous and powerful enemy of Germany was France. Not Britain. The British commanded the sea, but the war was decided on land. Not Russia. France. And the numerically and industrially inferior French put an army in the field that faced the vaunted German military machine virutally alone in 1914. And they beat it.
1940 and the catastrophic failure of France was the surprise event that opened the vistas for Hitler's madness.
The precipitous fall of France was a surprise, a surprise which opened up opportunities for Germany that unfolded into the nightmare of World War II.
But the Germans were not facing the French alone, and when they did not win outright in a month they had to send their next waves of reinforcements etc to the east, to meet the Russians. If Russia had not been in the field in WW I, France would have been smashed to rubble by the summer of 1915, at the latest. They didn't beat anybody.
In 1916, they only held because the Brits were standing beside them and soaked off German reserves on the Somme, ending the Verdun offensive. Which bled the French white, unsustainably so, but for help from the Somme and Brusilov offensives. And triggered the army mutinies of 1917. When the Russians dropped out, the Germans could and did hit the Brits in 1918, and beat them too. A similar scale breakthrough was not decisive for the same defense dominance reasons, and the depth provided by newly arriving Americans stopped them that time.
Pretending in any of that there was any military defeat of Germany by France alone, is simply pretending.
"Um, barely holding the line after losing a fifth of the country and millions of men is not "beating them". The French got killed in 1914. There was enough defense dominance in that era, from machineguns and modern artillery and from rail transport for defenders against feet for attackers, that they managed to avoid losing the entire country in a matter of weeks. They still lost much more of their army than the Germans did of theirs."
Yes, it is beating them.
The Germans had a strategic objective in the Schlieffen Plan. It was imperative they achieve it. They failed becaues the French Army stopped them at the Marne. The French won the campaign.
The Germans had a strategic objective at Verdun as well. And once again they failed. The French stopped them.
A comparison might be Jutland. The Germans sunk twice the British tonnage as the British sunk the Germans, but the Germans were driven back to port. The British won at Jutland.
Similarly, the Union won the battle of the Wilderness, and the Battle of Shiloh, despite having suffered heavier casualties than the Confederates. Because the Union achieved their strategic objective but the Confederates did not.
Germany vastly outnumbered France. It was a more powerful and more populous country. The Germany Army lost to the French Army at the battle of the Marne, and at the Battle of Verdun. The Germans chose the battlefield, and timed the stroke, and in both cases the French held the field.
Pretending that France didn't defeat the Schlieffen Plan and the Verdun plan is self-deception.
Really....well you know the doctors are not expecting to be the "elite" still left when all the "middle class" have been made expendable by the virtual socialist state.
How dare anyone or system call anyone a "sub-elite"?
"The Pan Snob who struts about in the middle of the other animals, doing as he likes, represents the pride that has penetrated many people, thanks to advantages, riches, beauty, honors, etc. Instead of only keeping them as gifts of God, they make them into a personal merit by which they lift themselves up in their own thoughts. Then, believing themselves better than others, they despise and oppress them."
These conditions never have nor will they ever be tolerated. Not by the heart of the lovers their country today or yesterday.
There is nothing worse then the rejection of a countrymen or a friend who stabs you in the back after years of faithful service.
When France is gone to those that will fill her moral and spiritual void, there will be more that despise her for her arrogance and rejection than are buried on her soil.
How very sad...
Good point! I sure am glad you are not a one-note MNJohnnie. Now THAT truly would get tedious.
In my experience, they stay in France, make sure they have an easy bureaucratic job they can complete by 11 in the morning, and sit around a lot drinking and discussing the latest raving nonsense.
French society, such as it is, does not know they exist nor care, and whenever they try to impose some actual reform it simply goes into the streets and breaks things until the entirely imaginary "elite" gives it up and goes back to its books by madmen.
And the world turns. And the graveyards fill up. And occasionally a foreigner stops by to look at art made by monarchists 300 years ago, or looted by a Corsican dead almost 200 years.
Well, consider this: Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin are ENArques. General Charles de Gaulle was not.
Leadership is not made through technocracy, but through something else. Unfortuately there is no good way to test for that ineffable quality...perhaps handwriting analysis?
I have been fascinated by the French educational system ever since I heard Bill Buckley -- 30 years ago on Firing Line -- tell the apocryphal story of an American reporter visiting the French education minister in his cavernous, Versailles-like office.
The reporter, in that jaunty American style, opened with, "So what's going on in French education?"
The minister is said to have glanced at his watch and replied, "It is 11:45; The children are studying Moliere."
I am always interested in the Gallic insights that you bring to these threads and was reading along with interest through your commentary on the meritocratic quality of the French system. All that you said was consistent with what I have gleaned elsewhere.
I am always alert, though, to see if you will "jump the shark" in defense of frogs!
I was pleased that you concluded your comments with a very fair perspective pointing to what is arguably a serious defect in the French system, that rigorous scholarship does not necessarily correlate with great leadership. One thing that you did not dwell on that I suspect would surprise many here is not just how rigorously competitive these schools are but the extent to which graduation sets one up for life.
In America, a prestigious education will definitely grease one's way into a lucrative first job with every possibility of a bright future. But after a short time, the question becomes not where did you go to school but what have you accomplished in the real world.
My understanding of these things in France is that the right academic pedigree is not just a boost at the starting line but an entitlement to a leadership position in government or business throughout one’s career.
