“The French, like the Italians aren’t to be trusted in time of war.”
That’s how the French felt after getting duped into fighting the Indochina War by the US; they left NATO, developed the bomb, and haven’t been “rescued” ever since.
The French preferred Hitler to Stalin when they were forced to choose; they knew from the Civil War in Spain what Stalin had in store for Europe, and in the end, they (and Spain) were spared the fate of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Albania, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, East Germany and Yugoslavia (some of them the countries born of WWI when the world was made safe for democracy)..
Verdun.