“The rapid collapse of France in 1940 is often attributed to that previous lost generation.”
France still had plenty of people, but few that believed Hitler was worse than Stalin. The atrocities in Ukraine and Spain were known by the time WWII started, and French Catholics saw little reason to oppose the only people who were vehemently anti-communist: Germany.
I can’t agree with your analysis.
Briefly, the French believed the line of Forts they had been building for years were impregnable, so I’d call it the Maginot Safety Syndrome. In fact, they were extremely difficult to overcome and provided a strong defense in certain areas, however the Germans simply went around the line and through where the line had not been completed. Thionville and Metz are unbelievably fortified with dozens of forts protecting the Lorraine region.
The Germans attacked with an entirely new tactic, the Blitzkrieg which rapidly rolled through whatever stood in its way. The mounted cavalry, once considered a great fighting force was wiped out in Poland and subsequently France. No horse or even armored vehicle can stand against a tank.
France had lost the Flower of its youth in W.W. I, only twenty years earlier and sustained enormous losses in the Spanish Flu epidemic as well. It had not yet recovered.
The great hero of France, Petain, an old and some say senile man was persuaded that he could save France from destruction by working with a benevolent Germany. The Vichy government, filled with German sympathizers, led the old man to terrible decisions and the French people were betrayed.
The French were disarmed! It was not until the Americans and Brits began arming them that they had the wherewithal to fight. Nevertheless, they began underground movements all over France and prepared to aid the Allies when they came.
The French people were definitely not German sympathizers as you seem to believe. I’ll warrant there were more German sympathizers in England and America than in France.
Many French Catholics in certain parts of the country were Communist sympathizers and indeed, the man known as the First Maquisard of France, Georges Guingouin, was a Communist school teacher. He led the Maquis of Limousin and succeeded in liberating the city of Limoges, among many operations against the Bosch.