[GeorgefromGeorgia]

The French Army was no small force. Unfortunately, its strategy was flawed. The Germans won fairly easily not just because they did an end run around the Maginot Line (give me a break, they repeated the same strategy from WWI), but also Hans Guideron's combined arms strategy of using air, infantry and armor in coordination to break through lines and aggressive move into the rear. Finally, the Germans wanted to win a lot more than the French.

[kenavi]

When WWII came, the French were depleted from two centuries of war and Revolution: the Seven Years War with the British, the 1789 Revolution and its executions, Napoleon's Empire Building (taking on the German states who then coalesced behind Prussia, invading Russia, fighting guerilla resistance in Spain), the return of the monarchy, the Paris Commune of 1871, the return of Napoleon (nephew) and the Franco-Prussian Wars, and World War I, fought mainly on French soil. All the while maintaining a second-rate Empire to the British in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeastern Asia.

The population was depleted, and the populace was torn by a century of over-ideologizing.

That is the lesson of France for us, not the people, who vary as to friendliness towards the U.S.