Well put. The French Army held the Germans in largely static positions in a band about 60 miles wide in the east for most of WWI. The French lost about 1.3 million soldiers about 4% of their population, while the British lost about 800k, around 2% of theirs. The Russians lost around 2 million which was about 2% for them.
Yet, to hear of WWI you would think it was the British who nearly fought it alone. They all went home, wrote the Hobbit series, wrote Flanders Fields poems, etc ad nauseum. Propaganda is a wonderous thing.
It was bad for everyone there, but the French fought hard.
And as for WWII, they lost something like 350k dead and wounded and caused the Germans something like 150k in a battle lasting a matter of weeks. But the Luftwaffe and Nazi tanks had bested them. The French build amazing defenses along the German border, and the British were going to hold the northern flank.
But thats where the wily Germans attacked. And the British Tea Drinking surrender monkeys ran away, wishing the French good luck. Oop, i meant “conducted the brilliant and miraculous reverse amphibious assault at Dunkirk”.
Even in the war on Terror, the French fleet has been far more aggressive than us. I think for some reason they do not have our historic aversion to shooting at Africans. An American land attack in Africa would send us into catatonic shock and our guilt would overcome us.
France is weird. At home they are socialist nutballs, but overseas they could care less how they are seen. Like sinking the Rainbow warrior. Doing atmospheric nuke testing in the 90s. (and we even TOLD them they shouldnt!) They flipped us the bird and pushed the button.
Anyway, thats my rant of the day. BUt im thinking with our pussy generals giving Salami salami baloney greetings on Afghan TV, and forbidding our troops from insulting pedophiles or the Taliban, and our deathly fear of bombing pirate bases or doing ANYTHING that might anger moslems, we are the last people who should be insulting anyones will to fight decisively. Hell, we cant even shave major Hassans damned beard.
Well that was retarded. Not characteristic of your posts at all.
The French position became untenable after the massive German breakthrough at Sedan. I’m not blaming them - the Blitzkrieg was a new kind of war for which no-one was prepared. They recalled the unpopular but plausibly effective Weygand too late to make a difference.
But please explain to the thread why should England should NOT have leveraged its sea-power to get its army off the Continent?
Was Dunkirk a strategic point which had to be denied to Hitler at all costs? No.
Was Dunkirk a suitable theater for die-hard obstinacy like Stalingrad? Should the UK parliament have told it’s soldiers to die-in-place the same way Hitler commanded von Paulus? Again, obviously no.
Make your point. Why should Britain have fought an untenable position in France - which even the French government could see was lost?