Posted on 11/08/2015 6:01:50 PM PST by Olog-hai
The French president is set on Thursday to finally inaugurate the new €4.2 billion Ministry of Defense building, nicknamed the "French Pentagon". [...]
The building is located on the southern edge of the city near Metro Balard, in the 15th arrondissement of Paris. It's due to this location that some refer to it as the "Balargone", a reference to the US Pentagon. [...] It doesn't, however, have five sides like its US counterpart. [...]
It will be primarily used as a command center to oversee operations, built to replace a spread of sites that were previously dotted across Paris. Its walls can withstand a missile strike. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at thelocal.fr ...
Did they leave enough room for the white flag for the next time the going gets tough?
Oversee operations? Is their military even capable of force projection beyond a few brigades? I thought I read that their sole aircraft carrier couldn’t make it out of port for more than a few weeks at a time.
The building also boasts restaurants, a hairdresser, three daycare centers, and plenty of green space on the inside. It also has a swimming pool, which will be open to the public and which cost €30 million. …They sure did not get their priorities wrong, did they. Nothing like a $32-million swimming pool to help tactical efforts.
As far as “white flag” comments on French military threads go, yours was particularly lame. You could call it French, even.
Centralization should make the next fleet scuttling easier, without the confusion of conflicting orders and such.
I thought I read that their sole aircraft carrier had been operating in the Persian Gulf, and supporting our troops in Afghanistan.
During one of the many wars that the French and the British fought, and the French usually lost, the French just happened to capture a British Major.
An officer brought the Major to the French general for interrogation.
The French general began ridiculing the Major for wearing “that stupid red tunic.”
“Why to you wear that red uniform, it makes it easy for us to shoot you.”
The British major replied, “If I’m wounded, the blood will not show and my soldiers will not be afraid.”
The French general said, “That is a very good idea.”
He turned to his orderly and said, “From now on all French officers will wear brown pants.”
That’s so retarded to say. In WWI they l.3 million compared to the Brits who lost 800k. They fought the Germans in an absolute hellscape and held the Germans hard back for years until the armistice.
WWII you say? In the 6 week Battle for France they lost 85,000 dead and killed 49,000 Germans, and the Germans lost 1200 aircraft and about 800 tanks.
The Brits fled the battlefield back across the channel but we never hear tea drinking surrender monkey jokes for some reason.
Even better, the Brits surrendered Singapore to a Japanese force a third their size.
Very unfounded to slander the French military.
Remind me again what the Battleship Graf Spee did in South America rather than go out and shoot it out with three British ships?
What did the whole German fleet do at Scapa Flow?
Scuttled, that’s what. In Scapa Flow it was a mass scuttle after a mass surrender. Double prizes!
Lord in heaven, you and I just agreed on a thread! Good times,,,
DeGaulle of him to slander the Fwench....
Found some different numbers elsewhere:
Germans 156,000 casualties, 27,000 killed
France 200,000 wounded, 90,000 killed, 1.2 million captured
Britain 68,000 casualties
Belgium 23,000 casualties
http://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=32
Another site shows
Germans
Killed 27,074
Missing 18,384
Wounded 111,034 Officers, non-commissioned officers, and men.
Total Casualties 156,492 Officers, non-commissioned officers and men.
Are you sure that you aren't pulling the number from the 1914 invasion for the Germans? 85k looks about right for 1914, but way too high for 1940.
It certainly didn't surrender.
It cowardly refused to leave port and face battle. They sunk it themselves and the crew was interned for the rest of the war. That’s a surrender if i’ve ever seen one. Call it what you want, it sure wasn’t the charge of the light brigade.
“It also has a swimming pool, which will be open to the public and which cost €30 million. “
Ok all you jihadis outta dah pool!
85k does not look right for WWI. Those numbers vary according to site. And you think it’s 90k. Close enough. Pick the one that makes you happy. Either way, the French lost more dead in 6 weeks than we did in all of Vietnam.
And my 45k for the Germans includes 18,000 missing plus your 25. They didn’t go deserter on the Nazis. They exploded into bits, drowned, burned to an unrecoverable crisp, vaporized in plane crashes, etc.
In those days missing means a 155 direct hit and a pink mist.
Either way, the point remains, the French soldier fought almost fanatically and was beaten in WWII by a war plan nobody anticipated. That’s why the Brits fled the battlefield, leaving the French left flank wide open. Their government and leaders, slander away. But the French soldier was not a coward.
The Brits have a bigger record of surrender than the French. Every military then had them. We did in the Philippines, Germans did in Africa, in the east, and in the western front.
Only armchair tacticians fantasize that everyone fight to the death.
No, surrender would be running up the white flag and giving the ship to the British.
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