Posted on 11/08/2015 6:01:50 PM PST by Olog-hai
That’s neat. thanks.
Geez, a lot of money just to have a meeting place for a bunch of cheese eating surrender monkeys.
Your comments are very true but omit one important detail: the 40,000 French soldiers taken prisoner by the Germans after successfully defending the Dunkirk beachhead so the about 240,000 British troops and 100,000 French troops could be evacuated to England.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkirk_evacuation
What I don’t understand is the treatment by the French people of the 1 million+ 1940 French POWs after they were freed from German camps at the end of the war.
From accounts I have read, France denied them recognition as POWs unless the soldier had escaped and returned to France during the war. It also took until the 1950s for the 1940 POWs to be granted veterans benefits.
Reading of it gives a sense for spiteful pettiness on the part of the French public. A sort of “Yes, the country’s pre-war leadership and preparation for war was ill-conceived, even incompetent, we suffered. The generalship once the fighting started was poor, we suffered. You were ordered to surrender, we suffered. The occupation was hard on us, we suffered. You got to work as a POW in German industry and agriculture for five years but we suffered. So now you have returned and you are going to suffer because we suffered.”
The 85,000 figure is for May and June of 1940 in WWII NOT WWI.
The French lost 162,000 killed at Battle of Verdun from February through December, 1916
France: According to the Defence Historical Service, 85,310 killed (including 5,400 Maghrebis), 12,000 missing, 120,000 wounded and 1,540,000 prisoners (including 67,400 Maghrebis).[256] Some recent French research indicates that the number of killed was between 55,000 and 85,000.[6] In August 1940, 1,540,000 prisoners were taken into Germany where roughly 940,000 remained until 1945 when they were liberated by advancing Allied forces.
I'm finishing up reading a book about the Malaysian and Singapore campaign. You have a point. Poor planning, poor strategy, poor tactics, and generally poor leadership of frequently poor troops. Of course, it didn't help that early on they lost a chunk of their outdated planes due to the actions of a British officer who turned out to be working for the Nips.
Then they have fixed the problems, for now. Typically that thing does not get out of port often.
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