[drjoe]

But Americans never talk about World War I, when France fought in the mud and the ice and the trenches for four years and lost 1.4 million soldiers


OK We'll talk about the mutinies of the French army on the Western Front, where, if it were not for the Brits the French army would have folded up like a house of cards and the Germans could have resumed their march on Paris

[xJones]

The British and the Russians took horrendous casulties in WWI, but they managed to come back and fight in WWII.

There was something going on the cafe society of Paris during the 1930's. Americans like William L. Shirer commented on it. A blase sort of atmosphere where no one cared about anything, and don't tell them about problems. Sartre's "existentialism" was a later outgrowth of that. It would appear that the French leaders don't want to fight anymore, but they still want to control things. World War I, fought on French territory, shocked the hell out of them and they drew the wrong conclusions.