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?
I think the point is that it was French troops that defended the Dunkirk perimeter against the Germans. The British didn’t inform their French allies that they were pulling out, and pretty much abandoned most of the French forces.
You miss the point. When the Germans made the deep breakthrough, the British forces and some French were all to the north of the penetration.
The south side was all French. The British fled the battlefield.
Of course the British were as unable to deal with the new concept of Blitzkrieg warfare, as were the French. So running away rather than repeat WWI (which was impossible anyway) was probably the best option. Yet Britain is always rational and intelligent, and are never called tea drinking surrender monkeys with no will to fight.
After the British fled, the remaining French who counted on them to fight too were totally screwed. The French forces were basically encircled and cut off. the French government surrendered.
So my point was that it’s actually retarded to hear so much popular BS jokes about the French surrender, while the British were pulling their “Brave Sir Robin” act and fleeing from the enemy. And losing 350k in a 6 week battle is not exactly being eager to surrender.
It’s just facts.
The French in WWII were victims of a poor strategic plan by their generals and leaders, and on counting on England to stay and fight alongside them.
But the French soldier has been slandered beyond belief in modern culture. Their leaders have deserved scorn on several occasions. But their soldiers are first rate, and pretty much always have been.
For every British Rourkes Drift, there was a French Battle of Cameron. Incidents of the French having no will to fight are about the same as in the British, American, German, and Russian armies.
WHen it happens anywhere, it is always clearly the fault of bad generals and political leaders. But it’s just highly ignorant to suggest that the French soldier doesn’t fight very professionally.
And the French learned their lesson. They are in NATO, but do not base NATO troops on their soil. Their nuclear forces are utterly independent of the NATO command structure. They have learned to count on no one but the French forces for military defense.
And yes, they are hard to understand. ALmost no country has more moslems than they do, but they outlaw hijabs in public and attack moslems in Mali. And it creates no unrest at home. They can be heavily anti-semetic ,,, but sold Mirages to Israel.
They are hard to understand sometimes, but not a bad people. And certainly not cowards.