I believe that I have read that de Gaulle did some deliberate social engineering to assure that France would be run by a cadre of intellectual elites. Is that true? I suppose that Napoleon is somewhat the model for all of this -- a brilliant man who rose on merit and ran his regime in a very modern, meritocratic fashion (leaving hundreds of thousands of needless dead in its wake).
One other downside of all of this that we Americans have to struggle to grasp is the fierceness of the academic competition and the brutal grind that ambitious French teenagers face. You have probably seen the books of Polly Platt. Although they make no pretense of being scholarly or very serious, I have gotten some useful insights from them. Ms. Platt makes the point that the French educational environment can be so competitive that a youngster who is out of school for a few days could not necessarily expect a classmate to show him what he had missed. That seems so extreme -- Is that an overstatement, in your opinion?
Notwithstanding all the French bashing on this board (in which I sometimes lustily participate), I think it is hard for Americans to understand that France is a seriously different culture. Learning about French education began, for me, to open the eyes. And there are also things to be understood from the educational system about what centralized big government (i.e., statism) carried out by disciplined bureaucrats really means, as when the education minister can look at his watch and say with certainty that the children -- all the children, from Nice to Brest -- are studying the prescribed lessons about Moliere.
ping
If you ask me, the Muslims are still getting off relatively easy: don't forget -- Europeans have a history of genocide when it comes to minorities who outlive their usefulness, outstay their welcome, or become inconvenient.
"Now you've gone from beating the Germans to beating plans. lol. French are such wusses."
Not at all, sir.
I started with the premise that victory is the measure of effectiveness, and observed that the French won the war. My basic point was, and remains, that German strategic planning has generally been extremely weak, as demonstrated by the fact that Germany started two World Wars she had no real prospect of winning.
You retorted that the French didn't win the war, really, that everyone else (presumably the Americans and the British) won the war, and you gave casualty statistics to "prove" your point.
I countered that the key defensive battles on the Western Front: First Marne and Verdun, were head-to-head Franco-German affairs, and that the French Army defeated the German Army on the battlefield in both of those battles. That establishes, I believe, the quality of the French Army, and demonstrates that the Germans, while tactically proficient, did not enjoy a vast tactical superiority over her primary enemies, France in particular. Germany attacked France, and lost the war. That's the big picture. The tactical picture is that the two head-to-head German on French campaigns chosen by the Germans were both French victories and German defeats. The Americans and the British did not defeat the Germans at the Marne in 1914, and at Verdun. Those were direct matchups between the German Army and the French Army. France won both battles.
In general, you have a personal distaste for the French which has caused you to simply be blind to the considerable French military capacity which was primarily responsible for Germany's defeat in World War I. Nobody pretends that the Americans, British and Russians didn't play a role, but France bore the brunt of the battle, and it was France that stopped the Germans in 1914. Could France have held against Germany alone? Obviously not. Germany was a far more populous country than France, and therefore a far greater industrial power. Clearly the Germans would eventually win a war of attrition against France, alone, or Britain alone, but against both, she could not win a war of attrition: combined, Britain and France outnumbered Germany. So, if Germany was going to choose to start a war against superior enemies, the Germans had to rely on delivering a knockout blow to the French. They tried that in the 1914 campaign. And they lost at the Marne.
You may denigrate the quality of the French Army, but the Germans of the time could not afford themselves that luxury. They were at war, and had to evaluate their enemies realistically. Falkenhayn, the German Chief of Staff, called the French Army "England's best sword", and planned the Verdun campaign to 'bleed the French Army white', because thereby "England's best sword would be knocked out her hand".
YOU may denigrate the French Army in World War I, but the Germans you so admire did not share your opinion. They respected the French Army, and understood clearly that Germany could not win the war if they could not defeat it.
Verdun was the direct, intentional effort by the Germans to destroy the French Army in a war of attrition. The Germans lost the battle. How do we know? They failed to achieve their objective, they lost nearly as many troops as the French there, in the end, and Falkenhayn was relieved of command.
I don't know why you feel the need to refight century-old battles and take the German side, but if you're going to do that, then you should also adopt Germany's respect and fear of the French Army. They knew they had to defeat France or they would lose the war. They were right. They didn't defeat France in the field, and so - as they knew would happen - they lost the war. They rolled the dice figuring they could smash France quickly and win. What happened was that France smashed them in the end. You don't like the French, so you're revising history.
And no, the French and British together would not have won a war of attrition against Germany without additional help, even though between them they outnumbered Germans 3:2. Because German relatively performance was a higher factor than that, and defense dominance a comparable one, in addition. But Russia and the US as well make it quite a different story.
Also, if you think stopping an enemy in one battle is victory, then once the French started counterattacking at Verdun, the Germans won, since they stopped those, too. It is simply a silly position of setting a bar as low as possible in order to "clear" it, motivated by nothing more than national bias. No objective observor thinks French military performance was superior to German military performance in either 1914 or 1916.
"Really....well you know the doctors are not expecting to be the "elite" still left when all the "middle class" have been made expendable by the virtual socialist state."
Well, the doctors I know are mostly interested in healing people and enjoying quiet lives. I don't know anybody who walks about consciously concerned about whether or not s/he is "elite", "sub-elite", etc. Doctors are doctors because they love medicine, not to make a social statement.
Utterly specious arguments, Is this really what the German taxpayer is is getting in for return their underwriting of french education?
"Utterly specious arguments, Is this really what the German taxpayer is is getting in for return their underwriting of french education?"
German underwriting of French education?
You don't know what you are talking about, kid.
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